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

As right hon. and hon. Members know, during and since the war successive Governments have possessed powers by Defence Regulations to deal with shortages of water due not only to drought, but to other causes. The simple purpose of the Bill is to replace Defence Regulations 50A and 56 by permanent legislation which will enable the appropriate Ministers, both in England and in Scotland, to give water suppliers temporary authority to meet shortages which are due to drought.

It may, I confess, seem a little odd that a Bill to guard against drought should be before the House immediately following the wettest June for about half-a-century, when many people in different parts of the country are worried not so much by drought as by floods. Even so, if we are to revoke these Defence Regulations, which, I think it is generally considered, have lingered on long enough, we must have statutory powers to act against drought.

By and large, our annual rainfall figures show very small variations over the years. I was looking at them the other day for the last seventy years, and if one takes a group of years at a time it is surprising how small the variations are. What they show, however, is that the three-monthly period April-June is almost consistently the driest quarter of the year, with about one-third less rain than the popular quarter of July-September, when most of the English persist in taking their pleasures rather sadly, because over a long span of time it is a fact that those months tend to get wetter and wetter.

Because water shortages, like all other shortages, arise when demand exceeds supply, I ask the House to look at the growth in the demand for water. The industrial demand is almost insatiable. The Report of my right hon. Friend's Department for last year, which was recently published, shows that industries like the new chemicals and plastics industries which have grown up since the war need millions of gallons of water every day for cooling and for processing. In many parts of the country new industries have sprung up where, a generation ago, nobody ever dreamed of industry.

That is clearly the case in some of the new towns, where as recently as ten years ago much of the land was farmland. In most of the urban districts there has been a striking growth of industry, not least in districts like Tees-side, Humberside and Merseyside. All this has stimulated the demand for water. Again, in farming, modern methods make a very heavy demand on public water supplies in the countryside, and irrigation is now coming along as another important factor.

Lastly, there is domestic demand. One is apt to think of this in terms of providing for an increasing population or of taking piped water to country districts where it was not taken before, but, as hon. Members who are interested in the subject well know, it is by no means as simple as that. During the last seven years, for example, the number of houses with fixed baths in England and Wales has risen from just over 8 million to about 10½ million and the proportion of houses throughout the country without baths is declining steadily every year. I remember hearing, when I was a very small boy, an old lady saying to my mother that she had never had a bath in her life because she did not believe in them. Of course, at that age I was almost a disciple of the old lady. That is an indication of how times change.

I said that under Defence Regulations we have been empowered to deal with shortages due not only to drought, but to other causes, whereas the Bill is limited to "a serious deficiency due to an exceptional shortage of rain."

Is there any reason why the Bill should be limited to that particular cause of shortage? What about the breakdown of an embankment, the failure of machinery or other causes of shortage of water?

We considered carefully whether this limitation should be put into the Bill at its drafting stage. Shortly, the answer to the hon. Member, which, perhaps, my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland may elaborate when he winds up the debate, is that, certainly in recent cases, the Defence Regulations have only been used to guard against drought and not to guard against the other circumstances to which the hon. Member refers. Moreover, there is power under, I think, Section 12 of the Water Act, 1945, whereby water undertakers can be helped in circumstances other than drought. I believe that, in those circumstances, those powers are used where required.

As I was saying, the Bill is limited to a serious deficiency due to an exceptional shortage of rain. We should be quite clear that under it suppliers will not be able to obtain orders to deal with shortages which have been brought on because they themselves have failed to make adequate provision for rising demand. This in itself should prove an incentive to the water industry to proceed with greater rapidity with the regrouping policy which my right hon. Friend is supporting.

Since 1956, about 30 undertakings in England and Wales have been merged with larger undertakings and the total number is now just below 1,000. Orders which are before my right hon. Friend at different stages, either compulsory or agreed, are expected to reduce the total by another 40 or so in the near future. There are about 25 or 30 groups of undertakers who are understood to be drafting agreed orders and many other groups, covering several hundred undertakers, are engaged in preliminary discussions.

We feel that, on the whole, this progress is not too bad. On the other hand, it is not strikingly good and we hope very much that matters will be speeded up in the near future, largely, we hope, on the basis of voluntary action by the undertakers themselves, although, I am bound to add, that the compulsory orders which my right hon. Friend has himself pro- moted are evidence that he will not hesitate to use compulsory powers where necessary. We certainly have no intention of dragging our feet in this matter of regrouping.

How many compulsory orders have there been?

Speaking "off the cuff," I think that there have been about four or five compulsory orders in draft. That is to say, they have not all been carried to finality. Altogether, four or five have been put in train by my right hon. Friend.

The more rapidly we can bring about the reorganisation of the industry, the greater the likelihood that supplies of water can be maintained. That is not to say that we should expect the water undertakers to provide and to maintain sources and storage of supplies which might be needed, perhaps, only once every twenty years or so in case of a severe drought. This would mean sinking large sums of money into the construction of new reservoirs, and so on. It would certainly not be economical and might well lead to steep increases in charges for water. This is one of those matters where the best planning in the world cannot protect us from all risk of drought. It would be foolish to go in for over-insurance in a matter of this sort.

One of the worst droughts that the country ever experienced, certainly in this century, occurred in 1934. The Government of that time were severely criticised, inside and outside the House, for having no powers whatever at their disposal to deal with the trouble. In the result, temporary legislation had to be rushed through Parliament in 1934. That was the Water Supplies (Exceptional Shortage Orders) Act of that year, which empowered Ministers to make Orders enabling water undertakers to get more water. That Act expired in 1935.

During and since the war, we have been able to deal with shortages of water by making Orders under the Defence Regulations. For example, Defence Regulation 50A has been used to make Orders allowing undertakers to take water from emergency sources. Regulation 56 has been used to ease restrictions imposed on water undertakers: to give an example, when an impounding reservoir is built, a stream is dammed and water is collected behind the dam. In accordance with their normal powers, water undertakers are then required to despatch certain quantities of water from the reservoir to maintain the flow in the stream itself.

This is what is known in the industry, and in the House, no doubt, as compensation water. While, in these circumstances, it will be much less than the maximum natural flow of water in the stream, it will usually be a good deal more than the minimum natural flow in very dry weather.

In recent years, the regulations have been used only to deal with drought caused by low rainfall. In Great Britain as a whole—England, Wales and Scotland—20 orders were made in 1949, 11 in 1955, 13 in 1956 and 8 in 1957. It is because we have decided to do away with these emergency powers that the need for the Bill arises.

To refer briefly to the main provisions of the Bill, Clause 1 provides the means by which statutory water undertakers can either get more water or keep up their supplies when a shortage is caused or is threatened because of very dry weather. Although in the Explanatory Memorandum to the Bill we speak of "drought," we have not used this expression in the Bill itself. I understand that in meteorology, "drought" is a term with a very precise meaning. A drought in the technical sense, followed by very heavy rainfall, would not worry us or water undertakers as much as a long period of very low rainfall.

Under Clause 1, water undertakings will be able to seek an Order which would allow them to take water from a source which is not normally used—it may be a lake, a river or a stream—or to take more water than is allowed by their normal powers from an existing source, or, again, to discharge from a reservoir a smaller quantity of water—that is to say, compensation water—than they are normally required to send down the stream.

Before he makes an Order, my right hon. Friend or my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland would have to satisfy himself that the shortage of water is caused by an exceptional shortage of rain. Before applying for an Order, the undertakers are required to consult with the appropriate river board, which, obviously, is concerned, and it is clearly right that when the appropriate Minister is considering an application, he must take into account the interests of all other bodies which are concerned in the conservation or the use of water.

Clause 2 empowers the appropriate Minister to make Orders authorising the erection of stand-pipes and water tanks in streets and the supply of water by those means. That, of course, is a device for the more economical use of water in times of shortage.

The Orders of any kind will not last for more than six months in the first place, but they may be extended so as to retain them for not more than twelve months in all. Under the Defence Regulations themselves no procedure was laid down for the making of orders. Under the Bill we are laying down a detailed procedure, and what we are providing for is this. In the first place, notice must be served of any proposals either on persons or on bodies who are directly interested, and notice must also be published in local newspapers and, in certain circumstances, in the London Gazette . We are then allowing seven days for objections.

I entirely agree that seven days is not a lengthy period, but I am sure that hon. Members on both sides will appreciate that here we are dealing with an emergency procedure and if we were to make this period much longer there might be an undesirable tendency on the part of water undertakers throughout the country to seek prematurely what I may term precautionary Orders and, in that way, give rise to quite unnecessary disturbance.

If there are objections to a proposal, then an inquiry or a hearing must be held, unless the objections which have been made refer solely to compensation, or, in the case of an application for an extension of time, where the objections were, for all practical purposes, made against the original Order.

Under the Bill, the Minister concerned will have discretion to decide as between a public inquiry and a hearing, but both my right hon. Friends will certainly bear very much in mind the general preference for public inquiries. At the same time, we have to recognise that the need for expedition in matters of this sort may make hearings unavoidable in certain cases. It is also our intention that reasoned decision letters should be issued.

I hope that the House will feel that this procedure which I have very briefly described and which is contained in the Schedules to the Bill is as compatible as it reasonably can be made, both with the emergency nature of the operations with which the Bill is seeking to deal and with the spirit of the Franks Report. What my right hon. Friends have tried to do is to hold the scales between water undertakers and their consumers, on the one hand, and the rights of other persons and bodies who have an interest in water, on the other.

I hope that the House will feel that we have held this balance with fairness and with equity. Certainly, that is what we have tried to do. I commend the Bill to the House.

11.24 a.m.

Several eyebrows were raised when hon. Members heard that I was to make my maiden speech in this Chamber on a Friday. Perhaps I can best explain that decision by saying that I understand that it is the custom for maiden speeches to be not too controversial, and one of my main reasons for seeking the opportunity to speak on this Bill was that I should not feel capable, when talking in this House for the first time, of making a non-controversial speech on a controversial subject.

It gives me very great pleasure, however, to make a non-controversial speech on this Bill, which is not controversial in the ordinary sense of the term and which I generally approve, except that I should like to see one or two additional matters put into it.

The Parliamentary Secretary, in his expert description of the effects of the Bill, referred to the tremendous growth there has been in the industrial and domestic demand for water since the end of the war. So far as the industrial demand goes, I must admit that that does not in any way affect my own constituency of Islington, North, where we have no large factories or industrial concerns.

In spite of the fact that there has been a tremendous increase in the number of bathrooms and other amenities during the last ten years, which has added to the demand for water, I must say that though this is due, in the main, to the new house building programme under which local authorities, a few weeks ago, completed their 2-millionth new permanent house since the war, it does not, unfortunately, apply to my own constituency, where most of the buildings do not compare with the modern ones in their amenities.

Accordingly, the problem of waste of water does not apply there in the same degree. When one has to carry water in a bucket from a tap at street level up two flights of stairs one does not feel much inclination to waste any of it once one has got it up there.

I am very pleased to know that the special sub-committees of the Central Water Advisory Committee, which was set up some time ago to consider the question of the demand for water, will, apparently, be reporting soon. It is important, in discussing this Bill and in looking at the whole problem of the water supply industry, that we should have a reasonable knowledge of what the demand is expected to be.

The Parliamentary Secretary spoke of the number of water undertakings that there are and I welcome the action the Minister took in the circular last year to secure amalgamations of those water undertakings. I do not myself believe that nationalisation, as such, of water supplies will of itself improve the position, but I am a great believer in public ownership of water supplies, and I feel that the municipalisation and rationalisation of these undertakings are preferable to nationalisation in the normally accepted sense. My main question on this is: how long will it take for this job to be done?

I should like to refer to the supply of water in the Greater London area. I was at one time for about six years an employee of the Metropolitan Water Board, as a rate collector. In that capacity I often initiated action which led to a temporary shortage of water in certain properties for which the water rate had not been paid, and I understand that the Bill will not enable them to obtain any relief.

A Departmental Committee on Greater London was set up in September, 1946, and reported in 1948. The Committee was unable, unfortunately, to come to an agreed solution. There were two Reports, one by the chairman and one other member advocating a single water board for the Greater London area from Welwyn in the north to Sevenoaks in the south and from Wycombe in the west to Romford in the East. The other report suggested four separate water boards covering approximately the same area.

At that time, in 1948, the plan was supported by the London County Council, the Middlesex County Council, and the Metropolitan Water Board, but now we are in 1958, and, so far, there have not been any amalgamations of the undertakings in the Greater London area, which I consider to be absolutely essential in getting a co-ordinated water supply for the area. I understand that the Metropolitan Water Board is at present considering absorbing the. Richmond and Croydon undertakings, but that is a very small matter compared with the problem of the whole area.

I was pleased to hear from the hon. Gentleman that some consideration is being given to using the compulsory powers available to secure amalgamation under the Water Act, 1945. I am convinced that with all the vested interests there are in small water undertakings the only way the Minister will secure large-scale amalgamations will be by using those powers which are available to him. I was therefore very pleased to hear that he is in the process of using some of them.

The Parliamentary Secretary said that the Bill allows the Minister, in certain circumstances, to issue Orders allowing statutory undertakers to take supplies from other sources or to reduce compensation water on occasions of drought. That, of course, can be done under the Defence Regulations now, but, as the hon. Gentleman said, the Defence Regulations are rather wider than the provisions made in the Bill, and I should like the House to consider for a moment what might happen.

The Minister referred to Section 12 of the Water Act, 1945, and the action which could be taken there, but, as I understand, one of the main reasons for the Bill is that the action which can be taken under Section 12 of the Act of 1945 may be rather slow and prolonged, and one of the main objects of this Bill is accelerated procedure, to be able to cope more quickly with circumstances as they arise. I should have thought that a more accelerated procedure could well be necessary in the case of other shortages as well.

The Defence Regulations have been used for other things, and I understand that seven of them are still in force, or were in force up to the end of 1957, according to the Report of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government for that year. These enable water undertakers to make temporary arrangements for extracting water from sources not normally available to them until permanent works are completed.

It might well be that there is a need for a similar provision to be put in this Bill, enabling the Minister to make similar Orders to those at present in force for temporary expedients to be adopted while more permanent works are undertaken. I should have thought that, since several of these Orders are still in force, that sort of provision would be worth while putting in the Bill.

There are other ways in which these powers may be needed in certain areas. A small water undertaking which, because of the fracture of a main sewer, may find wells put out of action for a temporary period, would be able to obtain relief under the Defence Regulations by an Order enabling it to take a supply from another source, and I think that it is worth while making provision in the Bill for that kind of arrangement. We also know that accidents do happen, and in cases where radioactive material is concerned there is always the possibility of water contamination. We can never be absolutely certain that such accidents will not occur. I would have thought it much better for the Minister to have powers under the Bill to take similar sort of action to that which he can at present take under the Defence Regulations. I hope that, as the Bill goes through, we may be able to amend these provisions so that the Minister is able to take the same kind of action under the Bill as he has been able to take in the past under the Defence Regulations.

Personally, I welcome the Bill. It goes one stage further towards something which the Government have promised to do; that is, to "set the people free" from Defence Regulations. We have now reached a point where they are doing this by removing temporary methods and putting the powers into permanent legislation.

11.33 a.m.

I am sure that all hon. Members in the House today will have listened with very great interest to the interesting and informative speech of the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Reynolds). It is always an ordeal to make a speech at any time in this House, and particularly a maiden speech, whether it is on an ordinary working day or on a Friday. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman, in speaking on a subject on which he clearly has wide knowledge and experience, will have added to our debate and to the interest taken in this Bill to a very large extent. I am sure that everybody on both sides of the House will look forward to hearing the hon. Member speaking to us again on any subject he chooses, whether controversial or not, and adding to the dignity and the usefulness of our debates in the way which he has shown in his speech today.

The general provisions of this Bill certainly have my approval and support, but there are one or two matters on which I should like assistance. It might seem that, in view of the type of weather which we are having today, which we have had for weeks and months past and look like having for many weeks and months in the future, this Bill was entirely unnecessary, but at some time in the future the provisions of this Bill, which deals with periods when we have exceptional shortages of rain, will, in fact, apply.

Unfortunately, water undertakers are not the only people who use water, and, in dealing with statutory water undertakers, I should like to ask the Minister to assist the House by defining what is meant by that description. One knows that in the ordinary case it means the supply of domestic water or water for industrial purposes, but I should like to ask, for example, whether the hydroelectric boards are included. We may have to put up with difficulties and shortages of water in the rivers from which domestic and industrial purposes may be supplied, but it seems undesirable that hydro-electric boards should be given the same privileges in not keeping their agreements for supplying compensation water where they have agreed to do so. Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary will give us an answer to that question.

It is most regrettable that our water supplies are in such a large degree affected by pollution. This is a problem which I suggest is entirely relevant and in order on this Bill, because a shortage of water affects the question of pollution, and not only the extraction of water. The whole problem of pollution is a very difficult one, and perhaps I, as a keen fisherman, should declare an interest. I certainly think that it is disgraceful to see how many of the rivers are being made foul by being polluted by effluents from sewage works and industrial works. One stands on the Terrace of this House and looks into the Thames, where one can see complete justification for the remarks I have just made. This is a big city and there are very big industrial works on the river banks, so perhaps the difficulty of pollution cannot be entirely overcome, but I believe it could be considerably reduced, even the pollution of the River Thames in the vicinity of the Palace of Westminster.

This pollution is going on up and down the country, and if there should be a shortage of rain, and one of these orders is made authorising a greater degree of extraction, then any effluent, of whatever kind, which will still further reduce the supply of water, will make for a higher degree of pollution in the water which remains. It will affect the fishermen, it will increase the risk and danger to health as the water goes further down the river. I ask the Minister whether he has had in mind the pollution of the rivers in connection with the operation of this Bill when it becomes an Act because of these orders further reducing the supply of water in the rivers.

There is another point, which arises on Clause 1 (1, a ) which provides that the Minister may make an order— authorising the undertakers, subject to any specified conditions or restrictions, to take water from any specified source". What does that mean? I know he has in mind that, where there is some power under an Act or by Regulations limiting the amount of water to be taken from a river, it can be suspended in cases of exceptional shortage of rain, but I should like to know if that includes giving the power over any private premises. For example, would it permit taking water from a pond or lake, or some private source, such as a bore hole or artesian well belonging to some private undertaking and providing for its own industrial purposes, because the wording of the subsection at present would seem to be wide enough for that?

The words of the Bill at present would be wide enough to allow water to be taken from any unspecified source. There is no limit. A large factory might have its own artesian well supplying its premises, but a local board, however small, might be authorised to lay pipes and take away that water supply and thereby do a great injustice to an industrial enterprise.

Clause 1 (1) provides that: Before any statutory water undertakers make an application under this section they shall consult with any river board upon whom notice of the application will be required to be served by the First Schedule to this Act. Many other bodies will be interested in the making of an application for an order. It might be that a river board was not a very up-to-date or active body and there would be people concerned with the matter who ought to be consulted beforehand.

I suggest that there is a precedent for this in other Acts and that long before any question of an order crops up a person or a company or factory should have the right to register with the statutory undertaking and to say, "If you are going to make one of these orders in future I give notice that I shall want full notice of what you intend to do so that I may consider the matter and make proper objections." It would be imposing an impossible burden to require that every interested person should be consulted, but by advertisement or notice published in the local papers the undertaking could say, "We are the statutory undertakers and we may at some time require power to make orders under the Act. Anyone interested who registers with us beforehand can make objection before the order is made." That is all that I would suggest. Those who did not register would not be able to object. Perhaps it would be agreed that that is not an unreasonable suggestion. It may involve altering Clause 1 and also the first part of the First Schedule.

The Parliamentary Secretary dealt with the question of time for objections. Seven days is a very short period. I appreciate that orders may have to be made in a hurry but, after all, water does not disappear overnight, and this should not be as rushed a procedure as all that. I am not asking for twenty-eight days, as is provided for under the Town and Country Planning Act, but I ask the Minister to make the period a little longer, perhaps fourteen days. That would avoid many complaints. These matters take several days. They involve drafting notices and things of that kind which cannot be done in seven days.

Apart from the points that I have raised, I give the Bill my full support as an effort to deal with the increasing problem of the abstraction of water from the rivers. There is a very limited amount of water in this country and there is an increasing demand the whole time. The proper abstraotion of these waters by many of those interested is a matter of great and increasing importance, and it is not sufficiently realised that abstraction often leads to increased pollution. I ask the Minister to keep a watchful eye on fair distribution and the avoidance of pollution. I do not agree with the hon. Member for Islington, North that rationalisation is the answer. Certainly nationalisation does not answer the problem. Indeed, it may make it worse.

11.45 a.m.

As the Parliamentary Secretary pointed out, the purposebf the Bill is to make an end to another series of Defence Regulations. I think that we all welcome a continuing process of this kind. It gives us a feeling that we can turn our backs once and for all on the dreadful days of World War II when Defence Regulations were necessary, but we must not forget that, whilst the Bill may give the impression that such temporary measures are being quickly removed, in reality what the Bill does is to make those regulations permanent.

Personally, I have no quarrel at all in this instance with the fact that such temporary measures are now to become permanent in relation to water supply and distribution, because there is still an emergency and there will be for many years to come. My complaint is that the Bill does not go far enough. I had expected that by this late hour we should have received from the Government a Bill which would have proceeded not merely one step but a mile, that is, 1,760 steps, but what we have is something very meagre indeed. There has been for years a growing realisation in the United Kingdom that our water resources are not exploited to the degree necessary to meet present, quite apart from future, requirements.

I had earnestly hoped that with all the committees of inquiry and sub-committees which have been sitting, the Government by now would have produced something to enable Parliament to rationalise the highly chaotic supply system, as my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Reynolds) has said, and place our future resources on a more profitable basis. By "profitable," I mean profitable to the nation or the United Kingdom at large. But what we have here is a very paltry Measure whose sole purpose is to make rigid measures which were originally intended to be temporary.

I hope that I shall not be accused by my hon. Friends of patting the Government on the back, but I must say that if there are two Ministers on the Government benches who have the capacity to face this problem they are the Minister of Housing and Local Government and his Parliamentary Secretary. By introducing the two major Measures of this Session, dealing with local government and rents, they have shown that they can face a subject of complexity and scope with great courage. I am disappointed, therefore, in finding that a Bill has come from them which falls far below their usual standard. On this occasion, the Government have missed a great opportunity. I want to state briefly why I think that in presenting the Bill in such a meagre form the Government have neglected their responsibilities to the nation as a whole.

I shall confine my remarks, for obvious reasons, to my own native country which. I might say, in case it is not already known, is of course Wales. It is a paradox, and if it were not a serious subject I would say that it is a farce, that whereas my native country has the finest sources of water in the United Kingdom and supplies millions of gallons of water a day to great towns in England, it has large areas in which 50 per cent. of the population are still without piped water supplies. In one large area, only 19 per cent. of the population has a piped water supply, and much of that is supplied by stand-pipe methods. I know of another large area where only 26 per cent. of the population have a piped water supply. Could we not describe that as an indictment of our water supply system?

I am sorry that the Minister of Housing and Local Government is not present, because this is particularly a Welsh matter and he is also Minister for Welsh Affairs. Five years ago the Council for Wales and Monmouthshire presented its second Memorandum. That Memorandum stressed the serious position at that time, and I will quote paragraph 98 on page 23, as follows: It is hardly necessary to emphasize the importance of this service in relation to the problems under consideration. The effect on housing progress of the absence of suitable water schemes in many parts of the Survey Area has already been referred to, and there can be no doubt that in the improvement at living conditions and of the rural economy at large the provision of piped supplies of water of adequate quantity and quality is an essential factor. The Council may have thought that at that time it was "hardly necessary," and I say that with respect to them, because they went on to describe further how serious was the position. If, therefore, after five years this Bill is the best effort the Government can present, it is extremely necessary, for Wales particularly, to stress time and time again the serious plight in which many of my countrymen in the rural areas find themselves. I can say without exaggeration that as regards piped water supplies they might just as well be in a desert.

In a long written reply to a Question on 7th February, 1957, the Minister of Housing and Local Government referred to the Advisory Water Committee for Wales. The right hon. Gentleman stated that he considered that as a preliminary step it was desirable to set in train a technical appraisal of the water resources of Wales, and that he was arranging for his engineers to begin such an investigation at once. He added that the investigation would be addressed particularly to river flows, etc. I would like to know when we are to have that report. In view of the fact that five years ago the Second Memorandum showed the seriousness of the position in the rural parts of Wales at that time, it is high time we had the report. Incidentally, I would like to have an explanation of how the Rural Development Panel arrived at its fourth recommendation, which was: 'Finally, the Panel consider that the establishment of a Water Board for Wales in present circumstances is not a practicable proposition and would not, in any event, affect the position under which one water undertaker can seek supplies in another's area'."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 7th February, 1957; Vol. 564, c. 88–9.] That to me is a very surprising conclusion, and I would like to know along what road the Panel travelled in order to arrive at such a surprising destination. I noticed the Minister's very bald comment on that in the reply to which I have referred, for he stated "The Panel's fourth recommendation is noted." I wonder whether I can derive any satisfaction from that comment by the Minister on a possible water board for Wales.

We must face the fact that we shall never get an end to the present chaotic position, and that we shall never get a real solution to the problem of a proper water supply—which I stress as distinct from distribution—until we have put an end to the hundreds of boards and authorities in the United Kingdom. The Parliamentary Secretary pointed out that there are 1,000 boards and authorities who are at present quarrelling, dissenting and arguing, whilst the country faces year after year in any lengthy period of dry weather a serious shortage of water. We shall not get a solution of this problem unless we place the responsibility for the supply system upon the nation and the Government.

As regards distribution, I say unequivocally that the local authorities are the best people to carry out that task, and I want to mention one other thing. I do not wish to trespass beyond the bounds of order, but, Sir, since I tried to catch your eye at the time, I wish to state that I fully supported my colleagues on this side of the House, and indeed many hon. Gentlemen opposite, to their credit, who supported us in our opposition to the Liverpool Tryweryn scheme.

Whilst we have small authorities with very limited resources, unable themselves to finance adequate water supplies, we shall have continually the position of the large predatory authorities themselves stepping in and, with Private Bills, hosts of technical engineers, hordes of lawyers and, much more important, large financial resources, taking land, building reservoirs and selling supplies at a profit. In one instance, they estimated having supplies of 70 million gallons a day for their own use when their present shortfall in dry weather is a mere 4 million gallons a day. Is that not a ridiculous position for the country to be in? Of course, in the circumstances I am referring to, in nearby areas there are poor authorities who are not able to provide piped water supplies to their own people and, of course, piped water supplies bring with them proper sanitary conditions. I warn the Government that if they do not face this position we shall have many more Tryweryns, and they certainly will not be confined to Wales.

I will not give any statistics, but the Parliamentary Secretary pointed out forcibly one factor which refers to industrial requirements. The figures I have here estimate that by 1970 water undertakings will be expected to supply twice the amount of water which they had to supply in 1938 and this, of course, is largely due to industrial requirements.

This leads me to my final point, the aspect of industrial development as regards my own country. It is known that there is urgent need for new industry in the rural areas of Wales, Mid and North-West in particular. It is significant that where this new industry is needed, mostly to alleviate unemployment and rapid depopulation, the water supplies are totally inadequate. I refer to Anglesey, Montgomery, Merioneth and so on. Indeed, my colleagues from Anglesey, Caernarvon and Merioneth, and the right hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. C. Davies), have stressed time and time again this need. Industry cannot, of course, carry on without adequate water. The paradox is that the water is there, and it is either not being conserved or, where it is being conserved, it is being distributed hundreds of miles away to far more prosperous areas. How can we go on like this year in and year out? A national policy is essential. What is the use of exhortations from the Minister of Housing and Local Government to these boards which are almost heterogeneous when they should be as one?

Furthermore, the Minister must remember that these continuous injunctions from him are causing great friction. I think he is aware of this. Much argument is delaying work of a more fruitful nature, and I have often wondered during this last year or so how many schemes have either been scrapped or shelved because the local boards and undertakings have realised that in the near future they may either be scrapped or forced to join with others. The present position is very unhealthy.

I welcome this Bill despite my criticism of the Government's lack of policy, and I hope that the House will pass it quickly. I am certain that on this side of the House we shall assist the Government to do so. However, I welcome the Bill only on the understanding that it is the precursor of a major Measure, and I hope that in the next Session the Government will face their responsibilities and produce one. As far as I am concerned, in that major Measure there would be two basic principles. First, in reference to supply, we should have a national responsibility under two water boards, one for England and one for Wales, despite the recommendation of the Rural Development Panel. As regards distribution, the second principle, the responsibility should be with the local authorities and their specific areas.

It is only on this understanding that I, personally, can be satisfied that the desperate needs of my country will have any reasonable hope of being successfully met. It is only then that we can find an end to the stupid position in which thousands of my countrymen are still without proper water supplies and sanitation. I look forward to the day when a Minister for Housing and Local Government and Minister for Welsh Affairs will produce a Bill which will meet the problems which now confront us.

12 noon.

I rise to support the Bill, but perhaps I might, first, again congratulate the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Reynolds) upon his excellent maiden speech. He spoke with authority and was obviously an expert on the subject; and he spoke for his constituents. I sometimes think that if we spoke only on subjects on which we are experts, and of which we have real knowledge and in which our constituents have a real interest, there would be far fewer speeches in the House.

But I would beg the hon. Member to do one thing for the sake of the HANSARD and newspaper reporters. The hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale) will have to be looking to his laurels as the fastest speaker in the House. I have never heard words pour from an hon. Member so well and so fluently. I am sure that if the hon. Member for Islington, North and the hon. Member for Oldham, West follow one another the HANSARD reporters will be put to a severe test. However, I congratulate the hon. Member most sincerely upon an excellent maiden speech.

I have a particular constituency interest in the Bill. On the South Humber bank from Immingham to Grimsby, in the Grimsby Rural District Council area, over the last fifteen years there has grown up a great new industrial belt. These modern plants are mostly chemical concerns each of which uses millions of gallons of water every day. The Minister said in his speech that there were new industrial developments coming into what were previously rural areas, and that is just the case in my constituency.

There are three conflicting interests arising. The farmers are beginning to wonder whether their supplies are not being endangered, the domestic users are wondering whether their supplies will be safeguarded, and those who were previously in the industrial area are beginning to wonder whether the newcomers will not endanger the supplies to those who have been established there for many years. I wish to put this matter to the Minister for consideration.

Some time ago I heard a water engineer in Leicester talk to the local chamber of commerce. He said that he considered that water would soon be the rarest and most valuable natural mineral that we have in the country and that we must conserve it and that if we are not very careful we shall find ourselves in a very difficult position.

The Minister said that the Bill tries to hold fairly the balance between the water undertakings and their consumers and other interests. In the Grimsby-Immingham area there is a firm which put down its own bore at the beginning of the century, long before the rest of the industrial development there was thought of. As, over the last fifteen years, great new factories have come into the area, those who were already there are beginning to fear—I will not put it higher than that—that the extra demand on the natural water supply will cause more water to come in from the Humber which will contain dangerous degrees of salt. I think it fair to say that the people who were there earlier ought to have their interests safeguarded before other big users are allowed to come in and tap what may be regarded in some degree as a natural preserve of the original people.

Will my hon. Friend consult the President of the Board of Trade, so that before other industries are brought into such an area it is made sure that water supplies are adequate and that the newcomers will not take from the older established companies supplies which they are legitimately entitled to expect for themselves? It is important that in the organisation of industrial belts the Board of Trade should take into very careful consideration the water requirements of the companies already established before attracting new people who may be cutting into limited available resources.

The hon. Member for Islington, North said that in his constituency there were many houses where people had to carry their water up two flights of stairs and that those people were not likely to waste water. We all hope that before long that state of affairs will be abolished throughout the country, for it is a disgrace to us. Every house, no matter how poor the people inside it, ought to have an adequate water supply. If the ideal that we should all like to see accomplished is to come about, there will be another enormously increased demand on our water supplies. It has seemed to me, as I have talked to my constituents on this issue, that the domestic users must have the first call on supplies.

I now want to make a plea on behalf of the farmers. They feel very touchy on this subject. In my part of the country they see huge new plants coming along each taking many millions of gallons every day, and they fear that this may endanger their natural water supplies. It is not an adequate reply to them to say that the Water Board for the North Lincolnshire area has very generously tried to meet the farmers by giving them a temporary surface supply, for the farmer wants to feel that his cattle will always have an adequate natural water supply.

I ask my hon. Friend to ensure that in this tug-of-war for what will be a diminishing supply of a very valuable raw material the farmer is also satisfied, and his fears are allayed, by his being assured that the bigger people are not coming in to rob him of something which he and his forebears have enjoyed for hundreds of years. We are telling the farmer that more stock is required; consequently, the farmer must have, even in times of drought, an adequate water supply for his cattle and sheep.

I urge my hon. Friend to bear these things in mind and ensure that all the interests are fairly dealt with. If he will promise to do that, I am certain that he will be doing all our interests a great service, and I shall be very pleased to support the Bill.

12.9 p.m.

I am glad to follow the hon. Member for Louth (Mr. Osborne), particularly after what he has said about the need for observing the requirements of agriculture when the Bill becomes an Act, as I hope it will. I rise to support the Bill, but I want to make some reservations and put to the Minister some points which, I think, are worthy of his consideration.

There is a growing tendency among farmers in East Anglia—and I am one of them—to develop irrigation. In one of the Government's publications on the need for irrigation, it is clearly shown that in East Anglia—and it would not be stretching the Ancient Kingdom too far to include Louth in that area—irrigation is needed at some time of the year seven years out of nine. These are periods of drought which have to be overcome if there is to be efficient agricultural production.

In the last few years, water undertakings have become very different in character from what they were, and there have been great developments in water supply and water provision. In the part of North Essex in which I live, there has been an increasing demand in the last three or four years for the water supply to be made available to everybody, and farmers especially have wanted to obtain it, among other reasons, for irrigation. This has caused some argument and, as I am personally involved in a row with the local water authority, it woud be wrong for me to regard this issue as anything but sub judice, and as the hon. Gentleman's right hon. Friend is holding a hearing into my complaint, it would be even more impertinent of me to press that matter too far.

However, there is a growing demand for irrigation as a necessary additional technique to an expansion of agricultural production, which means that the Minister should be very careful, when considering applications from local water authorities, to take into consideration the needs of agriculture.

A water undertaking may say that a drought is threatened, but a drought is always being threatened, and a local undertaking which is not paying proper attention to the needs of agriculture may start off with that view at the beginning of the spring, and thus prevent farmers having that water which is surplus to the requirements of domestic consumers. I do not say that the farmers' needs should come before those of domestic consumers, but they should be able to have water which is surplus to the statutory responsibility of the water authority to look after domestic consumers first. Water undertakings should not restrict supplies by saying that there may be a drought, thus entirely overlooking the fact that a farmer wants water not in the drought, but long before the drought comes.

That is especially true in East Anglia, where water in the early spring will last on the heavy clay practically throughout the year. At present there is too much water on the heavy clay, and we have a comparatively grim outlook. I hope that when considering claims of a water undertaking that it is threatened by a serious deficiency, the right hon. Gentleman will see that the needs of agriculture are borne in mind.

The Bill gives an opportunity for the Minister seriously to consider the constitution of some water undertakings. In joining with other hon. Members who have complimented my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Reynolds) on his speech, I must say that I was at variance with him on one, and only one, issue. He preferred the municipalisation of the water supply to the nationalisation. I am not sure that that is the better way, to judge from my experience and the experience of others.

Running a municipal water undertaking is not just running the one public bath in a rural town. It is a complicated and difficult job which calls for a great deal of engineering skill, knowledge, and common sense. I wonder whether rural district councils come up to the requirements of undertakings of this kind. I would much rather that a water undertaking was in the hands of an engineer specifically appointed for the purpose, rather than in the hands of a chairman of a water, health and garbage disposal committee of a rural district council, who is doing his best but who is standing on tiptoe to try to hold up a job which is far too big for him.

In my own area, which is a rural district council of the sort of which the hon. Member is speaking, the committee is composed of members from three different areas, but with a qualified engineer to guide them. I think that that arrangement is fairly common. The work is done extremely well.

I wish that the engineer had more power in his guidance and that he was not constantly, or even occasionally, subjected to the kind of political pressure which ought not to be put on an engineer. I would prefer the engineer to be the general manager of a water undertaking, or its managing director, with sufficient power to be able to run it, as his colleague in the town is running a branch of the Eastern Electricity Board, or the South-Western Electricity Board, or whatever it is.

It is because the development of rural water supplies has come so rapidly since the war that in the areas covered by a water authority we have not been able to build up the necessary technical ability and skill. What we require is nationalisation; with a national water grid run by people competent to undertake the responsibility of seeing that the available water in the country is fairly distributed and fairly shared.

The hon. and learned Member for Surrey, East (Mr. Doughty) asked from where an authority was to get water, and he asked about boreholes put down by firms and by private individuals. In East Anglia, there are practically no other sources of water in time of drought—the rivers are dry, the creeks are dry, and there is no water in the brooks. The only alternative source of water supply is that owned by private individuals.

If the nation needs it, I have no objection to water being taken from the private individual for use in the interests of the nation, but we ought to understand that we are saying that there are circumstances—contained in the Bill as presented to us—in which a local undertaking could say that it will take from Mr. X's river or Mr. X's reservoir or from his borehole that water which it wants. That runs contrary to the spirit of the debate which we had yesterday. If the nation needs water and somebody has it and somebody else has not, I have no hesitation in saying that the somebody who has it should be made to give it up, but I remind the House that yesterday we had a discussion running in the opposite direction.

If it is the intention of the Government to give these powers to local authorities to enter other people's property and take the water, let them make that clear. If that is the intention of the Government, I beg them, before deciding to take such powers to investigate the capacity of the water undertakings and, in particular, the local authorities to fulfil such a task with fairness and efficiency.

12.19 p.m.

In so far as the increasing demand for water at this time is a sign of increased prosperity and an increase in the standard of living—and we have had examples of that today in references to better plumbing and the demand of factories for more water and, by no means least, the greater activity in agriculture—I dare say that the Bill is to be welcomed.

However, the truth of the matter is that we are a nation not of water users, but of water wasters. We turn on the tap without thinking about where the water comes from, or how much we are using. Bearing in mind the increased demand for water, it is not surprising that many hon. Members have expressed anxiety about the future of our water supplies.

It was good to heat from my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary that grouping is proceeding apace. I very much hope that the criterion on which this grouping takes place in future will be a voluntary basis rather than a compulsory basis. It may well be right that the Minister should have compulsory powers in reserve, but I feel, and I am sure that many of my hon. Friends agree, that it is very much better, however difficult it may be, to get voluntary agreement rather than to use compulsory powers which should be used only in the last resort.

Mr. Bevins indicated assent .

I see that my hon. Friend indicates his assent to that view. I am certain that that is the point of view of us all. It may seem a paradox that we should ever be short of water in England, and it is especially a paradox that there should be a shortage of water in Wales, of all places, where I believe the rainfall is slightly higher than it is in East Anglia, but something must be done about water supplies in the comparatively near future, because there is an increasing demand and the problem will become increasingly difficult.

I congratulate the Government upon introducing the Bill. It is not a large one, but it is none the less important, because it is a step in the dismantling of wartime controls and Defence Regulations. It must be right, as a matter of principle, that any powers which the Government need should be the matter of specific legislation rather than obtained under the blanket authority that has existed hitherto. That may be necessary, right and desirable in time of war, but in my view it is utterly wrong in peacetime.

I want to refer to a few specific questions involving matters of principle and detail, and I shall ask my hon. Friend certain questions. First, there is the matter of pollution, which has already been referred to by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East (Mr. Doughty). I entirely agree with him that the state of many of our rivers and canals is a disgrace because of the effluent poured into them. This is a matter which we have debated from time to time and which is engaging the attention of the Government. On the other hand, I would ask the Parliamentary Secretary to bear in mind the fact that if water is taken from a river its level is lowered, and in time of drought, when the level of the river is low in any case, it will be still further reduced.

When effluent is put into a river, canal or other watercourse, it is got rid of by being diluted, and if there is less water than usual dilution becomes increasingly difficult. It may be that certain undertakings whose arrangements are normally quite adequate to ensure that there is no pollution will find that they are polluting rivers or creeks because they are putting their effluent into them at a time when the river is already low and has been artificially lowered still further. I should be grateful if my hon. Friend would say a word on that subject, because it is plain that those people who are accustomed to putting their effluent into rivers perfectly properly will be specially vulnerable on these occasions, and I would think that it would be appropriate to take the view that there should be no prosecutions for pollution at times when orders have been made for the taking of water from these sources.

Next, I want to refer to the question of private industrial boreholes, which was also referred to by my hon. and learned Friend. As the Parliamentary Secretary will know, some firms, organisations and persons depend entirely upon private boreholes for their water supplies. I do not dissent in any way from the view put forward by the hon. Member for Deptford (Sir L. Plummer) on the question of the needs of the community, but I always think that when it is a question of balancing the needs of the community as a whole with those of the individual, the Government must lean over backwards to see that the rights of the individual are fully protected. If it is the Government's intention to use private industrial boreholes, I would ask my hon. Friend whether they should not be entirely exempt from the provisions of the Bill, or whether there should not be a provision that water should not be taken from them where it will have a deleterious effect upon the owners of these boreholes. If it must be done, it must be done—as the hon. Member for Deptford said—in which case there should be adequate compensation. If that compensation is provided there can be no objection.

I now turn to the question of notice. The First Schedule states very clearly that notice regarding: Orders concerning the taking of water from a source or the discharge of compensation water must be served on Every local authority … Any navigation authority … Every river board". In passing, I would say that I do not agree with one suggestion which was made earlier, which seemed to be a general inference that river boards are not efficient. I think that they are highly efficient as a general rule, although I appreciate that they sometimes have difficult matters to deal with. But there are certain omissions from the list of people to be notified. If water is taken from a stream or river, I think that notice should be given to the riparian owners—whether they be farmers, people with factories, or private people—or their assosiations, rather than given only to the three authorities indicated. Surely notice should be given to all those people whose interests are affected.

My remarks were intended to refer to some river boards. While many are highly efficient, some are perhaps not quite so efficient. I did not intend to make any attack upon river boards in general. My criticisms were directed at some river boards.

I am sorry if I misunderstood my hon. and learned Friend. I certainly accept his explanation. I have no doubt that, like me, he has a high admiration for the activities of many river boards. My point is that we should endeavour to give the maximum amount of notice to the maximum number of people who will be affected by anything done under the Bill.

The question is how to get over the problem. We can either notify everybody—which I believe would be wrong—or adopt the suggestion made by my hon. and learned Friend, of following the system which was put into very satisfactory effect in the Town and Country Planning Act, 1932, under which a register of persons who wished to be informed about matters involved in legislation is kept, and those people are given notice. Provisions to that end should be inserted in the Bill, or made the subject of a Ministry circular. I do not think it matters which course is adopted, provided that we aim to give the maximum amount of notice to the maximum number of people whose interests will be affected.

Still on the subject of notice, I turn to the question of publicity. Schedule 1 says, in paragraph 1 (2, c ): where the application is for an order concerning the taking of water from a source or the discharge of compensation water. notice must be given in one or more local newspapers circulating within the area of every local authority within whose area the source or the site at which compensation water is to be discharged is situated. That is all very well, but it does not go far enough. If we take water from the head of a river it is plain that people in that area will be affected, but so will those in areas lower down the river. I suggest that the Government might consider whether it would not be appropriate to publish notices in newspapers in the vicinity of any watercourse affected by an order of this kind.

Paragraph 4 of the Schedule states that: A notice under this paragraph … shall specify a place within the limits of supply of the applicants where a copy of any relevant map or plan may be inspected … There again, the same kind of reasoning applies as in the question of publicity in local newspapers. Rather than keeping the map in one place only, which may be very far from the residences of all the persons affected, it would be better to provide maps in other places. I suggest that the Government might consider it right to follow the principle laid down in paragraph 1 (2, c ) and see that maps are made available for inspection in the offices of local authorities along the length of the watercourse concerned. That would be a simple matter; it would not involve very much work or trouble, and it would mean that maps were readily available for inspection without undue difficulty or trouble on the part of the interests concerned.

I want to discuss the words "first publication." It may be that we can go into this point in greater detail in Com- mittee, but I suggest that seven days is a very short time. I appreciate that emergency provisions are concerned here, and we do not want to stand too fast upon a principle and say that it is essential that maximum notice shall be given and that the notice shall be not less than 28 days. That would be absurd.

On the other hand, I would ask my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to consider the following point. If the notice appears first in the London Gazette no one could pretend that that is a newspaper ordinarily read by many people. Local newspapers are published rarely, sometimes only once a week, and it might be that the first publication may appear in the London Gazette and then not until five days later might a further notice be published in a local newspaper, so that the effective notice which people interested in the matter would receive would be only two days.

That cannot be the Minister's intention, and I would be most grateful if he could do something about the matter. Perhaps on the Committee stage he might consider dealing with the words: from the date of first publication of the notice". I now come to the Second Schedule which deals with compensation, on which there are two points I wish to make. I should be grateful if my hon. Friend could say a word about the basis of compensation. I ask this particularly because, if we examine the Opencast Coal Bill, which was a Bill of the same genesis as the one we are discussing, because the reasons for both are the same, we find that that Bill set out the basis of compensation in very great detail. This Bill says nothing about it at all. It would be of great interest if my hon. Friend could say a word on the subject.

Paragraph 2 of the Second Schedule states that an arbitrator may be appointed. I wonder if my hon. Friend would consider whether it would not be a better system if the Land Tribunal did the work. It is an experienced body, it would be quick and inexpensive, and, in my view, would probably be more effective than an arbitrator. I should be interested to hear my hon. Friend's view on that matter.

I do not propose to go into the Bill in any more detail because we can discuss many of these matters and, indeed, a number of others on the Committee stage. I would again like to congratulate the Government on bringing the Bill forward. It is an extremely useful Measure, and I hope that it will have a successful passage through Parliament.

12.33 p.m.

Although the ambit of this Bill is small, it deals with a subject which is of vital concern. It has already been emphasised that any expansion of production or rise in the standard of living must postulate an increased consumption of water.

As the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Reynolds) said in his attractive and fast flowing maiden speech, the domestic consumption of water rises quite extraordinarily. I had a graphic practical experience of that in my own home after the war. I started with a hand pump and had to transport water in a bucket during the first twelve months. The consumption of water per capita was then very small. I then had a small petrol motor pump which pumped water into a 250-gallon tank which required filling every so often. Someone had to start the engine, and, therefore, the family exercised some due economy. Now with an electric pump and an automatic switch it is remarkable how the consumption of water has risen. A washing machine does not save water.

How much more has the consumption of water risen in the case of industry, and, of course, of agriculture. It so happens that I and, I think, the hon. Member for Deptford (Sir L. Plummer), recently had the opportunity of visiting the United States of America. One of the facts that impressed me very powerfully was the degree to which water is at this moment America's most important raw material. I saw in California and Arizona whole tracts of land, and indeed whole cities, which depended for their very recent expansion upon the fact that water was being extracted by powerful electric pumps from underground sources many hundreds of feet below the surface. That alone enabled people to live and, of course, to have agriculture and an industry. As far as agricultural marketing is concerned, even the finest milk and the choicest fruit are largely sales of water.

As the hon. Member for Deptford said, the provision of enough water at the right time is fast becoming a necessary item in efficient agricultural production, certainly in the east of England, where many of us need to supplement nature's erratic supply in six years out of seven. Therefore, we see a future in which, despite the normal over-liberal supply of rain, national water resources will play a decisive rôle in the deployment as well as in the volume of our production.

I hope, therefore, that this Bill, which is just one small pointer towards solving the problem of water shortage, will be the forerunner of a wider policy of water conservation which will be progressively developed as the Reports of the Central Water Advisory Committee become available. It seems to me that over the next few years we need as a nation to look very closely into the whole subject. It may be that we shall have to think in terms of bringing water from the comparatively wet West, to take some of Wales's surplus water away and let it flow towards the relatively arid East, and also to consider the use of natural underground storage capacity and its systematic replenishment.

I know that all these things are outside the scope of the present Bill, but they are not far removed from it. I hope that the Government will turn to the wider problem of water as a natural resource after they have disposed of the Bill, which I heartily support.

12.37 p.m.

I propose to make only a short intervention in this debate to comment, first, on the fact that it is, perhaps, a little odd that we should be discussing measures for dealing with drought when we have had one of the wettest weeks for a very long time.

In common with the hon. Member for Deptford (Sir L. Plummer), I live in Essex, in Southend, and in the past few weeks we have been subject to a heavy rainfall as a result of which some of the roads are flooded. In normal times the rainfall in that area is so low that it rates as one of the driest parts of the country. As a result, the supply of water to the County of Essex, and particularly to Southend-on-Sea, becomes a very expensive operation. It costs so much for water in Southend that I am reliably informed that some people have given up drinking whisky. The whisky itself is dear enough, but the water which is sometimes added to it makes it prohibitive.

Therefore, I am a little worried about the Bill, which proposes to give to statutory water undertakers temporary powers to meet deficiencies. I hope that we can have an assurance that these powers will be used with some regard to the financial ability of the consumer to foot the bill. I very much hope that my hon. Friend will keep this matter very much in mind.

The hon. Member for Deptford will, I know, confirm that some problems in the County of Essex have been added to by the policy of taking the surplus population of London to Essex. That has meant a considerable extra demand for the supply of water for which the present residents in the area have to pay far more heavily than in almost any part of the country.

I am delighted to hear from the Parliamentary Secretary that the Ministry is considering the question of the grouping of water undertakings. It seems to me that this might bring about greater efficiency in Essex where we have a different water undertaking charging a considerably higher rate. Considerable benefit might be given to consumers by a more efficient grouping of the undertakings with a view to supplying them with water at a reasonable price instead of at the present very high price. As I have said, in Essex we have a low rainfall generally, and the lowest supply of water from water holes compared with the rest of the country. It seems to those of us living in Essex that, though we live in a delightful county, we nevertheless suffer a handicap.

12.40 p.m.

We have had one of the most interesting debates in my experience. I was particularly glad to listen to the maiden speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Reynolds), who showed a remarkable knowledge of the subject matter and a remarkable propensity for presenting his experience and knowledge in a form that was most acceptable today, and which, we are sure, will be equalled on future occasions.

The question of water for England and Wales was discussed rather more fully than usual in the last Report of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government. The Ministry pointed out, on page 64, that water undertakers can be expected to meet demands in all normal and some abnormal years, but they should not be asked to over-insure. A point can be reached at which provision of reserves sufficient for an exceptional run of dry years would entail a disproportionate amount of capital investment. We would all accept that, and that it is only a question of where we draw the line between normal supply and exceptional requirements. We have been engaged today in considering, rightly, how far the Bill is necessary, recognising that it is necessary to some extent, and how far the difficulty is in the character of the water supply and the machinery that regulates its distribution.

As far as possible, I shall not deal with any procedural question. Such questions can be raised in Committee. They are no doubt important and should be carefully looked at. One has to recognise that this is a Bill to meet exceptional circumstances which may, in the nature of the case, arise or come to a head rather rapidly and that it is not the type of case in which one is able to provide as fully as one would otherwise wish for matters like length of notice, inquiries, and so on. Again, it is a question of striking a balance.

The Bill follows rather closely the legislation introduced in a hurry in 1934. I was impressed—and I hope that the two Ministers were impressed—with what was said about the need to provide for other emergencies, but I doubt whether we can do it in the Bill in its present form. The need is still there and Section 12 of the Water Act will not meet the case. It requires 28 days' notice and in some cases special Parliamentary procedure. It is not sufficient, if it is intended to deal with an emergency like the collapse of an aqueduct.

There are two distinct questions in connection with water supply. One concerns national water resources and the other their management and distribution. Taking the latter first, I confess to being disappointed with the rate of progress with amalgamation. It was recognised as early as 1944 in the White Paper, "A National Water Policy"—I think that it was a Coalition Government document—that amalgamation of smaller units was necessary in the interests of efficiency if for no other reason. That has been recognised again and again, yet there have been only four or five compulsory amalgamations.

If we are to measure progress since about a year ago, by the four or five compulsory Orders drafted by the Ministry and mentioned by the Parliamentary Secretary, we see that two had been drafted before May, 1957, and, according to that, only two or three drafted during the present year. The Minister sent round a circular on this matter towards the end of 1956, in November, and in speeches subsequently he has stressed the need for amalgamation. I hope that the pace will be increased.

There has been an impression given by some hon. Members that the only bodies requiring amalgamation and in relation to which amalgamation was being considered were the private water companies. These private water companies supply only about one-fifth of the country with water while the vast majority of undertakings are run by local authorities. There is just as much need to see that if a local authority is too small to run a water undertaking, it is in some form or another linked with other local authorities as there is to see that a very small water company is dealt with in the same way.

I express one hope about it. It is rather academic to talk about nationalisation or municipalisation of distribution, which is already a local authority function, with some surviving exceptions. I hope that those exceptions will not be multiplied, for the reasons given in the 1944 White Paper which said, as one of its main proposals and principles upon which it proceeded: Responsibility for water supply to rest with democratic bodies—at the centre with Ministers responsible to Parliament; at the circumference (without unnecessary change in the present organisation of statutory undertakers) with the responsible local authority. That is the principle upon which we ought to proceed in the matter of supply and distribution. It seems consonant with the Minister's duties in the matter.

The Minister has a general policy duty under Section I of the Water Act of 1945. It is his duty, to promote the conservation and proper use of water resources and the provision of water supplies in England and Wales and to secure the effective execution by water undertakers, under his control and direction, of a national policy relating to water. His duty is closely parallel to that of the Minister of Education under the Education Act, which is to secure a national policy about education and to have as his emissaries or agents—call them what you will—for that purpose, the local education authorities; so the Minister of Housing and Local Government—in England and Wales, at any rate, and I believe there are similar provisions in Scotland—has that duty in relation to local water undertakers.

In May, 1957, there were debates in the House and in another place on the broad question of water supply. This is very relevant to the question we are considering today, the question of what is an emergency which justifies the summary and sharp action originally provided for by Defence Regulations and to be provided for under this Bill.

I am permitted to quote from the proceedings in another place, since they were in another Session of Parliament, and I wish to cite in support of what I have to say a noble Lord who certainly is not a fully paid-up member of the Labour Party. I refer to Lord Swinton, who seemed on this occasion to talk a lot of—I was going to say "sense," but, if that is considered irreverent, I will say that he said some things with which I find myself in agreement. The noble Lord said: I would certainly agree with the last speaker that large undertakings, whether municipalities or companies, are extremely efficient. I would also agree that there are a lot of small undertakings which, by reason of their size, cannot be efficient and which, no doubt, ought to be amalgamated. But even when you have done that you have not solved the problem of conservation; you have only made the production, the management and the distribution more efficient. You have not dealt with the problem of national resources. It is really rather an odd thing that water is, I suppose, the only great national asset which is not considered nationally. Later, the noble Lord made his suggestion as to what should be done. While I would not wish to adopt that particular suggestion without further consideration, the principle seems to be right. The noble Lord said: … what I would suggest is that there should be a small body of National Commissioners and they should survey all the unused resources; and when a water company or a municipality wanted to tap a new source they would consult the Commission, who would advise the undertaker and also advise Parliament (when the matter came before Parliament on a Private Bill or some Provisional Order, or whatever it might be) whether the plan was in the national interest."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, House of Lords, 29th May, 1957; Vol. 204, c. 86–7.] I would not wish to adopt that particular suggestion, but it seems to be right and necessary in principle. It was because the need for dealing with these administrative matters in relation to the broad question of national resources was recognised that, after Section 1 of the Water Act, 1945, laid down the Minister's responsibility, the next thing the Act did was to require that the Minister shall appoint a committee, to be called the Central Advisory Water Committee, for the purpose of— ( a ) advising him or any other Minister concerned upon matters connected with the conservation and use of water resources;" —and there followed more detailed subjects of advice.

That Central Advisory Water Committee has had a rather curious history. There were periods when it did not meet at all. It did not meet once in 1957. I am not at all certain that it has met in 1958. In October, 1955, two very important sub-committees were appointed, one of which was to advise on the demand for water. I share the relief that one hon. Member has already expressed that we now know, by an Answer to a Question I put to the Minister on 1st July, that reports from that sub-committee and another important sub-committee are likely to be ready in the early autumn. They will have taken two years to make them, but I do not complain about that for a reason I shall explain. The reports will be published after they have been adopted by the Committee.

Why I do not complain is that we have singularly little information at present about what the national water resources are and very little information about what the national consumption of water is. The amount given out through the public water supply, including all these organisations, was estimated in a recent very useful paper published by P.E.P. on 27th January, 1958, at about 2,500 million gallons a day. About 1,600 million gallons was for domestic and commercial use and about 900 million gallons for industry and agriculture.

There then follow some staggering figures. The electricity supply industry uses up to 15,000 million gallons a day. That water is used and comes back and much of it is not drinking water, but it is still water. The steel industry uses 350 million gallons a day. The chemical industry uses about 820 million gallons a day. We have to put that against the total of about 900 million gallons a day used both by industry and agriculture out of the public supply. It is, therefore, refreshing to see that there are, at any rate, national water resources unused to a very large extent. I am not saying that all those national resources can be used for every purpose. There is water and water, but a very considerable potential increase is shown.

I come to the broad question which Lord Swinton raised and which, I agree, is a very urgent matter for national consideration. If we look at the Report issued by the Ministry for 1957, we find some very interesting information. About one-third of the water supply in the country is underground water, which is not visible until we begin to use it. That is the subject of conservation orders, and if we consult the map of England and Wales published in the Report we see where it lies. A very large part is in East Anglia and the Midlands and, going further North, through Yorkshire almost to Northumberland.

On the other side of the picture, we find the staggering situation on which my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdare (Mr. Probert) was so eloquent and speaks with such knowledge and experience, that the part of the country which has obvious easy water resources is also the part of the country in which there is the greatest deficiency of domestic water properly pumped and made available.

When we consider the use of those resources, I suggest to hon. Members we ought to bear in mind the main supply, the proper use of national resources, the question whether Merseyside should be supplied from Wales and to what extent, the question whether Welsh supplies or supplies from other well-watered areas of the country should be taken from those areas, and to what extent. All those are major questions.

When we come to the question of distribution, even if we have statutory water boards we cannot wipe out the local authority responsibility for the reason that when we deal with the taps in the house and the actual supply there are questions between landlord and tenant and the local authority concerned which are, and must be, purely local questions. That was why I refer to the water companies as to some extent an anachronism. The natural position is that we should have a national policy for the supply, conservation and use of the main national resources and that their management and distribution should fall, at any rate, to a considerable extent on the local authorities.

Those are the suggestions which I want to put before the House today. We in this party attach very great importance to this matter. I think it fair to say that the country as a whole and the Conservative Party, too, have attached great importance to it, but I am profoundly disappointed at the lack of progress in the question of the conservation and the proper use of national resources.

I do not think that this sub-committee will have taken too long to investigate the matter; two years seems to me quite reasonable, given the amount of knowledge required. But the need for a national water policy was stated quite clearly in the White Paper of 1944. Government after Government—we must take some responsibility, too—have failed to carry it out fully. We at least introduced the Water Act, 1945, which represented a very large step forward. It is now high time that we took the matter a little further forward, or one fine day we shall find not only that the lack of water supply is cramping the proper distribution of industry and population in this country, as hon. Members opposite have pointed out, but that in some cases, including Greater London, we have shortages which are not emergency shortages but are due to our own lack of national foresight and national policy.

I therefore hope that this small Bill will be passed, with any necessary alterations, which, it seems to me, will be few, but also that the Bill, the expression of good intentions in the 1957 Report and the pressure which there has been on amalgamations, will not be allowed to be taken as a substitute for the national water policy which is so urgently required in the long run, the more so because of the growing demands of both industry and agriculture, as well as of domestic consumption.

1.2 p.m.

I am grateful for the welcome given to the Bill, which is truly non-party political, and I assure the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) that we intend, through all the stages of the Bill, to look sympathetically at what he described as "any necessary alterations". Our object is to make it the best Bill we can get.

May I start by congratulating the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Reynolds) on his well-informed and traditionally non-controversial maiden speech. Whether the finer distinction between municipalisation and nationalisation is or is not controversial, is a matter between himself and his hon. Friend the Member for Deptford (Sir L. Plummer). For my part, I agree with the hon. and learned Member for Kettering. On our side the question is academic.

The hon. and learned Member also referred to a national water policy. That is hardly within the scope of the Bill, but hon. Members who are interested in this point would no doubt be interested to read the chapter on water in the Annual Report of 1957 for England and Wales which, I am advised, puts the whole question into perspective.

Many of the hon. Members who have spoken today expected perhaps rather too much of the Bill. I was glad to hear the hon. and learned Member come back to the purpose of the Bill which according to the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum, is to give statutory water undertakers temporary powers to meet deficiencies in their supplies in time of drought. The hon. and learned Member and others felt that perhaps the scope of the Bill could be widened to cover shortages for other reasons. Representations on this matter have been made by some of the local authority associations—the Association of Municipal Corporations, the County Councils' Association and the Association of County Councils in Scotland. My right hon. Friend has told the Associations that the Bill is basically part of a process of getting rid of Defence Regulations. The Government decided that permanent powers should not be taken unless they were shown to be absolutely necessary.

The hon. and learned Member knows that Defence Regulations have not been used to deal with troubles caused by floods, subsidence or similar types of delay in water supply. In such circumstances, there is nothing to prevent one water undertaking from passing water to another water undertaking. This can be arranged at very short notice by mutual agreement, without any orders, under Section 12 of the Water Act, 1945, in England, and in Scotland under Section 19 of the Water (Scotland) Act, 1946. Both these Sections are available for dealing with just such an emergency, and it is not necessary to cope with the problem in the Bill. If the passing of water between undertakings is necessary, no additional powers are needed.

The figures I gave show that there are very large water resources which do not fall within the ambit of public supply and which might be available, under proper safeguards, in emergency. That was the point which I had particularly in mind.

That would be a matter for the water undertaking in the area concerned, in consultation with all the interests concerned and the responsible Minister at the time the emergency arose.

The hon. Member for Islington, North referred to shortages that occurred while permanent works were being carried out and felt that this should be covered in the Bill. It is up to the water undertakers to start their work early enough to avoid such shortages. We do not want to carry them. It is their legitimate liability.

I might be asked, "What about help from bulk supplies? Why does not the Bill include special provision to enable bulk supplies to be made available from one water undertaking to another in time of drought?" The 1945 Act in England and the 1946 Act in Scotland already provide for an expedited procedure for approving the giving and taking of bulk supplies by statutory water undertakers, if the Minister is satisfied that by reason of an exceptional shortage of rain, or by reason of an accident or other unforeseen circumstances, a serious deficiency in the supply of water exists or is threatened in any locality … When hon. Members look at the 1945 and 1946 Acts, I think that they will find that these Acts cover nearly all the points which one might feel at first glance might have ben included in the Bill.

In view of the fact that the Water (Scotland) Act, 1946, was a very comprehensive Act and was dealt with by the Scottish Standing Committe, why is Scotland now being tacked on to an English Bill instead of having a separate Bill for Scotland which would go to the Scottish Standing Committee? Is the hon. Member aware that the Bill dealing with bus shelters was sent to the Scottish Standing Committee? Are not the Government doing everything possible to sidetrack the Scottish Standing Committee because they know that they have not a majority in Scotland?

As the hon. Member knows, the Bill dealing with bus shelters was a Scottish Bill dealing with a problem which was a Scottish and not a United Kingdom problem. If he waits until I have finished my speech he will see that we are dealing here with a Great Britain Bill. I was coming to the point which he raised in the knowledge that if any Scot were listening to the debate that question would be asked.

I will not engage too far with the hon. and learned Member for Kettering on the question of regrouping. I assure the hon. and learned Member that an immense amount of work is now going on in this direction and that my right hon. Friend is confident that we shall see considerable amalgamations in the next year or so, mostly on a voluntary basis. Where, it is evident, however, that local water undertakings have no genuine intention of regrouping voluntarily, I am advised that my right hon. Friend will not hesitate to use his compulsory powers.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East (Mr. Doughty), whose speech I much appreciated, and my hon. Friends the Members for Taunton (Mr. du Cann) and for Louth (Mr. Osborne) raised important points dealing with the effect of the Bill on outside interests and other considerations. The question of pollution was raised. I can give an undertaking that my right hon. Friend the Minister will take all these points into account in deciding whether an Order should be made.

I draw the attention of those who raised the point to Clause 1 (5), which is very short and extremely wide. It states that: In the exercise of his power to make orders under this section the Minister shall have regard to the interests of all persons concerned in the conservation or use of the water to which the order relates. In another place, this subsection was so amended that nothing specific is mentioned and it is all-embracing.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East asked about statutory water undertakers. Hydro-electric boards are not within the definition, but they will be able to make representations when an Order is in process. My hon. Friend the Member for Taunton was concerned about compensation. The basis of compensation is damage and injurious affection. These are considerations which are familiar to the valuers and we are advised that no difficulties should arise. Similar provisions worked quite satisfactorily in the 1934 Act. Another point raised by my hon. Friend concerned the Lands Tribunal. We are seriously considering his suggestion and will look at it closely.

May I ask a question concerning the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes)? I notice that the arbitrator is to be selected from a panel of persons nominated by the president of the Institution of Civil Engineers. Can the Joint Under-Secretary tell an ignorant Englishman whether that is an English or a United Kingdom institution?

It is a United Kingdom institution and the choice of the president of the Institution of Civil Engineers is acceptable to all good Scotsmen.

Is he a Scot?

That I do not know.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East spoke about the registration of interested parties. That is a Committee point. We think that it would be better to do that sort of thing by administration rather than by writing it into the Bill. We do not want to write into the Bill too much of what can be covered by administration. My hon. Friend the Member for Taunton raised a number of points on the First Schedule which I had myself raised on reading the Bill. He was worried about source or site and about the notice in the newspapers being all-embracing. What my hon. Friend said will be carefully studied. It is our intention to put right anything in which we feel that anybody's interest has been omitted.

Two hon. Members raised the question of private boreholes. We must consider this in Committee. The owners and the occupiers of the land have, of course, the right of objection under the First Schedule. In the circumstances envisaged in the question, I feel that they would be able to put up such an overwhelming case against the water undertakers that it would not be worth their while to try to proceed to take water out of the borehole. In any case, I have quoted Clause I (5), which covers that sort of thing. I do not think that this is a practical problem, although in theory it is one which might frighten people a good deal.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East suggested that seven days was too short a period and my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton was worried about the period of notice in the case of a newspaper which is issued on a Friday. We are anxious to listen to all arguments. On that question, if papers are issued on a Friday and the London Gazette comes out on a Tuesday, we could probably overcome the difficulty by specifying seven days after the insertion of the notice in the particular paper. On the question of seven days as opposed to, say, 21 days, this is, of course, a matter of striking the correct balance between the rights of individuals who would like to see 21 days' notice and the needs of the emergency.

This is an emergency Measure. In his opening speech, my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary pointed out that if we allowed too much notice, there would be a tendency to make too early an application for Orders that were never brought about. When the Bill is considered in Committee, I think that it will be seen that the undertakers have considerable time in which to make their investigations when a drought is building up and that, once the drought condition is known to be approaching, the shorter period will be wiser than the longer one. The difficulty which is caused to people concerned by the short notice will have been overcome, because the work of preparing the Order will automatically have kept most of them advised.

My hon. Friend the Member for Taunton spoke of us as a nation of water wasters. That was not a very fair comment. As we all know, in times of drought or partial drought many undertakings make restrictions on the watering of gardens or the use of water for washing cars. In a serious drought, however, the sort of drought to which the Bill refers, the mere saving of water by domestic users would not solve the problem. It would be much bigger than that.

The hon. Member for Deptford (Sir L. Plummer) suggested that a water grid might be a good idea. Water has very different physical properties from gas or electricity. Gas or electricity can be made at the place where we want to make it, but water must be collected where Nature has provided it. If the hon. Member envisages the possibility of a nation with pipes going up and down and across it, in terms of capital expenditure it would be quite fantastic to have a water grid.

The hon. Member for Aberdare (Mr. Probert) asked a question the answer to which I should like to put on record. He asked about the Welsh Committee. A survey has been made by my right hon. Friend's inspectors. It is now in the hands of the Welsh Advisory Water Committee, who must be allowed time to consider it. The hon. Member covered a wide range of matters. I would like to tell him that my right hon. Friend the Minister, who has such a keen interest in the Principality, will look carefuly at the constructive points he made. My hon. Friend the Member for Louth asked two questions, but as he is not present I will write to him.

The Bill helps to answer the problem which for every one of us is difficult to answer: how much of what we have should we spend on good living and current necessities and how much should we save for a rainy day—or, in this case, should I say a fine day? By the Bill we reduce the necessity, as the hon. and learned Member said, for a degree of over-insurance, a degree of too much capital expenditure which would otherwise be necessary if normal water sup- plies were to be maintained in times of exceptional shortage. I think that the hon. and learned Member will agree with me that this is one of the greatest merits of the Bill, this ability to save capital expenditure and direct it into more useful channels.

May I ask the hon. Gentleman to use his considerable influence with the Chancellor of the Exchequer to get the Chancellor to relax restrictions on expenditure on water just as he is relaxing certain other financial controls?

I do not know whether my influence is considerable, but I have no doubt that my right hon. Friend will see that comment.

The Bill, as hon. Members have pointed out, has other merits. If the full effects of drought are to be avoided, speed of action is essential, but speedy action by utility undertakings can mean trampling on other interests, and the Bill does, we believe, nicely hold the balance between speed and fair play. The Bill concerns itself only with Orders which are urgently needed and which are only temporary. Many of the points raised are already covered, I think, by the 1945 Act in England and the 1946 Act in Scotland. No one, under this Bill, can be permanently deprived of his land or his rights to water, and there are very fair compensation provisions.

Another point, which has not been made, is that this Bill is severely practical. It enshrines in permanent legislation the practical experience gained by operating for nearly twenty years under the Defence Regulations; so we know the Bill will work and that it will be used, and we know that it will work before we pass it, which is more than can be said of every Bill which passes through this House. Of course, we hope that it will never be used.

It is truly a Great Britain Bill which the Scottish local authority associations and other interests concerned approve. It is appropriate that a Scottish Minister should take part in the debate on this Bill. In the past ten years four Scottish local authorities have used the Defence Regulation powers on fifteen different occasions. Almost all of the Bill applies to Scotland, but I think that it would be helpful, especially for the hon. Member who raised the point and for our deliberations in Committee, if I briefly enumerate the points which do not apply to Scotland and why that is so.

Clause 1 (2), dealing with inland navigation, is not likely to be required in Scotland for geographical reasons. Clause 1 (3, b ) is not applicable to Scotland as the powers to borrow are already available to the public bodies concerned.

Clause 2 (1, b ), which deals with the maintenance of water charges in an emergency, is not applicable as in Scotland water rates are levied by the ordinary rating authorities, and subsections (2) and (3) of Clause 3 are not applicable as there are no Scottish Orders under Defence Regulations still in force.

Finally, there are no drainage authorities in Scotland, so the reference made to them in the First Schedule applies to England and Wales only. Otherwise, the whole Bill applies equally to Scotland and England.

Lastly, I must give Scotland one word of praise. Although we still use the horrible word in other contexts, I am glad to say, as may be seen in Clause 4 (2), that in the handling of water we call ourselves local water authorities and not undertakers.

Question put and agreed to .

Bill accordingly read a Second time .

Bill committed to a Standing Committee pursuant to Standing Order No. 38 (Committal of Bills) .

I beg to move, in page 1, line 9, at the end to insert: and provide proper and adequate accommodation and facilities for the inspection of the public records by the public". The House will observe that this part of Clause 1 refers to the general responsibility of the Lord Chancellor for the public records, and it purports to outline his specific responsibilities in relation to that. The Lord Chancellor is charged with the general responsibility for the execution of this Act and shall supervise the care and preservation of public records. In our opinion, a very important aspect of this problem has been completely left out of the Lord Chancellor's responsibility, and indeed, it is not covered in any part of this Bill, and that is the provision of adequate accommodation and facilities for inspection by the public of the public records. It is very difficult to see what useful purpose the Public Record Office could have unless its facilities were made wholly and completely available to the public. Indeed, that is its main purpose and its main function. We believe that the Lord Chancellor, who is responsible to Parliament for the operation of this Measure and the care of the Public Record Office, should have the specific responsibility for the provision of adequate accommodation and facilities for the public to consult the records which are there.

For more than a hundred years this problem of adequate accommodation and facilities for the public at the Public Record Office has existed. Indeed, the Grigg Committee, arising from whose findings this Bill is brought forward, makes a specific reference to this matter in paragraph 205 of its Report, and the concluding part of the paragraph reads: But we consider that the general effect of the implementation of our recommendations should be to put an end, once for all, to those recurrent accommodation crises which have been a feature of the administration of the public records ever since the first Public Record Office Act was passed in 1838. 1.30 p.m.

The specific recommendation is to be found on page 84 of the Committee's Report, in paragraphs 2 and 3. Paragraph 2 reads as follows: The site at Chancery Lane should be exploited to its maximum extent as a repository and a place where records may be consulted. The additional storage accommodation required should be provided at Ashridge Park and Hayes. Paragraph 3 reads: High priority in exploiting the site at Chancery Lane should be given to the provision of extra search room accommodation. Our complaint is that that recommendation is not implemented, as far as we can see, in any shape or form in this Bill, and we regard it as a very important omission. If the intention of the Bill is to be carried out, very considerable arrangements will have to be made to extend the accommodation for the storage of public records if the public are to have adequate facilities for studying and consulting these records.

One can gather to some extent the magnitude of the problem if we realise that, at the moment, the records which are housed in the Public Record Office, which cover a period of just over 1,000 years, are contained in 40 miles of shelving space, but there are, lying in Government Departments and awaiting transfer to the Public Record Office records occupying 120 miles of shelving space. These should have been at the Public Record Office, but through shortage of accommodation there and the inadequacy of the administration they still remain on the shelves of Government Departments, unable to be consulted, in the main, by any member of the public.

If the Bill is to be carried into effect, it means that the public records that now lie in Government Departments are to be transferred, quickly, I hope, to the Public Record Office. The House will realise, therefore, the acute problem which will face the Public Record Office in providing adequate accommodation for this additional quantity of public records in order to have them sorted and stored, and, what is of equal importance, so that adequate accommodation shall be provided for the public to consult and study this very much larger volume of records.

We think that it is the great weakness of this Bill that no attempt is made in it to place the responsibility for providing the accommodation and facilities necessary upon the only person who is capable of taking the responsibility; that is, the Lord Chancellor, who has to be responsible to Parliament for the operation of this Act. Therefore, we hope that the suggested Amendment to this Clause will be accepted by the Government, because we believe that the provision of accommodation and facilities is of top priority, and compares equally with, if indeed it is not greater than, any other responsibility which the Lord Chancellor is now to undertake.

There are two aspects of this problem of providing adequate accommodation and facilities which are embodied in the recommendations of the Grigg Committee in the two paragraphs which I quoted to the House earlier. The first is the provision of adequate storage accommodation at Ashridge Park and Hayes for the additional public records to be transferred from Government Departments to the care of the Public Record Office, and, in addition, the recommendation that the site adjoining the Public Record Office in Chancery Lane should be developed to provide, in the main, additional accommodation for the public to search and inspect those records. This is a responsibility which cannot be placed upon anybody except the Lord Chancellor. It definitely involves the expenditure of money, and it places a responsibility on the Lord Chancellor for doing something about it.

The most economical arrangement that could be effected would be for the Lord Chancellor, exercising any powers which he might have, to secure the implementation of the recommendation of the Grigg Committee to develop the vacant site alongside the Public Record Office. If he did so, that would provide much more accommodation in the Public Record Office itself, instead of having to disperse documents at Ashridge Park, Hayes and probably elsewhere. More of them could be concentrated at the Public Record Office itself, and it would provide much better facilities for the public to study and inspect the greater volume of documents there available. It would also avoid a lot of uneconomic administrative expenses in having to convey documents to and from Ashridge Park, Hayes and the Public Record Office, because most of them would be there, and that unnecessary transport would be cut out.

Therefore, I hope that the learned Solicitor-General will give us an encouraging reply to this Amendment, because this is a serious problem which needs some attention. My complaint has been that this aspect of it, particularly the provision of adequate acommodation for the public, has been well down the list of priorities for work at the Public Record Office. I am not blaming anybody for that. It just happens to be one of those things which have existed, to which the Grigg Committee has called attention, and I feel that now is the time to do something about it.

We do not have a Bill of this kind brought before the House every day. The last occasion when this matter was looked into by the House was in 1910 when a Royal Commission was set up. That was forty-eight years ago, and I hesitate to say whether we shall have another Bill of this character in the lifetime of anybody present here today. This, therefore, is the occasion on which these matters should be raised because they are not likely to be raised again for a long time. They are important matters on which the Government ought to give some assurance to the House.

The Grigg Committee specifically referred to the inadequate accommodation for the public in paragraph 198 of its Report which says: We would, however, draw attention to the need to provide extra accommodation at Chancery Lane for consulting the records. The present search rooms are inadequate, and we recommend that if it is not possible in the immediate future to exploit the whole of the available site, high priority should be given to the provision of extra search room accommodation—if necessary by adapting the existing premises. I hope that the Solicitor-General will take note of what has been said, and particularly of what has been recommended by the Committee which most exhaustively considered this problem. I hope that he will give the House some assurance that this question of providing adequate facilities for the public at the Public Record Office is one which the Government are taking seriously and will look into as quickly as possible. In addition, I hope that he will make it the responsibility of the Lord Chancellor, so that he will be responsible to the House for carrying out the recommendations of the Grigg Committee, on this subject.

I beg to second the Amendment.

We feel that there is a real defect in the Bill in that no specific duty is laid on the Lord Chancellor to provide proper and adequate accommodation and facilities for the inspection of public records by the public. We had some discussion on this subject in Committee, but I am afraid that we did not have any very satisfactory answer from the Solicitor-General. We are moving the Amendment because at any rate it will remove one of the objections which the right hon. and learned Gentleman raised on that occasion when we debated a somewhat similar Amendment to a later Clause in the Bill. He then pointed out that this was not a matter which ought to be placed as a duty upon the Keeper of Public Records. It was essentially something over which the Minister responsible must take charge. He added that … we shall need the co-operation of the Minister of Works of the day, and some titillation of the palate of the Treasury.…"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee E . 14th May, 1958; c. 40.] The fact that the right hon. and learned Gentleman made those observations seemed to me an additional reason why we should ask that a specific duty should be placed on the Lord Chancellor in this Clause, because if it is thus placed on him it will, at any rate, make it easier for him to secure such co-operation of the Minister of Works and of the Treasury as may be necessary. It is not necessary for me to repeat the case that was made out so fully by my hon. Friend the Member for Acton (Mr. Sparks). The Grigg Committee, in more than one paragraph of its admirable Report, has stressed the urgency of providing better facilities in the Reading Room at Chancery Lane for the benefit and convenience of those students and research workers for whom, of course, the preservation of the public records has a special interest and a special value, and for whose benefit it is largely provided.

It is common ground that, in so far as the Bill implements the major recommendations of the Grigg Committee, we shall be seeing in the immediate future a very great flow of documents to the Public Record Office from the Departments. One of the chief objects of the Bill is to deal with the heavy backlog of records and other documents which have accumulated in the Departments and have not been transferred to the Public Record Office. If, therefore, this work is to be adequately discharged it will be essential that additional accommodation is made available.

1.45 p.m.

Secondly, the increased flow of documents that will result from the Bill will no doubt stimulate the enthusiasm of students and others to look at the documents thus released, and the difficult conditions which exist at present in the Reading Room at the Public Record Office will be increased. We feel that it would be very unsatisfactory if, in the course of discussion of the Bill, we do not have some assurance from the Government about their intentions in the matter of providing more accommodation for those who will wish to search these documents.

As the Grigg Committee pointed out, it is a fortunate circumstance that the Crown owns land adjoining the Public Record Office buildings in Chancery Lane which could be used for an extension to the existing building. We are not, therefore, faced with the difficulty, which might have been an excuse, of having to find accommodation elsewhere. The land appropriately situated is available, is vacant and is in the hands of the Crown. All we ask is that it should be used. As the Grigg Committee says, plans for providing an extension to the existing buildings has been considered from time to time. The plans exist, but I imagine that they have been shelved for one reason or another.

The Grigg Committee says that they have been shelved because of economic stringency. That reason, of course, could be given at almost any time, but they should not always be given. We feel that it has been given for long enough and that this is an appropriate moment for taking a decision to build on the site of the Public Record Office between Chancery Lane and Fetter Lane an additional wing which should form a compact, harmonious architectural whole and which would provide the facilities for search that are required and would enable much fuller and very badly needed additions to the research rooms for students to be made.

I hope, therefore, that the remarks on this subject which were made in Committee by hon Members on both sides, and which this Amendment enables us to repeat, will not be lost on those responsible for this matter, and that we shall have a much more satisfactory assurance on the subject than we had during the Committee stage.

As a user of the Public Record Office for the past twenty-five years or more, I find myself in considerable sympathy with the principle behind this Amendment. The search room accommodation in Chancery Lane is really pitifully inadequate at present for the demands made upon it.

I do not propose to cover the ground which was thoroughly traversed during the Committee stage of the Bill, but I must say that at the time of the publication of the valuable Report of the Grigg Committee, four years ago, emphasis was placed on the inadequacy of the search room accommodation for students. If anything, the situation has deteriorated since that time. Students come from all over the world—from the Commonwealth, from the United States of America and from foreign countries—to study in this unique storehouse of historical treasures and records.

To some extent the needs of Commonwealth and foreign university students are met by the provision of microfilm and photostat copies of documents, but, naturally, many students, particularly those on scholarship or fellowship grants, desire to come here and inspect the documents themselves. The surroundings in which they are obliged to work are really most undignified.

Hitherto, by reason of priorities, there have been financial difficulties in the way of extensions being made, but our national archives are in a sense a part of our shop window, so that there is an obligation on Her Majesty's Government, as the Grigg Report has underlined, to provide extra accommodation. I hope, therefore, that in the spirit of this Amendment we shall in the not too distant future see the needed extension at Chancery Lane.

I am most grateful to hon. Members who have raised this topic once more. One of the most agreeable things about the passage of the Bill all the way through has been that we have had the assistance of hon. Members who make much use of the Public Record Office. In particular, we have had the benefit of the experience and observations of my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, North (Mr. Hyde) and the hon. Member for Acton (Mr. Sparks) on its day-to-day operation, what happens when one goes there, and the inadequacy of the existing accommodation.

I confess I am glad that the question should be raised here once again to provide the hon. Member for Islington, East (Mr. E. Fletcher) with the opportunity of repeating what he said before, as he so modestly put it. No one will doubt that the substance of this Amendment was thoroughly discussed in Committee, and I do not propose to repeat what was then said. Perhaps, however, in defence of the Government, I might point out that in Committee we ourselves drew attention to the paragraph of the Grigg Report, cited by the hon. Member for Acton. Unhappily, in drawing attention to it, in addition to what is there contained about the inadequacy of the accommodation, we drew attention to the fact that the Grigg Committee felt obliged to say: Whether it would be justified under present economic circumstances raises issues of social and economic priorities which it would be outside our competence to pronounce upon. Unhappily, that is always the position under every Government of every conceivable political complexion. No doubt it is of the greatest possible value to raise these matters here and to discuss them, and I am confident that every word that has been said here on this topic will be carefully taken into account by those who will be responsible for administering the Bill when it becomes law.

However, to raise these topics now is not necessarily to mean that the adoption of this Amendment would be desirable. It does not, of course, fall against the objection to the Amendment that was put down in Committee, namely, that it would be charging a mere civil servant with a duty which he could not discharge except in combination with powers much more exalted than he is in the hierarchy. But we take the view that it would be unwise, even if we desired to fulfil the purposes desired by hon. Members, to put this Amendment into the Bill. I think that I can explain why quite quickly.

We amended Clause 5 (3) to meet the views of hon. Members opposite and the result is that there is now an obligation under the Bill on the Keeper of Public Records to arrange that reasonable facilities are available to the public for inspecting and obtaining copies of public records. So there is already an obligation upon him to arrange reasonable facilities for inspecting. I agree that "reasonable" may not be quite so tough a standard as "proper and adequate", but there seems a good reason for keeping "reasonable".

What is the difference between "facilities" and "accommodation"? Can the right hon. and learned Gentleman say that "reasonable facilities" mean the provision of reasonable and adequate accommodation? If he can say that is the meaning of these words, it will go quite a bit in our direction.

I say without hesitation that a part of "facilities" is "accommodation", but I cannot say that "reasonable", whether applied to facilities or accommodation, is the equivalent of "adequate", and I will say why in a moment.

Let us suppose there was a fire, at the Public Record Office, owing to some highly-inspired person, who did not like the idea of the hon. Member for Acton being able to look at his secrets, burning down a wing of the building. Instantly, there would cease to be proper or adequate accommodation in the circumstances; but there would remain reasonable accommodation because it would be unreasonable to require more than existed, and it would not be wise, in our belief, to put a statutory obligation into the Bill which would not allow an emergency to be dealt with under the duty imposed.

There is also another consideration. Let us suppose, for instance, that the Public Record Office become full as regards the accommodation provided for the inspection of records put there. Also let us suppose—I hope greatly that I shall not be alive at the time, whatever the complexion of the Government of the day—that the circumstances are ones of extreme financial stringency. It would be a little too much to put a statutory obligation into the Bill which would compel the responsible Minister, willy-nilly, to give priority, just for this one purpose, over all other kinds of expenditure.

2.0 p.m.

For that reason, we hope that it will be seen that, as the Bill stands, Clause 1 places a statutory obligation on the Lord Chancellor to be generally responsible for the execution of the Measure, and the Measure will impose an obligation upon the Lord Chancellor's civil servant for this purpose to arrange that reasonable facilities are available for the public. We hope that the need, such as it is, for statutory provision is adequately covered by those provisions.

For those reasons, I could not recommend the House to accept the Amendment, but I would say that no one is running away from what the Committee has found to be the conditions as regards accommodation available in the Public Record Office at the moment, and I am very sure that everything that has been said here today will be taken fully into account by those who are to operate the Measure.

If the words of the Solicitor-General can be noted by those who are responsible for this Measure in future, that will go a long way towards meeting what we have in mind. In view of what the Solicitor-General has said, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn .

I beg to move, in page 4, line 33, to leave out "fifty" and to insert "forty".

It may be convenient to discuss at the same time the two Amendments to Clause 12 in the name of the hon. Member, in page 8, line 17, after "Ireland", insert: or to the Republic of Ireland", and in line 19, at end insert: or to the Government of the Republic of Ireland, as the case may be".

I think, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that I can cover the points I want to make in one speech and that that will be for the convenience of the House.

I want to put in a word for the historians. I believe that if my first Amendment were accepted it would be of benefit to historians that various interesting and important historical controversial documents would now be available whereas if the period of fifty years as specified in the Bill remains it will mean that the documents will not become available for another ten years.

I can understand a person living in Victorian times thinking that fifty years was a sufficient period to elapse before documents were made available to historians at the Public Record Office, but history, as Karl Marx said—I am sure the Solicitor-General will recollect this—sometimes moves forward in bursts. The years from 1916 to 1920 are in a very important period of history when events in the world moved very quickly and historians are greatly concerned about them. We have some reason to believe that a number of interesting documents relating to that period wait to be studied by present and future historians.

If my Amendment were carried, it would mean, for example, that all the various documents concerned with the First World War would be available for inspection at the Public Record Office. There is still a great deal of discussion of events, policies, personalities and crisis during that period, and I suggest that the First World War has now reached so far that it is reasonable to ask that documents which would be available to the Public Records Office in 1966 or 1968 should be made available now.

The further we move from those events, the more they become of academic interest. There is still fierce controversy ranging round, for example, the history of the Dardanelles, about which historians take different points of view. There is also considerable controversy about the events connected with the Russian Revolution, which is covered by that period. If my Amendment were carried, we should presumably have access to important documents, which are now at the Foreign Office and the Home Office, about the attitude of the British Government of the time towards the Russian Revolution. I submit that now that time has passed on it would be very convenient indeed for historians if these records were available and they had opportunities to make their necessary research and studies at the Public Record Office.

The period about which I am talking also covers the relations between ourselves and Ireland. The controversy in that respect continues. There is still a great deal of controversy over certain documents which are at present in the custody of the Home Office. I refer to the documents connected with what is known as the 1916 Revolution and the events with which Sir Roger Casement was connected. There are, I understand, in the possession of the Home Secretary documents which are still the subject of considerable historic and political controversy.

For example, during the last two years I have been visited by Irish and American historians who are very anxious to see the original documents connected with the trial of Sir Roger Casement. Hon. Members will know that last week Alfred Noyes died, and it again became a question of current interest whether there is still in the possession of the Home Office a diary which many Irish historians say was a forged document. I will not go into great detail but will merely mention the fact that after Sir Roger was executed the Home Office circulated throughout America documents relating to the personal character of Sir Roger.

The documents were not circulated by the Home Office. That has been denied. They were circulated, but not by the Home Office. For the sake of the record, I think it desirable to make that correction.

I am obliged for the intervention of the hon. Member, who has studied the period and is a recognised authority upon it. We all read his books with great interest. Whether the documents were circulated by the Home Office or the Foreign Office is a matter of academic interest. The fact remains, as Alfred Noyes pointed out, that they were put on his desk and he circulated them to the United States, which he bitterly regretted in his later years, and for which he tried to make amends in his book.

The facts are that these documents were circulated by somebody, and I understand that they are still in the possession of the Home Office. It is very difficult for historians to check whether these documents are genuine, and I have repeatedly asked that these documents should now be released to the Public Record Office and its opposite number in Ireland so that historians can check the documents so that the controversy which has caused so much speculation and bitterness may be possibly ended for ever.

The last occasion on which I asked about these documents was on 30th January this year, when I asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department: when he proposes to make a decision about the return of the alleged diaries of Sir Roger Casement to Ireland. I received the following reply: I am unable to add to the reply to a Question asked by the hon. Member on 2nd May last, when I said that I was not prepared to hand over to the National Library of Ireland certain confidential documents relating to the case of Roger Casement which are among my Department's papers."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 30th January, 1958; Vol. 581, c. 99 .] That is an admission by the Home Secretary that the papers are there.

I do not know why they should be described as confidential now, because, as time marches on, documents cease to be confidential and I believe that that time has now arrived. The controversy will go on as long as the documents are not deposited in the Public Record Office, or sent to Northern Ireland or Dublin, so that historians can consult the originals there.

I shall not now pass judgment on whether the diaries were forgeries, but the time has come when the documents should become part of the raw material of history and be made available at the Public Record Office so that experts can judge whether these interpolations in the Casement Diaries were forgeries carried out at the Home Office, or whether they were not. If my Amendment were accepted, all documents relative to the period 1916–18 would be available, as would other interesting documents.

I have not gone to the Public Record Office in recent years, but I know that on one occasion a request was made for a copy of Pravda which was forged by Scotland Yard. I understand that it was then said that it was too soon for the papers to arrive, but hon. Members who delve into the pages of HANSARD know that it was admitted by the then Home Secretary that Sir Basil Thomson had been responsible for circulating in the Baltic States a Pravda which was not published in Moscow but forged in Scotland Yard. This is the raw material of history. I have often wanted to consult this paper myself to find out what possible purpose there could be in Scotland Yard forging copies of Pravda . There are still many interesting and unsolved problems of history which, whether we like it or not, are not just forgotten, dry-as-dust documents, but documents about which people still argue and which are still of current interest.

In its obituary notice on Mr. Alfred Noyes last week, the Manchester Guardian said that his contribution to the Casement controversy would remain longer than some of his other contributions to literature. That may or may not be true, but the time will come when passions will die down and when controversies will cease to be virulent.

2.15 p.m.

It is now forty years since the First World War, since the Russian Revolution, since the war in Ireland and the formation of the Irish Republic. Now is the time when these documents should be available at the Public Record Office. It may be that other periods of fifty years have not attracted so much attention, but I appeal to the Solicitor-General not to regard the figure of fifty as necessary simply because it happens to be half of a hundred This is not a matter of the multiplication table. We are here dealing with a period of intense interest to our own generation and, possibly, to future generations. This raw material of history should be available now, and we should not have to wait for another ten years for these documents to be deposited in the Public Record Office.

I beg to second the Amendment.

The effect of the Amendment would be to reduce the "waiting period" from fifty to forty years. It may well be that the Solicitor-General will draw attention to the fact that as it stands the Clause enables the Lord Chancellor to designate a period longer or shorter than fifty years for these documents to be made available to the public. However, if there is any possibility of the period being reduced, that should be specifically stated in the Bill.

It is clear that the argument for still regarding as confidential all the documents relating to the First World War is not as strong as the Clause makes it appear. It is clear that the time has now been reached when the fullest possible facilities should be provided for students of these historic events which came to an end, if that is the term, in 1918. I cannot see what individuals would be embarrassed if the Amendment were accepted.

There is another aspect of the matter which has not yet been mentioned in discussions on the Bill. Cabinet Ministers naturally have access to Cabinet papers. When a Cabinet Minister resigns or is removed from office, he is entitled, within certain limitations—the exact nature of which I do not know—to retain Cabinet papers and memoranda. That has applied to all Cabinet Ministers since Cabinet records of the kind referred to in the Bill have been kept on some sort of scientific basis.

When a retired Cabinet Minister wants to write his autobiography or present to the outside world a justification of various incidents in his political career, he makes use of those Cabinet papers which are in his possession, subject to the approval of the Prime Minister who, if there is a difference of opinion between the ex-Cabinet Minister and the Cabinet Office, decides what may be included in the book. If what I have said represents a reasonably accurate picture of what takes place when an ex-Cabinet Minister wants to write his memoirs—and the same sort of thing, mutatis mutandis, applies to retired field marshals, admirals and so on who are attempting to justify various actions which they took during the war—it is true to say that two distinct classes of people are concerned here.

The first is a small, select, privileged class of retired ex-Ministers, field marshals and so on, who naturally have access to papers in the course of their public duties but who, after they have retired from public life, can also retain control of certain papers and documents of which they have made use or have had to deal with in their active careers, for the purpose of writing what sometimes are later discovered to be rather tendentious and partial narrations of what they have done.

In those circumstances, it is most unjust that there should be this differentiation in treatment between a retired Minister or high-ranking Service officer and a member of the other class of people—the genuine student of history or the professor from one of our universities, who may be particularly interested in carrying out researches into the period in question.

By having a forty-year period instead of one of fifty years we should be narrowing the gap between the small and privileged class of the community to which I have referred and the genuine, responsible student of history in one of the universities or someone who may not be professionally engaged in the teaching or writing of history but wants to make his contribution or engage in research in the subject matter concerned.

If the problem is regarded in that light it provides an additional reason why the Amendment of my hon. Friend for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) should be accepted. I would ask the Solicitor-General to give his serious and, if possible, sympathetic consideration to the arguments which have already been adduced and to the further arguments which may later be adduced by hon. Members in support of reducing the period, by Statute, from fifty to forty years, and not leaving the matter in the vague position set out in the Clause.

I sympathise with the plea for historians which has been put forward by the proposer and seconder of the Amendment, but at this stage of the Bill it would be extremely difficult to accept the Amendment. The period of fifty years, after which documents—subject to a few exceptions—can, generally speaking, be open to public inspection, was the recommendation of the Grigg Committee, which gave the matter very careful consideration, and that recommendation has been accepted by the Government. I cannot see that an alteration of ten years would make all that difference.

The hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) rightly referred to documents relating to the origins and conduct of the First World War and also to Irish affairs. It is only right to tell the House that many of the documents relating to the origin and conduct of the First World War have already been published in a whole series of documentary works, and official historians have been employed upon them. I doubt whether a great deal more has yet to be made public in relation to the First World War, from purely official sources.

The hon. Member also referred to the documents concerning the trial of Sir Roger Casement. With the exception of the controversial diaries, all the documents which were in the possession of the late Mr. Justice Gavan Duffy, who was then the defence solicitor, have been deposited with the National Library of Ireland, where they can be freely consulted in Dublin by anyone interested. Furthermore, there are photostat copies also deposited there of what purport to be authentic copies of the diaries. Like the hon. Member for South Ayrshire, I am not going to say whether I think that the diaries are genuine or false.

As I understand, the diaries were seized by the police in 1915, while Sir Roger Casement was in Germany. They were not used at his trial, although they were offered by the then Attorney-General, Sir F. E. Smith, later Lord Birkenhead, to Casement's leading defence counsel, Serjeant Sullivan, in case he should wish to put forward a defence of insanity on behalf of his client. Serjeant Sullivan declined to look at the diaries, since he was not going to conduct a defence of that kind. That being so, the diaries were not introduced at the trial.

In those circumstances, I very much doubt whether they can be regarded as public records at all. The Forfeiture Act, which governs the custody of the property of those convicted of high treason, makes it clear that any document not used at a trial of a person convicted of high treason should be returned to the convicted person's executors or heirs, and I should have thought that if it were interested, Casement's family would have a very good claim on the Government for their return.

Is the hon. Member aware that the Casement family and the committee interested in the rehabilitation of Roger Casement have repeatedly asked the Home Secretary for these documents. Is the hon. Member arguing that it is illegal for the Home Secretary to retain them?

No; I said that there is probably a good case, which Casement's family can test in the courts. I have not been in touch with this committee, so I do not know what steps it has already taken. I am putting forward a purely ex parte opinion of my own, but I should have thought that if they had met with a point-blank refusal to hand over the documents they could test the matter by bringing proceedings in the courts.

2.30 p.m.

I think that the hon. Member has gone too far away from the Amendment.

I was led into doing that by the fact that the hon. Member for South Ayrshire raised the point.

May I ask the hon. Gentleman, if he is right in saying that the Casement family have a claim against the Home Office for the return of these papers, whether it is not odd that no proceedings have been taken before now? Is not the hon. Gentleman aware that the ordinary rules of prescription must apply here?

I do not think that on this Amendment we can discuss a claim against the Home Office.

I quite appreciate that, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I will simply say that if the Amendment moved by the hon. Member for South Ayrshire were accepted it is extremely doubtful whether it would cover these diaries at all. In the first place, they may very well not be qualified to rank as public records, and in the second place, of course, the Lord Chancellor has authority under the Bill to order the retention beyond fifty years of any class of documents for a special reason. That is quite clearly laid down in Clause 3 (4).

While I sympathise very much with historians and students, I do not feel that at this stage it would be possible to accept the period of forty years instead of fifty years. Indeed, I think that as a general rule fifty years is a very great advance on the previous practice, and, personally, I am very glad to see that period incorporated in the Bill.

I do not entirely see why, even at this late stage, the Amendment moved by my hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) should not be accepted because of the overriding provision that documents can be retained.

May I immediately confess to an interest in the matter? I have been engaged, in a desultory manner, in preparing a biography of Lord Kitchener. I should have thought that the time had certainly arrived for a biography of that very great Englishman, and that it certainly was not premature. One is rather placed in the absurd position that one's researches are stopped at 1908.

Among the most fascinating aspects of the life of Lord Kitchener is that of the conflict between the Secretary of State for War and his Cabinet colleagues, ending with the very mysterious tragedy of the "Hampshire". Surely it is not too early to have an opportunity of seeing what really happened at that time. I should have thought that the time had arrived when, with certain exceptions, for which any way the Bill provides, the general documents of the First World War could and should be made available.

I wish, briefly, to support the Amendment moved by my hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes). I should have thought that there was an overwhelming case for making forty years rather than fifty years the time limit so that so many of the very fascinating documents of the First World War might be made more easily available now to students and other people interested in them. There are still living those who were active in some of these great events. Surely they should be able to now know the inside story.

I hope that when he replies the Solicitor-General will not rest his case on the suggestion put forward by the hon. Member for Belfast, North (Mr. Hyde) that because fifty years was recommended by the Grigg Committee it is sacrosanct. I do not know whether that Committee thought that fifty years was a good round figure or whether it felt that individuals who may be referred to are less likely to be embarrassed or inconvenienced after that length of time. Concerning documents relating to a middle-aged man, one should remember that if one adds forty years that man, if still alive, would still be over ninety years of age. Therefore, I do not think that the possible embarrassment of people can really be a very strong reason in such circumstances for not agreeing to the shorter period suggested in this Amendment.

Many of us have a special interest in a number of incidents connected with the First World War. I should be out of order if I referred to the Casement documents, but it would, I think, be of very great advantage in our relations with our neighbours across the Irish Channel if the matter could be cleared up once and for all. I think that the proposed Amendment would help in this direction, and I hope, therefore, that if the Government cannot accept the Amendment my hon. Friends will press the matter to a Division.

I am sure that the Solicitor-General will have listened to the arguments that have been addressed to the House with a view to reducing the period from fifty to forty years. If one reads the Grigg Report, I think one will come to the conclusion that the sugges- tion of fifty years was, to some extent, an arbitrary one. There is no magic in the figure suggested by the Grigg Committee, and it is relevant to remind the House that in paragraph 153 of its Report, dealing with the period of access, the Committee states: This is not a subject on which we would wish to make a final pronouncement and we suggest that the question whether some classes of records should be opened before the lapse of fifty years might be examined some five years after the introduction of the new reviewing procedure. Then the Committe dealt with the subject subsequently.

The position is that, whether forty or fifty years are selected as being the normal time for access to public records, the Bill provides that the Lord Chancellor shall have the power, with the approval of any Minister concerned, to prescribe either a longer or a shorter period in connection with any particular class of public records. Therefore, I have every sympathy with the representations that have been made by the mover of the Amendment and by those who have-supported it.

Personally, I hope that the Amendment will be accepted, but if it is not, or if it is defeated, then I trust that the Solicitor-General will bear in mind, as so many of my hon. Friends have pointed out, that we are now living at a period of history when events of great historical interest occurred between forty and fifty years ago. The tempo of life is moving at a much greater rate than it used to move, and there is an overwhelming case for saying that the present generation of students, historians and research workers should have access to the many documents that relate to what occurred between the years 1914 and 1920.

This has given rise to a matter of very considerable importance. My hon. Friends the Members for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) and Brixton (Mr. Lipton) said that if the Amendment were accepted—indeed, it was one of the reasons why they pressed its acceptance—it would mean that the Casement diaries, about which there has been so much controversy and public interest, would become available for public inspection. The hon. Member for Belfast, North (Mr. Hyde) threw some doubt on that proposition. We cannot leave this important matter in this state of confusion.

These diaries have been the subject of Questions in this House to the representatives of the Home Office. I should call them Departmental records, and, therefore, public records within the scope of the Bill, like any other documents in the possession of any other Department. If there is any doubt about that matter it ought to be cleared up, whether forty years or fifty years be the right period and whether or not the Lord Chancellor may come to the conclusion that there is a case either for throwing open to the public access to the Casement diaries at an earlier date or that the period of inspection should be postponed. I hope that there can be no doubt that these are public records and documents of the kind with which the Bill deals. I understand it to be the object of the Bill to ensure that all important historical documents in the hands of any Government Department shall be preserved.

There are arrangements for destroying a mass of documents thought to have no historical value and for others to be preserved, transferred to the Public Record Office and made available for public access. The Casement diaries are a very good illustration of the kind of document to which all historians attach great importance. There is no doubt that the diaries exist in the hands of the Home Office. There is controversy as to whether the diaries are forgeries or genuine and particularly whether certain interpolations in some of the diaries are genuine.

I should have thought that the diaries were undoubtedly public records and should become available in the Public Record Office on at least one of two grounds. Not only are they in the possession of the Home Office, but, as I understand, they are diaries by Sir Roger Casement at a time when he was engaged in the public service in making reports to the Foreign Office or it may have been to the Colonial Office, on the atrocities——

Order. The hon. Gentleman is going into too much detail on these Casement diaries. He has explained quite clearly the point that they ought to be made available for public inspection but that is as far as he should go.

I am very much obliged to you for your Ruling, Mr. Speaker. It seemed to me that doubt having been raised on the subject, that doubt should be cleared up. I will not pursue the matter. Enough has been said to show the need there is about documents that came into the possession and into existence about forty years ago being available for inspection. I hope that the Solicitor-General will be able to accept the Amendment.

2.45 p.m.

I have been asked to bear in mind many things that have been said. I will, but I have been asked to bear so many other things in mind on successive Friday mornings that I begin to wonder about the increasing burden upon my mind with the increasing representations that I am asked to bear in mind. I do so with good heart. I wonder what your view is, Mr. Speaker, but I am entitled to ask you. I wonder if there were ever a period when events which took place forty or fifty years ago were not of the greatest interest to historians of the day.

The hon. and agreeable Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) has been talking about these Casement documents. While he did so, I was looking in the book to remind myself of something. The hon. Gentleman has been here longer than I have, and he knows very well that if he wants to know where these documents are and where they are kept he has to ask the specific Department in whose care he thinks they are.

If I started saying whether the Casement diaries were or were not public records for the purpose of the Bill, I should run headlong into your displeasure, Mr. Speaker, as being manifestly out of order. Obviously there are documents relating to the Casement trial, such as official criminal records, which no one can dispute would fall within the ambit of the Bill. Whether or no they would be records in the normal period for public inspection is another matter. There is a Home Office practice in relation to documents which are strictly criminal records not to let them loose in circumstance where they are likely to be emotionally disturbing to living relatives.

Suppose there are Casement documents in the custody of the Home Office and suppose these documents are public records within the meaning of the Bill; there is nothing in the Bill to prevent their being let loose for inspection tomorrow. What there is in the Bill is a general, normal period laid down which has to apply, unless in the special circumstances applying to the particular category of documents the Lord Chancellor orders otherwise, in which case they might be kept for a longer or shorter period than the normal.

This normal period was not chosen in those ages which the hon. Member for South Ayrshire rather disrespectfully called "Victorian" times. It was chosen by the Grigg Committee in the last few years. I do not say that that sanctifies it, but it is entitled to the respect properly due to hard work done by very competent people, who thought it was a good rule to choose fifty years, as the normal period in relation to the life of a man.

In the Report, paragraph 111, we can see that their motive was what they called "the preservation of unself-consciousness" in the writing of records. If a man felt that the document he was writing was soon to be exposed to public view he might become self-conscious about it. By reason of that, the document would lose something of its historical value because these are documents which persons read as splendid material for history. It was with these considerations in mind that the Grigg Committee thought that fifty years was the right general period to take, with power to make exceptions from it.

Although we have listened with great care to the arguments, we do not find any reason to depart from the conclusion at which the Committee arrived. The present state of the Bill does not debar an exception from being made. The Bill merely lays down a general principle. I hope that on consideration the House will think that is the right thing to do. Certainly no harm can be done by leaving the Bill based on that principle as it is.

The hon. Member for Brixton (Mr. Lipton), in an emotional appeal which went straight to my heart, asked me to be sympathetic towards arguments which neither he nor I at that moment had heard. I could not go so far as that, but I hope that the House, having heard me, will think it right not to accept this Amendment.

It was ruled that we should discuss these Amendments together and there is a further point dealing with the Republic of Ireland. Could the Solicitor-General tell us the Government view on that?

I am sorry I did not mention that. It is true that we were invited to consider these Amendments together. The difficulty about the proposal in the Amendment referred to is that it would apparently mean that the Republic of Ireland was to be put in the same position as that of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland under the Bill. That would be odd. What would be the justification for picking out one Commonwealth country—[HON. MEMBERS: "It is not in the Commonwealth."] Well, one foreign country, which makes the point even more emphatic—without special treatment for other Commonwealth or foreign countries? It does not seem that there is any justification for taking that course.

I am afraid, also, that as an Amendment it is technically defective because, if one were to try to do something of this kind there ought to be an Amendment to subsection (8) of Clause 3 in order to make it work. For the reasons I have indicated, I suggest to the House that it would not be right to do this. I am sure the hon. Member will see that there are what would seem to be sufficiently generous powers in the Bill as it stands. I do not know if he has looked at subsection (6) of Clause 3 and at Clause 6. Both would appear to include power to convey documents to the Republic of Ireland and other places in all circumstances in which it would be reasonably right to do so.

Question put, That "fifty" stand part of the Bill:—

The douse divided: Ayes 38, Noes 22.

I beg to move, in page 8, line 3, to leave out from "includes" to "other" in line 4, and to insert: papers, documents, books, notes, rolls, instruments, letters, manuscripts, memoranda and records of every description whether in writing or produced by any mechanical or". The Amendment has been put down because of an undertaking given in Committee by the Solicitor-General that he would consider the matter after it had been raised in Committee. The Amendment seeks to insert into the interpretation Clause a definition of what is a record, or, at any rate, what is a public record. It seems to me that considerable point has been given to the importance of the Amendment by the discussions which have just taken place on the Amendment of my hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes).

As the Bill stands, the only definition of a public record or of a record is contained in Clause 10, which reads: In this Act 'public records' has the meaning assigned to it by the First Schedule to this Act and 'records' includes not only written records but records conveying information by any other means whatsoever. There is no controversy about that provision, because it is intended to cover not only written documents but also gramophone records, records on tape, or records by any other mechanical means.

But what is a record? We turn to the First Schedule and we find: The provisions of this Schedule shall have effect for determining what are public records for the purposes of this Act. There is a list of Departmental records— records of, or held in, any department of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom …. There are provisions dealing with the bodies and establishments which are deemed to be Government Departments for the purposes of the Bill. There is also a list of the courts and tribunals whose records come within the scope of the Bill. But nowhere, as far as I can see, is there any indication of what is a record. That is why I thought it desirable that the Bill should provide that records should include papers documents, books, notes, rolls, instruments, letters, manuscripts, memoranda and records of every description whether in writing or produced by any mechanical means …. What all of us, including the Solicitor-General, I am sure, thought we were doing was providing that all documents in the hands of Government Departments should, after an agreed lapse of time, be turned over to the Public Record Office and then be made available for public inspection I have very grave doubt whether the word "record" is wide enough to include manuscripts, memoranda, letters, the Casement diaries, and other documents which will be of the same interest as, if not greater interest than, records in the strict sense.

The word "record" has a limiting application. It is obviously a word which is not nearly as wide as "document" or "paper". Historically, it is a mere accident that the Public Record Office, so-called, has come to house documents other than documents which are records in the strict sense—Chancery records, Exchequer records, records of law, which are records properly so-called. By a series of accidents we now find in the Public Record Office what are, in fact, State papers. The object of the Bill is to transfer to the Public Record Office all documents, memoranda, papers, and so on, in the hands of Government Departments. The Amendment seeks to ensure that that which is the declared object of the Bill should have effect.

I was looking at the definition of "record" in the Shorter Oxford Dictionary, which seems to corroborate my own impression of the strict meaning of a record. It gives two definitions of "record". The first is a record in the legal sense. Secondly, it refers to a record as the fact or condition of being preserved as knowledge, especially by being put into writing; knowledge or information preserved or handed down in this way That has considerable limitations. We are also interested in documents which record opinions, whether they are fact or knowledge or not.

I am more concerned about the Amendment because of the doubt which has now arisen as to whether documents like the Casement diaries are or are not records. That is only one illustration. There are in the hands of Government Departments a great many memoranda, a great many opinions, correspondence, correspondence written years ago between Ministers and notes made by Ministers and officials at various times. Those are not records in the strict or popular sense or in any ordinary sense. Therefore, unless the Solicitor-General can give a categorical assurance that documents, notes and memoranda of the type to which I have referred are effectively covered by the word "record", it seems to me essential that to avoid any misunderstanding arising in the future, it would be preferable to insert the definition in the Bill.

I therefore ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman, so that the House may know how he stands about this matter, to tell us whether the documents of the kind to which I have been referring are records. The Casement diaries have been referred to. Could they be excluded on the ground that they are not records? If so, it will come as a great surprise to my hon. Friends and myself.

I beg to second the Amendment.

The case for the Amendment is much stronger as a result of previous speeches, especially the speech made by the hon. Member for Belfast, North (Mr. Hyde). What is a record? It might be argued by somebody who is against publishing the Casement diaries that they were not a record which was used in the trial of Sir Roger Casement, and that would be correct. The controversy which arose concerning those documents was not that they were used during the court proceedings, but because they were used afterwards to influence opinion in America and here against the granting of a reprieve. It might be quite logical for anyone to say that they were not a record at all. According to our Amendment they would be amply covered.

I think that the clearest definition which has ever been made of these documents is that by the Home Secretary in a Written Answer to me on 30th January, 1958, in which he referred to certain confidential documents relating to the case of Roger Casement which are among my Department's papers."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 30th January, 1958; Vol. 581, c. 99 .] From this definition it might easily be argued that this is not a record of any court proceeding, but if our Amendment were carried it would certainly be covered because our Amendment would define records as papers, documents, books, notes, instruments, letters, manuscripts, memoranda and records of every description whether in writing or produced by any mechanical aid. If this Amendment were carried there would be absolutely no doubt at all that the Casement documents would be available for future historians.

There is another aspect of this Amendment. We are passing into the time when mechanical records become more important. We are in the age of tape recorders; we are in the age of telephone tappings. It may be quite conceivable that in some historical setting conversations between certain officials and certain representatives of the Crown may be taken on a tape recorder.

The official record of the was crimes trials was a tape recording.

That confirms my argument.

I conceive that in future even the records of this assembly may for the convenience of Members be taken down by a tape recorder.

Surely my hon. Friend would not wish to be heard twice?

One would pay one's money and take one's choice.

However, certainly we ought not to rule out what improvements may be made in the future in the recording of human speech and opinion, and so I suggest that the formula contained in the Amendment is a reasonable one, especially in view of the fact that we are not likely to have another Bill of this kind, so we are told, for another fifty years.

I can, perhaps, narrow the point we are discussing. After hearing the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) again I entertain no doubt whatsoever that a diary is a record. Plainly it is. It purports to be—it may be true or untrue, but it purports to be—a record of events. There is no doubt about that at all. I am not to be taken as expressing the slightest view whether any diary which may or may not be in the custody of the Home Office is a public record for the purposes of this Bill; but I am certain it is a record.

As to the other point, the mechanical devices, we have all much enjoyed the hon. Member's jokes from time to time, but I would suggest to him that he would be very unlikely to pay any money to hear his jokes repeated on a tape recorder, however good the jokes may have been in the first place.

Would the right hon. and learned Gentleman just clarify the first matter he was dealing with? He says that he has no doubt that a diary is a record, but he entertains some doubt whether a private diary in the hands of the Home Office is a public record. May I ask him whether he has considered the provisions of paragraph 2 (1, a ) of the First Schedule, by which public records include records held in any Department of Her Majesty's Government?

Would the right hon. and learned Gentleman tell us whether, in view of that, there can be any possible doubt that if a private diary is held in a Department of Her Majesty's Government it is a record and, therefore, under the provisions of the Bill a public record?

3.15 p.m.

I propose to deal fairly and squarely with this point, as far as I can. I know quite well that the hon. Member and the House will not expect me to commit myself to any view at all about some document of which, at the moment, I have no knowledge. I know neither what it is like, nor how it came into the possession of the Home Office. Hon. Members all know that if they want to know these facts, they must ask a representative of the Home Office, or must give me warning so that I can ascertain the facts and seek authority to divulge them. I did not express any doubt; I merely said that I was not to be taken as expressing any view at all, and to that position, without intending the slightest discourtesy to the House, I must adhere.

On the point of including mechanical recordings of events. I am sure that the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) will understand that there is no distinction between the proposed Amendment and what is in the Bill. Both contain words to cover that difficulty, namely, a more modern form of record which does include mechanical devices such as tapes and the like. We have fulfilled as far as we could the undertaking which I gave to look to the best of my ability into the point of what "record" means as a word, at the instigation of the hon. Member for Islington, East (Mr. E. Fletcher).

I know that the hon. Gentleman is very concise in the expression of his views, and would not wish to use more words than are necessary, but it is only fair to say that the definition in the Bill is a great deal less verbose than the one in the Amendment. So if we are right, and it is safe to use it, I have no doubt that he will prefer as we do, the definition in the Bill. The hon. Gentleman has a big book, but I have a bigger one. This is not a public record. It is "A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1914".

May I have a look at it?

That depends on whether the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) has paid his subscription to the appropriate library, as to which I make no suggestion.

It starts by giving the word "record" a much narrower meaning and, of course, as all lawyers know, in a legal sense, it has a very restricted meaning. It drones on and on through columns of definition, and, after a page, we get a Roman II and a sub-paragraph 4 and go on to subparagraph 5—and I am still back in 1655, if necessary—we get this meaning, and I ask the House, from its own experience of language as used at the present day, to take the view that this is a perfectly sound and sensible meaning to attach to the word "record" at present: An account of some fact or event preserved in writing or other permanent form; A document, monument, etc., on which such an account is inscribed; also, transf ."— and my translation of the word "transf." which is in italics, is "by transferred meaning", and I think it is right— any thing or person serving to indicate or give evidence of, or preserve the memory of a fact or event; a memorial. Freq, in pl ., the collection of such accounts, documents etc. Also, in recent use, a tracing or series of marks, made by a recording instrument. In view of the last words of the definition, I think that we were gratuitously careful in putting the words dealing with mechanical devices in the Bill.

If I may deal with the special point which the hon. Member put to me, obviously memoranda fall within that dictionary definition, and all comments on and recordings of experiences. The hon. Member put the case of opinions. It sounds embarrassing to say this, if one is a Law Officer, but I suppose that our opinions in the face of history will be regarded as records of events, in that they are the records of the event that we so advised, unhappily, whether right or wrong. They are liable to bound back at our heads, if wrong.

I ask the House to take the view that the definition we have given is supported by this very large and extremely authoritative book. I have taken such advice as is available to me for the purpose and I think that the definition of the word "records", as it stands in the Bill, safely meets the wishes of the House.

Some of the doubts which I had in my mind when I was listening to the speeches of my hon. Friends have been removed by the first really explicit statement that the Solicitor-General has made today on any subject which has come up for our consideration on Report.

We now have it, not only on the authority of the Oxford English Dictionary but of the Solicitor-General himself, that "records" include recordings and that recordings would include recordings whether on tape, on a cylindrical wax record, a flat wax record, a long-playing record, a short-playing record, or any of these modern improvements which have been effected in recent years. They will all be records within the meaning of the Clause.

I do not know whether, for example, the telephone conversations between the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill) and Mr. Franklin Roosevelt, during the war, were recorded or not. I hope that they were for the purposes of historical record. If a recording was made of these conversations, I hope that, in the terms of the Clause, they will be made available to the public at some future date. Nothing could be a more dramatic addition to our historical records than a recording of that kind.

I hope, also, that where, for example, historic cases of telephone tapping have occurred they will be preserved for the information of posterity. We can find very little about them now, of course. They presumably involve questions of security and therefore are not available. I hope that those who are in charge of the Government's telephone tapping arrangements may also bear in mind that their work may be of interest to future generations and that telephone tapping recordings will not be thrown away when they have served the immediate purposes of the parties concerned, but will be preserved for the delectation of future generations.

I find it a little difficult to see why the Amendment cannot be accepted when, at any rate, it considerably clarifies what the Government say they wish to do. I am not certain whether the Solicitor-General told us or not, but my hon. Friend the Member for Brixton (Mr. Lipton) thought that he said that tape recordings came within the meaning of "records" for this purpose. It certainly is made clearer in the Amendment. Fifty years hence somebody might have another view.

I raise the question of tape recordings because I am particularly interested in it from the point of view of the war crimes trials, where the tape recording was the official record. I took part in one of these trials and at the end of it I received a demand that I should return my manuscript. I told those demanding it to chase themselves. They chased me for about two years, threatening all sorts of things but eventually dropped the demand. There is obviously an attitude that the records of war crimes trials should not be allowed to get about. I can understand that, because they were very disgraceful proceedings, but I hope that, as matters of historical interest, the records of those disgraceful proceedings will not be permanently buried.

Amendment negatived .

3.25 p.m.

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

This Bill has gone on its way propelled by much eloquence. I am sure that it requires no Third Reading speech to receive the blessing of the House, because it has had support from all quarters. I rise only to express my thanks to those hon. Members who have taken a special interest and have helped us to make it as useful a Measure as possible, and, in particular, to those hon. Members on both sides of the House who had no special interest in the subject matter of the Bill, but none the less, to further its progress, were content to bear the tedium of rather prolonged Committee proceedings upstairs.

3.26 p.m.

As the House knows, we have had certain misgivings on some points of detail in the Bill, some of which have not been entirely removed. However the Opposition, like the Government, welcome the Bill and are glad to know that as a result of the careful examination it has had here, as well as in another place, it will now reach the Statute Book.

Perhaps I should express the hope that once it is on the Statute Book the Bill will carry out the intentions of those who have framed it. That will depend to some extent on the amount of money which the Treasury makes available for the purposes of this Department. We hope that the Government will accept the view to which common opinion has been given throughout our discussions that, in the words of the Grigg Committee, … the making of adequate arrangements for the preservation of its records is an inescapable duty of the Government of a civilised state.

Question put and agreed to .

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

Can we hear something about the Bill?

Should it help, I would be delighted to tell the right hon. Gentleman something about the Bill. The easiest thing to tell him about it is that it is pure consolidation and that, as far as I know, no points arise upon it whatsoever. I confess that it is difficult to know what else I can tell the right hon. Gentleman and remain within the very strict rules of order applicable to these circumstances.

Question put and agreed to .

Bill accordingly read a Second time .

Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[ Sir G. Wills .]

Committee upon Monday next .

May we have an assurance from the Government that this, too, is purely a consolidation Measure?

It is. It is a modern consolidation.

Question put and agreed to .

Bill accordingly read a Second time .

Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[ Sir G. Wills .]

Committee upon Monday next .

The question I have to ask the Government today is their policy on routine air trooping and the air transport of troops in an emergency. Today, just when we have the greatest need of a clear policy and firm decisions, we appear to have nothing but Ministerial indecision and there is direct evidence of confusion.

The debate arises directly out of answers given by the Minister of Defence on 11th June which showed confusion in his mind between two completely separate matters—first, routine air trooping; and second, the strategic movement of troops. Any hon. Member who was present on 11th June and had followed the subject at all was surprised by the Minister's statement in reply to a supplementary question which I put to him and which appears in column 194 of HANSARD of that day. The debate arises directly from his answer. But it flows indirectly from pronouncements by members of the Government in different Departments on transport aircraft and their operation which have brought despondency to the management and workers in the aircraft industry and to all those concerned with defence.

In considering this subject, we must recognise that there is bound to be a great deal of uncertainty about air trooping requirements. This uncertainty is an important factor in working out the policy, but it is not a reason for not having a policy which can be clearly stated, and still less is it a reason for there being confusion in the minds of Ministers.

First, let us consider the routine day-to-day air trooping of men and materials. How much of the load is to fall on the Royal Air Force Transport Command? How much of the load is to fall on the nationalised Corporations? How much is to fall on the independent operators? I should like evidence that the Government have accepted the fact that air transport, for both men and material, is cheaper than sea transport, by any test. I should like to see evidence that stockholding by the Services overseas has been ruthlessly cut and that stores and spares are delivered as required by air freight. In short, I should like to see evidence that the Government are alive to the enormous possibilities of air transport. So much at this stage for the routine, day-to-day air transport of men and material.

Second, when we come to the policy for an emergency, the same three questions arise, the rôle of Transport Command, the rôle of the Corporations—obviously, particularly B.O.A.C.—and the rôle of the independent operators. To give the Under-Secretary a chance to state the Government's policy and to clear the air in this respect, I shall put some of the questions which are being asked everywhere in the aviation world.

We were told that there was a serious emergency in Cyprus, yet it took five days to move just over 2,500 men. I could quote the criticisms of the national daily newspapers, but I shall quote only the two aviation weekly papers. Flight attributed the time taken to move these troops to the woeful lack of suitable military transport aircraft. Aeroplane referred to the scarcity of the proper weight-lifting long-range aircraft and said It is scarcely encouraging to those who know what is involved in moving not only troops but their heavy equipment about in double quick time. I said that I would ask a series of questions so that we might have an opportunity of hearing the Government's policy.

Is it true that the Air Council is fighting not only against the Maginot policy of the Minister of Defence, but also against the Army Council? Is it true that while the Air Council fights for the Short Bristol Britannic for Transport Command, the Army Council fights for the Blackburn B 107 and that some other Department wants the Armstrong-Whitworth 660 freighter coach and yet another Department the Handley Page development of the Victor? Those are questions which are being asked in the aviation world and by those who are concerned with defence. Further, is there any truth in the report that the Government are about to order American transport aircraft?

I must refer too to the rumours of a deal to strip the Royal Air Force of Coastal Command and to hand it over to the Navy. This rumour and discussion on it have cropped up in every year since the war. I shall not raise the wider implications, because that is not the subject of the debate, but I want for a moment to consider how it would affect air transport.

In the Cyprus emergency the Shackle-tons of Coastal Command were used, and I understand that they made about 50 trips and carried about 30 men each time. If that is anything like accurate, it represents a very large proportion of the men who were moved.

In an emergency, Transport Command must call upon other commands. That is understandable. We cannot expect Transport Command to have enough capacity to meet an emergency. It must be able to call on other commands. But it is difficult enough to meet the complications of having to rely upon another command; if that other command is transferred to another Service the additional complications are enormous. I very much hope that the Under-Secretary can kill once and for all the rumour of the transfer of Coastal Command to the Royal Navy. I am not asking him to go into the wide strategic and political matters which are involved; that would be inappropriate in a small Adjournment debate such as this. But it is directly relevant to the control of the reserve of transport aircraft which is at present available within the R.A.F. Transport Command.

As to the reserves of transport aircraft, I wonder whether the Air Council has given enough attention to the possibility of using ordinary production line civil aircraft, such as the Viscount, for the training of aircrew other than pilots. I realise that different considerations arise in the case of pilots, but I wonder whether enough consideration has been given to the question as it affects the training of other aircrew. I mention this not only because it is cheaper, since the aircraft come off the ordinary production line, but because these ordinary civil aircraft would also form a valuable transport reserve.

There is a widespread feeling among people concerned with aviation and defence that the Government are not showing enough understanding of the importance of aviation in our defence and in our traditional rôle of a manufacturing and trading nation. I have asked questions which I believe reflect a dismay in the world of aviation and among those concerned with defence. I do not envy the Ministers at the Air Ministry, but they are the spokesmen of the Government and we have to look to them for answers.

I see that the hon. Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. P. Williams) is in his place. He knows something about air transport matters, and I hope that he will catch the eye of Mr. Deputy-Speaker so that he can intervene. It is important that we should realise that this is not an occasion for any narrow party criticism; we are concerned with the genuine worry which is felt about the circumstances to which I have referred.

If, as is felt, the Government are guilty of a lack of decision and policy, that is not a matter which affects only our defence and aviation industry of today. It is something which will affect them in five, ten, or fifteen years' time—because aircraft development and production is not like a tap which can be turned off and on; it is one long, continuous belt, and if it is broken now the mistakes made today will be felt in years to come.

The Minister of Defence must recognise that rockets are not the answer to every problem. They are the answer to many defence problems, but it is obvious that men and material will not for a long time, if ever, be transported by rocket. Our defence strategy is based upon air transport. I wish that I could be convinced that the Government have a policy which recognises that we must have adequate modern manned transport aircraft.

3.45 p.m.

The whole House is profoundly grateful to the hon. Member for Lincoln (Mr. de Freitas) for raising this subject on a particular Adjournment Motion as opposed to losing it in a plethora of words in a Defence or Civil Estimates debate. It is of interest that at this moment when there is so much in doubt about aircraft manufacture, design, research and about trooping itself that we should have an opportunity of hearing from the Government exactly what is the present intention for aircraft production and for the policy itself.

I apologise for not hearing the first few words of the speech of the hon. Member for Lincoln, but I rather imagine that this debate has been provoked by what I believe was a slip of the tongue by the Minister of Defence two or three weeks ago.

The hon. Gentleman is quite right. I do not know whether it was a slip of the tongue or not, but it was provoked, as I indicated, by what the Minister said on 11th June.

My understanding of what was said then was that Transport Command would be doing the trooping. It may well be that that was a slip of the tongue or a misunderstanding of what the hon. Member for Lincoln was saying in his supplementaries, because that particular moment was in advance of the movement of troops to Cyprus. It may be that the Minister was thinking of that forthcoming move and that there was a quite natural misunderstanding of what the hon. Gentleman was driving at on that occasion.

I should declare that I have an interest in the civil aviation industry, and I hope that the House will not wish me to dwell on that point too long. The hon. Member for Lincoln said that there is considerable uncertainty in the aviation world over the Government's policy on research, on aircraft production, both for civil and for military use, and, as a result of what I believe to be a slip of the tongue on the part of the Minister, a misunderstanding on air trooping policy.

I only want to ask one question. How can we as a nation get the most efficient and the safest method of moving troops and material for the Services? I think that these are the two things one must try to combine and then to examine, without the prejudice of past experience or even past knowledge, how to do it.

We must surely combine safety, reliability and efficiency of aircraft and airworthiness of airlines with economy of operation. I am not convinced that there has been a sufficiently close scrutiny of the comparative merits of conducting an operation of this nature, air trooping and air freight, by the civil operators. I include in that phrase both the independent companies and the Corporations—the civil operators, on the one side, and Transport Command on the other.

In the debate on the Air Estimates earlier this year, I raised the question of how many flying hours an aircraft of Transport Command does per year, what are the costs per flying hour, and what is the experience of pilots? Again, in asking this question once more, I do not wish in any way to cast a shadow of doubt on the worthiness of the pilots or of Transport Command itself. It is quite obviously not possible for a pilot flying oldish aircraft for only 300 hours a year to be as effective, as efficient and as safe as a civil airline pilot operating aircraft which may be flying 1,000 or 2,000 hours a year and himself, perhaps, flying 800 or 1,000 hours a year in every possible type of weather.

It is always possible to prove that Transport Command has a very good safety record, and we are grateful for that. But one is not so likely to have accidents due to weather if one is always flying in good weather. Again, I do not wish to raise any doubts about the safety of Transport Command, but I think that unfortunate comparisons are sometimes made when comparing fair weather flying with flying in all conditions.

This is the simple and sole question I wish to ask the Government. I do not know whether, at short notice, I can even reasonably expect an answer. Has a comparison been made at any stage of safety, reliability, efficiency and cost in conducting transport operations, between the two sides, civil and military? If not, it would be reasonable to ask the Government to make some inquiry and comparison of this nature. If it were to be found, as I believe it would, that civil operators could provide a service safer, as reliable and certainly more economical than the military, then there would be a very firm case indeed for re-examining completely the rôle of Transport Command.

I hate the word "civilianisation", but I think hon. Members would know what I meant if I were to use it. It may be that more of the burden of moving freight and men, and of providing strategic reserve movements as well, could be carried through by civil operators than is being done at the moment. Let me take the case of the twenty Britannias. Surely it is patently obvious that if Transport Command is to have twenty Britannias within its control there will be precious little chance of their being used effectively and efficiently or maintained in good order If they are maintained in good order, the economics of the Command will be extremely expensive I therefore suggest to the House and to the Government that the making of a comparison between the civil and military sides is a matter of prime and urgent necessity.

3.52 p.m.

I am glad to have the chance of clarifying any uncertainty which may exist on this Adjournment debate initiated by the hon. Member for Lincoln (Mr. de Freitas). If there is uncertainty we cannot restate the case too much. I am afraid it will not be possible for me to answer all the questions put to me by my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. P. Williams). There were from 15 to 20 of them. I can re-explain the policy and how it is working, and so answer at least some of the questions which have been put to me.

Let me first make it clear that these policies are founded on the need for Transport Command to provide air mobility at short notice and in emergency for all three Services. In order to do that, Transport Command must be freed from its routine tasks. To answer one point put by my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South, while the defence forces must, particularly in the present climate, look for the economic issues, we cannot always measure in the field of defence the value we get from reserve equipment in pounds, shillings and pence, whether in arms or aircraft.

There has been no change in air trooping policy, which was stated by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Air on 9th May, 1957, in the debate on the Air Estimates. Perhaps I might repeat what he said, which was: Apart from a small number of ad hoc movements which have been undertaken either by Transport Command or by the Corporations, and apart from the carriage of individual passengers on scheduled civil air lines, the policy of the Government has been to invite the independent civil operators to carry out the air movement task"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th May, 1957; Vol. 569, c. 1192.] When my right hon. Friend said "air movement task" he clearly meant in this context the routine air movement to which the hon. Member for Lincoln referred in his opening speech. Oversea garrisons are somewhat smaller because we are running down the total of our Forces, but at the same time there are fewer troopships in the Service.

The fact is that in each of the last four years more Servicemen have been moved by air than by sea. That shows the importance the Government attach to the present air transport position. Air transport is vital to the task of our troops in carrying out their jobs in all parts of the world.

This general emphasis will continue. Several other troopships may be withdrawn and, as the Britannia 252s are brought into use, there will be extra capacity for air trooping, but I wish to emphasise that it is not intended that Transport Command should do more than occasional ad hoc trooping. Not only will that leave the command free for emergencies, but, by giving this work to civil operators we provide a most essential and valuable pool of air transport which supplements the resources of the command. The air trooping policy is designed to free Transport Command of routine tasks from which it could not be easily disengaged, either so that it can stand by for emergency or carry out the tasks of an emergency. It must be there to train its air and ground crews to the highest standards and to take part in inter-Service exercises.

I wish to assure my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South that this continuation training goes on by day and by night over all distances and in all kinds of weather. If he were in my seat he would know the number of complaints I have from certain hon. Members who have Transport Command airfields close to centres of population in their constituencies. I never cease to get complaints about the amount of training which Transport Command undertakes.

Transport Command must also be free to take part in the inter-Service exercises and, in particular, the movement of units of the Army and the Royal Air Force. This does not impair the capacity of the command to undertake a number of other tasks of very great importance. First, there is logistic support for the R.A.F. and other Services overseas; secondly, logistic support for nuclear weapons and guided missile trials; thirdly, aero-medical evacuation flights; and, fourthly, miscellaneous flights of various kinds

Emphatically, it is not our object to get the maximum flying hours out of Transport Command aircraft or to run it as an airline deeply committed to scheduled services. I cannot give the actual number of hours, but, as I said in the Air Estimates debate, if we tried to make an airline out of the command it would be impossible for it to fulfil its emergency rôle. Naturally, as the capacity of Transport Command increases we shall welcome the opportunity to increase the number of inter-Service exercises and the amount of effort which the command devotes to the other tasks I have described.

Exercises are particularly important. A start was made earlier this year, in February, with "Exercise Quickstep." We chose a month notorious for its unpleasant weather. The exercise was carried out with 500 troops and 10 vehicles and trailers. Ten tons of equipment were moved a distance of 1,400 miles in 34 hours, using four Hastings, four Beverleys and one Comet. In future, we shall go to a variety of destinations and use different combinations of men, materials, and aircraft.

Nor are we concerned only with troop movements, but it is equally necessary to produce reinforcement moves by R.A.F. units to overseas commands if we are to get the flexibility which is essential. Troops and airmen cannot have too much experience of rapid movement by air into different climates and different surroundings. Staffs need practice in organising and executing airlifts of this kind and overseas commands need practice in the reception of reinforcements.

Having spoken of the policy and of the way in which it works, I should like to turn for a moment to the Cyprus airlift.

It being Four o'clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put .

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[ Mr. E. Wakefield .]

The recent airlift to Cyprus is a good illustration of the success of our air transport policy in coping with an emergency and, in particular, of the excellent understanding between the Services about air transport problems. The hon. Member has quoted various informed papers which suggested that the pace of the operation was slow. These papers suggested that this was the best that Transport Command could do. This is a wholly mistaken outlook. The pace of any move is, naturally, always related to the reasons for it. Emergencies fall into different categories. There are emergencies of the utmost importance, where time is vital, and there are other emergencies where time is less vital.

The first thing, of course, was the decision to send these reinforcements to Cyprus. It entailed a total of 6,000 men and more than 200,000 lb. of freight. This was authorised not at one time, but progressively over a period of several days.

Moreover, in this operation only a part of Transport Command's aircraft was allocated to the airlift for, after we had considered the priorities most carefully, about half our Hastings force, which is our largest force, continued to do the tasks previously assigned to it. More aircraft could have been made available for the airlift and the time of the move shortened in consequence, but this was not considered necessary.

I think that the House will agree that there are three stages in a move of this kind. First, there is bringing the troops from their normal bases to the point of departure; secondly, there is the airlift itself; and, thirdly, there is the reception of the troops at the other end and their deployment in the field to their operational objectives.

We should not over-rate the importance of supreme speed in the airlift part of this movement. It seems futile to save half-an-hour or an hour in the airlift if we spend 48 hours in moving the troops to the point of departure and 24 hours in deploying them at the other end. I think that the papers have perhaps emphasised the importance of the speed at which the aircraft travel.

It is pointless to make elaborate and costly arrangements to accelerate the speed of the airlift to an extent which puts it out of gear with the general pro- cedure in all stages. However many aircraft Transport Command uses on an airlift of this sort, the speed of the move depends on the speed with which forces can be made ready in the United Kingdom and how readily they can be received at the other end.

In time of great emergency troops can no doubt be ready in a matter of hours, but in this case it was not necessary. It was thought right to give the troops reasonable warning to make their private arrangements before they left. In any event, it can sometimes be a case of too much haste, less speed. A short period of warning is often helpful in planning for a steady flow of aircraft along the route and to arrange for the handling capacity of airfields outside the United Kingdom to be in keeping with the rate at which we want to pass aircraft through those bases.

The short answer to any criticism, therefore, is that the time of the move could have been shortened if the Government had considered it necessary. Obviously, in any move of this kind there are a number of factors to be taken into account, and that is what we did on this occasion; we made our plans accordingly. The great thing, I think, was that the plans were efficiently carried out.

I should like to say a word on cooperation. I saw something of the airlift myself. The most noticeable feature was the excellent co-operation between the Royal Air Force and the Army and also between the various commands concerned. Army and Royal Air Force staffs worked together at command level and planned the move jointly and then carried it out together at the bases. Army staff were on duty alongside the R.A.F. operations officers in the Operations Room at Headquarters, Transport Command.

The airlift as a whole was controlled by Transport Command, but Coastal Command was closely associated with working out the detailed planning. Coastal Command officers, too, were on duty throughout in the R.A.F. Transport Command operations room. Coastal Command aircraft operated from transport airfields so as to make the best use of the movements and loading organisation there. The whole airlift was a striking example of close teamwork between the Services, with each Service doing the job at which it is expert and for which it is specially trained.

The hon. Member for Lincoln raised the question of the future of Coastal Command. As he rightly said, the future of Coastal Command has arisen fairly consistently year after year. At this juncture, I cannot do more than reiterate what was said by my noble Friend the First Lord, in another place, when he remarked that any suggestions in the papers about the future of Coastal Command were "purely speculative."

Apart from the strategic and other implications of any possible transfer of Coastal Command to the Royal Navy, can the hon. Gentleman give the assurance that the point I raised about the reserve of transport aircraft being in the Royal Air Force, although in a different command, will also be considered if the possibility of transfer is discussed?

I am sure that if the question arises, all these factors will be taken into consideration.

From time to time, we use Shackletons of Coastal Command to carry our troops in emergency. I have seen it suggested that we ought not to use these aircraft for this rôle. This point was not made by the hon. Member for Lincoln—in fact, he is in favour of their use for this purpose. There has, however, been some criticism. The primary rôle of Coastal Command, as my right hon. Friend the Minister of Defence said on Wednesday, is maritime operations, but its capacity for such operations is in no way impaired by this occasional contribution to the air transport rôle. We would be open to a charge of bad and extravagant management if we did not use the Shackletons in this rôle when the need arose.

It is true that the Shackleton is not as comfortable or as fast as other Transport Command aircraft. This is all that can be said against it. From what I know, there is no doubt that the Army morale seems high whatever aircraft is used. Army personnel seem quite ready to take the rough with the smooth, the Shackletons with the Comets. Not only does the use of Shackletons give us a bigger airlift. It may on occasions enable Transport Command to carry on with its other important tasks and the Shackleton gives us a valuable extra degree of flexibility.

The figures quoted by the hon. Member are approximately correct. Coastal Command carried 2,000 of the total of 6,000 men transferred to Cyprus, although not the 200,000 lb. of freight. That was a worthy contribution to the task.

The hon. Member for Lincoln asked about future aircraft. The Government are deeply conscious of the importance of ordering new aircraft to do the job properly and of ordering them at the right time. The hon. Member mentioned certain British designs and asked whether we had made up our minds about the Beverley replacement and what our plans were for the longer-range transport aircraft.

The Beverley is only just in service. Although we know a good deal about the time which it takes to get a new type of aircraft into service, we still think that we are right in considering with the greatest care the precise type of aircraft at which we should aim. There are a number of divergent requirements to be reconciled. This is not a question of battle between the Air Council and the Army Council, as the hon. Member suggested. It is a question of consultation and of finding a compromise which is as near ideal as possible. Ideally, we want an aircraft with a hold large enough to take all the cargoes which the Army needs to carry, and yet the aircraft must not be so large, expensive, and vulnerable as to be too precious to risk on tactical operations.

The long-range freighter raises a separate problem. Militarily, of course, range is invaluable, and a really long-range freighter would provide a solution to many staff problems. Whether it would necessarily be the best or most economical solution is a different matter, bearing in mind the possibility of stockpiling heavy equipment overseas and the heavy cost of providing expensive aircraft whose full potential can be realised only occasionally.

Meanwhile, for the carriage of troops and ordinary freight over long ranges we are getting excellent aircraft in the shape of 20 Britannias for Transport Command. They are expected to have a very long and useful life indeed, and for a number of years will be supplemented for the carrying of passengers and light freight by the Comets which are already in the Air Force.

For our long-term transport requirements our aim is to introduce aircraft which have a civil as well as a military future, if we cannot adopt aircraft under development for the civil market for military use. It is two ways round. Let me repeat it. We want to introduce aircraft which have a civil as well as a military value, if we find that no civil aircraft under development are suitable for military use. The research and development costs incurred in producing a new type are so high that this country cannot lightly undertake to develop specialised military aircraft if no civil market is in sight at all.

The Americans have developed some excellent freighter aircraft which are used for military purposes, but I think it is significant that to date, as far as I know, not a single civil order has been placed for those long-range military freighter aircraft like the Globemaster and the Lockheed C.130A.

We are not closing our eyes to the value of aircraft of this class. All I am saying is that it would be difficult for the United Kingdom in present circumstances to justify the development of similar aircraft if they had only—I repeat only—a military application.

On top of all this is the problem of numbers. The more ambitious our specification the fewer aircraft we shall be able to afford, and by striving to provide for all contingencies we could arrive at a force too small to be effective for the task. All these conflicting factors have to be most carefully weighed in deciding what aircraft we are to invest our money in. I cannot apologise for the fact that our problems are taking us time to solve, but I can assure the House that we are well aware of the timetable to which we must work.

Finally, I wish to stress that this question is not a problem for the Royal Air Force alone. When it comes to air transport there must be the closest co-operation between all three Services and, of course, especially between the Army and the Royal Air Force, particularly since decisions made now, as the hon. Gentleman underlined, affect the future for many years to come.

Working well together on transport operations themselves is equally vital. I wish to pay tribute to the co-operation which in fact exists today. As I said earlier, I have witnessed something of this myself. On Monday, 16th June, I went to Lyneham. At that time some 1,500 troops had passed through the base on their way to Cyprus. I was tremendously impressed with the smooth way in which this task had been undertaken while not cancelling all the other tasks which Transport Command was doing. The Royal Air Force had a job to do; the Army had a job to do; both clearly understood what those jobs were, and did them together in a very fine spirit of very close co-operation.

With the leave of the House, may I add this? I entirely agree with what the Under-Secretary has said as to how very well run was the Cyprus operation and commended the work of the R.A.F. Transport Command and Coastal Command. What puzzles me, and puzzles so many people who are concerned in these matters, is that the two aviation weekly papers which study this problem both appeared to be disappointed. They are papers working in this particular field and they thought that the airlift job was a failure and they pointed to the shortages which I outlined.

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising this matter, because I think that I have been able to show that, in fact, we were employing only a small portion of the transport aircraft on this airlift. If the emergency had been so extreme, we could have employed more aircraft and have done the task much more quickly. However, I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman and to my hon. Friend for this debate.

Question put and agreed to .

Adjourned accordingly at a quarter past Four o'clock .