I beg to move, in page 1, line 25, at the end to insert:

(3) In performing any functions under subsections (1), (2) or (5) of the said section seven in relation to controlled waters, river boards shall have special regard to the factors arising from the tidal nature of the waters and, in particular, to additional dilution due to dispersal of the effluent by tidal action, and the varying direction of flow and salinity and any other special properties of those waters.

When the House discussed this Measure on Second Reading my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government drew attention to the fact that at that date there had been little or no opportunity for the representatives of industrial interests to give their opinions on how the Bill might be expected to affect them. I think that is the advice which he gave to the House, and I certainly thought it was the sense of the House, that on behalf of the sponsors of the Bill we should have consultation with the representatives of industry and try to take into account their point of view and meet it so far as we could.

I am glad to say that we managed to have a number of discussions with the Federation of British Industries, which was represented by its technical committee at these talks, and I personally am indebted to the help and advice which I received from that committee, based on its considerable experience of pollution conditions in estuaries with which we are dealing in this Bill.

As a result of the discussions which we had, I was glad to be able to agree to move this Amendment. It is quite plain, I think, and simply seeks to give recognition to the main contention of industrial interests who make discharges in estuaries, namely, that it is an incontrovertible fact that conditions in estuaries and tidal waters are different from conditions in streams owing to a number of factors that I need not specify here, that they should be treated differently and that the obligation on river boards to take account of these differences when considering applications for consent should be incorporated in the Bill. That is really what we are doing.

I should tell the House that the form of words used in this Amendment, although not the actual words, already have Parliamentary sanction in that Section 5 (1) of the Act of 1951, which deals with the powers of river boards to make byelaws, says in one part of it:

"A river board in exercising the powers conferred by this subsection to make bye-laws for any stream or part of a stream shall have regard to the character and flow of the stream …"

This Amendment transposes that obligation and applies it to estuaries.

I think, as a matter of fact, that even were this Amendment not incorporated in the Bill, it is certain that river boards would, in the discharge of their duties, be obliged to have regard to the conditions which industry has in mind. Nevertheless, the Amendment will provide additional reassurances to industry, and I personally would be glad if the House would accept it in witness of the intention of the sponsors of this Bill to be reasonable to and co-operative with all the interests which may be affected. I am sure it is the intention of river boards to maintain what has been their practice in the past, and this Amendment will make clearer their duty in that regard.

I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman could say how far this Amendment might affect sea fisheries committees and their jurisdiction in tidal waters?

This Amendment obviously seeks to place in the Bill a perfectly logical recognition of the facts. No doubt, as my hon. Friend says, the facts would be recognised whether this Amendment were incorporated or not, but I cannot help feeling that if we accept the Amendment we shall certainly be making allowances for conditions of tidal waters and permitting possibly a greater degree of concentration or greater quantities of effluent to be poured in than would be allowed in a straightforward single directional stream.

This rather bothers me because, possibly on the other side of the argument, although salt water has a well-known sterilising effect and the mixing and dispersing effect of tidal action may enable a stretoh of water to accommodate more effluent than a still stretch or a slightly moving single directional river, yet in these estuaries and tidal waters the flow is to and fro. Very commonly it is such that any given stretch of water never leaves the estuary at all but simply goes up and down within the same estuary. To take a local example, between the Isle of Wight and the mainland it moves at the most, during spring tides, at the rate of a dozen miles each way, never leaving those restricted limits.

Therefore, the Amendment needs to be regarded with a certain amount of suspicion as possibly seeking to justify a greater outpouring of effluent when the circumstances do not justify it.

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport and Fareham (Dr. Bennett). I know that, in Private Members' Hills, one has to meet many opposing influences and try to reach a compromise so that a good Bill should become law. For that reason, I do not propose to take any action which might in any way imperil a very good Bill, but there is here a compromise which does not make me at all happy.

To begin with, I do not accept the analogy given by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate (Mr. Ramsden) as a good one. It is perfectly true that, under the Rivers (Prevention of Pollution) Act, 1951, in making regulations river boards had to take into account the speed and flow of a particular river so that, obviously, if a river was as near stagnant as made no difference, the regulations had to be more strict. That one could readily understand. This Amendment, on the other hand, is drawn much too widely.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport and Fareham said, a tidal water is different from a freshwater stream; it ebbs and flows. If we are to allow a lot of effluent to be put by industry into estuaries—and it is not only industry but, very often, towns as well which do it— we shall permit the continuance of the very matters which the Bill is designed to terminate. I am a little afraid that this Amendment will, in fact, be a wrecking Amendment in its effect upon the whole purpose of the Bill.

The Bill was brought in for a very good reason. Today, our estuaries are a standing disgrace, because many persons—I use the word in the general sense to mean corporate bodies, industries, and so forth—simply put effluent and other material into the estuaries, leaving it, if I may use the expression, to take its chance. This we must stop. It may be that the remedies are expensive, but it is expense which must be undertaken if we are to keep our wide estuaries in anything approaching a state of cleanliness and keep our sea shores from being in the filthy condition in which many of them, even in the pleasanter places, are at present.

If the river boards are to have this new power to torpedo the provisions of the Bill by saying, "We took into account the ebb and flow of the estuary; we took into account the amount of salinity to be found in these waters, and we therefore make exemptions in respect of a wide range of industries and towns", the Bill will have no effect at all. The Amendment gives them that power, and that is why I do not like it.

I began by saying that I should not for that reason propose to offer any opposition to the Bill. On the contrary, it has my full support and I hope it will go through. Nevertheless, I enter that careful caveat and I ask the House to consider for a moment, before accepting the Amendment, what the effect will be upon the general purpose of the Bill.

I do not consider that the hon. and learned Member for Surrey, East (Mr. Doughty) need really have the fears about the river boards which he has expressed. From my experience of them, the river boards are as anxious as we are to preserve the cleanliness of our waters. I share the view expressed by the hon. Member for Gosport and Fareham (Dr. Bennett) that the Amendment is really unnecessary inasmuch as this is the kind of thing which a river board would have taken into account in any case. Having said that, however, I accept the Amendment as a good one, and I suggest to the hon. and learned Gentleman that there are not the dangers in it which he fears.

In my view, this is a worth-while Amendment and I support it. I am a little nervous about it because the powers which are given to the river boards under the Rivers (Prevention of Pollution) Act, 1951, are fairly comprehensive, but I am quite certain, from the knowledge which I have had of how river boards have operated, that they will use the powers which will come to them under this proposal with discretion. I do not think that we need have any fear that their powers will be abused.

Those of us who live in the parts of England which have estuaries are very conscious of the damage done to them from time to time by effluent, and I do not think that the additional powers to be given to river boards under the Amendment are in any way unwarranted. I hope that the House will accept it.

I wish to ask the hon. Member for Harrogate (Mr. Ramsden) one question. In drafting the Amendment, did he have in mind the fact that anyone offended by an order of a river board had an opportunity of appealing to the Minister?

With the leave of the House, I should like to say a few words in reply.

The hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Mr. Hayman) asked me about the effect, if any, of the Amendment on sea fisheries. I think the answer to that is that many sea fishery districts have their own powers in estuarial waters under byelaws, those powers being separate from and independent of anything which may come about as a result of the Bill or any new powers conferred on river boards under it.

I believe that the Amendment would not affect sea fisheries one way or another. It would not detract from their existing powers, which will remain exactly as they are despite the Amendment and despite all the other provisions of the Bill. They would not, I think, be concerned, although I fully recognise, since he comes from Cornwall, the hon. Gentleman's interest in sea fisheries.

To the hon. Member for Faversham (Mr. P. Wells), I reply that I am aware that the Bill provides for an appeal to the Minister in the event of any objection to conditions to a consent imposed by a river board.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gosport and Fareham (Dr. Bennett) and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East (Mr. Doughty) called the Amendment in question to some extent. In reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport and Fareham, I can only repeat what I said in moving the Amendment, namely, that there is a substantial physical difference in the condition of the water, the rate of flow and many other factors which are, I think, obvious between the water of an estuary and the water of a stream.

It is, I think, appropriate that a river board, in considering how far a contemplated discharge might affect the character of an estuary, should have these considerations in mind. A broad stretch of water with a considerable current and ability to dilute a discharge would tolerate, without damage either to fish life or to amenities, a higher rate of pollution in the discharge than would the constricted water of a stream. That is really a practical matter of fact. In any case, the duty which a river board has to behave reasonably in these considerations would mean that it would have to take account of those matters in any event.

One example which was given to me by a representative of an industry concerned—I can only pass it on as it was given to me, without being able to vouch for its scientific accuracy—is that a discharge of sulphuric acid is so metamorphosed by the action of salt water upon it that, within a very few yards from the point of discharge, it will turn into gypsum, a wholly innocuous chemical which, indeed, in some industrial instances, is actually added to water to increase its desirable properties. It is that kind of consideration which river boards will be taking into account under the Amendment.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East expressed apprehension lest river boards might wish to torpedo the Bill and use the Amendment so to do. By no conceivable stretch of the imagination could it ever be the intention of a river board to torpedo the Bill, since the River Boards Association is the main body sponsoring this Measure. For that reason, this Amendment is not particularly agreeable to that organisation; it will not use it to torpedo the Bill. It is afraid that it may be used as a torpedo against the Association. I thought it right to try to preserve a judicial attitude. The sponsors of the Bill are not acting as agents of the Association or anyone else.

In framing the Bill, we thought it right to try to bring before the House what we think is the most workable, the best and the fairest thing to all the interests concerned. Having listened to the arguments of my hon. Friends, I must recommend the House to bear me out in this Amendment if it can see its way to do so. I hope that my hon. Friends will not press their objections to it.

If I may have the permission of the House to speak again, I should like to accept entirely what my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate (Mr. Ramsden) has said. He knows that I am a greater well-wisher of his Bill. However, it is undoubtedly a double-edged consideration that "special regard" should be had to the circumstances mentioned, for the reason that it is possible, in my mind, that, although a continuously flowing river might remove effluent altogether from the scene— while distributing it over a much bigger area and therefore past more people, it might remove it once and for all— in tidal waters, river boards might be prompted to allow an even smaller quantity of effluent to be discharged, as effluent which is discharged today will return tonight. I therefore hope that it is understood that this is not merely a way of giving effluent-makers an extra permission to foul waters. It would seem a little less like what is, I believe, called special pleading if the word "special" were omitted and it were said that river boards should merely have regard to the circumstances I have mentioned.

I beg to move, in page 8, line 20, to leave out "the northern corner of the bathing lake at Southport at SD33151797" and to insert "SD37752180".

I appreciate that this is rather a come down from the important matters that have been discussed earlier this morning. It is a point of detail, but, nevertheless, I hope that I may have the indulgence of the House, because I hope to persuade hon. Members that, although this may be a small point and one of detail, it is important. I ought to confess that the procedural aspect of what I am proposing is largely a mystery to me. I only hope that I shall compensate for that deficiency by the sincerity and conviction with which I hold the views which I shall express to the House and by the fact that I think I can fairly claim to have some close and personal knowledge of this small point.

I was present during most of the Second Reading debate, and I have read the OFFICIAL REPORT of that debate over and over again. I paid very careful attention to what was then said about letters from town clerks and not being swayed too much by them. I can assure the House that I have paid very careful heed to that injunction. It is only fair that I should make it clear that I received a very courteous note from my town clerk simply drawing my attention to the Bill and asking if I would take a look at it. What I am doing is in no way at his instigation, or at the instigation of any other officer of the corporation. Officers of the corporation have given me valuable assistance in my personal investigation of the facts, but I have been in no sense persuaded by them to do this.

I also paid very careful heed to these words of my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate (Mr. Ramsden), on Second Reading:

"I realise that what happens, now we have brought this Bill to the House in its present form, must be a matter for the House and not for the river boards or the A.M.C."—

that is, the Association of Municipal Corporations—

"or anyone else. But I wish to say, on behalf of my hon. Friends, that if the House will endorse the principle of what the Bill seeks to do about estuaries, and will give a Second Reading to the Bill, we will undertake to introduce Amendments during the Committee stage to define the estuaries which we mean to deal with, because we are simply concerned with trying to do something about the cleaning-up of estuaries and we are not trying to build up an empire for the river boards all along the coast at the expense of local authorities or anybody else."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 27th November, 1959; Vol. 614, c. 748.]

It seems to me that the first part of what my hon. Friend said, namely, that now the matter has been brought before the House it

"must be a matter for the House and not for the river boards or the A.M.C.",

must be right and that, as the promoters could not possibly consider each single case on its merits—that would be asking too much of anyone—it was especially my responsibility, as the only one who could be expected to do it, to examine the situation very closely in relation to my own constituency, and, if I then felt that what was being done was wrong, it was my responsibility to so inform the House. It is in that spirit that I have approached and investigated the matter very closely and it is in that spirit that I now speak.

It is also important to bear in mind the second part of what my hon. Friend said, namely:

"… we will undertake to introduce Amendments during the Committee stage to define the estuaries which we mean to deal with, because we are simply concerned with trying to do something about the cleaning-up of estuaries."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 27th November, 1959; Vol. 614, c. 748.]

I am not relying on the undertaking, but the principle behind it. It seemed to me at the time, and it still seems to me, that that was a clear statement that the Bill is not intended to introduce control for the sake of control but only to give river boards control where it is necessary that they should have it for the proper performance of their duties, namely, the cleaning up of rivers and the estuaries connected with them.

That principle was also made clear in the speech of my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government on Second Reading. He said:

"I think that my right hon. Friend would wish the sponsors themselves to decide what estuaries they want to include in the Bill, and then those who might be affected will have ample opportunity to make any representations they wish. In that case, the final result, whether presented in the form of a Schedule or in some other way, will be one that takes into account all the interests which have a legitimate right to be considered in this complex matter. It would still remain true that the river boards would retain power to bring in by the present Order procedure any estuaries which have not been included in the Bill from the beginning …"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 27th November, 1959; Vol. 614, c. 775.]

My hon. Friend seemed to be making it clear that it was not in his mind at that time that all estuaries would automatically be included in "controlled waters." I need not read the rest of the sentence. It seemed to me that this made it quite clear that it was not intended simply to include all estuaries at the outset, whatever other interests were affected, and whether there was any necessity for it or not.

I then considered such observations as those which I have quoted, coupled with the following facts. First, it seems to be clear that what the House was concerned about, and the reason why the Bill was welcomed on Second Reading, was the fact that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate said, on Second Reading:

"A local authority on tidal waters, or on river estuaries, can, and in most cases does, discharge its sewage raw, unscreened and uncontrolled into the tideway."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 27th November, 1959, Vol. 614. c. 742.]

That was the state of affairs creating the problem with which the Bill was intended to deal.

The observations which I have quoted, coupled with that fact, and also with the fact that by common consent, and I think that my hon. Friend will bear me out on this point, Southport goes to very great lengths—equalled only by one other authority round our coasts—to purify its sewage, and also coupled with the fact, thirdly, that Southport is a seaside town and not a river town—

Which is the other one? We should like to know.

I am told that it is Skegness. That is the only other one.

These things together led me to believe that the proposed Amendments would clearly exclude Southport, and that optimism was strengthened when my hon. Friend was kind enough to write me a letter, which I will not quote, in which it appeared to me that he had the same idea as I had at that time. That is not intended as a criticism, because I did not expect him then, any more than I expect him now, to know the details of how Southport deals with its sewage, or how it finds its way to the sea. It is quite enough for one hon. Member to find out about that in his own constituency.

It was, therefore, a considerable surprise to me to find, when the Amendments were published, that half of South-port was included, measured from the bathing lake, which in fact no longer exists, and whatever happens to my Amendment my hon. Friend may care to put that right. Southport is one of those places which is developing rapidly in several directions. A new sea wall has been built which encloses what was the bathing lake, which is now a boating pool.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. Perhaps we could dispose of the point now. What he says, I understand, is quite true. On the other hand, coupled with the term "bathing lake" there is an eight-figure map reference, which partly clears up his difficulty. I will undertake now, however, to have a look at this again. There would be an opportunity for a detailed Amendment at a later stage. This has nothing to do with the substance of his Amendment.

I quite accept what my hon. Friend says, and I mention it only because it is a point of detail which I have found out from my own personal investigations, and I feel that whatever happens to my Amendment, my hon. Friend might like to take the opportunity of putting that matter right at a later stage.

What surprised me was to find, when the Amendments were published, that half of Southport and all the main outfalls were included in the controlled waters, and it is to rectify that position that this Amendment is necessary. The Amendment does no more than that. It does not strike at the principle of the Bill, with which I am in agreement, in any way at all. At that stage, it was too late to deal with the matter in Committee, because I had adopted the line all through that I would not express a view until I had learned sufficient facts to form a useful view, and that I was not able to do before the Committee stage. My hon. Friend, however, drew my attention to the fact that nothing would be lost, and that this Amendment could be moved at this stage.

Since then I have spent a good deal of time in probing the details, including a final inspection on the ground as recently as last Tuesday afternoon. Before I tell the House what I have discovered, I ought to say that the principle which has governed the whole of my investigations has been this. I have always said that if I could discover any reason which makes it desirable for the river board to have this measure of control over Southport, I should leave the matter where it is, for I have no quarrel with the principle of the Bill.

In my view, however, there must be a good reason before any control over one public body is given to another. I feel confident that everyone in the House would agree with that, and that no one wants control for the sake of control in this sphere, any more than in any other sphere. I also felt confident in adopting that approach that I was following the same principles as were enunciated by my hon. Friends in the passages which I have quoted from HANSARD.

I have been able to discover no reason at all why any measure of control should be given to the river board. I will now do what the hon. Member for Faversham (Mr. P. Wells) asked me to do, and will explain as shortly as I may how we deal with our sewage. I think that my hon. Friend agrees that the Borough of Southport has gone to great lengths to purify its sewage, and that its standards are, by comparison with others, extremely high. I have here the only map which is small enough for me to be able to manage it by holding it up like this, and, I hope, large enough to give some idea of the Ribble and what is called its estuary.

I have drawn two lines, which I hope are visible, one being the line drawn as the Schedule stands, and the other being the line as it would be drawn if my Amendment is accepted. What is important, and all that is important to know, for the purpose of my argument, is that all this part which is coloured light blue is out of the water at low tide. The whole of it is covered only if there is a very high tide of 28 feet or more, and the tides average from 21 feet to 28 feat, save for an exceptional tide of 30 feet. Therefore, for by far the greater portion of the time, all this area is out of water, and, in fact, a good deal of it is becoming land which is extending out from the south bank. I have not pointed out where Southport is, because I have assumed that all hon. Members of the House know that.

The main channel of the Ribble is right over on the other side, and the shortest measurement across here is about five miles. When the tide is out, all that five miles is either sand and mud, overgrown with grass, or firm sand over which one can walk until reaching this channel which is called the Crossen's Pool, and which, at low tide, looks just like and is, in effect, a stream, running through the sand, and quite a deep one. The next channel right over on the north side is the main channel of the Ribble.

This may be of some importance. The main channel of the Ribble has been over there for longer than anyone I have met knows. This is something which has been accentuated and perpetuated by the activities of those concerned in recent years. Training walls have been built along both sides of the main channel, especially for the purpose of making it the main channel and confining the waters of the Ribble to that channel as far as possible, so that there is one channel which is kept fairly deep simply by the action of the water, rather than having the water coming down to be dispersed over this whole area south of the main channel. The result is to accentuate the growing out of the bank from the south side.

12 noon.

There is one thing I must say to make the picture complete. At the position which I am now indicating, there is a channel called the Pinfold Channel, which runs straight out to sea. South-port's main effluent comes into this little stream, Crossen's Pool, runs down between its banks to the Pinfold Channel and goes straight out to sea. It cannot at low water go up into the Ribble, because the training wall has been so built as to cut off the Pinfold Channel entirely from the Ribble Channel. At low water, therefore, none of our effluent can get into the Ribble. It goes down the channel and straight out to sea.

Surely, when the tide is coming in, it is liable to be washed up the Ribble.

If my hon. Friend will bear with me, that aspect of the matter was on the tip of my tongue. I have dealt with the tide going down. I was about to say what happens when the water comes back. This has not escaped me and I have also investigated it.

By means of float tests and observation of the water—the former are the most useful—it is found that when the water comes up, if the wind is in the wrong direction or in a certain direction and a sea is running, some of the effluent may be carried up. To get into the Ribble, however, it must be carried not only several miles northwards, but over the training wall, too. I do not deny that that is possible if all the conditions are wrong. It is, however, plain Chat even with a comparatively high tide, the danger of any effluent going into the Ribble is very small indeed. I hope that hon. Members will feel that I have not tried to leave out any point in the cycle, because I appreciate that there is yet another danger which may arise when the tide turns out again, namely, that what comes up may be deposited all along Banks Sands and the beach at Southport. It does not do that, however, and at least one very good reason is that, because Southport does not want sewage deposited on its beaches, it has. ever since 1911 at least, been taking positive action to make sure that that does not happen.

I cannot do better than give the House the following illustration. On Tuesday, I walked over these sands for several miles after a reasonably low, short, tide had gone down. It is, of course, the short tide which is the biggest danger, because when there is a short tide there is only a small depth of water over the sands and, therefore, the danger of deposit is greater. I walked over the sands after a reasonably short tide had gone out and I saw no trace of effluent or solids whatever. I could see no damage done to any part over which I walked. I walked in whatever direction my fancy took me, looking for any evidence that might exist to show that any of the effluent coming from South-port was doing any damage at all on the sands, but there was none whatever.

There are two reasons for that. The first, of which, I hope, I have satisfied hon, Members, is the conformation of the so-called estuary. Anybody who cares to come to Southport, where everyone is always welcome, would appreciate, as I have now found, how misleading it is simply to look at a map and say, "That is all the estuary". Even if it is so regarded, the conformation of the tidal flows is such that the danger of anything being deposited on the sands south of the main channel, even if our system was not as good as it is, is very small.

Coupled with that is the second reason, namely, that in the course of its treatment all our sewage passes in the first instance through sediment tanks except in the case of storm water outflows, and these all have cills to prevent anything going over the top unless the flow is six times the normal. In cases where there might be any real danger of that, there is also a drum which rejects all solids. On Tuesday, I stood immediately above the point where between 4 and 6 million gallons a day is discharged, but I saw no trace of anything, nor did I notice any noxious smell.

To deal further with the question of treatment, the sewage passes through sediment tanks and then the liquid passes through 14 100 ft. bacterial filters, great round coke beds. The liquid is piped or pumped to the top. Its own action forces the arms to move round, the liquid comes out of the arms and falls through the filter, then passes to the next one and eventually gets to the main outfall. The result is that the sewage is so well treated that it is innocuous by the time it has passed through, certainly in comparison with the sort of things that the promoters of the Bill have in mind.

I appreciate that it may be different in other cases, but I am talking about Southport. The fact is that the discharge is innocuous, and combined with the fact that it is only in the rarest of circumstances that any of it could get into the channel, this seems to me to justify the conclusion that what we do in South-port in no way affects the activities of the river board and in no way makes it necessary for the river board to have control over Southport.

Will my hon. Friend indicate on his map the position of the bathing lake?

The former bathing lake, which, on an old map, would still be shown as the bathing lake, is at the end of the line marked on my map. Even this copy, however, which is a fairly recent one, is now out of date, because a new sea wall has been built which takes out all this area of land. This is the kind of process which is going on all the time and has been going on all through this century. More and more sea wall is being built out to enclose more and more land, partly because the effect of making the Ribble run more and more in the way which is now being done is to cause more rapid silting. A noticeable and appreciable amount of land has been taken away in the last fifty years.

I am obliged to my hon. Friend for his explanation.

I submit that those arguments, allied to the principle on which I have said I have acted and which, I hope, is acceptable to the House, are conclusive. I do not propose to occupy the time of the House in endeavouring to anticipate what replies hon. Members may make. I understand that, as mover of the Amendment, I may speak again should anything be said which calls for a reply. I ought, however, to refer, albeit briefly, to one or two more points.

I have always made it clear to my hon. Friend, as, I hope, he will bear out, that if he could show me any good reason why the board should have control, I would reconsider my view. I have made that clear to the secretary of the River Boards Association in my discussions with him.

There appear to me to be only two reasons which I have been able to discern for the suggestion that the river board should have control. First, it is said that if the line were to start at the northern end, it would be logical to draw it as it is in the Schedule, to take in the estuary. That may be so, but that would be to proceed on the wrong basis. We are not proceeding on the basis that we take in all estuaries willy-nilly. The line just as a line means nothing. What matters is whether it includes those parts which ought to be included and excludes those parts which ought to be excluded, and, in my submission to the House, this line in this instance does not satisfy those requirements.

The second reason I have been given is that it is said, I think, that Southport is so good in the treatment of its sewage—in which opinion I concur—that it has nothing to fear from control. With respect, all I can say is that it is my submission that that is a very bad argument, because it is approaching the matter from the wrong end, in that that argument appears to advocate control for the sale of control. I cannot think that that is what my hon. Friend intends.

I would ask the House—if it were to consider that Southport might ever depart from its present very efficient treatment of its sewage, when it has shown such a sense of responsibility and willingness to implement proper policies —whether it thinks it really likely that Southport would suddenly reverse its policy, and to bear in mind that even if it did the river board could always apply under Section 7 (17) of the Act of 1951 for an order under Section 6 of the Act of 1951 applying the provisions of subsections (1) to (15) of Section 7. So the river board does not stand to lose anything by the Amendment.

I had one or two other small points to put to the House, but I think that as I have spoken rather longer than I had intended to do, I had better leave them now, and, if in any discussion there may be of the Amendment any material objections to the Amendment are raised, deal with them afterwards.

I put my case simply on this footing, that, as I have endeavoured to show, my own personal researches lead me firmly to the conclusion that the activities of Southport do not, in this instance, give cause for concern and are not affecting detrimentally the activities of the river board and that there is no practical possibility of their doing so. I move my Amendment because I submit that the principle on which we should act is that control should be given only where there is reason for it; and that there is no reason for it in this case. All my Amendment will do, if accepted, will be to bring about that situation.

First, I should like to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Mr. Percival) on the care which he has given to the presentation of his case to the House. I think it was a first-class effort, and showed great consideration for the rights of his own constituents. However, I am wondering whether he is right to press this point at this stage, and whether it would not be better if examination of it were to be made in another place, which, of course, is possible.

What my hon. Friend is concerned about is that the Ribble, as he has explained so clearly, has this tributary which runs into it from the Southport direction. I should have thought that it was very desirable for the river board to have control of what goes into that tributary. I do not know whether my hon. Friend is nervous lest the Southport local authority is likely to be unduly pressed by the river board. I can assure him that it is not so. I think that the river boards exercise their powers with great discretion.

Indeed, in the Rivers (Prevention of Pollution) Act, 1951, there are adequate restrictions on unfair uses of river boards' powers. My hon. Friend will find, if he looks it up, that the last part of Section 7 (5) makes it clear that anyone has a right to appeal to the Minister if people feel that they have been unfairly treated by a river board, and not only have they the right of appeal, but the Minister has the right, if he thinks fit to do so, to

"direct the board to vary or revoke any such condition."

I do not think that the local authority need be at all nervous about the powers which the river board has. The board is under very strict supervision. I do not myself think that there is need for any fears in that respect.

I think one is really rather getting at the whole idea of the Bill if one tries to allow a local authority to pump sewage into a tributary and thence into the main flow of the river, for in peculiar circumstances, with a spring tide running and a following wind, there may be such a build-up that the sewage will run into the river. I hope that my hon. Friend will see fit not to press this Amendment, but will possibly withdraw it and allow the matter to be considered in another place. I am quite certain that the local authority will not be penalised, and that its fears are quite unjustified.

I, too, wish to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Mr. Percival) on the very clear and forceful way in which he put his argument to the House. I am sure that Southport should be congratulated upon having a Member who raises questions of this kind with great detail and puts them before the House in so very clear and unambiguous a way.

I wonder, however, whether, when my hon. Friend considered what he would say to the House today, he had fully considered other Amendments on the Notice Paper. Undoubtedly, he had before him the Bill and its effects, and the remarks which had been made upon it by local people in his constituency, but, perhaps, he may have overlooked the effect of the Amendment we discussed a short time ago, which was moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Harro-gate (Mr. Ramsden), in page 1, line 25 —the new subsection (3):

"In performing any functions under subsections (1), (2) or (5) of the said section seven … river boards shall have special regard to the factors arising from the tidal nature of the waters and, in particular, to additional dilution due to dispersal of the effluent by tidal action, and the varying direction of flow and salinity and any other special properties of those waters."

If my hon. Friend's arguments are right—and I do not doubt for a moment that everything he has told us is perfectly correct—then it would appear to me that the troubles and difficulties which Southport fears it may suffer from the river board can well be taken care of by the special provision that the House passed in that Amendment a few minutes ago.

I must frankly admit that when I looked first at the Amendment moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Southport, and heard my hon. Friend's opening words, the idea of excluding a bathing lake from the powers of a river board to keep it clean, and of putting it under the direct control of a corporation, if the outfall should be close by, was not one which appealed to me at all. But my hon. Friend knows Southport better than I do. If I have been there at all it was many years ago. My hon. Friend tells us that the bathing lake is not, in fact, used as a bathing lake, and, presumably, never will be. If that were not so, and it were to be close to the outfall, I would unhesitatingly oppose his Amendment, but as we have passed that other additional Amendment earlier today it would appear that the corporation has nothing to fear, because it is to be congratulated upon the way in which it deals with its sewage.

I wish I could say that of other corporations. I regret to say that there are far too few in the country today about which those remarks can be made. I do not think that the Southport Corporation will really suffer in coming in some indirect way under the control of the river board. Although my hon. Friend has put his argument clearly and forcefully, I do not think that it invalidates the previous Amendment.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Mr. Percival) for the lucid way in which he has explained his Amendment and for the trouble he has taken to get hold of facts upon which the House can make up its mind. I am sorry that in the series of amicable conversations that we have had I have not been able to persuade him that in proposing to include Southport within the ambit of the Bill we are not doing something unreasonable. I shall have one final attempt to persuade him and the House on the matter, and it may help if I begin by explaining—with a rather larger map than my hon. Friend used—the principle upon which those who drew the lines to delimit estuaries have worked, because that principle bears on the problem.

In the case of rivers with narrow mouths—of which there are a great many round the coast—or rivers whose mouths are artificially determined either by a pier or a breakwater or two piers, it is easy to delimit the boundaries of the estuary by drawing a short line between the two man-made features. But in the case of a funnel shaped estuary—and many estuaries, including the estuary of the River Ribble, are funnel shaped—one has to proceed upon rather different principles.

The principles adopted by the cartographers of my right hon. Friend's Ministry—which commend themselves to common sense and other practical considerations—are that they should follow as far as possible the normal line of the coast, above and below the estuary in question, and draw the line in such a way that it runs where the coastline would have run if the estuary had not been there. As my hon. Friend says, this is an easier thing to demonstrate than to explain. That is the principle upon which the line delimiting the estuary of the River Ribble was drawn.

The line leaves the coastline where it ceases to run south and turns east, at a point within the borough boundary of St. Anne's-on-Sea, and hits the coastline again at a point within the borough boundary of Southport-on-Sea. I am assured that even if Southport had not been there, or if St. Anne's had not been there—and St. Anne's and Lytham, which are both within the line, have made no objections—the line would still have been drawn in exactly the same place. I realise that this puts my hon. Friend in a difficulty, because he has either to move Southport, or move the line—and he cannot move Southport.

But I would assure him that Southport is not the only town round our coast that is affected in this way. If hon. Members will look at Ordnance Sheet No. 173, for East Kent, they will see that the line across the estuary of the River Swale is drawn so as just to include the borough and seaside resort of Whitstable. This has been done out of no offensive intentions toward Whitstable, but simply because that drawing of the line follows the principle upon which the Ministry has worked. The same thing can be seen even more clearly in the case of Weston-super-Mare, which is shown on Ordnance Sheet No. 165. There the red line again follows the line of the coast from point to point, and happens to include the seaside resort of Clevedon.

I have taken those two maps at random, and there are many other examples round the coast. I am not aware that any objections on lines similar to those propounded by my hon. Friend have been raised by any other local authority. The House will respect my hon. Friend's constituency interest in the matter, but I would ask him to try to put himself into the position of the supporters of the Bill, who have been concerned throughout—and the House endorsed this concern in the Second Reading debate—to do something about the pollution of estuaries. He must not mind if our suspicions are aroused when the line which the Southport Corporation prefers to our line happens to fall in just such a position as to exclude the main sewage outfall from Southport.

That is not coincidence. I put it there deliberately for that reason, and I have no hesitation in saying so.

Exactly, That makes my point for me. I accept everything that my hon. Friend has said about what happens to the outfall at low water— and he has supported his argument with good evidence—but low water occurs only half the time, and at high water, as my hon. Friend admitted, the effluent from this outfall at the Crossens Channel is washed up the estuary by the action of the tide.

We are all familiar with estuaries. Many of us have walked on them at low water. Some have gone wildfowling on them, and those who have know that one's preoccupation when doing so is that one should not be caught by the tide, because it is a very uncomfortable experience to be marooned on a sandbank at night. It is one of the characteristics of estuaries that part of the time they are dry land, and when they are I have no doubt that my hon. Friend is right in saying that the discharge goes into the open sea. But for the rest of the time they are covered by the tide, and with the tide washing up over the sands pollution from an outlet into the estuary can occur.

That is what we are concerned with, and that is why I should be reluctant to recommend the House to move the line so as to exclude the outfall into the Crossens Channel. I accept what my hon. Friend says, that the effluent from Southport sewerage works is of a very pure and innocuous character. I willingly pay my tribute to Southport, and I hope that other local authorities are following its example. But, as my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr. Dudley Williams) pointed out, that is only one more reason why Southport has nothing to fear from the Bill.

My hon. Friend mentioned the undertaking we gave in the Second Reading debate to exclude seaside resorts. I am glad that, as it happens, the way we have drawn the line has excluded South-port bathing beach—not that bathers there have anything to fear, owing to the precautions taken by the municipality.

Even if I could feel convinced by my hon. Friend's arguments on behalf of the Southport Corporation and its interest in having this line moved, I should still not be convinced sufficiently to enable me to advise my hon. Friends and the House to accept the Amendment. The Bill deals not only with local authorities and their discharges; we must remember that other people may discharge effluents and pollute an estuary, including those in industry and, in some cases, even agriculture. If we left this power in the hands of the Southport Corporation it would have no control over any other kind of pollution than its own.

For those reasons, I cannot advise the House to accept the Amendment. I hope that in re-examining this matter carefully my hon. Friend will accept my assurance—and the assurances which other hon. Members have given—that he will have nothing to fear from the exercise, by the river board, of its responsibility in the waters with which he is concerned.

I sail with some diffidence into this battle of the line, but since my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Mr. Percival) referred to my Second Reading speech perhaps I may be allowed to make some comments on this Amendment. I join with other hon. Members in commending the lucid diligence shown by my hon. Friend in this case.

The object of his Amendment is, as he clearly said, to shift the boundary inwards so as to exclude the Southport outfall sewer from the effect of this Bill. In this connection, I must endorse categorically what was said in reply by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate (Mr. Ramsden). It is true that my hon. Friend the Member for Southport has deployed most effectively a number of technical arguments. He maintained the quality and the efficiency of Southport in its sewage administration, which no one wishes to deny. But he will agree that once he embarks upon a technical argument probably a powerful technical argument could be made against it. However, that is not at all my object. My purpose is to maintain that the reasons he has deployed are completely irrelevant to the purpose of the Bill, and I will try to sustain that by the following arguments.

First, my hon. Friend is concerned because the Bill, with its Schedule, would catch Southport's sewage outfall, but the fact is that the Bill does not affect existing outlets at all unless the quality or nature of the effluent or discharge changes. Secondly, as some of my hon. Friends pointed out, even if it were to affect the output because the quality of the effluent were to change, were there to be any difficulty whatsoever—which the very quality of Southport's administration makes unlikely—there is an appeal to the Minister should the local authority feel aggrieved in any way.

The second argument I put to the House is that my hon. Friend's point of view is irrelevant because there is no moral or administrative implication whatsoever in the definition of the boundary of the estuaries set out in the Bill. That Schedule is entirely a geographic one. This House accepted the principle of the Bill on its Second Reading, namely, that new outlets in all tidal estuaries should be controlled and that all that remained was to define the term. That has been done by listing all tidal estuaries and defining their seaward limits. This is essentially a geographic exercise, to draw a line in words at the end of the estuary.

As my hon. Friend pointed out, it is true that at column 775 I spoke of wishing the sponsors themselves to decide what estuaries they wanted to include in the Bill, but my hon. Friend did not relate this to the context in which I was speaking. The paragraph from which that extract was taken dealt with Clause 2 of the then Bill, as is clear from the rest of the paragraph, which gave to my right hon. Friend a power which the sponsors agreed later to drop, to exclude certain estuaries later at his discretion.

The argument I was putting forward was that it was for the sponsors of the Bill to decide what estuaries were to be included and not for my right hon. Friend to do so later by the exercise of his discretion. I was not in any way implying that, once they had made up their minds, it should not include all estuaries. My point was that it was for them and not for my right hon. Friend to decide.

To shift this line to exclude or include a particular outlet, for whatever technical reasons would be unjustifiable in view of the clear decision reached by the House on the Second Reading of the Bill. If we were to accept that, for one reason or another, we could shift the line in one case, we would be obliged to scrutinise every other estuary whose boundary might inconvenience some local authority or some other interest. Thus we might have to argue over limits with local authorities and other interests in the very areas where most damage is being done to the estuarial waters which this Bill is designed to catch.

I suggest to the House that if we started upon this course there would be no absolutely firm ground on which we could rest, whereas the geographical definition which the Schedule now contains is at least firm ground. I repeat to my hon. Friend, in asking him to reconsider his Amendment, the three points I have made. The first is that the existing outlets are not affected by this Bill and that the Southport sewage discharges in an existing outlet. Secondly, even if there were to be a change of the nature which would come within the Bill, there would be a right of appeal to my right hon. Friend.

Before my hon. Friend leaves that point, I should point out what I think is not appreciated by many hon. Members, namely, that it is not right to say that existing outlets are not at all affected. What are affected are new outlets or new discharges, and a new discharge can be a new discharge from an existing outlet, which few hon. Members in the House realise. This means that, without any change in a local authority's outflow, on a change in the composition or quantity of the effluent passing out of that outlet, the provisions of the Act would be brought into force.

I think that I covered that proviso in all I said. It was for that reason I said that where an outlet changed in such a way it would come within the Bill, there would be a second line of defence against unreasonable behaviour by a river board, namely, a right of appeal to my right hon. Friend.

The third reason why I hope my hon. Friend will reconsider his Amendment is that this is a logical definition of an estuary, of general application, and can be sustained around the whole coast of the country.

I am obliged to all my hon. Friends for the views which they have expressed, to which I assure them, I have given careful consideration. I hope that they will not think I am discourteous if I say that none was a surprise or new to me. In preparing my case, I endeavoured to foresee what could be said on the other side, because I hope that I can fairly say that, although I now hold a firm opinion, I was willing to be persuaded by the arguments used by others.

Now I will deal with one or two points of detail mentioned by my hon. Friends. It is not really right to talk about discharging our effluent into a tributary running into the River Ribble. It is clear that the Crossen's Pool never runs into the main river. My map is too small for hon. Members to see this, but the House can take it from me that it is not correct to say that we pump our sewage into a channel which goes into the main Ribble channel. I concede that in certain circumstances, when the tide is running out, some of the effluent may be taken over the banks of the Crossen's Pool and dispersed over an area of sand between the Crossen's Pool and the main river channel, but I hope that my hon. Friend will accept it from me that this only happens to a small degree and that it is only in exceptional circumstances that it would get right over into the main channel.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East (Mr. Doughty) mentioned the Amendment which adds a new subsection to the Bill. I had not overlooked it. It seemed to me that the fact that it was thought necessary to add that new subsection rather supported my argument, because it is a recognition that in waters such as I have been speaking about, the tidal flow may make the danger of pollution that much smaller, and this is stating in the Bill that river boards should have special regard to those considerations.

I have already made my point about existing outlets, and I am sure that the Parliamentary Secretary will not think it discourteous if I do not say anything further about that. I agree with him that if what we are concerned with doing is simply logically defining all estuaries, the line may be right. But I have never understood that this was a Bill to define estuaries, or that it was anything but a means of doing the very difficult task which, I accept, faces the promoters, that of bringing under control those tidal waters which ought to be controlled. That is a task which I have supported all the way till now. All I say now is that if that is the reason why the line is drawn where it is, I hope that I have demonstrated that the line in question has been drawn in the wrong place.

The Parliamentary Secretary said that my reasons are irrelevant and that as a result of the Amendment one would have to look all round a map of the country and investigate each line. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate said that no other local authorities are complaining. Surely the House would not draw any conclusion from that point, because it might easily be that my authority is the only one which has such a record as enables me to make the case which I have made. It is within my knowledge that one of the areas mentioned by my hon. Friend as being included by one of these lines is included for the very good reason that it discharges its sewage raw, uncontrolled and untreated straight into the main channel. That may be why it does not complain.

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

We had a very good discussion on the Bill on Second Reading, and since then we have implemented the undertaking we gave to confine the Bill to estuaries and estuarial waters and to take steps to define estuaries in a form acceptable to the House and to legal interests. We have also given effect, as I have already explained today, to the undertaking we gave to consult industrial and other interests concerned. I do not, therefore, think that this is an occasion when a long speech from me is required, and I hope the House will feel that, after the full and fair discussion which we have had, it is right to give the Bill a Third Reading.

I should like to thank all those who have been of immense help in preparing the Bill and bringing it to this stage, in particular the Clerk to the River Boards Association and my hon. Friend and officers of his Ministry, without whom we could not have produced anything in a practical and workable form. I also thank all hon. Members on both sides of the House who have given such valuable support to the Bill throughout.

Of all the explanations I have been called upon to furnish during the passage of the Bill so far, the most difficult was that required from me by my nine-year-old son, at the conclusion of which he simply said, "Well, let us hope it works." In the confidence that, with the co-operation of hon. Members, we have managed to produce something that will work and that the river boards, on whom the duties are laid, will see does work, and work fairly, I commend the Bill to the House.

I am chiefly concerned with the pollution aspect of this problem. Clause 2 states that the Bill and the Rivers (Prevention of Pollution) Act, 1951, may be cited together as the Rivers (Prevention of Pollution) Acts, 1951 and 1960. I must place on record my regret that there is not more emphasis in the Bill on the causes of pollution by flooding. That is a very serious cause of pollution. One of the most effective ways of polluting rivers is to have continual or frequent flooding of streets—

The hon. Member must bear in mind that we cannot have such a wide debate on Third Reading as we can on Second Reading. He must confine himself to the contents of the Bill as opposed to omissions from it.

I beg your pardon, Mr. Speaker. I was merely trying to refer to certain aspects of the Bill which should properly have been included; but, if I am out of order, then I shall sit down.

This is a very important Bill and I do not think it right that the House should pass it without further discussion. I support the Bill, but the House will realise that some aspects of this problem axe not affected and that the Bill goes only part of the way to deal with it. For far too many years, our rivers and estuaries—particularly the estuaries—have been a standing disgrace to the country. Industries and corporations have been discharging their effluent into our rivers in a most unpleasant condition. It is most unhealthy for the population and for those who go on beaches near estuaries. It does great harm to the fishing interests and also to fishing as a sport. This state of affairs has been allowed to go on far too long. If the problem concerned housing we should all be angry and insist that something be done, but because it concerns what are public waters we have allowed it to continue far too long. When a corporation or an industry says that to deal effectively with its effluent is expensive, then there is no excuse. It was once truly said that there are votes in houses but no votes in sewers. That may be one of the reasons why so many Governments have not dealt with this important question.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate (Mr. Ramsden) for going as far as a private Member can go to deal with this very difficult and important problem. If he had had the resources of the Government behind him, undoubtedly he would have brought in a stronger Measure, because this Bill does not deal with the evil of the past. It hopes to control the future only, thereby giving licence to those who have been polluting our estuaries and rivers so long to continue to do so. That is not something which we can look upon with equanimity.

The Bills deals, or purports to deal, only with:

"new or altered outlets for the discharge of trade or sewage effluent to a stream and of the making of new discharges…."

Firms and corporations can continue to discharge in the old careless way, dangerous to health, dangerous to fishing interests and dangerous to people, and when called upon to stop, they can reply that they were doing it before the Bill came into force. That is a matter which the Government will have to tackle and which they should tackle in the not over-distant future.

I sincerely hope that the river boards will show enough strength in this matter to make and to enforce regulations to prevent new and altered discharges from being made. I have the greatest respect for river boards and nothing I say today should be taken as any form of criticism of them, but they vary from river to river. In some cases, to put it mildly, they are not very active bodies, while in others they take great interest in the rivers under their control and can be expected to implement the provisions of the Bill.

I hope that the Minister will keep an eye on the river boards and, in cases where they are not making the necessary regulations or, having made the regulations, are content to sit back and to see them not observed, will bring pressure to bear on them and will draw their attention to the provisions of the Bill and ensure that they live up to its principles. If he will do that and if the river boards will carry out their part of the duty, I give the Bill my personal blessing, so far as it goes, but I say that it does not go far enough.

I hope that the House will give the Bill a Third Reading, and I want to say something which my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate (Mr. Ramsden), who has been responsible for the Bill, cannot say for himself. There is one aspect which will affect the working out of these proposals more than anything else and which will affect the future of the Bill more than anything else. It is the degree of co-operation and the degree of willingness to make the Bill work which the bodies and the local authorities concerned show after the Bill reaches the Statute Book. All Statutes depend on that to some degree, but a Statute of this kind, by its very nature, depends almost more than any other on a willingness to see that not only the letter but the spirit of the law is observed.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate on the stand he has taken at every stage in the preliminaries of the Bill to safeguard the interests of those who have shown concern about it and to discuss with them freely and fully the various difficulties which might arise. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Mr. Percival) will acknowledge that my hon. Friend has been scrupulous in that respect. There is no reason for anyone coming within its orbit to feel that they have been ridden over and there is no excuse for them to feel that they must seek to evade its provisions. Since that will affect the future workability of the Bill more than almost anything else, I end by hoping that the Bill will be observed by those who need to do so, to make it work not only in substance but in spirit.

I add my congratulations to those of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes) to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate (Mr. Ramsden) as the prime mover in taking the Bill through its various stages. Anyone who has any connection with the rivers of England will be extremely grateful to my hon. Friend. I am sorry that the Bill could not be extended to Scotland, but I understand that that was impossible. I hope that hon. Members who sit for Scottish constituencies will take some action of their own at a later date.

The rivers of Devonshire, in which I am particularly interested, although I am not a fisherman myself, for a long time have made a substantial contribution to the sport of fishing, which all enjoy, not only we in the House, but the country generally. It is a great tragedy that rivers should have been allowed to become so polluted through a lack of the reasonable powers sought in the Bill.

I hope that when the Bill goes to another place it will be considered expeditiously and will become law shortly after that. Succeeding generations will be very grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate for his action.

I add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Harrogate (Mr. Ramsden) on getting so important a Bill through the House. The beaches of St. Austell have already been polluted by china clay effluent, and the River Plyn in South-West Devon is also polluted. I hope that local authorities and the river boards will do all they can to achieve the objective of the Bill and the previous legislation so that we can have clean rivers and clean coasts.

I, too, express my congratulations to the hon. Member for Harrogate (Mr. Ramsden). I recall that on Second Reading I said that I regarded this as a great step forward in the solution of the problem of pollution. It is a problem which affects Gloucestershire, and on Second Reading I said that the City of Gloucester had been very badly affected by the pollution of the River Severn and that one of its industries, salmon fishing, had been entirely destroyed by pollution.

The only thing about the Bill which frightens me is that I do not think that it goes far enough. However, it is undoubtedly a step in the right direction and I wish it well. I confess that I hope that when the Bill goes to another place consideration will be given to whether the last Amendment which we accepted this morning is wise. It seems to me to some extent to detract from the strength of the Bill. Unfortunately, I had another engagement or I should have spoken against that Amendment. I hope that the promoters of the Bill will consider that Amendment very carefully, as it causes me grave apprehension.

I am sure that the whole country is greatly indebted to my hon. Friend for the skilful way he has got the Bill through its various stages.

May I add my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate (Mr. Ramsden) and my support to the Third Reading of the Bill? In spite of what I have been saying this morning, I have always supported the principle of the Bill, and feel I must make that clear again. I congratulate my hon. Friend on introducing and piloting the Bill through its various stages, and I wish success to those who have to implement it.

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

This, and the other new Clauses with which I am concerned, arises from our discussions in Committee. The hon. and gallant Member for Cheltenham (Major Hicks Beach) suggested that it would be helpful if, where offices were located in factory premises, enforcement were undertaken by factory inspectors instead of local authorities, as would otherwise be the case. My right hon. Friend agreed to consider that suggestion, and the new Clause is submitted as a result.

The position now is that local authorities are still responsible, even under the Factories Act, for inspection in relation to the provision of sanitary conveniences and to the employment of women after childbirth. Those duties will remain with local authorities, but on considering further the proposals put forward by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Cheltenham, I am advised by my right hon. Friend that there would be no official objection to factory inspectors being responsible for the inspection of offices in those respects except where those offices existed in factories.

The new Clause gives effect to the suggestion made by my hon. and gallant Friend. It is true that the hon. Member for Greenwich (Mr. Marsh) made the point that local authorities were already responsible for inspection in some factories, but that is true only of factories not using mechanical power. Only one in ten factories does not use mechanical power. That point is, therefore, not particularly applicable. I therefore suggest that we should accept the proposal of my hon. and gallant Friend.

I welcome the concession in the new Clause, and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, East (Mr. J. Harvey) so kindly said, it implements some observations that I made in Committee. Like everyone else present, I am in favour of the principle of the Bill, but we must guard against the duplication of work by inspectors under the Factories Act, under this Bill when it becomes an Act, and under the Mines and Quarries Act. I shall have something to say about that later. The new Clause meets my point, and I welcome it.

My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, East (Mr. J. Harvey) consulted me on this point, and the new Clause has been drafted with Government help. It meets the point raised by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Major Hicks Bench) and makes a sensible alteration to the Bill.

We regard this as a sensible and helpful Amendment and from our point of view it will help the Bill.

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

I preface my remarks by. saying that I have had valuable help from my right hon. Friend and his Department in the drafting of all the Amendments in the name of my hon. Friends and myself. I cannot claim any personal credit. They were all drafted, as I hope the House will agree, in the spirit of trying to arrive at an understanding and accommodate the various points of view put forward in Committee. I think that we should all be grateful to my right hon. Friend and to his Department.

The Amendment arises out of a proposal put to the Committee by my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham (Dr. A. Glyn). He pointed out that, by the terms of an agreement or lease, a person might be prevented from carrying out works necessary to comply with the provisions of regulations made under the Bill. My right hon. Friend said in Committee that this would receive consideration. In fact, other legislation deals with this difficulty. Sections 146 and 147 of the Factories Act, 1937, enable a county court, on application, and after hearing the parties, to make an order setting aside or modifying the terms of an agreement, and, in case of dispute as to which party should be responsible for the cost of structural alterations, to make an apportionment of costs. That is what the new clause seeks to do to overcome the present difficulty.

I am cognisant of the difficulties which exist, that a block of offices is often occupied by many individual leaseholders. Although the new Clause goes a certain way to help, we are faced with considerable difficulties. In many offices, it is not only a question of the legal rights of a lessee or a tenant and what he may do; it is a question of the accommodation which exists in the building.

There is another difficult problem, and that is the extent to which in a Measure of this nature one can override the rights of leaseholders or freeholders. I should have preferred to make these regulations applicable to new leases rather than to try to modify existing conditions in offices which are incapable of modification.

I support the new Clause, but I do so with many reservations. It cannot, and will not, be the answer which we really want.

I agree with the new Clause. I made some observations on this point in Committee and, to a limited extent, it meets the point I made. It does not meet the point completely, but I am prepared to admit that it is difficult to meet from a legal point of view. Although I agree with my hon. Friend that it would have been more desirable, from a legal point of view, if the Bill applied to new leases, I do not think that that is a practical approach to the problem.

There will be grave difficulties over this, but they are difficulties that we must face and, on the whole, this is a reasonable compromise. Before the Bill gets to another place I hope that my right hon. Friend will think over this point to see if he can get over the difficulty. Having occupied and worked in offices for many years, I can say that this is a real difficulty, and one which should be overcome if it is possible to do so. I am only a humble solicitor, but I hope that my right hon. Friend, with the full weight of his Department behind him, will be able to devise something to overcome this difficulty.

I accept that this is a difficult problem. I think that members of the Standing Committee will recollect that representations on this point were made by one of the professional organisations. We have attempted to meet that point. In doing so, as my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, East (Mr. J. Harvey) said, we have followed the precedents in Sections 146 and 147 of the Factories Act, 1937.

I accept that this problem is more difficult in the case of offices than in the case of factories. I should not like to lead the House to believe that we can improve on the wording in the new Clause, but I note what has been said. If as a result of that, or any other representations, improvements are possible, I will consider them for submission in another place.

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

To provide the background to this Amendment it is necessary, once again, to go back to the Committee stage. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Major Hicks Beach) said then that offices dealt with under the Mines and Quarries Act did not need to be dealt with under the Bill. It is true that the Mines and Quarries Act, 1954, goes a very long way to providing for the health, welfare and safety of workers in mines and quarries, but it was meant to deal not so much with office workers above ground as with those working at the surface of mines and quarries.

It is, therefore, felt that the Bill should apply to workers above the ground, although we take the point made by my hon. and gallant Friend about the provision for office workers underground that are contained in the 1954 Act. The purpose of this new Clause, therefore, is merely to ensure that duplication is not necessary for the inspection of the conditions of office workers under the ground, but that the Bill shall apply only to workers above the ground, and confer on them the additional protection they do not now have under the Mines and Quarries Act.

This new Clause goes, perhaps, half way towards meeting my point, but not all the way, so I cannot say that I approve of it. I think that the same difficulty will arise. We shall have duplication of inspectors. We shall have inspectors under the Factories Acts and local authority inspectors, all of whom will have powers to inspect offices that are all part of one building. As the promoters of the Bill have gone far to meet me over the Factories Acts point, I should have thought that they could have met me on this one. I cannot, therefore, give my blessing to this new Clause.

Although I appreciate the point made by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Major Hicks Beach), the Mines and Quarries Act contains provisions rather different from those in the Bill. All the provisions of the two Measures are not identical. If one applied to above-surface offices only the provisions of the Mines and Quarries Act those offices would be inspected at a standard lower than that required for other offices. We therefore think it right in logic that the Bill should apply to surface offices, as the provision of the Mines and Quarries Act would not in themselves be sufficient.

On one point, perhaps, it might be possible to go a little further towards meeting my hon. and gallant Friend, and that is on the question of inspection. There is some force in his argument that the inspection should be carried out by the one body, and it would be possible for the Mines and Quarries Inspectorate, who would inspect the below-surface offices in accordance with the 1954 Act, to inspect the surface offices in accordance with this Bill. That would prevent the duplication of inspection that he fears. If that would help him, I would consider an Amendment to be dealt with in another place, if the sponsors of the Bill were agreeable.

The right hon. Gentleman has made an important point. The sponsors of the Bill are not concerned with who inspects any offices, but with the standard of that inspection. The 1954 Mines and Quarries Act was not designed primarily for these workers, although it makes some provision for them, and if it is possible, as the right hon. Gentleman says, to meet the point about the Factory Inspectorate by ensuring that the same people could inspect both types of offices and that the standard of inspection laid down would be applicable to all office premises, there would be no difficulty at all.

What we would all regret would be, having gone so far, to have two levels of conditions and welfare for offices. An office is an office—although the legal fraternity might not agree—whether it is in a quarry, below ground, or above it. We would, therefore, oppose any attempt to leave out offices in mines and quarries generally, although if, at some later stage, it could 'be ensured that inspections could be introduced in accordance with the Bill, nobody on this side, or, I think, on the other, cares who carries out the inspection.

I must apologise for not having been present sooner, though the reason is obvious when one looks at the time. Throughout the Bill it will be very hard to define an office. Accommodation situated, say, 1,000 feet under the ground might be defined as an office under the Bill, though, of course, it is not an office in the sense of there being typists and the like in it. It will probably be a place where miners report on coming off work, when someone has to make the necessary entries. This points out the difficulties of the Bill. If we make it as wide as this, there are caught in the net many fish that were not intended to be caught at all.

If this new Clause is accepted, as I hope it will be. it will represent a small effort to improve the Bill, but if we are to deal with one exception after another to offices under the Bill we shall be here for weeks defining every kind of office within the meaning of the Bill which is not an office within the meaning of what we intend to cover.

I could not agree more with what the hon. Member for Greenwich (Mr. Marsh) has said, but I think that what my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East (Mr. Doughty) has said brings us to the crux of the whole Bill. It is extremely difficult to define an office. It may well be that Government legislation will later be introduced which can deal with this point comprehensively.

The hon. Member for Greenwich said that he was quite happy as long as the standard of inspection of offices below the ground was adhered to, but one has to appreciate that there are different standards in offices below ground from those in offices above ground. For that reason, the factories or quarries inspector, as the case may be, might be the most suitable to carry out the inspection, as he would be familiar with those sort of conditions. That would also avoid this unfortunate multiplicity of inspections.

I beg to move, as an Amendment to the proposed Clause, to leave out "below ground".

The new Clause would leave offices at the surface of a mine or quarry subject to inspection by local authority inspectors, and would also leave them to be regulated under other provisions. My real point in tabling this Amendment is to avoid dual inspection, which would be wasteful and undesirable. In a great number of cases, mines and quarries are in rural areas, which would probably mean that the second inspector, the inspector under this Bill, would have to make a special visit of inspection. I contend that the inspection could easily and properly be carried out by the mines and quarries inspector.

Let me say at once to the promoters of the Bill that I do not suggest for a moment that it is desirable in any way to have two standards for offices. That is certainly not my intention. My intention, and I think that it is a very important point, is not to lower the standards but to cut out work by cutting out duplication of inspections. That is the whole object of my Amendment. My hon. Friend has gone some way in his observations to overcome my point. I do not think that he has gone the whole way and I hope that before the Bill goes to another place more consideration will be given to this point.

1.30 p.m.

Of course, if it is quite clear—and I do not know whether my hon. Friend is in a position to give me an assurance on this point—that the Ministry of Power is prepared to undertake inspections, as it has powers to do under the Mines and Quarries Act, 1954, and to see that the offices concerned are kept up to the standard of the Offices Bill, then my whole difficulty is overcome. But I do not think that my hon. Friend said that. It seems to be totally undesirable that two Minister should have the duty of making regulations for what are virtually the same premises. That is putting the whole problem in a nutshell. I do not mind who does the inspecting. Personally. I think that it would be better done by the Mines and Quarries Inspectorate. I do not suggest for one moment that proper standards will not be maintained, but we do not know what standards are to be laid down by the regulations.

It seems to me that the Amendment is a commonsense solution. It is one which will cut out red tape and dual inspections and the creating of quite unnecessary work for a great number of local authority inspectors.

Perhaps I did not make myself quite clear to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Chelten- ham (Major Hicks Beach). I advise the House that I think that we can meet his point about inspection. The Minister of Power is prepared to authorise the mines and quarries inspectorate to inspect surface offices, but to inspect them up to the standards in the Bill. That is possible within the terms of the Financial Resolution. The Amendment goes further than that in the sense that, while it might empower the mines and quarries inspectors to inspect the surface offices, it would only be up to the standards within the terms of the Mines and Quarries Act, which, I think, is not in the sense of the House.

I suggest that my hon. and gallant Friend should not press this Amendment, and I will pursue the matter further with the intention of having moved, in another place, an Amendment which will empower the mines and quarries inspectorate to inspect all offices within their concern.

The difficulty in what the Parliamentary Secretary has said is that we do not know in this Bill what is the standard. It is an enabling Bill with power to make regulations. These regulations can be of an extremely high standard, or of a lax standard, and well below or well above the requirements of the Mines and Quarries Act.

There is a great deal to be said for the Amendment. If the Minister knows what the regulations are to be and knows that they are to be of a higher standard than those of the Mines and Quarries Act, then, of course, he should tell the House so. So far as the present extent of our knowledge is concerned, we merely know that he has power to make regulations, which he may or may not make, and that under the Mines and Quarries Act there is a very high degree of standard required for these places above ground. Therefore, my submission to the House is that the Amendment of my hon. and gallant Friend should be accepted.

There is one further point that I should like to make. There are quite considerable differences between the provisions of the Mines and Quarries Act and what is envisaged in Clause 1 of the Bill and what is in the Gowers recommendation. In the Mines and Quarries Act there is no provision for prevention of overcrowding nothing relating to temperature, no provision for adequate ventilation and no provision for offices to be kept clean. Those are four items in which there is a difference between the Mines and Quarries Act and the regulatory powers in Clause 1 of the Bill and the Gowers recommendation. For that reason, I feel that we should adhere to the standards in this Bill.

I beg to move, in page 2, line 12, at the end to insert "and passenger lifts".

The intention of the Amendment is to ensure that passenger lifts in any offices should be inspected regularly and maintained to an adequate standard. I think that it would be a pity, if in any Bill designed to provide minimum standards of safety in office buildings, lifts were excluded. I understand, however, that there are a number of legal difficulties in the application of this Amendment. No doubt if the hon. and gallant Gentleman could give us some enlightenment, it might well be easy to get over these difficulties.

I must confess that, with all the good will in the world, I see grave difficulty in dealing with this question of lifts, because there is no definition of what is a passenger lift. Is there to be an inspection of lifts used to take up baggage and that type of thing? Are lifts in the General Post Office which take up bags of mail to be subject to inspection? I should not have thought that they came within the definition of a passenger lift, although, in fact, passengers very often use them.

I would strongly advise the House not to accept the Amendment, though that is not to say that I do not approve of the objective. I am in complete sympathy with the objective, as I am with the terms of the Bill, but we do not want to send out from this place a Bill which is incapable of practical effect—although, as a lawyer myself, the more bad law there is the better it is for me. We do not want to send out a Bill with an Amendment like this which, from a legal point of view, is totally unenforceable and which would cause people to question what it means. I feel very strongly that, in the interest of making the Bill work, we should not accept the Amendment.

In view of the remarks of the hon. and gallant Member, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

I beg to move, in page 2, line 14, at the end to insert:

(2) The Secretary of State may provide b; regulations for restricting the employment of women in offices after childbirth.

This Amendment is designed to put Clause 2 of the Bill as it now stands into Clause 1. It is in the main a drafting Amendment in that it seems desirable that all the various regulations which the Secretary of State may make should be listed together in Clause 1.

That apart, the Clause as it left the Standing Committee is not acceptable because it provides that the Secretary of State "shall" make regulations. This point was argued constantly in Standing Committee. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Mr. V. Yates), who was successful in getting the Committee to insert this provision, was even more successful than he realised, because the Committee did not spot that the phraseology which they had carefully ironed out all the way through had nevertheless managed to get itself passed in the hon. Gentleman's Amendment. However, I feel that we should now tidy it up by bringing it in line with the rest of the regulations that the Secretary of State "may" make—

On a point of order. The next Amendment in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, East (Mr. J. Harvey) relates to the provision of regulations for restricting the employment of women in offices after childbirth.

That is the Amendment to which I am speaking.

I am sorry. I did not appreciate from what my hon. Friend was saying that he was moving that Amendment.

I have been dealing first with the need to make Clause 2 a subsection of Clause 1 and to provide that although the Clause as passed by the Standing Committee contains the word "shall," the operative word shall now be "may."

Apart from this general tidying up, it is arguable that any regulations affecting the employment of women after childbirth should be flexible, because the type of employment that might be involved could require very different regulations. The effect of this Amendment is precisely that. It was pointed out in Committee that if there are to be restrictions on the employment of women after childbirth, the employer should have the defence that he did not know that the woman had had a child within a prescribed period. This is, indeed, recognised in the provisions of the Public Health Act, 1936, and the Factories Act, 1937, under which the offence is "knowingly to employ." If this Amendment is accepted, it will be possible to include the word "knowingly" in any regulations which my right hon. Friend may make in due course to deal with the matter.

I support the Amendment. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that when, in Committee, I moved the Amendment to which he referred I omitted to notice that the word "shall" occurred. I must confess that I am still amazed that in our legislation we have to use the word "may" as meaning "shall". However, as this is our custom, I accept that this proposed subsection should be included in the manner suggested.

I also think it reasonable that the words which have been suggested relating to an employer "knowingly" employing a person in these circumstances should be accepted. I am grateful for these suggestions, for I believe that they will emphasise the importance that we attach to human considerations in industry.

This proposal is a compromise. I am rather doubtful whether the employment of women after child- birth should really be the subject of legislation. This is rather a different matter from the Factories Acts which deal with very different ciroumstances, such as danger, dirt, and various other considerations. I believe this matter to which we are now addressing our attention is a matter for individual choice. Many women like to go back to work immediately after childbirth. On the other hand, there is the question of benefit to which women are entitled, and some women do not wish to work too soon and lose their benefit. I wonder whether we are right in legislating, particularly in respect of offices where the work is not particularly arduous, and. indeed, where in some cases it gives genuine pleasure to people when they feel sufficiently fit to work.

1.45 p.m.

The other point, which has been met, relates to the question of the employer's defence. Many employers would not know that the person whom they intended to employ had just had a child. That matter has already been dealt with; but there is one other point. Is an employer to ask every time he wishes to employ a person, "Have you just had a child?" This is a practical difficulty, and I hope that my right hon. Friend, when he makes any regulations under this Clause, will bear this point in mind. This is not so much a question of human rights. It is to a great extent a matter of human choice, and people choose to work at different periods after childbirth.

I would ask the House to reject this proposed new subsection. No one would accuse me of suggesting that women should be pushed back to work at the earliest possible moment after having had a child. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham (Dr. A. Glyn) that it is very much a matter of personal choice. Some people are anxious to go back early, while others wish to stay away a long time. If any regulations are to be phrased word for word as the Bill is phrased, a tremendous hardship will be placed upon employers, or else a lot of trouble will be caused in offices. Suppose that an employer is considering engaging a single woman and says to her, "How long is it since you had a child? ". There would be trouble. In any case, he might not even get a straightforward answer. This proposed subsection would give the Secretary of State power to make just that sort of regulation.

We are told—if I may use the expression without intending discourtesy to anybody—in an airy-fairy kind of way that the Minister will probably not make regulations exactly in those words. But we are giving him power to do so.

It will not have escaped my hon. and learned Friend's attention that we have already ensured in Committee that any regulations that are made will be subject to affirmative Resolution of this House. They cannot be made without coming to the House for affirmative Resolution.

With respect, one knows how a great many affirmative Resolutions are passed very late at night when there are very few Members in the Chamber. They go through "on the nod" one after the other. We are now in full House—a rather empty House, perhaps, but that is common on Fridays—and we have to decide what powers we are prepared to give to any Secretary of State. A totally different Secretary of State may be in office in ten years' time. I feel that we are granting too wide powers and we should be very careful in deciding what we do in the way of giving these general powers to Secretaries of State.

Some other Secretary of State, looking at this provision, would say, "The House obviously thought when passing the Bill that there should be regulations restricting the employment of women in offices after childbirth and I propose to make my regulation in that form with the same sort of words". He would come to the House and say, "That is the Act which the House passed, and I am only using the words that the House of Commons decided upon". It would be an excellent argument.

In my submission, if it accepted the Amendment in the form in which it comes before us today, the House would be making a mistake. If a better drafted Amendment giving the Secretary of State more restricted powers were to be inserted in another place, or on some other occasion, I am sure that I could support that. I object to this Amendment for the reason I have already given, that we are endeavouring to evade the consequences of a bad form of words by saying, "It is the responsibility of the Secretary of State. We all know he is a very nice chap and he will do the right thing in the regulations".

This is the wrong approach. The House must say exactly what it wants and what it wishes to be done. For that reason, I ask hon. Members to reject the Amendment, though, as I say, I should possibly agree with the addition of an improved form of words at another time or in another place.

I hope that the House will accept the Amendment. We had a long discussion on this matter in Committee and, after a vote, it was decided that a provision of this kind should be accepted.

The Gowers Committee, of which I was a member, received a good deal of medical evidence on this very point. In paragraph 62 of its Report, it is made quite clear that the Gowers Committee came to its conclusion after hearing the evidence of the British Medical Association and others:

"Some representations have been made to us that shop and office legislation of the future should contain provisions prohibiting the employment of women for a fixed period before and after childbirth. This accords with the view of the British Medical Association, who favoured complete prohibition for a period of six weeks before and seven weeks after confinement."

Later in the Report it is said that the National Insurance Act makes possible the payment of benefit to women for seven weeks after confinement. It is quite clear that, in consideration of the National Insurance Act and also in the Gowers Committee's consideration of the subject, it was felt that something of this kind should be included.

The hon. Member for Clapham (Dr. A. Glyn) has said that work in an office, perhaps, is not quite so heavy as work in a factory. We must not always assume that. Very often, people working in a factory sit down for a good part of the day. Very often, people working in offices are trotting up and down stairs and on the go all day long. There is also the effort of getting to and from work. Also, although this is not the primary purpose here, we should remember the welfare of the new-born child.

Bearing in mind all these considerations, particularly the conclusion of the Gowers Report after hearing all appropriate medical evidence, I hope that the House will accept the Amendment.

The hon. Lady has not dealt with the point I raised. I did not dispute any of the facts which she has given. I pointed out that this form of words, if translated into regulations under the power it is suggested we should give to the Secretary of State, would place an employer in a quite impossible situation. It is the form of words, not the principle behind such action, to which I object.

I should have thought that these words were quite wide enough to give the Secretary of State power to make the regulations.

I oppose the Amendment because I find it difficult to see how the Secretary of State can make adequate arrangements which will not be offensive to women generally. Some women may not wish to disclose the fact that they have recently had a child. The onus, according to what is proposed here, will be on the employer to ensure that no woman, during a prescribed period after childbirth, will be employed in his business. He must question women whom he proposes to take on to his payroll. That will not be a very pleasant thing to have to do. It is one thing for a doctor to ask such questions, but it would be quite foreign to the sort of attitude that we have to women after such events for laymen to put questions to them of that kind.

I am certain that such an intrusion would be particularly resented by those unfortunate women who happen to have illegitimate children. They may have their babies away from their homes and then, on their return, they have to go back to work. If the House were to make it an offence for a woman to take employment during a certain limited period after childbirth, that would be another matter; the onus would be upon the woman and, if she broke the law, she would be liable to prosecution. In this Bill, the onus is put on the employer, and this inevitably means that an employer must seek a written agreement from every woman that she has not had a child within the prescribed period before he proposes to take her on.

A great deal of embarrassment might be caused. A young girl of 18 may apply for a job in an office. The first thing she is asked, when she is seen by the prospective employer or one of his staff, is, "Have you had a child within the last four or five weeks?". Of course, the girl will be outraged, and her parents might well decide—

The hon. Gentleman is using the wrong phraseology. He says that she will be outraged. She was probably outraged long before then.

The young girl may be married, in which case she will not have been outraged. Many parents would find it disgraceful if they sent their daughter for a job and the first question asked by the employer was, "Have you recently had a baby?".

As I understand the Amendment, after the explanation given by the hon. Member for Walthamstow, East (Mr. J. Harvey), there is no obligation on the employer to question anybody. That matter can be made clear by regulation. I should have thought that, if a woman has to leave for the purpose of giving birth to a child, the employer will obviously know without any questions whatever. The hon. Gentleman is introducing unnecessary difficulties.

The hon. Gentleman has obviously not listened to what I was saying. I was talking about the employer wishing to take a young girl on to his staff. How does he know whether she has or has not just had a baby? He may well not have seen her before in his life. She may have gone to some distant part to have a child and, within a few weeks after having the child and, perhaps, having the child adopted, she comes back to her home district and tries to find employment. How is a prospective employer in a place like Birmingham to know whether a young woman has had a child recently?

As I understand the Bill, if an employer commits an offence, he will, under Clause 9, be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding £50 and, if the offence is continued, he will be subject to an even more serious penalty. I really do not believe that any Secretary of State could make regulations which could be decently interpreted by the employer. The onus has to be put on the employer, and this means that the employer must ask the young women these questions.

The only way in which we can stop the employment of women after childbirth is, of course, to have a general Bill which puts the onus on women not to work for a certain period after childbirth. This is not a matter which should be the subject of a Private Member's Bill. The principle is so important that it should be dealt with by the Government. I therefore hope that my hon. Friend will not press the Amendment but will withdraw it. If he presses it, I shall vote against it.

I am in agreement with my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr. Dudley Williams). As I see it, the matter depends entirely on what regulations my right hon. Friend may make.

On a point of order. Is it in order for an hon. Member to speak twice on the Report stage of a Bill?

It is not in order for an hon. Member to speak twice. I thought that the hon. Member for Clapham (Dr. Glyn) had not spoken on this Amendment.

I have not spoken on this Amendment, Mr. Deputy-Speaker.

As I have said, the matter depends entirely on what regulations my right hon. Friend makes. It will be incumbent on an employer, whatever regulations are made, to ask a prospective employee whether she has had a child within a certain period. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter that to ask whether a young girl has had a child is extremely embarrassing.

I hope that, when my right hon. Friend makes the regulation, he will take all the matters that have been mentioned into consideration. It is true that this is a compromise between both sides of the House, but I still think that it is unfortunate to make it part of our legislation that a person should be asked whether or not she has had a child and at what time.

I should like to try to clarify this point. Is not the obligation on an employer covered by the words:

"Provided that in any proceedings taken for any such contravention it shall be a defence for the person charged to prove that he used all due diligence to secure compliance with the provision"?

Does not that deal with the matter of regulations that may be made by the Minister under the Bill?

One can use "due diligence" only by making a full inquiry That is the point of our complaint.

I proposed to refer to what that could mean in relation to this Amendment.

How does an employer conform with the requirement to use "all due diligence" to make sure that he does not engage a girl who has had a child within whatever period may be described by the regulations? This is a rather tricky point. It illustrates the kind of burden that may be thrown on an employer by the provisions of the Bill. I do not know whether my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, East (Mr. J. Harvey) could help us in this matter.

I am in a difficulty. If my hon. Friends who find themselves opposed to this proposal had been with us in Committee or were aware of what we tried to do in Committee, they would know that we used all the arguments which have been put forward against an Amendment moved by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Mr. V. Yates). We were worried about precisely these points. Since we were deprived of the support of these hon. Members in Committee, we did not carry the day. Therefore, after talking to my right hon. Friend the Joint Undersecretary of State, it was thought that this Amendment would be a reasonable compromise. If the Amendment were accepted, my right hon. Friend "may" make regulations. As I have said, such regulations will be subject to the approval of this House in due course.

I think that if we assume that the Secretary of State, in framing his regulations, will not take into account the objections which were forcibly made in Committee and which have been made again today, we shall not give the Secretary of State any credit for taking to heart the lessons either of the Committee stage or the Report stage. We attempted in Committee to resist this altogether. We were not successful in doing so. We are, therefore, today suggesting that it might be a reasonable compromise between both sides of the House if, instead of binding the Secretary of State to provide for this in the Bill, we give him permissive power to do so, subject to affirmative Resolution of the House. It seems to me that we have adequate safeguards.

The hon. Member will recollect that attention has been drawn to the fact, as is stated in the Gowers Report, that in Scotland and in London this is the law. It is stated that in London and Scotland it would be an offence for the occupier of a factory knowingly to employ a woman or girl within four weeks of her giving birth to a child.

"Knowingly".

rose—

Order. Both the hon. and learned Member for Surrey, East (Mr. Doughty) and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Mr. V. Yates) have exhausted their right to speak.

Perhaps I may try to help the House. Those hon. Members who were on the Standing Committee will recollect that I advised the Committee not to accept the Amendment moved by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Mr. V. Yates), not because I was against it in principle but because I felt that he was going the wrong way about it. It is true that in Section 61 of the Factories Act provision is made of a similar nature, in respect of London and Scotland only, to put this obligation on an employer, but it is a substantive provision. It does not apply to the rest of England and Wales.

I further told the Committee that this matter was considered at some length during consideration of the Factories Bill last year when my right hon. Friend the present Secretary of State for the Colonies advised the Committee that it should not pursue the matter further and that this was a subject more appropriate for public health legislation. He offered to refer the whole matter to the Central Health Services Council for England and to the appropriate body in Scotland.

I advised the Standing Committee that it would be better to tackle this subject on public health legislation, and not to insert provision for it in this Bill. The Committee did not take my advice on that occasion. I then had to consider what should be done. My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, East (Mr. J. Harvey) and I decided that it would be unreasonable to ask the House to reverse the decision taken on that occasion, although obviously it is a matter for further consideration.

The reason for the Amendment is to try to make this provision conform to the rest of the Bill. If my hon. Friends vote against the Amendment, they must in logic vote against the proposal of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood. The Amendment is a more modest version of the hon. Member's proposal. As the Clause now stands, many of my hon. Friend's fears would be justified, but by inserting the word "may" instead of "shall" and, above all, by introducing the words

"restricting the employment of women in offices after childbirth"

my right hon. Friend will be given power in making regulations to provide different treatment for different circumstances. He might, for instance, decide to make less provision for people employed on light work than on other forms of work. He would certainly insert in the regulations the word "knowingly" which is in the Factories Act.

Therefore, the words of the Amendment would meet the situation properly, and would not be open to the fears of my hon. Friend; but, of course, the Amendment is still open to the objection that I raised originally, in that we are incorporating in a Bill of this nature something which, as I am advised, properly should be incorporated in due course in public health legislation. The hon. Member would not accept my advice, because he said that he would like to have it now rather than wait for my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of Health. It is up to my hon. Friend to decide what to do, but, if it is to be in this form, I would advise him that the words in the Amendment are the best way of doing this.

Before my right hon. Friend sits down—

Order. The hon. and learned Member has already exhausted his right to speak. Amendment proposed—

On a point of order. My hon. and learned Friend's intention was not to make a speech, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. With great respect—

The hon. and learned Gentleman is not entitled to speak again.

Further to that point of order. I was not intending to speak again.

Then perhaps the hon. and learned Member will resume his seat.

On a point of order.

rose—

Is it not in order to ask a question of the Joint Parliamentary Secretary by using the phrase "Before my right hon. Friend sits down—"? I waited until he had concluded his speech?

The hon. and learned Member has not that right.

On a point of order. Is it in order for the hon. and learned Member to question a Ruling of the Chair on questions of this sort? Surely, the hon. and learned Member has been here long enough to know that?

I am not questioning your Ruling, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, in any way at all. I was told that I had exhausted my right to speak. I have spoken once on this Amendment, and did not wish to speak again. I was only exercising what I understand is the right of an hon. Member to put a question to the Minister.

When a Minister has finished a speech it is not a right of hon. Members to get up and question him.

rose—

On a point of order. Do I not understand, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that you were putting the Question at that point, and that you were interrupted by what afterwards proved to be an unruly intervention, against which you ruled? Therefore, I should like to ask if the hon. and gallant Member for Cheltenham (Major Hicks Beach) is in order in intervening when you were, in fact, on your feet putting the Question.

I had not completed putting the Question, and the hon. and gallant Member for Cheltenham is entitled to speak.

Further to that point of order. I was also under the impression that you were putting the Question, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, and as there have been so many contributions from the other side of the House, I certainly would have wanted an opportunity to speak on the point. If we are to have everyone from that side who wants to speak and no one from this side, I shall have to demand that I should have the right to speak, if you are not now about to put the Question.

I cannot put the Question if an hon. Member, who is entitled to, gets up to speak.

I assure the right hon. Lady the Member for Warrington (Dr. Summerskill), speaking I think for everybody on this side of the House, that we should very much appreciate a contribution from her, if you saw fit to call her, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. One of the features of this debate has been what little contribution has been made on this very important matter from the other side of the House.

I strongly advise my hon. Friends to accept the Amendment, because under the Bill, as amended in Standing Committee, Clause 2 reads at the moment:

"The Secretary of State shall make regulations prescribing the period after childbirth during which a woman shall not be employed in an office."

If the Amendment is accepted, that will be changed to read:

"(2) the Secretary of State may provide by regulations for restricting the employment of women in offices after childbirth."

That is an improvement. I personally think that, as has been pointed out by a number of my hon. Friends, legislation of this nature, as we all agree, is very important. The hon. Lady the Member for Leeds, South-East (Miss Bacon) has read out part of the Gowers Report, which is very important. I agree with what my right hon. Friend the Minister said—that matters of this nature should be dealt with through the medium of public health legislation and not piecemeal in a Bill of this nature.

To get the best we can in the Bill, I hope that my hon. Friends will accept the Amendment. I do not like it a bit, but it is better than what is in the Bill at the moment. When the Bill goes to another place, though I do not recall a Private Member's Bill having so many Amendments to it, no doubt very careful consideration will be given to this point, which is one of fundamental importance, and one that is certainly appreciated by everyone on this side of the House.

I beg to move, in page 3, line 24, at the end to insert:

(3) If two or more occupiers of offices situated in the same premises agree to post such copies as are mentioned in subsection (1) of this section in one place where they can conveniently be read by all persons employed by those occupiers in those premises the posting and maintenance accordingly of those copies shall be deemed to constitute a compliance by each of those occupiers with the requirements of the two foregoing subsections.

This Amendment arises out of an Amendment moved by the hon. Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Iremonger), who was particularly worried that the posting of notices would detract from the amenities of offices. We had a long debate on this issue. Hon. Members on this side of the House, and indeed many on the other side, will feel that in legislation of this type it is essential that the persons concerned shall be able to see quite easily their rights and entitlements within the Bill when it becomes an Act. This is the same procedure as is followed by the Factory Acts.

There can be no question that we regard the posting of notices as essential to the enforcement of the Measure. The point was made, and it was stressed at considerable length by hon. Members opposite, that in many cases the posting of regulations would detract from the amenities of the office. The hon. and gallant Member for Cheltenham (Major Hicks Beach) wrung our hearts with a reference to his own office and the beautiful oak-pannelled wall and Adam fireplace, the beauty of which would be destroyed if these regulations were posted on the wall. This is something which hon. Gentlemen opposite feel very strongly about, and, as a result, we went to considerable lengths in Committee in an effort to try to meet them.

The suggestion was made that if the regulations could be posted at some central point, at which all the staff would be able to see them, that would probably be acceptable. The unfortunate point about that was that at one stage of our proceedings it seemed that the only central place in the office was the lavatory, and after further discussion we left this point. This Amendment is intended to assist in meeting the objections of hon. Gentlemen opposite, and to ensure that two or more occupiers of an office shall be able jointly to agree to post the abstract in a central position so that it can be seen by all persons working in that office, the occupiers being jointly responsible.

As the hon. Member for Greenwich (Mr. Marsh) said, the Amendment is a compromise. In Committee many of my hon. Friends laid stress on the fact that the whole question of notices is quite unnecessary. We spoke of persons working in offices who were of high intelligence. I abhor the idea of having to have the country littered with notices on every possible occasion. Persons working in offices are sufficiently intelligent to know that there is a body of legislation which protects them, and in my opinion, and in the opinion of many of my hon. Friends, it is unnecessary to have any notices whatever.

When speaking on this issue in Committee, I advised hon. Members that the Bill as drafted would seem to require the posting of notices in every room of a block of offices and that an offence would be committed under the Bill if that were not done. I had in mind a block of offices in which every office was in separate ownership. On further consideration, there is doubt whether the Bill makes that requirement. It could be, even without the Amendment, that if the landlord were so willing, if he himself placed a notice in the hall of the building, that would comply with the requirements of the Bill. Therefore, an Amendment of this nature might not be needed.

I am, however, anxious to give the matter a little further consideration. The Amendment is defective in drafting in several respects. Therefore, while my hon. Friends and I are grateful to the hon. Member for Greenwich (Mr. Marsh) for meeting the point, it is possible that no Amendment is necessary. If, however, it is, I would wish to reconsider the words of the Amendment. Therefore, I should like to give the House the assurance that in some way we will meet the point which the hon. Member has conceded to my hon. Friends, but I ask him not to press this precise form of words.

In view of the assurance given by the right hon. Gentleman, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

I beg to move, in page 4, line 19, after "(b)", to insert "in England and Wales".

This Amendment goes with the following one, in line 24, leave out subsection (3).

Yes, Mr. Deputy-Speaker; the two go together. The intention is to meet the wishes of our Scottish friends. Representations were made to me by the Association of County Councils in Scotland, which took the view that the power of Scottish local authorities to prosecute as at present provided for in the Clause should be removed. The reason, apparently, is that in Scotland there is a system of public prosecution whereby prosecution by public prosecutor acting in the public interest is the normal procedure. Local authorities do not have the power to prosecute unless this power is specifically conferred on them by Statute.

I understand that there are precedents in comparable legislation for local authorities in Scotland having power to prosecute. Indeed, the Clause as drafted follows the precedent of the most closely parallel legislation, the Shops Act, 1950, and the Factories Act, 1937. In both those Acts, power to prosecute was conferred on Scottish local authorities.

The Association of County Councils in Scotland has made it quite clear in a number of letters to me that it does not want this power under the Bill. The Association believes it to be unnecessary for the purposes of the Bill and I understand that it would be considered to be embarrassing in cases where, perhaps, a county council might have to prosecute other local authorities with offices in its area. Apart altogether from that, as a matter of policy the Association prefers not to depart from the general principle of public prosecution in Scotland.

I understand that, fallowing those original representations, the Association has been in touch with other comparable organisations, so that the Convention of Royal Burghs in Scotland has agreed with the view of the Association of County Councils. While the comments of the third Scottish local authority association involved have, I gather, not yet been received, it seems fairly clear that it will in the main meet the wishes of Scottish local government if we accept these Amendments today and do not give these powers to local authorities in Scotland. Since I see no purpose in this House trying to confer on local government powers that it does not want, I recommend that the Amendments be accepted.

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

This has been, certainly for me, an interesting exercise. It has probably been in some ways a useful one in providing Members of the House with the opportunity to discuss a large and important section of the population who are frequently overlooked in modern times. During the last fifty years, there has been a tendency to lose sight of the fact that the standards of the white-collar worker in this changing society have deteriorated largely in relation to other sections of the community.

It is true that factory and industrial workers still have many things of which they can rightly and justly complain, but it was extraordinary to me, when I first became interested in this subject, to find that there was no legislation for the protection of about 10 million non-industrial workers. The decision of my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) to set up the Gowers Committee, which reported in 1949, was welcomed by all shades of opinion.

On Second Reading, some of us were distressed that even in 1960 there appeared to be a large body of opinion in this House which regretted or was opposed to the introduction of minimum standards of health, safety and welfare for office workers in particular and for non-industrial workers in general. I am very pleased that since that stage, hon. Members opposite have seen the bright lights of truth and have come to the penitential stool. We are very pleased to have them with us.

We are all pleased to see the Joint Under-Secretary of State, who has been very helpful throughout the proceedings, in, perhaps, a happier—

After a bad start—

After a bad start— "better the one than the ninety and nine". We are all pleased to see the right hon. Gentleman so obviously much happier on this occasion than when he rose out of his sea of troubles last time.

On Second Reading, all hon. Members were surprised at the body of opinion which existed and the articulateness of white-collar workers on their claim for some form of protection against the conditions in which many of them work. It is true that many white-collar workers work in first-rate offices which are well lit, airy and well ventilated, and are ideal places of employment. It is equally true that, in 1960, many thousands of people doing an important job for their employers and for the country still work in conditions which are a disgrace to any community.

I have received many letters about office conditons, and if I had been called in the debate last night on our accommodation here I would have said some very bitter words about the difficulties of an hon. Member who suddenly finds himself in a position of unexpected notoriety on account of work he has done and is consequently made the recipient of hundreds of letters. An hon. Member in those circumstances has to suffer many difficulties if he has not clerical assistance and facilities.

There was, in particular, a letter from a lady who said that her office was a stingy little room without any heating or electricity; there was no sanitation whatever; and to get to it she had to climb a ladder. Not being of the type who wear trousers, she very often noticed men at the bottom of the ladder.

From any good social legislation there are beneficial effects on employees' output, if the health, safety and welfare of the employees are cared for, and one of the biggest surprises which I had in considering this matter was that, though there were many workers suffering from bad conditions extant in this country, no one, and I include the Government, knew just how bad those conditions were. If we have done something, with the assistance of so many hon. and right hon. Members on both sides of the House, to ensure better conditions for these office workers we shall not have laboured in vain.

These workers' contribution to society is certainly not less than that of anybody else and they ought to have working conditions not less good than those of anybody else and not less good than those of the industrial workers. They ought not necessarily to be any better than anybody else's. It was not the intention of the Bill to ensure that office workers should work in luxury, in conditions a cross between a chromium-plated Espresso bar and an Eastern harem, but to provide for those who spend the greater part of their lives in offices, reasonable, healthy, decent conditions. One thing which amazes me is that it should have taken longer than fifty years to get this House even to look at this problem in a serious light.

In Committee, the right hon. Gentleman was pressed to some extent about the conditions of non-industrial employment generally. I think that it would be generally accepted that now that we have accepted the position for office workers there can no longer be any argument relating to the remainder of the small proportion of people now left without the implementation of the Gowers Report. I am very hopeful that hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite will continue in that spirit of helpfulness which they showed so much so that—

The hon. Member may be tempting the right hon. Gentleman outside the scope of debate on Third Reading.

I accept that, Mr. Speaker. This is just another example of my complete innocence in these things. However, I feel that this is an important Measure although I agree that it is very restricted.

I would like, at this stage, to offer very sincere words of thanks to a number of people without whose assistance no Bill, certainly not one sponsored by anyone with my lack of experience, could ever have got this far. I think that hon. Members on both sides of the House are fully aware that in this place one can do little without a degree of support from a wide range of people.

Support for the principles of this Bill has extended over a very long period. I hope that it is not out of order to remind the House that my right hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Creech Jones) had a Bill, to which I have referred before during the course of this Bill, on similar matters as long ago as 1936. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Mr. V. Yates) had another and my hon. Friend the Member for Leek (Mr. Harold Davies) had the last in the series, and they have all made attempts during the years to improve people's working conditions, and, in the absence of drafting assistance on this Bill, their Measures were a considerable help in the preparation and drafting of this one.

I should also like to thank—I hope it does him no harm—the hon. Gentleman the Member for Walthamstow, East (Mr. J. Harvey), who has been of very great assistance to us on this side of the House, if for no other reason than that he has kept his hon. Friends under control.

I should like to pay tribute to the way in which we have arrived at Third Reading. We, as a result of the free decision of hon. Members on both sides, disregarding the advice of the Government, proceeded to the introduction of legislation, and with the assistance of expressions of opinion which we have received from supporters we have reached Third Reading.

I should like also to express a word of thanks to people who frequently receive no thanks at all—the Press—for I think that to have had in the course of this argument and controversy the support of sections of the Press, from The Times, in a first leader, to the front page of the Woman's Mirror, is something which falls to the lot of few people. The Press are frequently criticised by hon. Members. I would not deign to argue the respective merits of articles by hon. Members on the liquidity ratio and on fatstock prices and of other articles on the sex life of Miss Dors, but I think that the Press do sometimes, as on this occasion, a very good job of assisting us.

I hope that the right hon. Gentleman and his right hon. and hon. Friends will, even before the Bill becomes law, introduce legislation of their own which will not have the imperfections from which a Private Members Bill upon a subject of this type must inevitably suffer. I hope that in that legislation they will endeavour to cover all sections of this community, whether they wear threadbare white collars or go to work in overalls, for they are all entitled, in 1960, to at least the minimum standards of health and safety and welfare.

As one of those who voted against the Bill on Second Reading I should just like to say a word on Third Reading. First, and in all sincerity, I congratulate the hon. Member for Greenwich (Mr. March) on having brought his Bill through to this final stage here.

I, as one of the original opponents, do not at all feel that I am at the penitent's stool now, because the Bill, as we are considering it, is very different from the Bill which we considered on Second Reading. I should like also to congratulate the Committee on the Bill on having amended it and on having succeeded in putting it into what, I think, is a reasonably practical form. I can, perhaps, say that word of congratulation to the Committee, not having been a member of it myself.

My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, East (Mr. J. Harvey), whom I do not see in his place now, spoke a few minutes ago on one of the Amendments as though he was rather criticising those Members of the House who had not been on the Committee, criticising them for not participating in the work which the Committee did. I can only say that we do not select ourselves for Committees.

Personally, I would have had no objection to being on the Committee; indeed, I should rather have liked to have been, to have helped in this work —but I have learned that it is rather unwise to put forward a claim to sit upon a Committee, for one is apt some- times to be told, "We are very sorry that we cannot squeeze you in this time, but we have something else coming up and we shall not forget you then". Be that as it may, I think that the Committee has done a good job and that the Bill is a very much better Bill than the one with which we dealt on Second Reading.

That is not to say that I think that the Bill is even now perfect. I think it contains requirements which may perhaps put an unreasonable burden upon employers, if, of course, its provisions are not interpreted very reasonably. For example, I notice in Clause 1 that, whereas the word "shall" has gone out and the word "may" has been substituted in most places, the word "shall" remains in one instance:

"The Secretary of State may make regulations …

(b) for the provision of adequate and suitable facilities for washing which shall include hot and cold water…."

That is the only case where the word "shall" remains.

We all agree that office accommodation should include hot and cold water, but we must not think entirely in terms of large offices in London and great cities, where all these amenities and facilities are supplied. If we consider the many different kinds of small office, scattered all over the country, which fall within the definition contained in the Bill, we see that a mandatory provision that hot water shall be supplied may prove very difficult to comply with in present circumstances. The sooner we can reach a situation in which hot water is easily and conveniently laid on for every kind of office, large and small, the better, but I still have doubts as to the wisdom of imposing a mandatory obligation of that kind.

On Report, we wrote into the Bill a new Clause dealing with the question of a person—meaning an employer

"who, by reason of the terms of an agreement or lease relating to any premises, is prevented from carrying out in those premises"

the requirements of the Bill. That is a proper provision to have written in. But not only the terms of a lease or agreement may stand in the way of an employer. There are other obstacles. One is the question of planning permission. Within the last week a case arose in my constituency of a firm which was refused permission to add an additional floor to its office building, which it urgently needed to provide office accommodation for a greatly expanding business. We must keep in mind the practical problems which have to be faced, and in some respects the Bill may prove to be too stringent in its requirements and obligations.

Nevertheless, there is still a possibility that these matters of detail will be considered in another place. For the rest, I would only say that we must rely upon the reasonableness of the regulations which the Minister will make—and which are no longer mandatory upon him as they were in the original draft—and upon the fact that those regulations must come before the House for approval. I hope that when they do we shall all have regard to the common desire that those who work in offices, whether in the centres of towns or in small places in the country, where conditions vary considerably, should have the best possible conditions, but that, at the same time, no burden should be placed upon employers which might, in the end, have an adverse effect upon employment and production.

If we can rely upon the regulations being framed in that spirit, and considered by the House in that spirit, the Bill will serve a very good purpose.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich (Mr. Marsh) upon what I regard as an outstanding Parliamentary triumph. I am pleased that the Government had the good sense to yield to the will of the House as expressed by its vote in the Second Reading debate. For many years some of my hon. Friends have been pressing the Government to carry out the recommendations of the Gowers Report, on which this Bill and the previous legislation affecting agricultural workers were based.

I am glad that my hon. Friend paid tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Leek (Mr. Harold Davies) and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Mr. V. Yates) for their attempts to enact this kind of legislation in earlier Parliaments, but I want to mention particularly one other person. Among the hon. Members who pressed for this kind of Measure year in and year out none was more persistent than Mr. David Jones, who served this House with distinction for fifteen years and who was constantly pressing the Leader of the House to introduce this kind of Measure. If he reads the OFFICIAL REPORT of our debates on the Bill he will be as pleased as are all hon. Members on this side of the House.

The labourer is worthy not only of his hire but of decent conditions in which to work, and it is a disgrace that in Britain, in 1960, many thousands of clerical workers should have to work in conditions of the kind described during our debates on the Bill—conditions which would not be tolerated in any modern factory.

It is not enough to put the Bill on the Statute Book; the battle that we are having to implement the provisions of the 1944 Education Act shows how important it is, once a Measure has been placed on the Statute Book, to get some will and drive behind its implementation. I hope that after having conceded the purpose of the Bill quite handsomely, and having collaborated with my hon. Friend in carrying it through, the Government will be prepared to let office owners know that this is no idle Measure, and that the Government are prepared to see it carried through in a way that will be of practical benefit to clerical workers. We must make it plain that we are beginning a drive to do away with bad office conditions.

I warmly congratulate the trade union movement, which has been consistently fighting for this sort of legislation. Today is a milestone in its long battle. But I specially congratulate my young colleague, the hon. Member for Greenwich, on the statesmanlike way in which he introduced the Second Reading and dealt with the manifold Parliamentary hurdles that confront anyone who seeks to put a Private Member's Bill on the Statute Book. I hope that the House will give the Bill a unanimous Third Reading.

The hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Dr. King) said that he hoped the Government would give the Bill every support. I hope that the Government will eventually introduce more comprehensive legislation than has already been encompassed in this Measure, so that we may bring true benefit to the office workers. Hon. Members on both sides agree that there is a necessity to protect such workers. At the same time, I do not think that anybody would deny that this is one of the most complex and difficult subjects to deal with by legislation, because types of office acommodation vary so greatly both in London and other parts of the country.

Some offices consist of one room, and, however much we try to legislate in this matter, there is the overriding difficulty of finding the necessary space in fully occupied offices in which to provide for the necessary and important washing and sanitary facilities which should not only be expected but provided by employers.

Hon. Members ask why I put down so many Amendments to the Bill after having voted against its Second Reading. I voted against the Second Reading because I considered that as the Bill stood it was not suitable for legislation, and I doubted whether it would be humanly possible to introduce a sufficient number of Amendments to make it workable.

I want to pay a special tribute to the hon. Gentleman the Member for Greenwich (Mr. Marsh), who has been extremely co-operative, and to congratulate him on his great foresight in introducing the Bill. He should be proud of the fact that it has now reached its Third Reading. As a private Member the hon. Gentleman was in great difficulty in drafting this Measure, and I am glad that hon. Members on this side of the House have been able to assist him in that respect. In endeavouring to make this a workable Bill we put down a large number of Amendments. I believe that it was my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Major Hicks Beach) who said that he had never known a Bill with so many Amendments. This would seem to point to the need for the Government eventually coming to our rescue and superseding this Measure by more comprehensive legislation. What we have done has been rather like converting an old house—one can never really achieve what one wants.

There is in this country a genuine difference of opinion as to the necessity for producing a Bill on this subject, and many of my hon. Friends were perhaps sceptical about it. One argument put forward was that since office building is proceeding at such a pace the conditions of work in many blocks of offices are now so good that people looking for clerical work will not accept an offer unless the accommodation provided is up to a certain standard. I cannot accept that argument because, although new offices are being built at a rather alarming pace, it must be many years before the amount of office accommodation in London and elsewhere will be sufficient to bring all accommodation up to the necessary standard all over the country. In this connection, I am reminded of the conditions existing in many lawyers' offices in London. They are characteristically dirty and nearly always have a worn-out Turkish carpet on the floor.

It is extremely difficult to legislate in this matter. For instance, the rights of tenants and landlords have both to be considered. We made an effort on Report to overcome that difficulty, but I do not know whether we have succeeded. It would have been much easier if we could have confined ourselves to new tenancies, instead of having to try to convert existing tenancies by legislation. Our real problem here is not so much to provide the facilities as to produce extra rooms in offices in London where there is already overcrowding.

Much comparison was made with factories during the Committee stage. Towards the end, both sides of the Committee realised that there is a great deal of difference between legislating for offices and factories. I hope that the remarks made during that stage of the Bill about notices will be appreciated, because I do not subscribe to the view that it is necessary to put notices everywhere to draw the attention of people to the law. Indeed, it is a fundamental principle of the law of this country that ignorance of the law is no defence.

Office workers are among the most intelligent workers and I am certain that, if they do not know the law, the trade unions and other bodies representing them will soon inform them of their rights. It is, therefore, a pity that we have to be encumbered with the necessity for posting notices, and to my mind it is an under-estimate of the intelligence of office workers.

On the question of the employment of women after childbirth, the great practical difficulty is that many employers will be loath to ask the prospective employee whether she has had a child within a certain period. As I see it, unless the employer takes reasonable steps—which, in my opinion, must be to question the prospective employee—he is not protected under the law. It is a pity that we should have to legislate in this way and I agree that this is a subject which would be more suitable to another sphere of legislation.

In conclusion, I again compliment the hon. Member for Greenwich on having achieved his object of bringing the Bill to this stage, but I hope that the Government will assure us that the Bill will be encompassed in proper legislation, since this is a subject more suitable for Government legislation. I hope that when the Minister winds up the debate today he will give us an assurance that the imperfections of the Bill can be improved by future Government legislation, since we on this side af the House have co-operated in an endeavour to make the Bill as workable as possible until such time as the Government can introduce comprehensive legislation on this subject.

I join in the congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich (Mr. Marsh) on the notable success that he has achieved in his first Parliamentary Session. I am certain that the passage of this Bill through the House of Commons will be quoted for all time to come as one of the benefits of private Members' legislative opportunities. My hon. Friend not only drafted the Bill as it was introduced, but he survived the stern opposition of the hon. Gentleman the Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, who spoke for the Government during the Second Reading debate. Then my hon. Friend embarked on the Committee stage, and what happened there is a good example of what can be done when there is good will and an earnest intention on the part of hon. Members on both sides to make the best of some legislative proposal which is before them.

I thank the hon. Gentleman the Member for Walthamstow, East (Mr. J. Harvey), and those associated with him, for the way in which they co-operated during the Committee stage. When I recall the history of the Bill I find that it is something like a bicycle which has had new handle bars, new pedals, a new chain and, finally, a new frame. One asks oneself whether it is the old bicycle, or a new one. Although the name of my hon. Friend will always be associated with the Bill and, if I may be allowed to say so, it will always be known as the Marsh Bill, I am sure that he would be the first to admit that some of the language in it did not come from him but from the hon. Gentleman the Member for Walthamstow, East and those associated with him.

And my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, West (Mr. Redhead).

Yes, but that goes without saying, because the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, West appears on the back of the Bill. No matter who looks up the history of the Bill, unless they go carefully through the Committee stage they will not find the name of the hon. Member for Walthamstow, East.

I congratulate all those who were associated with the Bill upon the result which they have managed to achieve. I say that as the Minister who was responsible, with the Secretary of State for Scotland, for appointing the Gowers Committee. I endorse what has been said by the hon. Member for Clapham (Dr. A. Glyn) and my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and hope that now we shall have a comprehensive conclusion to the work of the Gowers Committee in a general Act which will bring matters into line with what was recommended by that Committee.

In view of the severity of the language which I used on Second Reading, perhaps I may be allowed to express my hearty congratulations to the right hon. Gentleman the Joint Under-Secretary not merely for being repentant, but for bringing forth fruits meet for repentance in the generous help which he and his officials gave my hon. Friend and the others of us who were associated with the Bill in Committee in framing the Amendments which have enabled the Bill to be presented to the House today with almost general approval.

I hope that those who will have to undertake the administration of the Measure will realise that the Bill now emerges from the House of Commons as one on which complete agreement has been reached between the parties, and that it is sent forward for administration from this House with a general desire that its provisions shall be fully implemented. It is a remarkable Parliamentary achievement, and I hope that those who will have to undertake the administration will enable us all to feel that what we have been able to achieve as a result of the initiative of my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich is a Measure which will bring to many people who badly need it assistance in maintaining good health and securing that their employment is conducted in conditions worthy of the twentieth century.

Naturally, I am very grateful to the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) for the kind remarks that he has made about me and other hon. Members on this side of the House who have tried to be reasonably helpful about the Bill. I have always taken the view that a Bill such as this could do nothing but serve a useful purpose. I did not, of course, subscribe to some of the arguments that we heard originally from the other side of the House about the teeming masses of aggrieved office workers to whose aid the House should rush, because I believe that nowadays office accommodation in this country is, by and large, of a fairly high standard.

However, the fact that so much office accommodation is of a high standard merely serves to accentuate the difficulties of some office workers who do not enjoy comparable standards. Therefore, I have taken the view, and I think that most of my hon. Friends would take the view, that a good employer has nothing to fear from a Bill such as this, and that what we should aim at is a nation in which employers shall not only be good employers, but be proud of being good employers; and I think that the Bill can do nothing but help towards that end.

I wish to add my own congratulations to the hon. Member for Greenwich (Mr. Marsh) upon the success that he is now, obviously, as we look at the clock, well on the way to achieving with the Bill and also upon the willingness which he has shown throughout to be reasonable and to seek agreement and compromise.

I feel that the House as a whole can pause to consider the passage of this Bill from a rather bumpy and uneasy start to the stage where it is now almost through. We might thus consider how, on occasion, one can get away from rigid party political lines and see how far we can together achieve some compromise on a Measure which will benefit large numbers of people who support hon. Gentlemen opposite and hon. Gentlemen on this side of the House and would even support members of the Liberal Party—if there were any of them here— and also some who probably support none of us, anyway. All of them will benefit in one way or another from a Bill such as this.

I also repeat the thanks I expressed earlier, and which the right hon. Member for South Shields has just expressed, to my right hon. Friend the Joint Undersecretary of State, who has been extremely persevering and helpful to us in the passage of the Bill and who, I think we can usefully recognise, is bearing a formidable load one way and another during this Session. I am immensely grateful to him for all the help and advice that he has been kind enough to give me.

Having said that, and emphasised that a good employer has nothing to fear from the Bill, I would re-emphasise one or two of the points that have arisen and which, I am sure, my right hon. Friend will bear in mind as and when he comes to the drafting of any regulations that may be made.

The first is the question of defining an office. I am not at all sure that the present definition is as satisfactory and watertight as it might usefully be, and I hope that my right hon. Friend and his Department will be able to look at that again. Here I acknowledge the advice and assistance I received from the Association of British Chambers of Commerce and the Institute of Personnel Management. Although these two bodies have been kind enough to write to me and give me quite a lot of advice, neither they nor my right hon. Friend, nor his Department, were able to evolve a perfect definition of an office. It is desirable, however, that we should try to see that the definition is as perfect as possible before we get into the possible legal implications of the Bill.

That apart, I hope my right hon. Friend will remember some of the things we discussed in Committee, such as the difficulties of the little room behind the little shop in the back street. Is that an office, and is it one which comes under the Bill? My hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Major Hicks Beach) has had an Amendment accepted about the Mines and Quarries Act, and we should bear in mind the other exceptions. A case in point concerns temporary offices such as those erected over building sites.

I am sure my right hon. Friend will bear these points in mind and I see no harm in re-emphasising them today. We should all note that under the Bill we have established two most important points. It lays it down that before making any regulations

"… the Secretary of State shall consult such organisations as appear to him to represent the interests concerned."

That can do nothing but ensure that the regulations that are made will take account of all the difficulties, provided that the people who are likely to find themselves faced with difficulties realise it now and act upon it.

Then the Bill also provides that the Secretary of State may make different provisions to meet different circumstances. That is a wholly necessary and wise precaution. In so far as I and certain of my hon. Friends have been able to help in the passage of the Bill, and have moved a number of Amendments to it, we are only too pleased to have been able to help in this way.

I still subscribe, however, to the view that I expressed on Second Reading, and which has been re-emphasised today, that, fundamentally, this is the sort of Bill that should come from the Government and not from a private Member. The field which it has to encompass is a larger one than private Members can or ought to be expected to try to cover. But at least now we have a Bill on the stocks and well on its way to the Statute Book, and no doubt the Government will, in due course, consider whether it should not form part of a wider and more embracing Measure, codifying some existing practices and incorporating what is new.

Whatever may lie ahead, I am sure that on both sides of the House we can feel that a reasonably good and workmanlike job has been done where something needed to be done, if only to encourage those who work in offices and who make a great contribution to the national economy as a whole.

I very much agree with many of the remarks made by the hon. Member for Walthamstow, East (Mr. J. Harvey) and other hon. Members who have done their best in Committee to make this a very good and presentable Measure. It is an example of what can be done in Committee, and the hon. Member and others are to be applauded.

I join in the congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich (Mr. Marsh) on being able to bring the Bill to the Third Reading. I tried with a similar Bill two years ago and my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, West (Mr. Redhead) tried later, but we did not succeed. We are all grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich for having brought the Bill to this point.

Today, the House is giving a light to the country and to millions of office workers. As one who was an office worker all his life before becoming a Member of Parliament, I cannot but feel a certain amount of pride that the House is about to approve the Third Reading of this Bill.

I left school at the age of 14 and I was employed in an office from half-past eight in the morning till eight o'clock in the evening for 6s. a week. I gave up that job after six months and got a job with a solicitor, but I had to accept a reduction of 1s. If in Committee I criticised lawyers, perhaps I will be forgiven because of my experience as a boy of having my wages reduced from 6s. to 5s. a week when I worked in a solicitor's office.

As it stands, the Bill is not the ideal which many of us would like. I agree with the hon. Member for Walthamstow, East that a more comprehensive Bill would be better and that it would be an improvement if we did not have to leave so much to the regulations to be made by the Minister. I had hoped that those regulations could have been closely tied to standards.

I have seen many examples of those who have suffered from the lack of provisions such as these, especially those dealing with health, lighting, space and air. The Bill will offer new hope to many workers in London and the provinces who can look forward to the day when all those mirrors which are hung in alleys to reflect light into offices will be removed and when offices will have natural light and air.

It is with some pride that I support the Third Reading of a Bill which I believe to be the beginning of a new charter for the black-coated worker. I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman, who was under something of a cloud after Second Reading, because his advice was not fully accepted, and who in Committee has shown—I will not say repentance—a readiness carefully to listen to what was said. He has shown, as a good Parliamentarian will, the need to meet the wishes and desires of both sides. I congratulate him on his lack of any kind of bitterness about matters on which there has been disagreement. I hope that the Bill will now be passed unanimously.

I shall not detain the House for more than a few moments, because a little later I hope to burden those few hon. Members who remain in the Chamber.

As one of the few hon. Members who voted against the Government on Second Reading, I should not like to let this occasion pass without congratulating the hon. Member for Greenwich (Mr. Marsh) on his success, and thanking my right hon. Friend for having done what he has done since the Second Reading debate. I confess that during the Second Reading debate I interrupted my right hon. Friend with considerable ire because he was making a speech which I thought was more reminiscent of nineteenth century Liberalism than even nineteenth century Toryism. I am glad that since that day he has used his influence to see that the Bill gets on to the Statute Book. Although it is not a suitable Measure for a Private Member's Bill, I am always grateful for half a loaf rather than none.

I have spoken about nineteenth century Liberalism. It is remarkable that, despite all the talk we hear from the Liberal Party, it has taken little or no interest in the Bill. There is an exceptionally large attendance here this afternoon. On Fridays hon: Members usually go to their constituencies, but no Liberal Member has been present, or, as far as I know, taken any interest in the Bill. That is typical of the Liberal Party. It makes a song and dance about being interested in the ordinary people who count, but they do not count when one has to do something for them—only when one is rendering lip-service to them.

I am grateful for this opportunity to congratulate both the hon. Member for Greenwich and my right hon. Friend on what they have done to make the Bill a reality. It has been an extremely difficult Bill to phrase. I realise its imperfections, and, like my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham (Dr. A. Glynn), I hope that it will not be long before a more comprehensive Measure takes its place.

I join in the congratulations which have been offered to my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich (Mr. Marsh) on bringing the Bill to its Third Reading. I also congratulate him on the way in which he conducted the proceedings in Committee.

There was a time during the Committee stage of the Bill when he became a little depressed because the date of the coming into effect of the Act, which he had envisaged as July, 1960, was put back to January, 1962. I ask him never to despair in this place. The Gowers Committee, of which I was a member, was set up in January, 1946. It reported in 1949. I did not think that over thirteen years after the coming into being of the Gowers Committee I would be standing at this Dispatch Box welcoming the fact that part of its Report will be put into operation in two years' time. It is a marvellous achievement that so new an hon. Member has proceeded so far.

His greatest achievement, having promoted the Bill, was to extract from the Government a statement of the possibility of legislation to implement the whole of the Gowers Committee Report. That miraculous change on the part of the Government has taken place within three months. After the Second Reading debate some of my hon. Friends said that I had been rather rough on the right hon. Gentleman. I was, but I think that we all recognised at that time—and if we did not then we have since—that the speech he made was not his own. As my hon. Friend said, the right hon. Gentleman did not look too happy on that occasion, and looked much happier during the proceedings in Committee when he was able to accept the fact that the Bill was to become a reality.

It was said on behalf of the Government on Second Reading that they had every confidence in the Gower Committee's recommendations

"… being achieved on the basis of competition, fair dealing and enlightened self-interest, without the need for legislation."—[OFFICIAL REPORT 11th December, 1959; Vol. 615, c. 974.]

It is a great step forward that the Government should now have recognised that legislation is needed, not only for officer workers but for other classes of workers mentioned in that Report, such as those in cinemas and theatres. We welcome this change and we are very pleased that the Government recognised, and accepted, the will of the House in this matter. I should like to pay tribute, too, to the work of some hon. Members opposite in Committee in association with the small group of my hon. Friends who have taken a special interest in this subject.

This Bill is a new charter for office workers who, up to now, have been forgotten. It will make them confident, not only that they will have better conditions in future but that this Parliament feels deeply about their conditions of work. The time is now ripe for implementation of other parts of the Gowers Committee's Report, and I hope that we can go ahead with legislation to that end.

I sat on the Gowers Committee for some considerable time, and I know that other members of the Committee will be very pleased indeed that the hours— and not only the hours, but the years— that we spent then have not been wasted. We have to thank my hon. Friend for seizing this great opportunity, and for bringing his Bill to this stage today. I hope that it will receive an unopposed Third Reading.

I apologise for rising at this stage, but I want to congratulate the hon. Member for Greenwich (Mr. Marsh) on achieving the distinction of putting this Bill through the House. It must be very gratifying to him to know that he has achieved his objective.

I was not very happy about the Bill in the first place, and I am glad that the Minister himself has promised so to improve it that when it comes back from another place we shall find that it is a workable Measure. If the regulations to be made under the Bill are reasonable, office workers will get some advantage, but I do not think that nowadays people work in offices in unsatisfactory conditions unless they wish to. There is plenty of work available, and workers can choose the employer they wish to serve.

Yesterday, we had an interesting debate on our own accommodation. I wonder what would have happened had today's debate taken place yesterday and the debate on House of Commons accommodation had taken place today, because when this Bill is enacted we shall be in some difficulty here. We employ quite a lot of people—[An HON. MEMBER: "This is a Royal Palace.") It may be a Royal Palace, but those who are employed here will be controlled by regulations made under the Bill. We shall then have to do many things which will, perhaps, make the Minister of Works rather more active than he yesterday indicated he could be in our present situation. The Bill might give some advantage there.

I am certain that office workers will find great opportunities to persuade employers to improve some of the conditions under which they work at present. I hope that when we are dealing with the small employer we shall not attempt to operate all the regulations which are to be made and make it more difficult for that employer to carry on his business. Clause 2 deals with the employment of women after childbirth, and the Minister will have to consider how this will effect the professional man who is working in his own home.

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I think that the hon. Member has not been in the Chamber. Had he been present, he would have known that Clause 2 went out of the Bill.

The hon. Member has not been here all day.

The Clause has been deleted from the Bill.

The Clause as amended is contained—

The Clause was not amended.

While welcoming the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Mr. K. Lewis) to the Chamber for the first time today, may I tell him that Clause 2 has disappeared from the Bill?

The Clause was not amended; it has gone.

I have listened to the debate even through the Committee stage. The Clause has disappeared, but the Minister said that he would deal with this in due course. He will still have to consider the question of how to deal with a professional man who is working in his own home and employing his wife as a secretary. This is designated as an office, and he gets all the advantages of having an office in his own home.

Precisely those sort of circumstances are specifically excluded from the Bill.

I am very glad to be informed that that is so. In any event, when the Bill is passed, let us accept the principle that it must not be applied rigidly. If it is applied rigidly, all those who employ office workers not in any large numbers but in small numbers will find themselves at a disadvantage. Apart from that, I think that the Bill will serve its purpose and be of great advantage.

I should like to join in the tribute to the hon. Gentleman the Member for Greenwich (Mr. Marsh). In addition to everything else said, I personally found him a very good-natured Member with whom to negotiate on this Bill. He said that he thought that I was a happier man now than I was during Second Reading. I think that may well be the case, but he and I must face the fact that we shall be rather uneasy when the Bill becomes operative, in 1962, because it will not be an easy Measure to implement. Many of those who have to give effect to its provisions will, I think, have great difficulties. There will be teething troubles and I think that the House would do well to accept that.

On Second Reading, I advised the House to vote against the Bill on the grounds that it was ten years since the Gowers Committee reported, that the Government needed further information and that it was delegated legislation. The House did not accept my advice on that occasion, but I am quite used to that happening in my present r61e. The Government did, of course, accept the decision of the House, and the Bill as it now comes back has been redrafted with Government assistance.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, East (Mr. J. Harvey), who voted for the Bill, to my hon. Friend for Ilford, North (Mr. Iremonger), who voted against the Bill, and to my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham (Dr. A. Glyn), who, I think, voted against the Bill, who moved Amendments, in co-operation with the Home Office, and I think that as a result we shall have on the Statute Book a workable Measure, at least on a temporary basis.

The Government gave some indication of their intention by moving a Money Resolution, although a somewhat inexpensive one, to enable the Committee stage to take place. But the pattern of the Bill remains the same in that it is delegated legislation. I think that it would be the wish of hon. Members on both sides of the House that the Bill should have taken the form of the Factories Acts or the Agriculture (Safety. Health and Welfare) Act in its substantive provisions, but there was not time to redraft the Bill to enable that to be done.

I find that some hon. Members who have not followed our deliberations in Committee very closely are a little confused by the changes that have been made. Briefly, they are four in number. In Clause 1, we provide flexibility in the operation of the regulations. The date has been deferred from some time this year to January, 1962. That will allow time for inquiries that may be necessary to be made. It will allow time for consultation, for the preparation of the regulations and, of course, for the enforcement authorities to make their own arrangements. Thirdly, we have sought to secure a fair balance as between landlord and occupier and as between employer and employee. Fourthly, we have provided in the Bill arrangements for enforcement and for expenditure.

My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, East was concerned about definition, and so am I. Clause 3 as it stands is still the most vulnerable part of the Bill, but, despite much research between the Committee stage and this stage, I have not been able to improve upon it.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Mr. V. Yates) was concerned about the word "substantial". He wanted to insert the words "wholly or partly". That would be going too far, and the hon. Member would be rendering himself liable to criticism by my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Stamford (Mr. K. Lewis). We have retained the word "substantial" and I believe that is right.

I have been asked by outside interests to make clear the application of the Bill so far as it might affect offices on the ground floor of a block of flats, where the substantial use of the premises is as a private residence. I think that the right view is that such an office would be brought within the scope of the Bill, because it is an office within the meaning of the definition. The only premises to be excluded are those which are an integral part of a private residence. This is the answer to my hon. Friend.

Accordingly, while the Bill would not apply to any clerical work done in individual flats, it would apply to any separate office in a block of flats. In other words, the definition is intended to apply to any office, however small, where the sole use of the room is for office or clerical purposes, but not otherwise.

There is a further point to which I should address myself, and that is in respect of the enforcement authorities. During the Committee and Report stages Amendments have been made in respect of offices in factories and offices in mines and quarries. My hon. Friend the Member for Heston and Isleworth (Mr. R. Harris) has made two attempts to introduce Amendments relating to fire prevention, but he was not successful in catching your eye, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. But there is substance in the argument, and possibly other enforcement provisions should be made in accordance with similar provisions in factory legislation.

On the subject of enforcement, possibly the last word has not yet been said, and in any legislation which might follow this Bill we might have to have further talks about enforcement authorities generally.

The House will want to know the Government's intentions after the Bill becomes law. We may still require further information from local authorities. We shall certainly consult with the interests concerned; in fact, I have been asked to do this. The T.U.C. saw my hon. Friend the other day and asked that it should be consulted, not only about further legislation but about any regulations which are made under what has now come to be known as the "Marsh Bill." It will take a considerable time to prepare the regulations themselves. The Bill, as it stands, will come into operation in January, 1962, and regulations will be laid then or thereafter according to the type of regulation.

As to the future, the Government are considering whether the Bill should be overtaken by some more comprehensive form of legislation such as has been referred to.

Will it be desirable to have the regulations before the date of operation?

If the hon. Gentleman means the preparation of regulations, that, of course, will be undertaken, but the regulations will not be laid until such time as the Bill comes into effect. I think that is reasonable. We did discuss it in Committee.

I have much affection for the Principality of Wales and I do not wish to hold up the interests of hon. Members from Wales. I therefore hope that it is common ground, and always has been common ground in the House, that we are concerned that office workers should share in the improved economic and social conditions now becoming available. The difference on Second Reading was not one of principle, but of method. I took the view then that, possibly, these things would come as a matter of course now that the economy was in a buoyant state, but this was not the decision of the House, and, therefore, the matter is to be dealt with by legislation.

I still hope, however, that we may not need to wait until 1962, but that employers will now see what is required by the House, they will look at the Gowers Report itself, and much work may be done between now and 1962 towards implementing the intent behind the Bill. When enforcement does come, there may not be quite so much work to do.

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

Even an hour or so ago, I hoped that I should have a longer time in which to develop my arguments in support of the Bill, but at this time, as I am sure the House will appreciate, I shall have to abbreviate what I have to say.

I need hardly explain that the subject of leasehold tenure and attempts to modify it have a formidable long Parliamentary history. This history extends, as I think the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas) said on an earlier occasion when the subject cropped up, as far back as the Leaseholders (Facilities of Purchase of Fee Simple) Bill, 1884, and, perhaps, even further than that. Since that Bill almost eighty years ago, about 20 Bills have been brought before the House at different times, and all of them have prescribed in different ways methods of dealing with what their sponsors deemed to be a real problem.

The very number of Bills on the subject down the years indicates in some degree the existence of a problem at any rate in certain parts of the United Kingdom. My Bill differs in at least two important respects from most of its predecessors. In the first place, it is designed to be limited in its operation to Wales and for this, as for almost every other legislative purpose today, Wales is deemed to include the county of Monmouth.

I do not deny that there are parts of England where there is leasehold tenure and where the high incidence of it doubtless constitutes a problem, but I respectfully submit that there are towns and villages in Wales where the problem exists to an extent which is scarcely to be appreciated by non-Welsh Members of Parliament. In how many English borough or county constituencies, for example, can it be said that this is one of the major subjects of controversy? How many Parliamentary candidates outside Wales go to election meetings feeling sure that the inevitable question of leasehold tenure will be raised by somebody in the audience at some time or other? Where, outside several Welsh constituencies, can it truly be claimed that the rank and file, whether they be Conservative, Socialist, Liberal, Nationalist, or anything else, are largely united in their dislike of the prevailing system of leasehold tenure as it affects dwelling-houses in the Principality?

All sorts of estimates have been made of the amount and proportion of this kind of tenure in Wales. Some of these estimates undoubtedly have been exaggerated. I do not intend to exaggerate today. Therefore, I shall not make any excessive claims. But I am certainly not exaggerating when I say that industrial Wales, in particular, is predominantly leasehold in its residential areas. For example, Cardiff, Barry and the Rhondda have substantially more leasehold than freehold property. In varying degrees, Newport, Pontypridd, Swansea and Neath have the same pattern. I respectfully submit that the peculiarly high incidence of leasehold tenure of dwelling-houses in large areas of Wales where the majority of the population of Wales lives, constitutes a special problem requiring special treatment.

What are the consequences of this state of affairs in Wales? The difference between Wales and the remainder of the United Kingdom is shown by the fact that the people in the Principality regard the acquisition of a leasehold house as the acquisition of the ownership of that house. It is the only form of ownership that many Welsh people have been able to contemplate. Freehold houses often are not obtainable. We therefore make a distinction between a tenancy and a lease which would not be easily understood elsewhere.

I confess that the Landlord and Tenant Act, 1954, passed by the Government of my right hon. Friend the Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill), improved the position of leaseholders of residential property whose long leases were expiring. It prevented their being evicted—

In certain circumstances.

I am not trying to raise party political points. I am trying to be objective.

It also eased their liability for dilapidations and under repairing covenants. But it did not—I repeat "not"—meet the leasehold problem as it largely affects considerable areas in the Principality. The problem in Wales does not arise chiefly from leases which are about to expire. It arises in a troublesome manner from the numerous leases whose unexpired terms are thirty, thirty-five years or less.

From my own knowledge of Barry and Cardiff and indeed, other places in Wales, I can assert without much fear of contradiction that whole areas and streets in many part of the Principality are virtually unsaleable except at ridiculously low prices. Prospective purchasers cannot obtain mortgages in the case of leases of houses with perhaps twenty, twenty-five or thirty years to run. The freeholds cannot be acquired. I know this personally, because, as a solicitor, I have tried on behalf of clients and, as a Member of Parliament, on behalf of constituents to arrange the acquisition of freeholds. One result is that these houses are virtually frozen as unsaleable assets in the hands of their present owners.

Another consequence is that Government legislation—I want my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to take note of this point, so that he can convey it to the Minister—passed in recent years to stimulate the granting of 100 per cent. mortgages by local authorities is abortive in these cases. Government legislation to encourage building societies to advance money on houses erected prior to 1919 is equally abortive because the leases of such houses in most cases have about thirty years or less to run. In other words, the house purchase and housing legislation brought forward during the 1955–59 Parliament by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government has only a very limited operation in parts of Wales for the reasons I have given, which surely were not considered fully by those who passed that Measure, the operation of which is excellent in other parts of the country but does not operate as it was intended in Wales.

Another considerable difference between the Bill and nearly all its predecessors will be found in the Clauses prescribing the machinery. Nearly all earlier leasehold Bills have been based on the idea of enfranchisement—the automatic acquisition of the freehold or other superior interest at a prescribed number of years, for example, twenty-five years, purchase, the price being ascertained merely by multiplying the annual ground rent by this number of years.

Such a rough-and-ready formula had obvious defects. It might be fair and reasonable in some cases, but in others it might be quite unfair. For example, a leaseholder with only twenty years unexpired may have acquired the lease of a house very cheaply indeed simply because it was a very short-term lease. It would then be manifestly unjust if such a leaseholder could acquire the freehold at a price at all comparable with the price to be paid by a person for a much longer term.

The present Bill confers upon the courts—the county court in cases of rateable values of under £100, or the High Court in other cases—the fixing of a reasonable price. The Bill also—and here we find another difference from most of its predecessors—enables a leaseholder who has not sufficient money to contemplate the purchase of the freehold to apply to the court for a new lease. Clauses 5 and 6 describe the considerations which the court may have in mind in assessing the purchase price or the conditions of such a new lease.

I recognise that these formulae which I have put into this Bill may not be perfect. It is probable that they can be improved on discussion and consideration by the House, but I submit that they certainly represent a conscientious attempt to frame a solution which will be fair and reasonable to all concerned. This, indeed, is the motive of the Bill which I now bring before the House. I feel sure that most people who live in the Principality will recognise that I have not exaggerated this problem. I hope that they will feel that I have sought to present, in a shorter time than I expected to have, what I conceive to be a real attempt to arrive at a reasonable solution for these very real problems.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Barry (Mr. Gower), who is my next-door neighbour in geographical terms, on having introduced his Measure today. The word "leasehold" is a magic word, or rather the words "leasehold enfranchisement" are magic words, in Wales, for we have suffered enormously from the unjust system, which I believe is capitalism at its worst, in which the landlord or finance corporation is enabled to hold to ransom little people who have been struggling hard to buy their own homes.

Half of Cardiff is in the hands of great finance corporations, like Western Ground Rents, the Penllyne Estate, and another great finance corporation the name of which evades me at the moment. I want to bring to the attention of the House the fact that at my interviews with my constituents nothing crops up more regularly than this problem of leasehold enfranchisement.

I have a case at present of a constituent who pays a ground rent of £3 15s. a year. Because his lease is running out, the ground landlord says he can have the freehold for £850, which is sheer robbery, of course. As his lease has less than ten years to run, my constituent will get no help from this Bill because, unfortunately, the Bill offers no help at all to people whose leases have ten years or less to run. I am grateful for what is here in this Bill, but I wish that the hon. Gentleman had felt able to go further.

The hon. Member had a similar formula in his own Bill some years ago—in fact I have taken it from his Bill—to keep our speculators buying short-term leases.

So be it. We will not argue now, because with a little good sense we will get the Bill through and have a Committee stage whereby we shall be able to improve the Measure and deal with these difficulties. The party opposite will have to repeal the 1954 Act for this Measure to be effective.

The 1954 Act is working savagely in the City of Cardiff. In my constituency, there are people whose leases have run out and who can stay in their homes only by paying an economic rent for the home which they or their fathers bought years ago. The Rent Act means that an economic rent in Cardiff could be £3 10s., £3 15s. or £4 a week for a house in a modest residential part of the city. The 1954 Act is an act of cruelty for my constituents and they would unite in asking for any Measure that would grant leasehold enfranchisement to our people.

We like to sing,

"The land of my fathers is dear unto me".

It is natural that we have a special concern in people's homes and the land on which homes are built being free from the interference of finance corporations. Because we hold this deep feeling, we resent more than any other social problem I know the way in which the leasehold system works in South Wales.

I hope that the Government will be as forthcoming on this—although I doubt it—as they were on the Offices Bill, that they will tell us that the Conservative Party has now seen the light, that it believes in leasehold enfranchisement and that it will give to owner occupiers the right to buy the freehold of their own homes. So that other hon. Members may have an opportunity to speak and so that we may have the Second Reading, I go no further at this stage. I tell the House, however, that the people of Cardiff, and, I believe, the people of Wales, are fed up with waiting for leasehold enfranchisement and the right of security in the homes which they have bought.

The leasehold system is regarded by many of my constituents as the curse of Wales. They welcome the Bill as a courageous attempt to unravel a legal position as complicated as any that exists today. If anybody doubts that these complications exist, I invite his attention to the Government's policy statement on leaseholds issued in January, 1953, in Cmd. Paper 8713. It will be seen as a result that so many anomalies exist that successive Governments, both Conservative and Socialist, have hesitated to tackle such a thorny problem.

It is to the distinction of some landlords and tenants that a steady number of freeholds are willingly negotiated between the interested parties each year, for, contrary to public opinion, not all landlords are of the Scrooge variety. In some cases, trustee landlords are not only offering the freeholds to the sitting tenants on a fair and equitable basis, but they have also offered to loan the money to make the purchase on reasonable terms as well. Sometimes, when large estates have to be sold to raise death duties, the executors insist, quite properly, that the leaseholders shall have first refusal of the freehold. One outstanding example of this was the Tredegar Estate, where a few years ago some thousands of freeholds in Cardiff and Newport were sold to the leaseholders at their probate value.

Unfortunately, there are good and bad landlords just as there are good and bad tenants. Some landlords take unfair advantage of their undoubted legal right by demanding large sums from their tenants for the freehold, or a high premium for a new lease, while on the other hand some tenants completely ignore present market values, and their complaints often camouflage a secret desire that legislation will be introduced which will make a gift to them of a valuable freehold. Both these categories of tenants and landlords do a grave disservice to those of us like my hon. Friends who are endeavouring to solve this complex problem, and the sooner they decide to behave sensibly the better for all concerned.

First, landlords, when offering a freehold or a new lease, should be willing to disclose the basis on which such figures are calculated. They should also be willing to provide supporting evidence where required. I recently assisted a member of my staff to buy her freehold, and when, at my suggestion, she wrote to the ground landlord for some indication of how the figure mentioned was arrived at, her letters were completely ignored. Such behaviour is both highhanded and ill advised. It creates unnecessary suspicion and indicates deceit where often none exists.

Though from time to time there have been half-hearted attempts to make party political capital out of the situation, the supporting evidence for this is invariably very flimsy indeed. It is to the credit of the party opposite that it instigated the Jenkins Committee to investigate this problem. It is to its discredit that it has never attempted to tackle this problem or say how it would tackle this problem if it were returned to power.

That is not true.

To some of my hon. Friends opposite any stick is good enough to beat a so-called wicked landlord over the head. They would do well to consider that in so doing they may well be chastising such respected bodies as the Church in Wales, the Co-operative movement, the National Union of Mineworkers, and Socialist-controlled councils in many parts of the country. One does not have to look far afield to find Socialist-controlled councils some of which perpetrate some of the worst features of landlordism—in the guise of the public interest.

Secondly, those tenants who wish to see a change in legislation in regard to leaseholds should get together to frame proposals which are realistic, practical, and bear some relation to the facts of the situation. Like myself, many of my hon. Friends on this side of the House recently met a delegation from a leaseholders' society only to find that their aims and objects were so disproportionately biased in their own favour that they could not possibly hope to succeed.

The hon. Member will talk the Bill out.

If they would only realise it, they are doing great damage to their cause. They claim to be in favour of freedom, fair play and democracy, and in the next breath they seek powers to tear up solemn legal agreements, to which, whether they like it or not, they are a party. They would be much better advised to support the more reasonable proposals contained in this Bill in an endeavour to encourage public sympathy for their efforts, for an essential feature of this Bill is the fact that it recognises that any measure of leasehold enfranchisement which does take place must be at a price which is fair to both parties.

Though it might well be said that this is a big bite for a little Bill, I hope that today's speeches will at least leave my right hon. Friend in no doubt whatsoever as to the deep concern we in Wales feel that more effective action has not been taken to solve this problem.

I cannot agree that the Bill should be given a Second Reading. I am sure that we have heard about the initiatives of some people in Wales—