With your permission, Mr. Speaker, and that of the House, I would like to make a statement on business.

As the House will know, the Chairman of Ways and Means has put down two opposed Private Bills for consideration on Tuesday next, 20th March. He now thinks that it would be convenient for the House to know that, in view of the time which it is estimated that the first of these, the Letchworth Garden City Corporation Bill, will take, he proposes to postpone the Second Reading of the other Bill, the British Transport Commission Bill.

Will the right hon. Gentleman convey to the Leader of the House the fact that this business has been much rearranged, and that there are two objections to the British Transport Commission Bill? One is seeking to discover the principle by which the Commission is tearing up railway lines all over the country without regard to existing transport needs or the needs that are likely to develop. The second is contained in the Instruction standing in the names of a number of his hon. Friends.

Will the Government consider accepting the Instruction, or, alternatively, if they cannot do that, giving an undertaking that adequate time will be found to debate not only the merits of the Bill, but the very important considerations which concern not only my constituency but the country as a whole?

No doubt my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House will take into account what the hon. Gentleman has said.

I beg to move,

That this House, while recognising that there may be new circumstances in which it is sometimes desirable to charge tolls on some bridges, urges the Government and the highway authorities to take the earliest practicable steps to extinguish those tolls which have existed for many years on certain bridges and which now have no valid purpose.

I think that this debate will be short, for it has a very limited area. I am concerned mainly to stimulate the Government and the highway authorities into extinguishing up to a maximum of 30 toll bridges in England and Wales and one in Scotland. These few toll bridges are used by a great number of people; by casual travellers, holiday makers, who cross them occasionally, and habitual users—those who live on either side and have to cross to get to work.

These 31 toll bridges are dotted around England, Wales and Scotland. I have not gone into the history of all of them. I am concerned with those tolls which have existed for many years and should now be extinguished because they no longer have any valid purpose. I am concerned, also, that the Minister of Transport, who is noted for his dynamism, should now get to work and do away with what amounts to an anachronism.

My earliest memories of toll bridges go back to the time when our somewhat large family piled into an open touring car and went across country. After a hectic voyage at about 50 m.p.h. we were rather glad sometimes to stop at a toll bridge, for a variety of reasons. I had nothing more to do with toll bridges until I was elected for the Banbury constituency in Oxfordshire. I very quickly learned that in the southern part of my constituency there was a toll bridge at Eynsham. Naturally, I was brought into this whole question to get the toll extinguished.

If a traveller should go from Whitney to Oxford by the most direct route as the crow flies he would go through this small town of Eynsham. As he would leave Eynsham towards Oxford he would come across a very charming old bridge, architecturally speaking, if not financially speaking. He would go over this humped bridge and have to pay a toll.

This toll was granted by Act of Parliament in 1776, nearly 200 years ago. It may be for the convenience of those hon. Members whose history has become a litle rusty if I remind the House of what happened in this period. It is not entirely without relevance. King George III came to the Throne in 1760. The relevance of this will come out later. He was determined to overthrow the power of the Whig oligarchy and to get back for himself certain rights of patronage which had been taken away from him by this Whig oligarchy. In 1763 we ended the Spanish War with the Treaty of Paris, under which, incidentally, we gained Canada and gave Cuba back to the French, which, looking at it now, was a good deal. In the same year John Wilkes was expelled from the House for being rude about the King.

Then we come to 1766 in which year the Act, which I am particularly complaining about in respect of my constituency bridge, was passed. This was a fairly tranquil year. The war was over. It is hard to find anything of great moment which happened. The Duke of Marlborough laid the foundation stone to Woodstock Town Hall. I say this because many of the inhabitants of the present-day Woodstock use the toll bridge about which I am complaining. The Stamp Act was repealed in 1766, but with the repealing of this Act went a declaration that taxation would be imposed. It was not in fact imposed, but a declaration was made that it would be.

In the same year, Cavendish discovered hydrogen, which has a present-day context. It was then called inflammable air, In the same year a gentleman called Henry Brooke wrote a book called, "Fool of Quality". He is an ancestor of the Chief Secretary of the Treasury, who tells me that this Henry Brooke, unlike himself, had 22 children. The other significant happening in 1766 was this Act, giving the Earl of Abingdon the right to build a bridge at Swinford, just outside Eynsham, and charge a toll on it.

That is the setting of this short debate and I should like to describe how the Act of 1766 originated. In 1765, King George III had been on the Throne for five years. He was then doing a tour of the country and was going from Oxford to Cheltenham. Taking the most direct route, he had to go across the River Thames at Eynsham at this little place called Swinford. The land on both sides of this river was then owned by the Earl of Abingdon. Hearing that the King was coming on this trip, he as a good earl rallied round and thought he would make the passage of the monarch's carriage easier. It had to go across a ferry there. He got some logs and made it more secure for the ferry, as he thought. In fact, the ferry got struck and the Royal coach went into the river and the King got very wet.

In that state he turned to the Earl of Abingdon and said, "For God's sake, Abingdon, build a bridge here and, in perpetuity, you can take the tolls for it". No doubt he said some other non-parliamentary words at the same time. With typical Ministry of Transport efficiency, within less than one year of that event, the Act was already a law allowing the earl to build this bridge and charge the tolls. History does not relate whether the Guillotine was brought in to achieve it.

I have had a photostat copy made of the original Act, which is the Library. It is rather too large to carry into the Chamber comfortably. I will just read out one or two Sections, because they are very relevant to my case. The Act starts by saying,

"Whereas the Ferry over the River Thames or Isis, from Swynford … to Eynsham … is very inconvenient and dangerous, and sometimes impassable".

This, to my mind, backs up the story of how it originated with the King falling into the water.

The Act continues:

"And whereas the Right Honourable Willoughby Earl of Abingdon is the Owner and Proprietor of the said Ferry, and hath proposed"—

this is a slight tactical twist in the Act—

"and is willing and desirous, at his own Expense, to build a Bridge over the said River at or near the said Ferry, whereby many Mischiefs and Inconveniences will be remedied, and great Advantages accrue to the Publick."

That sets out the origin of why the bridge was built. Then there is a Section dealing with the vesting of the bridge and the toll in the Earl of Abingdon, which says:

"And be it further enacted, That for and in Consideration of the great Charges that the said Earl of Abingdon, his Heirs and Assigns, will be obliged to defray in erecting the said Bridge, and repairing and supporting the same, and also the Loss which he and they will sustain by the ceasing of the Tolls of the said Ferry; the said Bridge, when built, shall be and is hereby vested in the said Earl of Abingdon, his Heirs and Assigns for ever."

There is still an Earl of Abingdon, who is about 75 years of age. I am sorry to say that he is not very well. I tried to contact him before the debate, but, in view of his state of health. I merely succeeded in getting into contact with his solicitors.

The Act goes on to say:

"And it shall and may be lawful to and for the said Earl of Abingdon, his Heirs and Assigns … to erect, or cause to be erected, a Gate or … Turnpike … and also a Toll house … and there to ask, demand, receive, recover, and take, to and for his and their own proper use … the several Sums following,"

Then there is set out an interesting historical list of the sort of traffic which went over the bridge at that date. It is an interesting study of the economic life of those days in 1766. It says:

"For every Coach, Chariot, Berlin, Hearse, Chaise, Chair"—

"Waggon, Wain, Dray, Cart, Carr, or other Carriage whatsoever, with Four Wheels, the Sum of Four Pence."

That is the same charge as today. This is a quite interesting example of the pay pause having operated all the way through. There is only one slight Amendment to this Act, namely, the Locomotive Act, 1861, under which for large loads they charge per ton.

Then there is a lot more of it with which I will not bother the House, although there are just two more intriguing points which I should read out. One is that it is a monopoly. The Act says this:

"And be it further enacted, That if any Person or Persons, from and after the passing of this Act, shall for Gain or Reward convey any Person or Persons, or any Carriage or Cattle, over the said River Thames or Isis, within Two Miles of the said Ferry or intended Bridge … every such Person shall, for every such Offence, forfeit to the said Earl of Abingdon, his Heirs or Assigns, the Sum of Forty Shillings."

So we get this toll bridge granted in perpetuity to the earl, and, for two miles on either side of it, it is forbidden to build a rival bridge or start a rival ferry—indeed one of the original monopolies, certainly a local one, which might interest the Board of Trade.

Those who drafted the Bill did not miss many tricks. They did not allow any competition to arise in the future. Another trick they did not miss related to taxation on the income from the bridge, because, towards its end, the Act says:

"… the said bridge, and the Tolls thereof, shall be liable to the same Rates and Assessments, in respect of the Land Tax, and all other publick and Parochial Taxes, and … Quit Rents, Services, Duties and … tithes … as the said Ferry, and the Tolls thereof, were subject and liable to at and immediately before the passing of this Act, and to no other or greater Assessment, Tax, Rent, Rate, Duty, or Payment whatsoever."

That meant that any taxes then existing could never be increased.

As it is impossible to establish what taxes did exist then, it has been accepted that on taxes are payable at all on the revenue of the bridge. It was quite cunning, because when the Stamp Act was repealed the King said that there would be this right to tax. That right was never exercised, and taxation, even temporary taxation was, as we know, first imposed only during the Napoleonic wars. In effect, therefore, the income from this toll bridge owned by the Earl of Abingdon and his heirs is not subject to taxation or rates, and the very word "duty" that is used in the Act means that death duties are not payable in respect of it.

I have had to make an estimate of what the bridge yields in tolls. I asked, but I did not get an answer; but I believe that a fairly accurate estimate of what the bridge yields is something just under £6,000 a year. There are other bridges, of course, that yield a lot more. I believe that that case history serves to illustrate that the toll bridge is now an anachronism. I will only add that it was not built with quite the same speed as was the Hammersmith flyover; it was not completed until eleven years after the passing of the Act.

To complete the case history of Swinford Bridge, I would say that my predecessor in the constituency of Banbury took up the matter with the then Minister of Transport, and I have taken it up on two occasions with the Parliamentary Secretary. Again, in December of last year, I led a delegation to my hon. Friend, and took to him a Petition—that I would have presented to the House if it had been properly drafted—containing 4,000 signatures, praying that the toll should be extinguished.

Returning to the more general subject of tolls—

The hon. Member is telling a fascinating story and, if I may say so, is telling it extremely well, but how does he see the toll being abolished on a bridge of this sort? Has he some form of compensation in mind, or does he believe in State ownership, with no compensation?

I am glad that the hon. Member has mentioned that. I shall deal with it in due course, if he has time to wait.

Before my hon. Friend passes from that part of his speech, can he say whether what he has described as the yields from toll bridges are gross or net—net after costs of maintenance have been deducted?

Again, it has been impossible to get precise information. That is quite natural—why should the owner tell anybody what he gets out of it? I understand, however, on reasonably good authority, that the gross figure is slightly over £6,000 and that the net figure is slightly under £6,000; that is, when the owner has deducted the cost of a toll keeper, and other necessary expenses—

My hon. Friend quoted as an example a yield of £50,000 from one bridge—

No—£6,000.

I am sorry; I misheard my hon. Friend.

There are other bridges that give a much higher yield than that.

I will now bring the broader subject up to more modern times. In 1929, when the party opposite was on this side of the House—which, again, has an amusing relevance—

A minority Government.

Yes, on this occasion the laugh is on us.

On 8th November, 1929, Captain Peter Macdonald moved the Second Reading of a Tolls Bill, and was supported by Sir Kenyon Vaughan-Morgan, the father of my right hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Sir J. Vaughan-Morgan). There were then 80 toll bridges; there are now 31.

In essence, Clause 1 of the Bill said that failing voluntary agreement the local authorities could serve notice that within three months the highway authority could take possession of a toll bridge, and the question of compensation would go to arbitration after the bridge had been taken over. It reminds me of those enthusiasts who want to go into the Common Market, and who say, "Join now, and work out the terms later".

Sir Kenyon Vaughan-Morgan said—and hon. Members might here just note that even a mode of expression can be hereditary:

"The continuance in this year of grace of toll bridges and toll roads cannot but be regarded as out of date and a complete anachronism. Everyone will agree that they should go, and go quickly."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 8th November, 1929; Vol. 231, c. 1464.]

Replying to that debate, Mr. Herbert Morrison, as he then was, referred to the Bill, with considerable glee, as a thoroughly Socialistic Measure for appropriating first, and working out compensation later. Indeed, he referred to the father of my right hon. Friend the Member for Reigate as being positively Bolshevistic. He agreed, nevertheless, that tolls were a nuisance, and should be got rid of at the earliest possible moment. I have not been able to find much trace since then of a wider discussion of this subject in the House, although we all remember the Adjournment debates in which my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Barkston Ash (Sir L. Ropner) has discussed the Selby Toll Bridge.

In response to a Question by the hon. Member for Erith and Crayford (Mr. Dodds) there recently appeared in the OFFICIAL REPORT a complete list of the remaining toll bridges, and I shall merely mention one or two. There is the Whitchurch to Pangbourne toll bridge, constituted by an Act of Parliament of 1792—again having the restriction that no rival concern could be built for two miles on either side of it. An interesting feature is that that bridge is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport. The toll bridge at Bristol originated in 1890, and some hon. Members may have queued for a long time to cross that one over the gorge there.

Then there is one at Shoreham, owned by the British Transport Commission which many holiday makers use. That, again, brings in a tax-free income, but it may possibly have a valid purpose, because it presumably goes towards reducing the deficit of British Railways. The one at Southampton, which crosses Bartley Water, and is owned by Winchester College, formed part of the endowment of the founders of the college in 1385.

I do not expect that any hon. Member has read the annals of the college, but on page 186, in rather typical Wykehamist language, it says:

"This causeway may be a public utility, but it is a damnosa hereditas to the College. In 1741, it was ruined by floods and the cost of repairing it fell upon the college."

A lease, which is in the college library, and which bears the date 1785, provides the interesting economic fact that the charge to cross the bridge was 6d. for a four-wheeled carriage. It is exactly the same now.

The House will by now have recognised that one of the points I am trying to make is that many of these tolls are feudal in origin. I am not saying that they are bad because of that, but they are feudal. Legally, county councils, borough councils and urban district council can purchase these bridges and the rights of the tolls by agreement or by compulsory purchase, the compensation being worked out by the Lands Tribunal. The Government are empowered to make grants towards the purchase of these toll bridges. I believe that loan sanction can be given. All I say is that it is possible to extinguish these tolls, and I urge the Government to bring about their extinguishment by these methods.

It is obvious, in the light of the incomes that I have quoted—and I can assure hon. Members that there are many higher incomes than that derived from the toll at Eynsham Bridge—that the cost of extinguishing with compensation would be fairly high. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport, whom I am glad to see here today, takes the view that if a considerable sum of money is available to be spent it should be spent on improving the roads and making them safer.

That is a very worthy and honourable view to take, but there is one objection to it. According to Sir William Glanville, the Director of the Road Research Laboratory, the number of vehicles on our roads increases at the rate of about 8 per cent. a year. There are now over 10 million vehicles on our roads, and in twenty years' time, according to Sir William, there will be approximately 25 million. If the compensation to be paid for these toll bridges is based on the amount of money brought in by them, the more traffic there is on the roads the more money will be brought in, and the greater will have to be the compensation. The longer we leave the matter the greater the problem of redemption will become. That is why I urge my right hon. Friend to get a move on.

Unlike the father of my right hon. Friend the Member for Reigate, I am not yet a very strong Bolshevist, and I believe that some compensation must be paid. I am not saying how much it should be, or upon what basis it should be paid, but I believe that the factors which I have mentioned should in all fairness be brought into account when the assessors are considering what the compensation should be.

We must judge the matter by present-day standards, and it would, therefore, be relevant to consider what has been taken out in tolls so far, and also to bear in mind that the wise man who has looked ahead must have said to himself, "This cannot go on forever in these enlightened days. Therefore, out of my tax-free income I will put aside a little each year to build up a capital fund." We should expect the wise man to have built up at least part of a capital fund, realising that these tolls would be extinguished one day.

On the other hand, we must remember that maintenance expenses will undoubtedly arise, as they did in 1741 in the case of Winchester College, which was under a liability to keep its bridge in repair, as owner, and had to put it up again when it fell down. Further, the great sums that are now coming in to the toll owners have been coming in only in comparatively recent years, as a result of the great increase in the number of motorised vehicles using the bridges. Not many years ago some of these bridges were running at a loss.

Also, many of these bridges—and especially the one at Eynsham—have provided a public service where none previously existed, and credit must be given for that. The great increase in the volume of traffic has not been due to any action on the part of the owners of the toll bridges, and we must ask ourselves to what extent compensation should take account of that fact. How the figures would be arrived at I do not know: but I suggest that we should follow the trend which is appearing in current arbitration matters, where the arbitrator is asked to take into account the broader national interests.

There are some practical disadvantages in toll bridges. They are not safe. They often have humps on them. The one at Eynsham has a hump, and the traffic has to proceed in single line. Even hospital car service vehicles have to stop and pay tolls before crossing the bridge, although they may be carrying ill patients. One of the big snags at Shoreham, in Sussex, is where there is a big build-up of traffic, waiting to cross the bridge while toll tickets are sold. In the summer, perhaps with children in the car, frustration builds up. And when the motorist eventually does pay his 6d., and gets away, his reaction is to put his foot on the accelerator and drive like mad. That is a point which should appeal very much to my right hon. Friend, who is always referring to irritation which is caused while driving.

I must now suggest what should be done about this. After about forty years of procrastination by both sides of the House, the Government should say, "This is the beginning of the end for these historic toll bridges." They should fix a term of years by the end of which they will all be abolished, so that everybody knows where he stands. Compensation should take account of all the factors which I have mentioned, and—I do not know how this would be done—toll owners should be made to publish annual accounts of income and expenditure.

The Minister should take the initiative in the matter. The county councils, who are often the highway authorities, have no real interest in extinguishing these toll bridges, because they gain absolutely nothing from taking them over. I regard them as the reluctant extinguishers. We even find some county councils denying that they have any liability, territorially, because these bridges often cross a large river which itself forms the county boundary. One authority will say, "That belongs to the other county" and the other county says the same thing.

The Minister has a duty to step in and sort the matter out. I hope that my right hon. Friend will not only accept the Motion, but will go into action with his customary zeal and energy. I do not see why my constituents in Oxfordshire should have to pay to cross a bridge just because King George III got wet.

I wish to intervene for a short time to deal with one or two special points in which I am interested I am reminded of one of our famous toll bridges at Connel Ferry. There was a wonderful system of tolls in operation there. To bring sheep across ½d. was charged, but the shepherd was allowed to bring only one sheep across at a time and he also had to pay 6d. for himself every time he crossed the bridge. I am not sure how the matter has been settled nowadays, but that was the system at one of our historic toll bridges to Scotland.

The principle behind this Motion is that we pay for public roads and that a bridge or a ferry is just an extension of a road. Therefore, when the country pays millions of pounds to construct a motor road there is no logic in saying that the public should pay a tax just to cross a bit of water.

The bridge in which I am interested has not become historical yet. The Forth Road Bridge is just about to be completed. I freely admit that it is in the bond that tolls should be paid and that if we are held to the bond we must in honour pay the tolls. But, after all, this is not just a question of bargaining. It is a question of common sense in running the transport of this country. It already seems apparent from observation at the ferry at Queensferry that in the summer the entrance to the bridge will be cluttered up by cars and large lorries, with consequent irritation, and to a large extent the purpose of the bridge is likely to be frustrated. People will feel that it is far better to travel an extra twenty miles and travel round by Kincardine.

I can understand the Government's reluctance to incur any more liability in the matter. But it is the people driving the vehicles across the bridge who will pay the tolls. I suggest that there is still time to get all the people involved round a table to discuss some more sensible method of financing the bridge which does not involve Government finance.

I will make one or two suggestions. It is the vehicle drivers who will pay the tolls. I am one myself, and I would rather pay in the form of insurance, even if I seldom use the bridge, so that when I do want to cross the bridge I can do so freely. Is there any reason why the cost should not be spread over the millions of vehicle owners? I am sure most people would gladly agree to this course as it would avoid irritation and delay when they wished to use the bridge.

If it is not possible for the Government to do this, I suggest that they should investigate other means by which the crossing of these bridges could be facilitated. In some circumstances it is possible to arrange a consolidated fee. One can, for instance, join the Nuffield Trust if one requires hospital treatment and does not want to use the much better National Health Service. A person who requires snob treatment in a hospital can make some special hospital arrangement of that sort and pay a lump sum. It should be possible to establish a block fund, the contributors to which should be allowed to cross the bridge without further payment

If the Government cannot do this, I suggest that the A.A., the R.A.C. and similar bodies should include such a contribution in their annual subscription. If another 1s. or 2s. were charged for the year, it would probably be sufficient to cover the crossing of most of these ancient bridges and even the new ones. I believe that the A.A. and R.A.C. are in some difficulty in deciding what to do with all the money that they get because vehicles are increasing in number so quickly. This would be an excellent outlet for some of their cash.

It is for the Government to bring the local authorities together, for they ought to make a contribution. In addition, there is no reason why the Government should not slightly increase the road fund tax, provided that they do not "diddle" the motorists as they have done by confiscating much of the revenue from this tax for other purposes. If this small increase were charged for this definite purpose, I feel sure that motorists would be prepared to pay rather than suffer the inconvenience and frustration of waiting in queues at these bridges.

There are some urgent economic factors to be borne in mind. In Glenochil, Clackmannanshire, the pits are being closed down. There are other areas too, to which populations were transferred with a promise of twenty or thirty years employment in the pits at decent wages, where they have incurred various liabilities such as house purchase and hire-purchase of various articles. Now because of the lack of fuel policy on the part of the Government and because of a change in the economic circumstances, these areas will be left almost derelict of industry. Unless new industries are brought in very quickly, great hardship will be caused.

I understand that the Government have been trying to introduce new industry. I welcome that decision and I hope it is successful in the near future, but a vital part of the success of any new industries which are introduced will depend on the free flow of traffic over this vital artery from one side of the Forth to the other. I hope, therefore, that the Government will do all they can to facilitate these developments and also will realise that this whole business of tolls is an anachronism. Everybody agrees that it is so.

All that the Minister is concerned with is the difficulty of finance. Surely it is not beyond the wit of the Government to find a solution. If the Chancellor puts out the job to the different Departments some sensible way of solving this problem will be found. Vehicles are increasing in number, and I expect that the road bridges over the Forth and the Severn will be used to a far greater extent than the Government anticipate. I hope that even at this late date the Government will say, "Although it was necessary to have these tolls to get the whole project started, let us now find some other way of dealing with this question."

In 1929, when the Labour Government were in power, I wrote a letter to Mr. Herbert Morrison, as he then was, and said, "Get this bridge built." He replied, "We cannot get the money." I said "Charge tolls if you want to get the money," and he replied, "The people would never agree at this stage of civilisation to pay tolls." I said, "Well, get the bridge built and if the people object to paying tolls we can easily shift the tolls once the bridge is there." If he had done that and had got the bridge built at that time it would have been constructed at about a quarter of today's cost. We would have the bridge and we would not be paying any tolls.

I hope the Government will arrange for a conference to find some other way of financing this bridge. We are not going back on the bargain; we will still pay the bond if the Government insist, but it is not a sensible method at this time of our civilisation.

I am particularly grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten) for introducing this subject. It gets a special welcome from me, for reasons which I will give in a minute. Of the long list of toll bridges that are still in existence—and I saw that in HANSARD the Minister gave a list not long ago—the three most important ones must be three on trunk roads—Dunham Bridge, on the A.57, that at Shoreham, on the A.27 and that at Selby. In view of your connection with that area in the past, Mr. Speaker, you will not be surprised that the one I shall speak about is Selby Bridge.

This debate comes at a very lucky time for me, because my hon. Friend the Member for Barkston Ash (Sir L. Ropner), who, with me, "represents" this bridge in the House, and I have been invited to meet the local authorities on 27th April to discuss the future of the bridge. This may well be only the latest in what I believe have been hundreds of meetings which have taken place since 1792 on this subject, and I am very much hoping that the Minister will be able to answer a series of questions which I wish to put to him for transmission at that meeting to the local authorities.

The history of this bridge and the current news of it has almost always been conveyed to the House in Adjournment debates in fairly uncrowded company, so perhaps I may be forgiven if I say a word or two about its history, so that hon. Members may know what I am talking about. One has only to look at a map to see that this bridge is the natural crossing place for the traffic coming from York, in the north, southwards to Doncaster, and, east to west, from Hull to Leeds and on to Liverpool. It is an absolutely natural crossing, so that it does not surprise me to find that a bridge here was authorised in 1792. For over one hundred years, the bridge seems to have gone on fairly smoothly, and we find nothing in the records by way of complaint.

It was at about the turn of the century that the questions in the House started These, started by Lord Bingley, went on for twenty-five years, and my hon. Friend the Member for Barkston Ash continued for over thirty years. That is on one side of the bridge. On my side of the bridge, my predecessor, Mr. Odey, continued, while I myself have not been quite so noisy. Having been a Government Whip, I have been rather silent, but I am quite ready to take it up now.

This discontent has been gradually working up to a crescendo, and has now come to the point of fury. One has only to go over the bridge to see why the local population is angry. The town of Barlby has grown up on the other side of the river, and, to all intents and purposes, is part of Selby. We get the people of Barlby wanting to cross the bridge every day to do their shopping, and the people in Selby wanting to cross over it in their natural social intercourse, and also to work at the large B.O.C.M. works on the other side.

They have to pay 9d. every time they cross, except in the case of the local people, who pay only once a day, but even to have to pay 9d. a day in the course of one's life is annoying. If one walks, one can cross the bridge for a hafpenny, but that happens only once a year, and is not quite so big a nuisance.

The traffic on the bridge is now up to the rate of 5,000 vehicles a day, so that we are not only talking about the annoyance to people who live in these two towns, but to a large number of other people travelling over these major routes and making major journeys. All through Yorkshire, the Minister will become very popular overnight if he can solve the questions which I shall put to him. I should add that this is no reflection on the people who run the bridge, and I should like to put an end to the myth that this lucrative undertaking is owned by three old spinsters in Blackpool. In fact, it is owned by a fairly competent firm, as far as I can make out, and I do not get any complaints about the way this firm runs it.

It is a firm which has specialised in river crossings, which owns other ferries and toll bridges. But, however prosperous these other undertakings may be, this one at Selby must surely be the brightest jewel in its crown, because the feature about this bridge is the fact that the takings are tax-free. This freedom from taxation is the cause of all the trouble, because, as the traffic has gone up, it has raised the firm's income, and, as it has been tax-free, the bridge, as a commercial asset—it does not look much, and its break-up value could be no more than a few thousand pounds—is obviously worth a very large sum of money, and, so far, too large a sum for the Government to think that they could reasonably buy it.

In the last debate on this subject, on 11th April last, I hazarded an estimate that the tax-free income from the bridge must be about £70,000 a year, and if that is so I estimate that the asset value must be about £1 million. Since then, after that debate, the owners of the bridge—the company running it— checked me on this point, and very courteously but firmly said that I was inaccurate in my figures. I was not in the slightest surprised at that, because the data I had to go on was far from complete. All I can say now is that, if the company would like to give me accurate figures of its income, I will do my best to give it full publicity. Whatever the sum may be, it is quite obviously a very large sum, if not £1 million.

The result of all this, and of the present Government policy, is that it has been said that it is too expensive to buy, and, therefore, the Government will build a by-pass bridge further up the river, which will divert a lot of traffic off Selby Bridge. This, in turn, will reduce the amount of the tolls, which, in turn, will reduce the price of the bridge, so that the Government will be able to buy it and have the by-pass, and everybody will be happy. The local people have no objection whatever to this policy, and look forward to it taking place, but, to be realistic, it is not in sight yet.

Reading through the last list of the Minister's projects to be put into force before 1965, I notice that the Selby Bridge by-pass does not appear, so that if it is not to come in the next five years, my guess is that it will not be with us before at least another ten years. If we have to accept that, is there anything else that we can do meanwhile to make some progress? I should like to know from the Minister whether it would not be possible to buy the bridge now, and to go on charging the tolls for a number of years until the price of the bridge was written off in that way.

Expensive though this is, it seems to me that we should be able to make some progress. If we go on as we are, with the people paying the tolls, the more they pay the more the price of the bridge would go up, and the greater the asset value of the bridge. To do what I have suggested would result in gradually cutting down the value of the bridge and gradually paying it off. In ten or five years' time, or whenever the Minister sees fit to make a start with the by-pass, he would, at least, have got the toll bridge bought, or partially bought, before the other venture started. It is on this point that I should like the Minister to comment.

In our last debate on 11th April last, I made an estimate of the traffic which I thought the by-pass would probably attract, and I quoted, in this context, a letter which the Minister had written to the Clerk of the East Riding County Council, in 1959, in which he said:

"'The volume of through traffic using the bridge does not justify the diversion for the immediate construction of a by-pass of trunk road funds which are more urgently required for the current major road programme'."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 11th April, 1961; Vol. 638, c. 206.]

Everyone will agree that the only criterion upon which a prudent Government can decide whether or not they should embark upon a £2 million bypass is traffic. I came to the conclusion that 12,000 vehicles might be expected to use the by-pass road. I take this figure from a report of the East Riding county surveyor, who said:

"I am convinced that the new traffic which would be attracted to a Selby by-pass would be in the region of 9,000 vehicles per day, which, added to the 3,000, gives a figure of 12,000 vehicles."

That is the source of my information. The only statistics which my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary was able to give in answer to that opinion came from a survey which the Ministry had conducted at Boothferry Bridge. Apparently, 760 vehicles a day crossed there, and the drivers of these vehicles had been interviewed. That is the number which the Ministry thinks would be diverted to a Selby crossing. I did not think that that was very much of a reply, but in fairness to my hon. Friend I must admit that I took longer that I expected and did not leave him as much of the Adjournment debate as he had a right to expect. I hope that there are all sorts of encouraging figures which he did not have time to give and which the Minister can give us today.

On the subject of estimated traffic, I put these questions. What is the Ministry's estimation of the total traffic likely to use a free bridge and a by-pass in, say, 1964? Secondly, what would be the estimated trunk road traffic on a by-pass bridge? I realise that the statistics or estimates for which I am asking are complicated. I am not asking just for a census of the vehicles which now pass Selby Bridge, because that would reveal the traffic against a 9d. toll. The traffic without the 9d. toll would be a very different kettle of fish, and to arrive at that figure one would have to estimate having regard to the cars and lorries crossing at York, Boothferry Bridge, Malton, and so on. Selby is the focal point of six important traffic routes.

The East Riding County Surveyor has said that

"The removal of this deterrent by means of a by-pass and a free bridge would open the flood-gates to traffic and, in my view, effect a more widespread redistribution of traffic than any other comparable scheme in the North of England."

That is the opinion of a man of thirty years' experience in the area; and that cannot possibly be disregarded.

Again on the subject of censuses and estimates, I should like my right hon. Friend to say something about the concluding remarks of the Parliamentary Secretary in our debate on 11th April last. He said:

"At present, we are considering the results of the traffic census in connection with the possibility of using the abandoned Barnsley—Hull railway line as a trunk road. The surveyors of the East and West Riding County Councils are preparing a report for us on this… I would only add that we shall be announcing our decision on this matter very shortly."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 11th April, 1961; Vol. 638, c. 213–4.]

The results of that census would be very interesting in the present context, and I wonder whether the Minister has them by now.

Lastly, how would the problem I am discussing be affected by a major motorway? Looking at the publication, "Roads for Britain", published by the Ministry, I saw marked on it as a motorway for the future a route running from Hull across the country through Leeds to Manchester and Liverpool. I cannot see from the sort of map provided exactly where this motorway will cross the river, but, of course, this is something closely relevant to the subject of Selby Bridge. If it is to cross at Selby, everything we are talking about is put in an entirely different light. Indeed, wherever it is to cross, it will affect very much our judgment on the question of the toll bridge.

Everyone in the House will agree that, during the last two or three years, we have been able to take a more hopeful look at our roads. Things are really happening now. Motorways are being built, and those which we now have are the finest in the world. Roads like the A.1, of which we had begun to despair, are quite a pleasure to use now. Even the Malton by-pass, to my astonished delight, is on the way. All this good news of the roads gives me hope that the Minister will have some good news for us about the Selby Bridge as well.

I am very glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten) has raised this topic, not for constituency reasons but because I consider that it raises very important matters of principle. How far should the Government be expected to accept all the responsibility for toll bridges? There is no doubt that the raising of tolls is a nuisance to a certain extent. I am told that in the United States there is very little difficulty and traffic is not held up much when tolls are collected. In this country, on the other hand, we have a somewhat different situation, in that the Government are already levying such heavy taxation on the motor industry and the motorist. According to figures given by the British Road Federation, the Government are spending £140 million on the roads and raising in motor taxation no less than £730 million.

Our situation in that respect is in very great contrast with what is happening abroad. Even in a country like Sweden, which has advanced social services, the figures are more or less in balance. I am told that in the United States they are in balance. There is here a very, very heavy imposition already put on those who use the roads and motorways, and it seems wrong in principle that they should be expected to pay extra either for new toll bridges or for old ones.

It is high time that something was done about the old toll bridges, with this tremendous load of taxation already imposed on the users. Among the interesting suggestions which have been made was the ingenious idea advanced by the right hon. Member for Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire (Mr. Woodburn) that the tolls should be levied in some way through the A.A. or the R.A.C. I doubt that the organisations would welcome that because to a certain extent they would be turned into tax collectors. There are other ways of doing it. In the United States, the State Governments which built the toll roads—I see no objection in principle to toll roads—issued bonds, expecting to repay over a period of 20 or 25 years, but the growth of traffic has enabled them to pay off the money very much earlier. It was surprising how quickly the money could be paid back. I entirely agree that there should be some kind of sinking fund in respect of all these toll bridges so that the money can be paid off in a reasonable time.

I did not suggest that the A.A. and the R.A.C. should collect taxes. I suggested that it would be a wonderful service to their members, inducing everyone to join either one organisation or the other, if they could make block arrangements with the toll bridges so that members wanting to cross could do so without payment. It would not involve the Government in any finance at all.

I can see the disadvantage that people who did not belong to the A.A. or R.A.C. might arrive at the bridge and then have to turn back or pay, and there would be certain administrative difficulties. However, I can see advantages in the ingenious scheme which the right hon. Gentleman has proposed. It seems to me that the real test is whether the motorist, who is already paying so much in taxation, will get a better deal through these tolls and whether extra bridges and motorways can be built so that he gets something for his money.

It is on those grounds that I have in the past, and still do, support the principle of toll motorways provided they bring relief on the roads in our lifetime. On my way to the House today I was held up for a very long time at Hyde Park Corner, where an improvement is being made. My hon. Friend the Member for Howden (Mr. Bryan) spoke of the motorways that there are in the North. I know the M.1 and the improvements which have been made to the A.1.

However, I come from a different part of the country. I come from the Southwest, which my right hon. Friend the Minister knows has been grossly neglected. When I try to drive down the A.30 I find long stretches where there is room for only two lanes of traffic so that overtaking is almost impossible. I am anxious to see something done quickly about this and in my lifetime, not for posterity. It is no good lecturing me about the M.1 and the improvements which have been made in the North if my constituents are to suffer for many years to come. Fortunately, we do not possess a toll bridge. If we did, we should be anxious to see payment on it brought to an end, because, in spite of all the taxation on the motorists in my part of the country, we see very little return from it.

I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury has raised this subject, and I hope that the Minister will treat it as a matter of principle.

I am glad that the hon. Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten) has raised this subject. It could not have come at a more opportune moment for those who represent Scottish constituencies. However, the hon. Gentleman somewhat marred his Motion by stating in it that it

"is sometimes desirable to charge tolls on some bridges …"

The gist of his speech did not lend strength to that statement. Nor have we had a speech from either side of the House which supports the principle, either as it existed in the past or as it is likely to exist in the future.

I was very interested to hear what was said concerning tax-free incomes. It is, I suppose, highly desirable for those who are fortunate to have them to have unearned incomes. But to have unearned and untaxed incomes is really paradise. I wish that a representative from the Treasury were present. I hope that it knows about this, because it is intolerable that at a time when everyone else is being chased for taxation on incomes, particularly on earned incomes, people should be getting away with £6,000 a year in unearned income, untaxed income and death-duty-free income. It is an astounding reflection on the society in which we live.

I leave that matter there. I hope that the hon. Member for Banbury will pursue it through Questions. I shall be glad to give him what support I can on it.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman.

I wish to devote my remarks to the issue of the Forth Road Bridge. I am glad that the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland is here. He knows very well that we have had some extremely grim news in Scotland, particularly in Fife, in the last few weeks. We have had the announcement of the closure of the Rothes pit and the Glenochil pit, which will inflict very grave social, economic and psychological blows. Other collieries are threatened. In Central West Fife, lying immediately to the north of this proposed bridge, we are to lose 3,000 jobs, which will be lost for ever as the pits in that area close, and there is really little or nothing to take their place. If something urgent is not done now, Central West Fife will, as it has been said, become a deserted area.

There are nearly 2,000 people employed solely in mining in the Bowhill area, and the pit there is now under threat. If the Bowhill, Dundonald and Kinglassie pits close, there is not as much as one small industry in the area to take the people who will be unemployed. The Bowhill pit was regarded as a long-term pit. The Fife County Council made enormous capital investments in it. Since 1945, it has spent approximately £17 million on houses, schools, and so on, on the assumption that there would be industrial prosperity. The situation is bound to get worse in view of the enormous increase in the number of school leavers. It is anticipated that in the next three years there will be 3,536 school-leavers in the area. The jobs in the pipeline which have been mentioned on innumerable occasions in the House will do little to solve the problem. It is in that context that I wish to speak.

The Under-Secretary of State will agree that Fife County is making enormous efforts to attract industry. It pins great hopes on the completion of the Forth Road Bridge. We are in no doubt about the advantage of it. But if the Government do anything to jeopardise or decrease the value of the bridge to the future economic prospects of Fife, it will be a contradiction of the policy of bringing industry to this part of the country which they allege that they are pursuing.

I believe that the Secretary of State for Scotland has had representations from almost every local authority in Fife and every local authority concerned directly or indirectly with the bridge. They are almost unanimous in opposing what they regard as an outmoded method of financing the roads system. All the Members of Parliament in the area, with the exception of the hon. Member for Fife, East (Sir J. Gilmour), support the local authorities. I am sorry that I was not able to give the hon. Gentleman notice yesterday that I would refer to him, but he has been bitterly opposed by the small burghs, particularly St. Monance, in his constituency, because he wrote the burgh a letter saying that he did not think it worth while pursuing the Government to try to get rid of the toll charges, although St. Monance is a small burgh desperately in need of some light engineering industry. The hon. Gentleman, far from joining in what we regard as a very important fight, has taken the Government's side. Indeed, when it comes to fighting the Government, he is an out-and-out pacifist. He is not prepared to take our side and the side of his county in defending its interests.

No doubt the Minister, when he replies, will say that the local authorities promised that they would pay tolls, and that this was one of the conditions under which they got the bridge. That is true. But since the Government have been breaking more pledges in the last few weeks and months than anyone else in the country, it is very strange for them to say that the local authorities have to honour their pledge. I wish to be quite blunt about it. The local authorities made this promise only under duress. They were so desperately anxious to get the bridge that they would have promised anything. Now, however, the economic circumstances, desperate as they were then, are much more desperate, and the economic circumstances of Fife and of the area which my right hon. Friend represents are much worse now, than they were when the local authorities agreed to this imposition. The Government recognise that the economic circumstances are much worse.

The local authorities take the view that the imposition of these toils is bound to have adverse effects on the competitive position of Fife in attracting industry. There are in all areas of the country—indeed, of the world—big and small areas, which are competing for industry, and if anything is done to lessen the competitive ability of one area, that, of course, makes it less likely that that area will get the industry it wants, and Fife feels that it is being put in this position.

My right hon. Friend referred to the clutter-up of traffic on either side of the bridge consequent on the imposition of tolls. I am not sure that that is a very valid point, quite frankly. I understand that already orders have been placed for £90,000 worth of electronic equipment for the purpose of collecting the tolls, and this will weaken to some extent, I believe, the argument of my night hon. Friend. I do not regard this as the main argument.

The main argument, as I see it, is that it will put up transport costs and that it will create irritation, to which the hon. Gentleman referred, among people using the bridge.

I see no valid reason at all why these tolls should be levied. If I may refer again to my right hon. Friend, the bridge is part of the trunk road system. That it goes over a bit of water is incidental. I can get into a car in London and travel right up to Edinburgh with no question of a toll, but once I get to that little bit of water in the middle of Scotland I have got to pay a toll.

The M.1 was opened with a great fanfare—and began to break up in a fortnight. [HON. MEMBERS: "NO."] It was opened with a great fanfare as a link between two of the most prosperous cities in Britain—if not the two most prosperous cities in Britain—Birmingham and London, and not a penny toll is paid on that. And it cost a lot more than the Forth Bridge.

It is longer.

Of course it is longer, but if the right hon. Gentleman is going to charge tolls let him share them out, and let them be in proportion to the prosperity of the areas the roads are linking, if the Government want fair shares for all. The Secretary of State for Scotland now has a Housing Bill before the Scottish Standing Committee, and the Bill is designed to help the poorer authorities by taking from the richer authorities. I do not agree with the principle of tolls, but if tolls are to be applied that would seem to be the sensible way to apply them, in which case the M.1 would bear tolls and not the Forth Bridge. Nor are there tolls for the Whiteinch Tunnel. There are not to be any tolls for the Whiteinch Tunnel which is under the Clyde. So that it does seem, to us anyhow, that this is a deliberate imposition on a part of the country which is much worse hit than most by economic circumstances entirely outside its control.

Let me quote a letter from an industrialist in Fife, an industrialist who, I think, supports the Government. He regards himself as an independent, but this means that he is a Tory who has not declared himself. He is rather ashamed of it. He nevertheless supports them. I have a great regard for him. I do not think he will like my saying that. This is what he says in a letter to me:

"What kind of bridge is this new one going to be? Is it for holidaymakers and tourist traffic, and is it to be another nail in the coffin of Fife industry? With the possible advent of the European Common Market we will need every possible facility for transport, rather than have another noose round our neck in paying higher costs. It seems to me that the whole idea of the Government today is to have industry moved South of the Border, but certainly not in Scotland. Why should we have to pay a high figure for sending transport over water, as if it was impossible to build a bridge. Sooner or later a trunk road will have to be built round Fife, and I doubt if this would be any cheaper than building a bridge, and would probably cost a lot more."

This is just one example of the frustration of industrialists. Local authorities are angry about it, industry is angry about it, and now this is given added point by the recent pronouncements about the Scottish economy and particularly the coal industry.

I know the Government say the bridge has got to be paid for and that £15 million is an awful lot of money, and they say it is right and fair that the users should pay for it. I am not so sure that was applied to the £15 million for the Rotodyne, which was written off; almost exactly the same figure, but just written off.

The simple fact is that the road system of this country, whether it goes over water or over land, ought to be regarded as a State responsibility. Let us have none of this nonsense of sticking a little toll either end and collecting sixpences and shillings. This is really the turnpike attitude towards a modern transport problem. Get rid of it. Come into the twentieth century. It hurts like hell, but come into it.

It may be for the convenience of the House if I now say a few words on this subject and indicate the Government's point of view. My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary will remain here and deal with any other points which may be raised.

The hon. Gentleman the Member for Fife, West (Mr. W. Hamilton) said "Come into the twentieth century" and he said that these were turnpike days. That is exactly what they are. In possibly the most advanced motoring civilisation in the world, in America, they call them turnpikes and have little tolls at each end of a turnpike and collect the money there; and they have, I should think, the most extensive road system of any county in the world, and they are doing precisely this.

The M1.

No, not the M.1, because the M.1 is in England.

The hon. Member was kind enough to offer some assistance to my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten)—a very unholy alliance in my view, and I would recommend my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury to be very careful before accepting such an offer, for I think it could be very dangerous indeed.

The hon. Member said that we had said that if there were not going to be any tolls there was not going to be any bridge. That arrangement having been made, it has got to be kept, because it was only on that understanding that it was built, and the Government's policy is that tolls are an appropriate method of financing an expensive tunnel or bridge and that great advantages to the traffic which use it are to be gained. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland in an Answer on 9th February stated:

"The Government assistance offered to, and accepted by, the Forth Road Bridge Joint Board in 1956 was based on this policy and the Forth Road Bridge Order, 1958, which the Board promoted to give effect to the agreed financial arrangements requires them to levy tolls to repay the loans which I am advancing."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th February, 1962; Vol. 653, c. 96.]

I do not really think we can go back over the years and over the deal. That was the deal which was done, and all hon. and right hon. Members from the other side of the Border always keep to their deals and the letter and the spirit of an agreement which we on this side gratefully accept.

The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire (Mr. Woodburn) gave us some historic reminiscences about Mr. Morrison and how Mr. Morrison had said that it was impossible to build a bridge because we had not got the money and we could not get the money by tolls. That points to the faulty political judgment shown at that time, because we have both built the bridge and have the tolls. He also mentioned the Connel Ferry Bridge where a shepherd had to pay 6d. for himself and ½d. each for his sheep. He will be glad to know that the toll on the bridge has now gone down from 6d. to 2d., which shows that Conservative freedom works even north of the Border.

I am sure that the House feels indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury for bringing this subject before us. He gave us an historical account of some of our old kings in the 18th century in a delightful and agreeable manner. The Earl of Abingdon and his predecessors did well for those who followed them in securing something which was tax-free. The only time that I have felt myself in agreement with the hon. Member for Fife, West was when he expressed envy of someone who had something tax-free. I too should like to have something tax-free, but my ancestors were not so wise or clever—I will not use any other adjective—as were the Earl of Abingdon and his predecessors.

In England and Wales there are three toll bridges on trunk roads and one toll road. There is one toll bridge on a trunk road in Scotland. There are 17—including Tamar on a potential class I route—toll bridges on classified roads and one classified toll road in England and Wales. There are also a number of toll bridges and roads on unclassified roads.

The history of the ownership of these tolls is extraordinary. It goes back to antiquity and to ancient statutes. Tolls often stem from private Acts conferring rights on the builders of a bridge. They can be owned by local authorities, the British Transport Commission, private companies or individuals. Property or rights in the highway land are sometimes associated with the ownership of toll rights. Highway authorities have power to acquire the ownership under Section 233 of the Highways Act, 1959. The Minister or the local highway authority may compulsorily acquire toll roads but not those owned by railways. The compensation to be paid is subject to determination by the Lands Tribunal. If a local highway authority wishes to continue to levy tolls the Minister has to agree to a period of years for their continuation.

The redemption of tolls is extremely rare in practice, because of the substantial amount of compensation involved. Various figures of tax-free incomes have been mentioned in the debate, but how much compensation would an hon. Member expect if he had a tax-free income of £15,000 a year? What amount would have to be invested in funds to give an income of that kind?

The point has been already put to the Minister in debate that nearly all the increased income from these tolls has not been created by the people who built the bridges but derives from the fact that we manufacture and run so many vehicles. It is the motorists who have created this value.

That is not relevant to the point of compensation, because if anyone has a tax-free income under an ancient statute it becomes difficult to compute the compensation.

In recent years the Syleham—Brock-dish road in Norfolk and East Suffolk has been acquired, but that was a case where the previous owners dedicated the toll without compensation. It may be that some other owners would like to leap in and do the same. If so we would give anxious consideration to any such offer. The Hampshire County Council acquired the Langstone Harbour Bridge which is on a classified road and in that case my Ministry did not give a grant towards the cost of redemption but paid towards the cost of building a new bridge. Consent was given to the County Council recouping itself from toll revenue and the tolls were eventually extinguished in 1960.

We must distinguish between old toll bridges on short stretches of road and new constructions like the Forth Bridge, the Severn Bridge, the Dartford Tunnel and so on. I agree in principle that isolated tolls on existing roads are undesirable because they are contrary to the principle that right of passage on the highway is free. By their existence they may distort the natural pattern of traffic and, if the revenue they yield is insufficient, the section of road to which they apply and for which the toll owner is responsible may be badly maintained. Sometimes the collection of tolls causes delay, but I do not think that that will apply to the Forth Bridge because a new method will be employed there and on the Severn Bridge. In America motorists throw their money down on a device. The weight of money operates the machine and the motorist goes through.

We must differentiate also between trunk roads and classified roads. As to trunk roads, while it is policy of my Ministry to further the redemption of tolls as soon as possible, at the present time funds have to be concentrated on the construction and improvement of the country's main industrial routes. If I had to spend some of the money which the Treasury allocates to me to free a toll bridge I should have that much less for my trunk roads scheme. It is better for me at the moment to continue to have new building rather than free bridges on existing roads.

While this decision has been made, would the right hon. Gentleman not agree that at the same time tolls should not be just an automatic thing? For example, ambulances go back and forth from Fife to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Is there any reason why there should not be season tickets for people who use the bridge every day?

There is already an arrangement, in such cases as the Mersey Tunnel with the local authority and the Post Office. When I was in the Post Office I had an arrangement for postal vans to use the Mersey Tunnel on a season ticket basis, and I have no doubt that that could be applied to the Forth Bridge.

Proposals to relieve any tolls have to be considered, therefore, on their merits in relation to other improvement schemes. It will be appreciated that compared with improvement schemes they show a poor rate of return in terms of traffic flow or safety for the heavy capital investment involved. From the traffic point of view, it is often a better long-term proposition to try to by-pass the bridge, and that is what we propose to do at Selby.

I was very glad to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Howden (Mr. Bryan) speak after being silent for so long as a Whip. He spoke genially and confidently this morning, possibly because the Liberals are not here. The by-pass at Selby is planned but traffic conditions in the area are not bad enough to give it an early place in the programme and the cost would be £2½ million. My hon. Friend asked about the possibility of having part of the Barnsley railway line converted into a road, thus reducing the east-west traffic through Selby. This has been shelved because the cost of conversion would be uneconomic. In any case—and I draw the attention of the. Member for Fife, West to this—the British Transport Commission is considering re-opening the line between Hull and Barnsley. I thought the hon. Member for Fife, West would like to know that the Commission not only close down lines but reopen some as well.

On classified roads the same general policy that I have outlined applies. The highway authority is empowered to acquire the tolls either by agreement or compulsorily, but in practice they seldom do so without the aid of a grant from the Minister. Even on classified roads the acquisition of toll rights is often an expensive business and it would be wrong to spare funds for the redemption of tolls when so much needs to be done, especially in relation to urban congestion. There is considerable pressure on the Ministry to assist highway authorities with the cost of redemption of existing tolls on certain classified roads, particularly in respect of the Eynsham-Swinford Bridge and Whitchurch Bridge. I have stuck rigidly to the line that my funds could be used elsewhere to better purpose. Only when the priority of toll redemption, measured in terms of easing traffic congestion, becomes equal to that of other improvements should money be spent on it. To divert money to the redemption of tolls now would be to distort the programme.

The policy of successive Governments about tolls has been that they should be applied to very large and costly bridges and tunnels which effect a particularly great saving in time and distance. It has been decided that the Dartford Tunnel and the Tamar Bridge are to be tolled. The Severn and Forth Bridges are also to be tolled. These bridges and tunnels represent a considerable investment, but they also create completely new facilities, and that is rather important.

On the classified road projects toll revenue is to be used to service the loan raised to cover at least part of the construction cost. So this policy on new and expensive construction works will be continued and we shall toll them where-ever we can. I said on 19th April, 1961, that tolls would not be charged on motorways forming part of the five major projects or early extensions of them.

Surely the principles which my right hon. Friend has enunciated could be applied to extensions of the motorway system if not to the present roads, so that they could be brought about at an earlier date than would otherwise be possible?

They could. The pledge was given regarding the existing projects. At the same time I said that we should go into new motorway programmes and make up our minds later whether there would be tolls. It would be possible to finance them in that way.

My hon. Friend the Member fox Howden asked a number of questions. First, what volume of traffic was likely to use a toll-free bridge at Selby in 1964. Assuming that the present bridge was replaced by a new toll-free bridge and no by-pass road was built, we estimate that approximately 11,000 vehicles would use it each day. I am quite certain however that the best answer to Selby's problem would be to have a by-pass and that would make a bit of a hole in the profits derived from the present toll bridge.

My hon. Friend asked what would be the total trunk road traffic using a bypass bridge. A bridge on the by-pass might be used by about 8,000 vehicles a day in 1964. He also asked about the origin and destination traffic census on which we were to decide whether to build over the Barnsley—Hull railway line. The answer to that is that as I have said we have decided not to build along this line.

Other bridges mentioned included the Eynsham—Swinford Toll-bridge in Berkshire, and I believe that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary has one in his constituency in Oxfordshire, so that it seems to me better that I should reply in this debate than that he should. I am quite sure that a local toll which is an isolated and ancient nuisance to users on a perfectly ordinary road should be got rid of. But I am not able to say, or to accept the suggestion of my hon. Friend, that the Government should fix a time limit by which they would extinguish all these ancient rights. I cannot accept that. But if on new bridges we have the right to charge tolls, on the old bridges the local authorities and my own Ministry can always redeem them. I am sure that with the passage of time the bridges will become completely useless as we build up new routes, but we cannot afford to pay the redemption cost now.

Can my right hon. Friend say why we cannot agree on a fixed time limit?

Because it would mean that I had fixed a date by which a certain amount of Government money would be spent and it would be a very large amount of Government money. That I am not repared to pledge. It is purely a question of pounds, shillings and pence—mostly pounds. I cannot, therefore, accept that suggestion. At the same time it is a question of priority.

While we accept the terms of the Motion, I must emphasise that the Government reserve the right to toll anything which they consider advisable in the circumstances either now or in the future, and the acceptance of the Motion carries no implication to the contrary. The bridges which we are now tolling are not owned by private people or by firms or by any member of their Lordships' House—they seemed to get most of the old bridges, somehow or other. These new bridges are owned by public authorities and in many cases, such a that of the Mersey Tunnel which links Wallasey with Liverool, the toll has been reduced recently. It has been quite a success. I am quite certain that the average motorist would rather pay and have the tunnel than not have the tunnel and save his money, because the presence of the tunnel results in the saving of a tremendous amount of time and energy, and the avoidance of a great deal of frustration. Any profits from the tolls do not go into private hands, which will please hon. Members opposite, but into the public coffers and I consider that a good thing.

I agree with my hon. Friend that these ancient rights are an anachronism. The only difficulty is that they are embodied and enshrined in our statutes and it would be difficult to unscramble them. I hope, therefore, that my hon. Friend will be satisfied with my answer. We are all grateful to him for the delightful way in which he moved his Motion.

I wish to congratulate the hon. Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten) on his luck in the Ballot and the way in which he moved his Motion. He has rendered a service by reminding the House of some of the most extraordinary traditions which we still put up with. I do not believe that the Minister's answer will in any way satisfy the hon. Gentleman. It certainly did not satisfy me.

I must defend my noble Friend, Lord Morrison, against the Minister. It ill becomes the right hon. Gentleman to criticise Lord Morrison. He was the man who was responsible for Waterloo Bridge, in spite of a great deal of opposition, and that is one bridge at least where no toll is charged. Whatever Lord Morrison did or did not do, Waterloo Bridge will always be a monument to him. So let us dispose of any criticism of my noble Friend. I will refer later to the matter of the Automobile Association and the Royal Automobile Club. I think that the idea that they should do the job of collecting the tolls is remarkable.

The Minister said that he objects to some of these old tolls, but does not see how he can abolish them. He said, in effect, that they provided a tax-free income. Just imagine the position of the Government in the face of a situation of that kind. Here we have our so-called modern Minister of Transport—this alert man, who is always telling us how good he is and who is building motor ways all the time—who is unable to deal with the problem created by the existence of tolls which are hundreds of years old because they provide a tax-free income.

How can a modern Tory Government deal with such a matter? I think that it would be simple to dispose of the problem. The right hon. Gentleman could establish a small committee to decide what was the best thing to do and what should be the action of the Government from the point of view of how long these tolls have been in existence and the injustices which they inflict. Then compensation for the tolls could be fixed, and, if the amount of compensation were objected to, there could be compulsory acquisition.

Would not my hon. Friend suggest that the Inland Revenue authorities might assess the amount of tax which ought to have been paid over the last two hundred years and set that against the amount of compensation?

That is an extremely good idea and were it done some toll-owners, such as the Earl of Abingdon, might find that they owed the State quite a few shillings. They might be glad if the Government took away the toll without any question of compensation.

These charges of yesteryear are so stupid as to be hardly worth arguing about. The hon. Gentleman reminded us that the motorist has to pay over £700 million a year in tax and that of this the Ministry of Transport, under the present Minister, spends about £150 million. How can we go on defending a system under which the motorist has to pay more and more? In a recent debate on the Road Traffic Bill the impression went out from this House, unfortunately—inevitably, there have been repercussions; I have received letters, as I think has the Minister—that the new legislation was antimotorist.

I do not accept that. I believe that the danger on the road must be curbed in some way—after all, a motorist, when driving his car, is in control of a lethal weapon—but it is understandable that he should cry, "How much longer and how much more have I to pay for the privilege of owning this vehicle?" The time is coming when we must start to give better value for money. The Minister declares that any new bridges which are built will be tolled. He told the hon. Member for Banbury that, while accepting the Motion, he had to make clear that the Government intended to use the toll system.

I think that the principle is wrong. I agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. W. Hamilton) said. All roads ought to be free. If there is any charging of the motorist to be done, it should by the Echequer itself and by direct taxation of licences. If the Minister decides next year to add to his programme by another £100 million and tells us that he will spend that sum in that year on the roads and that every class of motorist has to make a contribution through his licence, I have no doubt that the vast majority will say that it is value for money.

Why should they be called upon to pay the A.A. and the R.A.C. to collect money to subsidise people who now own many of these tolls? I think that that would be monstrous. I have been to Scotland only once in my life and I should like to go again. The last time I went there I was in the Army, and I had to go. I am a Londoner, and Londoners do not travel too far—Scotland seems a very long way to them. I do not see why, in my contribution to the A.A. or R.A.C., I should have to help pay for those who want to go to Scotland and cross bridges which have tolls.

I want to see the motorist have better road facilities. I declare quite emphatically that no one can foretell the future of a Government with any certainty in these days. I say to the Minister that if I ever get the chance I shall oppose the whole principle of tolls wherever they may be found. I think that it is wrong. If I were the Minister, I would appoint a Select Committee now, with terms of reference to decide how quickly we should abolish the sort of tolls that the hon. Member for Banbury is worried about, and so give him the encouragement which I think his Motion deserves.

I welcome the Motion of my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten). I feel that it is a matter of getting our priorities right. What is most important is to buy up or liberate the old toll bridges, or to continue to construct desperately needed motorways, expressways and flyovers that are going up today.

At this stage, I would certainly prefer the Government to continue building motorways, which are doing so much to help the flow of traffic. As it is, we are building only about 60 miles a motorway a year, and it is reckoned that 1,700 miles of new road are needed. At the same time, I feel that my right hon. Friend's policy should be to prepare, and even publish, a priority list of all toll bridges. This should be made available gradually. I hope that he will liberate the toll bridges as the money comes in.

I also agree with my right hon. Friend on the point that he made that he was not against charging a toll for very costly new bridges or tunnels, especially if there is a reasonable alternative route. I think that when they are paid for, which, of course, they will be over the years, the tolls should be removed.

One knows from experience that that never happens. Once a toll has been obtained and it is profitable it is never removed. This is wishful thinking.

They have done this in America. Many of the private tolls there have after several years paid for themselves. The new idea is gradually to return them back to the authorities. That is what they are trying to do now. One lesson that we learn from America is that where there are toll bridges they double or treble the lanes of traffic to speed up the collection of the tolls. On going into New York there are ten lanes and there is little or no interruption of the traffic flowing in.

If private firms or commercial firms feel that this saving of time and petrol is worth paying for, I think that they should be given the opportunity, if they want, of paying for new tolls. Therefore, I am not against the idea of having tolls. It is quite clear that the public are willing to pay for parking meters which, a few years ago, it was said that no one would be willing to do.

Another point is that I understand that the Road Research Laboratory has done considerable work lately in examining the set-up of toll bridges and toll roads. I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will give the House its findings, because, so far, I cannot discover anything that has been said about this research. Is it because of the economic side, or is it because they find that the tolls slow traffic or divert traffic? It would be useful for the House to have a full report of the findings of the Road Research Laboratory.

Some owners of old toll bridges will not relish the idea of parting with these "gold mines". Others, I think, may have second thoughts, because of the ever-increasing cost of upkeep and the major structural alterations that will be needed as more and more vehicles come on to the roads. This category may be willing to give up their tolls for quite small amounts of compensation. I therefore feel that it is time that they should be officially approached to see what the exact position is.

There is an old toll bridge at Whitney, in Herefordshire. The bridge is very narrow, not in first-class condition and has a low weight limit. I think that it would cost the Herefordshire County Council too much to purchase. As it is in my constituency I have gone into this carefully and I feel that it is an ideal example of one of the toll bridges which should be liberated in time.

It is always a great disadvantage to speak after the Minister. He kindly said that he was doing it for the benefit of the House. I think that, judging by the clock, he may have done it more for his own convenience.

My right hon. Friend made it perfectly clear that he thought that it would be for the convenience of the House if he intervened at that stage to give the Government's point of view. I am here and I shall take careful note of anything that my hon. Friend says. My right hon. Friend has another engagement and that was made known to hon. Members opposite and to the hon. Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten). I hope, therefore, that my hon. Friend will not pursue that stricture on my right hon. Friend.

The same thing has happened before on Fridays.

I was going on to say that I was grateful to my right hon. Friend for leaving my hon. Friend here for the rest of the debate. It has happened on many Fridays that the Government have intervened in the middle of the debate when there have been Members on both sides who wished to discuss matters and there has not been a Minister from the Department concerned on the Government Front Bench to answer their questions.

However, I am not one who has good or bad fortune in this matter, because there are no tolls in Clapham. I wish to make one or two points which have not been made in this debate. Under Section 3 of the 1930 Act and also under the 1959 Act the Government have certain powers to take over toll gates and roads. I should be grateful if my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary could tell me if this applies to tolls which are held under Royal charter. I should have thought that they would be outside the scope of those Acts and that an independent Act would be required either to abolish or to purchase the type of toll which emanated from a Royal charter.

I quite agree with my right hon. Friend that this matter is a question of priorities. In 1947, the then Minister of Transport urged local authorities to purchase tolls, but in 1950 and 1955 ministerial emphasis was put rather on the improvement of roads than on investing large sums for purchasing these rather out-of-date assets. One of the things we have to look at in considering priority is not so much the cost of the toll, but the inconvenience caused to the public.

I was interested in what my right hon. Friend said about the possibility of by-passing some toll bridges. That, surely, is the easiest way of overcoming the problem in many cases. When the bridges are not up to modern standards it would be better not to purchase these assets, but rather to build by-passes. That brings me to a point on which I should also like to have the guidance of my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary. If it is desired to by-pass a bridge in relation to which there is a charter saying that one may not build within two miles of it, what happens if the Ministry or a local authority does build such a by-pass? Would they then be liable to an injunction from the company concerned? This is an important point, because I am sure that the answer to the problem is to by-pass such bridges and not to purchase the assets.

I was particularly interested in what the Minister said about compensation. I should have thought it almost impossible to assess the amount which should be paid in many cases. One has either to expropriate or to compensate. If one expropriates, that is one matter, but if one compensates the difficulties are immense. With taxation as it is, what sum of money could today possibly compensate for a tax-free income of £70,000 a year? Even with the present rate of interest, with which I know hon. Members opposite disagree, at 6 per cent. there would be a taxable yield of £60,000 a year. So the amount would not be £1 million, but a sum very much greater than that.

The owners of these bridges must have realised that in time these assets could become valueless. The Ministry should approach them and say, "You have an asset which, at present, is extremely valuable, but it may well be that in ten years the asset could be rendered entirely valueless if we build a bridge within a mile or two of your bridge." A little bargaining like that might bring down the price to something of a reality.

As we have heard from the hon. Member for Banbury, there are only 30 of these bridges. We are not dealing with a large number and they are not all in the same category. Probably we would find there was a problem in 10 or 15 cases. I agree with the principle of negotiation, but if it were said that the Minister was thinking of abolishing the system the negotiations would go smoother.

I am grateful to the hon. Member. I would go further. I would not say that we were going to abolish the tolls, but that we had means of constructing alternative routes—which, of course, would be free to the motoring public—and which would thereby decrease the assets. I am grateful to the hon. Member because he has enlarged on my idea that one should go to the owners of these tolls with a bargaining counter. One could say that the Minister was thinking of abolishing the tolls. Although hon. Members opposite do not quite agree on the question of compensation, possibly this calls for some form of, I will not say blackmail, but pressure to make the owners realise that their assets could be completely reduced to nothing if the Ministry or the local authority were to produce other means for transport within prescribed distances.

Will the hon. Member allow me to get this on the record? My party has always agreed that where the State takes over it shall compensate.

The hon. Member earlier referred to the question of price. Let us face it, it is a price. If one had an asset which is tax-free it is very valuable. I wish that my ancestors had thought of it. There has been a lot of jealousy on both sides of the House of owners of these lucrative tolls, but if we were to go to them with a straight deal we would have to pay a very large sum in compensation. I was suggesting a way of reducing the sum in the public interest.

The question whether the £700 million or the £150 million is used on the roads is not so relevant. What is important is that the public have to decide for themselves the priority. I see no reason why if one wishes to travel from X to Y and there is a perfectly good road provided one should not be asked to pay for that road. It could be paid for over a period of ten years. If a firm undertaking were given that ten or fifteen years would be allowed during which the work on the road could be paid for, the problem could be met. In America, this system has proved extremely practical. It has benefited road users and everyone concerned. The same happens in Germany and elsewhere on the Continent.

If the motorist wishes to use an old inferior road he is welcome to do so, but if he wants to use a modern, fast road he has to pay a reasonable sum for so doing. That sum is not excessive, because it must be compared with the wear and tear on one's car and one's time and patience.

Many motorists think it well worth while to pay extra for such a benefit. A great deal has been done by my right hon. Friend and I welcome the idea of the purchase of road improvements if this would bring a better system of transport to the country.

I agree with the hon. Member for Bermondsey that once the bridge construction work has been carried out it would be right in the interests of the community to cease to levy taxes on the road or the bridge. I would be grateful if my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary would deal with the points I have raised. I hope that he will find himself able to negotiate with bridge authorities. None of us wants to trample on the rights of individuals and owners of historic bridges or tolls. I ask my hon. Friend to look at the matter from the point of view of traffic and not so much as a question of money when considering whether taking away bridge tolls would alleviate the traffic position. Possibly he could negotiate with the owners on the lines I have suggested.

I agree very much with my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham (Dr. Alan Glyn). I think that most of us who have taken part in this debate have rather divided feelings about what is proposed, because on the one side there can be no doubt that the development of our road system and the building of bridges in the past has been to quite an appreciable extent dependent on private enterprise. Indeed, I suppose that if one goes back far enough—not far enough to reach the Romans, but a little short of that—one finds that most road-making has been the product of some kind of private enterprise.

I suppose the basic argument which underlies today's Motion and the many speeches which have been made is that this historical motive is now superseded and that we can safely shut ourselves off from that particular source of road and bridge building. I have some doubt about that, as I believe my right hon. Friend has. He doubted whether this was quite a spent force. It is difficult to introduce an absolute prohibition of this kind of development for the future, and equally difficult to justify an immediate and absolute abolition of all the surviving signs of it in the past.

A toll is simply a payment for an advantage or special facility, to use the etymological history of the word. It is difficult to see why a person should not be at liberty to provide over his own land or at his own expense a more commodious or convenient way for the public than that which has been provided by the public authorities, and why those who wish to pay some extra fee for the extra advantage should be debarred by a policy of Parliament from doing so. But no one would doubt that, in general, highways and bridges should be made by public authorities and that it is the general duty of the Government to ensure that there is an adequate system throughout the country.

My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport, who is, no doubt, waiting to go to lunch, must have listened to many debates in this House—as has the Minister himself—in which they have been urged from both sides to increase the national provision of highways, and we are embarked on a considerable programme now. I do not think that in this debate on a Friday anyone is questioning for a moment that the Government and the local public authorities have the general responsibility of providing an adequate network of highways and bridges throughout the country. But that still leaves the question of principle as to whether we should prevent for the future, and abolish in respect of the past, these extra provisions which have been made by private persons.

Public policy in England has been rather on the side of those who have supported this Motion most absolutely today. Oddly enough, the position in English law is that nobody has the right to make a private road open to the public at a charge. It is very doubtful whether one can, in England, dedicate a road to the public subject to a toll. The same applies to bridges. Because of that, virtually all these toll bridges owe their existence to Private Acts. There were in earlier times an enormous number of such Acts. One of the chores of this House was the annual Turnpike Renewals Act, just as we now have the Expiring Laws Continuance Act today.

There is no doubt that progressively through the years, the old turnpikes and toll bridges have been steadily reduced in number, until only thirty are left. Thus, I do not think that anyone would dispute that general public policy in England has been, from the earliest times, against the existence of any considerable number of private roads open to the public. Therefore, this tendency is something that we start with in this debate.

The question is rather the narrow one of whether one should take now a sort of guillotine action to knock off in a single operation the thirty which survive. I am sure that we are grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten) for the Motion. Toll bridges are not the sort of subject which the Opposition chooses for a Supply Day. I think that the Opposition leaders get into trouble from the section of the party which sits below the Gangway if they decide to discuss anything so practical as toll bridges. I do not want to make partisan animadversions, but I see that such is the interest in toll bridges that there are no right hon. or hon. Gentlemen present on the benches opposite, with the exception of the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Parker), who is waiting to move the next Motion. But for the private enterprise of my hon. Friend we should not be discussing this subject at all.

While we are grateful to him for that, I must enter slight reservations about the Motion. On the whole, this is a process which is proceeding pretty fast. Of course, my hon. Friend's answer to that has been that if we look at the thirty bridges which survive we find that they are not the thirty last to have been constructed. Some of them are pretty old specimens which have shown a great staying power in the race. It may be right, therefore, that this list should be scrutinised very carefully and that we should give our consideration to getting rid of at least some of them.

In particular, a toll bridge on a trunk road is an absolute anachronism. How these three toll bridges on trunk roads have survived I find it difficult to understand. I am sure that it must have been by nothing more than inadvertence, in view of the energetic team which we now have at the Ministry of Transport. The end of these tolls must come, I feel sure. But when we come to some of the details, such as the question of compensation, I find myself again slightly at variance with some of my hon. Friends and some hon. Gentlemen opposite. Obviously, compensation must not be exaggerated, but why should it not be just right? I say that because my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury said that it should be modified—that the arbitrator should be instructed to take into account the wider public interest.

This is a nice elastic phrase, and one infers that the arbitrator would be instructed to scale down the figure he thought was right. I think that that is the unavoidable implication. If one were, under compulsory purchase, to instruct the arbitrator or the tribunal to take into account something called the "wider public interest", that would be flying in the face of the trend of the times—which I believe to be a good trend—which is to give the full market compensation on compulsory purchase.

It is only a couple of years since we passed an Act specially to deal with that point. Therefore, I think that the full market value should be paid if there is to be compulsory expropriation of these bridges. My hon. Friend the Member for Clapham is right in saying that, in assessing the full market value, one must take account of a number of factors, including the historical fact that these toll bridges have not always been as profitable as now, when traffic is so much denser than it used to be.

The fact that the person who operates the toll bridge is not entitled to a permanent monopoly in road transport in the area must toe taken into account. However, care must toe taken. It would be cheating to argue that the compensation should be greatly diminished because the local authority could draught out a new line of roadway with a new bridge just beside the existing one and proceed by compulsory purchase powers to take the land and build the road and bridge with a grant from the Ministry. To argue from this that the right possessed by the present owner of the toll bridge is a highly precarious one would be in effect cheating and depriving someone of proper compensation for the enterprise which either he or his ancestors showed.

The answer to this is that it could happen in a commercial undertaking. When the value of anything is being assessed, the possibility of another factory starting up next door also has to be assessed. All these factors must fairly be taken into consideration. It is not that the local authority will say, "We will build here if you do not reduce your price". AH these factors must be taken into consideration when assessing the final price.

I quite agree. All these references to the motives of our ancestors would toe more appropriate on the Motion of the hon. Member for Dagenham, who is going to speak about the motives of ancestors presently. The hon. Member for Islington, East (Mr Fletcher), who has just entered the Chamber, need not be confused. We are still discussing toll bridges.

There is the commercial risk that somebody will come and put a new bridge beside the toll bridge already existing, but this is not a substantial risk. There is a difference in kind rather than in degree when it is argued that a public authority with compulsory purchase powers might come and do that, not because it would be commercially competitive, but simply to exercise pressure upon the owner of the toll bridge by virtue of the authority's compulsory purchase powers so as to make the toll bridge worthless. It would be unfair to take that possibility into account when assessing the compulsory purchase price.

Care should be taken when arguing that, if a toll bridge goes on, the local authority in its ordinary public duty to the inhabitants of the area, with the growth in motor traffic and the proliferation of the road system which follows, may well decide that it ought to put a public unrestricted road near to the toll bridge and, to that extent, compensation would be diminished. This is a tempting argument, but once considerations of the wider public interest are introduced into the assessment of compensation we shall be back to the old days before the 1959 Act.

My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury said that in any intervening period, or if some of these bridges were to go on, at least there should be provision for the publication of accounts. I had to leave the Chamber while my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport was speaking. I do not know whether he mentioned this question. I am under the impression that there is an obligation to render accounts under most of the Private Acts. Throughout the nineteenth century under the annual Turnpike Acts, there was a permanent statutory obligation to publish an account of the receipts and expenses of the roads to show what proportion the revenue bore to the expenses.

The continuance of the Turnpike Acts year by year was often made conditional upon the expenditure of a fixed proportion of the revenue upon maintenance. The proportion was prescribed in the Schedule to the annual Act. I do not know whether that has now gone by the board. I should be rather surprised if it had. I have the feeling that provision for the publication of accounts will be found in most of the Private Acts or in whatever succeeded the annual Turnpike Acts.

It is interesting to bear in mind, especially in view of the speech of the right hon. Member for Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire (Mr. Woodburn), that in Scotland turnpikes were virtually abolished by the Roads and Bridges (Scotland) Act, 1878, which came into effect a few years later. There are very few private roads and bridges left in Scotland. Therefore, it is interesting to learn that there is now a proposal by the Ministry of Transport to start them up again. The speech of the right hon. Member for East Stirlingshire was interesting because, after delivering an almost emotional appeal to us to abolish these anachronistic tolls, he said that he had appealed to Mr. Herbert Morrison, when he was Minister of Transport, "For heaven's sake let us have a Forth Bridge and charge tolls for it". That is what one is quite likely to do.

This is a Motion and not a Bill. The object is to leave a general impression of the views of the House in the mind of the Minister. We must not be absolute on this. Some of these old bridges are obviously anachronistic. They are a nuisance. They are a survival from the past which ought to be cleared away. However, many highly developed countries, and many countries which have put tremendous emphasis on the development of their road systems, have during the current phase of their operation placed considerable reliance on the turnpike principle. In face of this trend we should not shut our minds to the use of a method which has been established in this country for hundreds of years. This is not the moment to bring down the chopper and put this system behind us as a medieval relic which has no contemporary relevance.

The Road Fund was eroded very successfully by my right hon. Friend the Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill) way back in the 1920s. It is now almost hopeless to argue that road fund taxation should be used for road building, though many people will continue so to argue. It is, however, now a politically hopeless argument. We must steel ourselves to the prospect of paying our transport taxation and also for special reasons paying for a period of years a toll to use a tunnel, stretch of road, or bridge, simply on the principle that if we do not agree to do so in the present economic circumstances of the country and the world we shall not get the bridge, tunnel or stretch of road.

Although it may ultimately be desirable to get rid of this system altogether, let us be empirical about this for the future and for the thirty old ones which still survive. I hope that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary will tell us that there will be a more pragmatic approach rather than the theoretical one of arguing that whatever has existed for hundreds of years must prima facie be wrong in the twentieth century. It is always a great pity so to argue. It often leads to loss of efficiency. I am sure that nothing is closer to the heart of the present Minister of Transport than efficiency.

I apologise to the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Parker) for keeping him waiting to move his Motion, but I promise that I shall speak for only a few moments—and that only to answer two questions asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham (Dr. Alan Glyn).

My hon. Friend asked about the powers in the Highways Act, 1959, relating to the acquisition of tolls by highway authorities, and wanted to know whether the power was extensive enough to cover charters. Section 233 of the Act specifically mentions charters, the opening words of subsection (1) being

"… Where a person has by virtue of a charter or special Act the right to charge tolls in respect of the use of a highway …".

The subsection then goes on to give power to the Minister or to a highway authority to acquire the right either by agreement or by compulsory purchase.

My hon. Friend also asked whether the right of the highway authority or of the Minister to acquire the tolls extended also to the provision one frequently finds in old Acts and charters that, in consideration of the right to charge a toll being granted to the toll owner, a prohibition is placed on the building of any other bridge within a certain distance.

The historical reason for that is that many of these toll bridges succeeded ferries, and where there had been a ferry a franchise was frequently granted to the ferry owner to protect him from undue competition from any other ferry owner in the immediate vicinity. When the ferries were replaced by bridges, the same condition was put in.

Subsection (1) of Section 233 of the Highways Act, 1959, quite clearly states that the Minister or the local authority may acquire the toll either by agreement or by compulsory purchase

"together with the property in the highway and all his other property, rights and obligations under the charter or special Act …"

Without being unnecessarily categorical about it, I should have thought that the use of the word "rights" in the subsection would almost certainly mean the right of the toll owner to be protected from undue competition in the sense in which I have just used the phrase. Therefore, I think that the answer to my hon. Friend's second question is also "Yes". If I find that I am wrong, I shall certainly write to him and say so.

I am told that it would mean that if the highway authority wished not to purchase the main assets, but to by-pass the toll bridge or whatever it was, the authority would have to purchase that part of the right relating to the prohibition on building within whatever distance it might be.

That would be a little more complicated, because those rights to build would probably come under another Section of the Highways Act, and there might be a conflict between those other rights in Sections under which they would seek to build what was, in effect, a new road and the rights of the owners of the ferry or toll under the old statutes. I cannot go into that without proper investigation, but Section 233 seems to indicate that the answer to both of my hon. Friend's questions is "Yes".

Can my hon. Friend say what were the findings of the Road Research Laboratory on toll bridges and toll roads?

I am sorry, but I cannot. I heard my hon. Friend mention that matter, but I personally have not heard about it. I will make inquiries, and if there is anything that can be told to my hon. Friend, I will write to him, also.

I beg to move,

That this House is of opinion that a committee should be set up to inquire into the legal and social disabilities of illegitimate persons, and that the committee should be empowered to make recommendations for the removal or amelioration of such disabilities.

In the United Kingdom at the present time there are over 3 million people who were born out of wedlock, and half a million of those are of school age or under. Figures for 1960, the last year for which records are available, show that of those then born one in twenty was illegitimate, the total figure for the United Kingdom being 47,000.

I am a strong supporter of any steps that may be taken to terminate the colour bar. The colour bar arouses a great deal of interest in this House, but there is far less interest—as the numbers now present in the Chamber indicate—in trying to abolish the bar sinister—that is, the taint of bastardy from which a considerable number of our fellow citizens suffer. Those having that bar suffer many legal and social disabilities, and in many ways they live in this country as second-class citizens, without the full rights of British citizenship. That is due to no fault of their own. One may argue that parents may have sinned in the past, but I do not think that in this year of grace one should therefore argue that the children's teeth should be set on edge.

Illegitimacy is am increasing problem. Allowing for the fact that the figures for the Middle Ages may not always have been accurate, the number of bastards born from those days right up to the seventeenth century was not very large—at least, as far as the records show. A big increase took place with the disturbances of the Industrial Revolution, and a decline followed the growth of Victorian puritanism, but there was a big rise during both world wars. Over the whole period, and particularly in the last twenty or thirty years, the general tendency has been for the bastardy rate to rise. The surprising thing is that the 1960 figures show that over 16,000 more illegitimate children were born in that year than were born in 1938—before the Second World War. On the whole, the figures appear to be rising in a period of greater prosperity, when we are told that we have never had it so good.

This is a difficult problem to tackle, because there is no political group pressure from bastards. They are not organised in any way. There is no group to press hon. Members to take steps to put right some grievance. There are no votes in tackling this problem, because the individual who is illegitimate, or the parents of an illegitimate child, is filled with some sense of shame. The child is usually filled with a sense of resentment. All the parties want to keep the fact of the illegitimacy private.

The sense of resentment that illegitimate children have about their status has a very big effect on their behaviour, particularly on the behaviour of those in the teenage group. The child who finds out, when he is a teenager, that he is illegitimate at once feels a sense of instability, and the interesting thing is that such studies as we have made show that juvenile delinquency rates amongst illegitimate children are about twice as high as those amongst legitimate children of the same age group. That seems to be almost entirely due to a sense of instability; and of resentment against the community because of their status—

Can the hon. Gentleman say why it seems that the delinquency rate is almost entirely due to that cause? Is not that jumping the gun? Is it not more likely to be due to the fact that in most cases those children do not have a normal home and parents to whom they can turn, but are very often in care? That, surely, must be a far more important predisposing factor than sense of resentment.

The sense of resentment and instability that they feel is a very strong factor in juvenile delinquency.

Another cause of disturbance is undoubtedly the longer birth certificate. As the House knows, a shorter birth certificate is now in existence, on which the father's name is not mentioned. On many occasions, however, the longer birth certificate is required and when it does perturbation arises in the minds of many parents who have not told their children that they are illegitimate. Many employers demand to see the longer birth certificate before appointing persons to jobs. Most universities, including most Oxford and Cambridge colleges, want it, and I believe that the Foreign Office also demands it before making an appointment.

The fact that in the case of the illegitimate child the longer birth certificate bears no father's name, or bears a father's name that is different from that of the child, brings home to that child the fact that he is illegitimate and gives him a sense of resentment about his status.

Is my hon. Friend saying that there is a real prejudice in the Foreign Office against the entry of illegitimate persons?

I am not saying that, but the Foreign Office may have a better reason than other people for wanting more information on security grounds. I am not saying that it decides against the appointment of an illegitimate person, but I understand that it demands extra information.

Another cause of difficulty is the procedure for dealing with illegitimacy cases. The fact that there is a police court atmosphere when affiliation orders are applied for means that many people would rather not apply. They dislike the atmosphere. This, again, helps to build up the sense of shame and resentment which afflicts all people who have to deal with the problem of illegitimacy, either because they have illegitimate children or because they themselves are illegitimate.

What has been done to tackle the problem? The first and most important step was to try to reduce the number of illegitimate persons, either by legitimation or adoption. I understand that at present about one-fifth of those born illegitimate are adopted, and about the same proportion are legitimated. It is likely, therefore, that about I million persons who were born out of wedlock are either legitimated or adopted and, therefore, removed from the position of being illegitimate. That still leaves about 2 million.

When investigating the subject it is very difficult to obtain any firm facts. One has to depend mainly on various social studies, whose data is often rather limited in scope, and one is not always certain whether the samples used are fair ones. That is part of my case for asking for a further inquiry to be carried out. But it seems to be the case that of the 2 million people that I have mentioned a remarkably high proportion—about 39 per cent.—live in stable families, in the sense that there is a father and mother in the family. They are living in stable family surroundings, although the family is not a normal one, either because the parents do not wish to be married or, more commonly, because one or other is married to someone else and is therefore not free to marry the person with whom he or she is living.

That problem cannot be dealt with until we face up to the question of a possible reform of our marriage laws which might make it possible for rather more of these de facto families to become de jure families. I do not propose to discuss that problem now, but it means that a large group of illegitimate children who are in this special position would be living in an absolutely normal family if the parents were to marry. The children would then become legitimated under the 1959 Act.

A rather more difficult group to deal with—amounting to about 7 per cent.—is made up of those who are living in unstable families, in which a man is sometimes there and sometimes not, or in which there is sometimes one man there and sometimes another. Normally, there is a man and a woman running such a household.

There is a very large group where paternity is admitted or where affiliation orders have been won in the courts. If the various studies that have been carried out are correct, in no less than 93 per cent. of the cases in this group—inclusive of those living in stable families—the father either admits responsibility for the child or the case has been won in the courts. In other words, there is no legal dispute about paternity. But out of this very high proportion only about 50 per cent. of the men give any financial support during the life-time of the child, and then it is often irregular or only for a short time.

Private arrangements are sometimes made outside court orders, usually by middle-class people, in respect of illegitimate children. Such people are not normally anxious to be taken to court, but the legal adviser of the woman concerned often sees that a proper document is drawn up and stamped, so that it can be enforceable in the courts, providing her with an allowance for the maintenance of the child during its childhood.

Where the necessity to obtain an affiliation order arises, only one out of every seven mothers applies for such an order, and 12 per cent. only of the total are granted. The present maximum is 50s., although until recently it was 30s. Only very rarely was the 30s. maximum granted. The usual sum granted was 16s.—and the average was only 9s. 6d. The money can be paid until the child is 16 or, if it has an extended education, 21 years of age, but it is very rare for any money to be paid after the child has left school.

Only 12 per cent. of the fathers pay, and they pay less than two-thirds of the sum fixed, which is half the sum that could be fixed and less than one-quarter of the maximum payment. The curious fact is that when the sum was raised from 30s. to 50s. the number of claims rose sharply. The reason was that although many women did not think it worth the trouble of going through the affiliation order procedure in order to obtain the small sums granted, when it was announced in the Press that the sum would be rather higher they felt that it might be worth trying to obtain it.

The passing of the Maintenance Orders Act a few years ago has helped to ease the problem. It means that many of these orders are enforced and carried out over a longer period. Even so, it is fair to say that affiliation orders do not play a very large part in the maintenance of illegitimate children.

How are illegitimate children maintained? A common practice is for the child's grandparents to take care of it. A woman may go and live with her parents taking the child with her, and possibly she may obtain an affiliation order. Very often the grandmother acts as the mother, and in many cases the child comes to look on his own mother as an elder sister. The very big social job done by grandmothers in such cases is not always fully recognised by the community.

The care of an illegitimate child by grandparents can have difficult consequences. The mother may take the child to them soon after it is born. Later she may marry, in which case she may go away leaving the child with the grandparents. Sometimes the grandparents will adopt the child and sometimes they will not. The child gets used to the grandparents as its own parents. Then a difficult time comes when the grandparents become old. They either die or become incapable of controlling the child when it reaches adolescence and needs particular care and attention. Some of the difficult cases of delinquency arise when an illegitimate child is living with grandparents who either die or become no longer capable of controlling the child.

Another group are placed in homes, such as Dr. Barnardo's Homes, or are placed under the care of the local authority, and often they are boarded out with foster parents. Foster parents do a very fine job, but there is always this difficulty that they do not provide the real security and stability that home life with normal parents provides because there is always the possibility that the child may be moved to other foster parents, or the mother may want it back so that the arrangement comes to an end.

Then again a high proportion of illegitimate children depend on public assistance. In other cases the mother goes out to work and keeps the child with the money which she is able to earn. These are different ways in which the child is supported. My point is that all these ways are far more important than the affiliation order made by the court.

Then there is the other group of children, the 7 per cent., odd, whose fathers are not known or where it cannot be proved who they are. There is no chance in those cases of getting an affiliation order. The mother's problem of caring for a child is far more difficult in those cases compared with the case where there is an admitted father in the background. All the various sources of income that I have mentioned come into play in these cases, but there is far greater lack of stability and background than in the other kinds of cases.

What are the legal disabilities from which illegitimate persons suffer? The first one is that death of the father terminates all responsibility for the child. If a child is halfway through his period of schooling when the father dies, there is no obligation to pay any affiliation after that. The only time that support for the child could be ensured would be if a man made a will specially providing that a grant be made to the Child.

There is one important and interesting exception. Under the Fatal Accidents Act, 1959, an illegitimate child is treated as a legitimate child of his mother and reputed father. This means that if a father is killed in a motor accident, whatever commitment he may have made by an affiliation order or otherwise to maintain the Child is taken over by the insurance company for whatever period he may have undertaken to pay. This maintenance may be paid up to the age of 16 or 21 if the child is receiving education up to that age. I think this is a precedent which might have some influence when considering what ought to be done in the future.

On the question of intestacy, an illegitimate child has no claim on what the father may leave. The phrase in a will "leaving property to my children Off grandchildren" does not include illegitimate children. If it is intended to include illegitimate children they have to be mentioned by name. The same is true in the case of brothers and sisters, although there is less objection there because in such a case the child would be a half brother or half sister and it would not be unreasonable when leaving property to one's brothers and sisters to exclude one's illegitimate half brothers and half sisters.

With regard to the mother's estate, it is a curious fact that if the mother has no legitimate issue the estate falls to the illegitimate child. But if she also has a legitimate child the illegitimate child has no right to the estate. Under the Testamentatry Dispositions Act, 1938, the courts have the power, if a man disinherits his family, to make some provision from the estate for the maintenance of the widow or for a child under 21, or a son over 21 if he is incapable of earning his living, or an unmarried daughter over 21. Many feel recognised illegitimate children should also be able to be considered under this Act.

Another curious point with regard to disabilities is that British citizenship is refused to any children of British parents if the children are born abroad and are born illegitimately. For example, if a child is born of British parents in Germany and if the parents are married, that child can have both British or German nationality, and when he grows up he can select which nationality he will adopt. If a child is born in Germany of British parents and is illegitimate, he cannot have British nationality. He can only have German nationality. Many difficulties have arisen in these cases both after the First World War and after the second when our soldiers were in occupation in Germany. This leads to all sorts of anomalies when a child is brought home to be educated and knows not a word of the language of the country whose nationality he has, and then receives calling up papers to serve in the Armed Forces of that country.

I suggest that the whole procedure of dealing with illegitimacy needs some kind of simplification. In many Continental countries there is a simple system of recognition. If the father is prepared to recognise the child he is put on a register and has certain rights. There is then no need to take the matter to court to prove anything. A simple procedure would be for some welfare worker or representative of the mother to call upon the father before the birth of the child. If the father agrees to recognise the child and make some financial arrangements for his upkeep, the representative could find out what he is able to pay, and, if he is prepared to pay a reasonable sum, the matter should be reported to the court and recognition granted. Such cases should be subject to revision in the light of changing conditions.

With regard to affiliation orders, I suggest that there is a strong case for making some other person than the mother, on behalf of the child, able to institute proceedings to prove paternity. If something more is to be done in this direction, it would be reasonable to allow the putative father to ask for a blood test if he should dispute paternity. As I understand the position, a blood test can definitely prove that a man is not the father, but it cannot prove that he actually is. Possibly, some of the procedures adopted in regard to the Transport Bill which is now going through the House, by which it is open to people to offer to have tests, and the fact that they are willing to do so is then taken into account, may be introduced here.

My last point concerns a very special case for protection for the child for whom no father can be found or in which it cannot be proved who is the father. This is the kind of case which I should have thought is in special need of protection, and I suggest that in such a case the court might appoint a guardian. The guardian might be some person connected with the court, or some relative or someone known to the family, but there is a very strong case for guardianship in the positive sense, not merely that of watching the interests of the child, but of reporting regularly to the court what is happening, so that the child's interests are looked after right through its early life.

After all, we take steps in Chancery to look after young ladies who happen to have fortunes and who might have their fortunes filched from them by someone or other, so that I should have thought that the case was even stronger for appointing a guardian to look after a child in such special need.

In this Motion, I am asking for a Committee of Inquiry. I think it is needed to collect information on the whole subject first. I have tried to give the House such information as I have obtained, much of which depends on very small surveys, but much more information is required before a Committee can decide what action should be taken. I suggest that, having collected all the information possible, the Committee should look at the law as it is now, see how far it is unfair to these people and what protection they require, and suggest possible solutions. I do not say that the various solutions which I have already tentatively put forward are necessarily the best—for dealing with these cases.

There is a lot of foreign experience which might be examined. In Scandinavia, quite a lot has been done in this field, and also in Western Germany, while behind the Iron Curtain they have abolished illegitimacy by law, although it is difficult to find out what this means in fact. I understand that in Poland it has meant that they have an enormous, number of affiliation orders before the courts, and, therefore, the proof or disproof of paternity becomes a very important feature of the case. I well appreciate that if we give greater rights to illegitimate children where paternity is proved, we need to have a better procedure for dealing with affiliation orders. In Russia, despite the abolition of illegitimacy by law, the birth certificate of a child born out of wedlock does not contain the name of the father, so that the child still has a bar sinister and comes to know about it.

In the long run, I hope that we will work towards some kind of solution in which we try to tackle the problem of fatherless children as a group. There are many problems in common concerning the children of widows, and of deserted wives, and of illegitimate children; in all these cases there is no father in the background. I think that possibly in the long run we should be able to treat these groups from the point of view of social need and on rather similar lines. I admit that this is going rather ahead, and might well require fuller investigation. The principle must always be that the needs of the child should come first. Whatever be the method of dealing with these matters, it will be necessary for the State to give some assistance; it ought to be willing to do so. On the other hand, the father should be made to meet his obligations, as far as is possible, and we should collect from him the money he ought to pay.

What kind of inquiry would be the most suitable. We could have a Select Committee of this House or a Departmental Committee, and I have no very strong feelings one way or the other, though I think that either would be better than a Royal Commission, which would take far too long to go into the matter. I should have thought that a Select Committee of this House was probably, on balance, the best way to approach the matter. The most important thing is that any Committee of Inquiry should have the power to take evidence and report on possible solutions. I hope the House will feel that I have made my case.

We are all very grateful indeed to the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Parker), who moved this Motion, for the very great researches which he himself has personally undertaken and for the fact that, in addressing the House as he did in such interesting and lengthy detail, he went a little beyond the scope of the Motion. I imagine that nobody will object to that.

Clearly, from what the hon. Gentleman said, the problem affects a great many people, but there is nothing new in it at all. In 1066, there arrived in this country William the Conqueror, but a short time before that he was William the Bastard of Normandy. But whoever thought, in 1066, when he arrived here, having been known as William the Bastard, that he would become William the Conqueror? Ever since then, and probably before, the problem has been before the country.

It is not a one-sided problem. The hon. Member for Dagenham said with very great truth that one looks after the interests of these children in difficulties, and, naturally, one does, but the problem is so tied up with other questions as well—questions of marriage, maintaining marriages, questions of divorce, questions, sometimes, of blackmail, and one has to be very careful what one does before going any further.

For many years, efforts were made, generally by private Members in this House, to give the illegitimate child of persons both of whom fully acknowledge parenthood and who subsequently married, the same status as that of a person born in wedlock. There is nothing new in that. I used to learn about it when I studied Roman law, and Legitimatio per subsequens matrimonium was one of the questions of Roman law. These attempts on the part of private Members to get legislation through this House were generally unsuccessful. In 1926, the Government—and, quite frankly, I do not at the moment remember its political complexion—

Conservative.

Without trying to take any political advantage of that, I am saying that that Government brought in a Bill which later became the Legitimacy Act, 1926, and which went a very long way to assist the position of such people, because before then the old rule had been that once a child was born illegitimate it was always illegitimate, regardless of what had happened afterwards. That Act, subject to two important exceptions, made the subsequent marriage of the parents of the child a ground for legitimation of the child. For reasons which I cannot explain—I was not in the House then—there was an exception made in respect of Scotland. There being no Scottish Members present, I shall not arouse the ire of those who are not here by suggesting that the Scots must clearly be in a different position from the English and the Welsh in these matters.

There was the further important exception in the 1926 Act that

"Nothing in this Act shall operate to legitimate a person whose father or mother was married to a third person when the illegitimate person was born."

In other words, if one of the parents of the child born out of wedlock, the man or the woman, was married at the time, no subsequent act of theirs could ever legitimate the child.

The hon. Gentleman will recollect that in 1959 he introduced to the House and succeeded in having passed into law his Legitimacy Bill. He did not refer to this in his speech, but I propose to refer to it now. His Bill, which became the Legitimacy Act, 1959, removed the disability to which I have referred. I have referred to the terms of this Act and I have studied what was said in the Second Reading debate, which took place on 30th January, 1959. The hon. Gentleman introduced his Bill, not entirely without opposition, to remove the disability to which I have referred and enable parents married to someone else at the time of the conception to legitimate the child.

I spoke in the Second Reading debate. I shall not read my speech again now. If hon. Members wish to refer to it, they will find it reported in Volume 598 of HANSARD, beginning at column 1417. Although there was a Division upon the Question "That the Bill be now read a Second time", I took no part in it because, although I fully understand the arguments which the hon. Gentleman advanced on that occasion and which, in essence, he has repeated today, I realise that there are dangers and difficulties likely to arise if further change is made.

Although, of course—to use a colloquialism—one wants to do a good turn to the child, one must remember that the change proposed would undoubtedly lead to a weakening of the bonds of matrimony, because the parent of the illegitimate child who was, at the time of the conception, married to someone else would, naturally, have an additional argument or ground for pressure to break up the marriage already in existence.

Although I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we have to consider the children in all these cases, we have to consider, also, how far we should go along the path which he has said is open to us. Ought we thereby to make marriages which, although already shaky, might continue a little longer more likely to break up, with the consequent disadvantages, both social and otherwise, falling upon the children of the actual marriages?

As the hon. Gentleman has told us, a number of children have by reason of these two Acts been subsequently legitimised, and I think that we can agree that, their position having been regularised, we need worry no further about them.

The hon. Gentleman spoke at some length, out of the fruits of commendable research, about affiliation orders, but affiliation orders do not come within the scope of his Motion. An affiliation order affects the parents. The child is too young to know what is his legal or social position when an affiliation order is made. Affiliation orders raise extremely difficult questions, of course. If a man admits paternity, there is an end of the matter and it need not go to court. A man of any substance or sense of responsibility at all will make an arrangement out of court. Questions of proof—there are technical and legal matters surrounding the proof required to obtain affiliation orders—often form a stumbling block, but I do not think that in this debate we need touch further upon such matters which are strictly outside the subject we are discussing.

The Motion expressly refers to the legal and social disabilities of illegitimate persons. I say at once that for this purpose we can dismiss the question of social position. We cannot deal with a person's social position by a committee of inquiry, or by legislation thereafter in the House. I will give an example. We have frequently before us—it will come before us again today—a Bill designed to deal with racial discrimination. We all have our views about whether racial discrimination is good or bad, but we must recognise that, no matter how strongly we oppose it, it cannot be dealt with by legislation. It is a matter of feeling and behaviour.

Does not the hon. and learned Gentleman recognise that, if we remove certain legal disabilities from a group of persons, we raise their status and this improves their social position relative to other members of the community? One of the strongest arguments for dealing with legal disabilities is that the removal of them helps to deal with social disabilities.

I cannot agree with the hon. Gentleman, although I understand perfectly what he has in mind. Even if we raise a person's status or social position—I do not mean his class position, but his social position having regard to his disabilities, if any—we still leave it open to people to say, "By law, he is something which he is not." We cannot change a person's social disabilities, if any, by Clauses argued and passed through Parliament.

The inquiry for which the hon. Member asks is an inquiry into the legal position of illegitimate children. We all know something about this subject, no one better, perhaps, than the hon. Gentleman who has studied it in so much detail, and I am sure that, if he requires further information, any hon. Member in any part of the House who has information to offer, including my hon. and learned Friend who speaks for the Home Office, could provide it. These matters are not new. There is the position of people who may or may not be entitled to inherit. Their position vis-à-vis their parents is well known. A committee of inquiry could only set out—in convenient form for us to read, I agree—the information which we could all find out for ourselves, as the hon. Gentleman has done, through research and inquiry.

I come now to the nexus of the whole question. Having made the inquiry and found out what the legal disabilities of these children are, ought we, in fairness to people who may be affected by a change, to take any action? If the hon. Gentleman is ever lucky in the Ballot for a Private Member's Bill, as he was on a previous occasion, and he thinks that there is something here which ought to remedied by the House, he can do so. He knows better than I do that the House is not harsh or unkind on such occasions. Perhaps one of his hon. Friends might be persuaded to introduce such a Bill which he could support in order to put the matter through the House of Commons in the ordinary way.

It is significant, I think, that, since I have been in the House, about ten years now, many Private Members' Bills have been introduced but, with the exception of the one which became the Legitimacy Act, 1959, which dealt with something which was regarded by many people as a wrong or hardship, no private Member—I shall be corrected if I am wrong—has ever sought to introduce a Bill to remedy the position of such persons as we are discussing today. Therefore, I do not think that I shall be unduly criticised if I say that, although we would wish to remove causes of suffering and hardship, we cannot change the position of these children because we cannot change the circumstances of their birth. In making such alterations one is liable to create greater hardships for other people.

Let me give an example. A person may feel certain that, because of what his mother has told him, Mr. X is his father. Suppose that Mr. X dies a rich man, but he is not mentioned in his will, or that Mr. X dies intestate. The unfortunate person in that position feels that he has been "done out of" something, or is, at any rate, entitled to a share in his father's estate. Can the hon. Gentleman really say that he should have a share?

Surely there is a distinction between a child recognised by the father or by the courts as being his child and a child in respect of whom there is no such recognition. Obviously, in the latter case, he should not have a claim, but, when there is recognition, I should have thought that he should have a claim.

That is the answer that I would give if the question were put to me. That is the whole difficulty of the matter. One cannot slide over it by saying, "If there is recognition, he should have a claim." In many cases, there is not recognition and there is dispute right to the end. The courts may make a decision, but—and I say this with some hesitation in view of my connection with the courts—one cannot say that the court is always right in these matters. Very difficult questions have to be decided.

For instance, women who have these children—and many of them do—have at the back of their minds that they know that the father is what we call in law a man of straw. Naturally, they try to get an order against someone who is better off and, because of the desperate straits in which they find themselves, they are often not averse to a little bit of untruth, and an order may be quite wrongly made. I therefore do not think that the fact that an order has been made against someone should necessarily give a person a legal right in an estate in which he thinks he should share.

The hon. Member for Dagenham was right in what he said about the 1959 Act, and in saying that in divorces the question of illegitimate children must be considered nowadays. We have gone a very long way to alleviate the hardships of those who, through no fault of their own, were born into this condition. But before we go any further we should be very careful to ensure that we do not inflict hardship on others. However, I can assure the hon. Gentleman that, if he brings a Bill before the House to alleviate a hardship which he thinks should be alleviated, I will give it my most careful consideration and, possibly, approval. I remind him that his last Bill was not opposed by me.

Many speeches similar to that of the hon. and learned Member for Surrey, East (Mr. Doughty) have been made over the years. I do not say that in any hostile way. He referred to the debates going back to, I think, 1927, the date of the original Act.

No, 1926.

If he refers to a debate which goes back even further than that, namely, to the time when the question whether the grounds of misconduct and other things should be equal in divorces, speeches were made very similar to the one which the hon. and learned Gentleman made today. They were largely pleas, although humane pleas, in favour of the status quo because of the harm which might be done to others if it were changed.

I am sure that during the ten years in which the hon. and learned Gentleman has been in the House—I have been here nearly thirteen years—he has often been appalled by the choice that we often have to make between two or more evils, and take the papal injunction—of all evils choose the least. That is the way in which we must consider this matter today.

If one traces the history of social relationships back to, say, 1832, which was the time of the Reform Bill from which our modern legislation stems, we come to the question of the social position of different classes of people. This is where the hon. and learned Gentleman was fundamentally wrong. He said that we do not legislate for social esteem. But that we do. It is legislation which, to a degree, gives recognition and social esteem, and we make a great mistake if we think otherwise. I hope that I have not gone back too far in my researches, but I attach great importance to the problem as to how we can legislate to remove social disabilities.

I have been interested, as hon. Members know, in the position of women over a number of years with regard to equal pay, and so on. If we go back to the period of which I am speaking and consider the work of Josephine Butler in the matter of the esteem in which we should hold women, we go back to a society in which social convention was built on the idea that, although men wanted virgins brought to the altar, they still wished to sow their wild oats. It has been a long period of disenchantment for all sorts of men, but we have now been forced to recognise women as equal elements in society.

Speeches similar to that of the hon. and learned Member for Surrey, East must have been made when the Married Women's Property Bill was being considered. We cannot separate the esteem in which we hold illegitimate children from the esteem in which we hold women generally, because, if we cannot legislate for social esteem, equally we cannot legislate for the disabilities of one sex as against another. But we have steadily legislated against that. I think that the hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Ronald Bell) served on the Committee dealing with attachment orders which was initiated by the hon. Lady the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Miss Vickers).

I was. It sat for a very long time, and I examined the Bill most carefully line by line.

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman did. I am glad that he reinforces my memory on that matter. I would not question his disinterestedness or integrity in this subject. It is a question of a fundamental approach.

No one would argue that the Bill of the hon. Lady the Member for Devon-port has not justified itself quickly. Many of the speeches which were made in Committee and in the House by opponents to it have been proved nonsense. That is why it seemed to me that the hon. and learned Gentleman was sounding a belated warning note in 1962 which must have been sounded over the ages. He went back further than I have gone back. He referred to the illegitimacy of William the Conqueror.

The cause of illegitimacy often has a class connotation. The bar sinister may have been all right in its way, but it carried no disabilities among the aristocracy through the ages. There was then a society which did not have so much of a middle class as we understand it today, and the institution of marriage was not commonplace. I do not know whether it mattered so much then or not.

We have to consider the position in modern England. We have also to consider the Puritan phase through which this country went and the attempt during the long reign of Victoria to give stability to marriage. It seems to me that, in attempting to give stability to that estate—this applies to all classes in society—many people were the victims of Victorian respectability, and that sort of thing lives to this day.

I have spent a bit of time on this, because I am trying to tell the hon. and learned Gentleman, through you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, how much I disagree with him on this question of legislation and giving esteem. The Motion itself calls for a committee of inquiry.

"into the legal and social disabilities of illegitimate persons".

Why do we want that? We want that so that we can get on the record what is our belief and because we want authoritative evidence on the subject.

With great respect to my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham (Mr. Parker), who has done a great deal of research upon this, while we shall have his speech and the debate as a whole reported in HANSARD—perhaps a couple of lines in the newspapers tomorrow—I am sure my hon. Friend would not claim that the statements which he has made have the authority which those made by, say, a Departmental committee would have, if a Departmental committee, including some distinguished persons, were brought together to do some research and give us its results. We need research into the sort of things which could be done to remove the disabilities on illegitimate persons without harm to others. That is really all we are asking for, and I am sure I carry the hon. and learned Gentleman with me on that point.

Yes, of course, the hon. Gentleman carries me with him on that point. I grasp the point that he is making. I ask him to grasp this point, that the easier we make the position of these people the more we increase the number of cases we have of difficulty, if we remove the stigma from the parents, between the children of persons married and of persons unmarried. We have to keep the balance somewhere without going to extremes which would affect the morality of social, and moral, behaviour.

I am sure that the hon. and learned Gentleman will acquit me of being offensive when I say that if ever one has had to look at this problem subjectively one tends to take a view of it different from that of those who look at it objectively in the courts. I think that the hon. and learned Gentleman looks on this sort of thing too objectively.

What oppresses me is that the numbers of these people are increasing. Marriages are younger. And children are coming of younger parents. That they arrive is not their fault. I have often thought that one of the few wise sayings of the late Horatio Bottomley was that if we were to stop talking about illegitimate children and to start talking about illegitimate parents we should probably get nearer to the heart of the problem.

Therefore, I would hope that the Government would set up an inquiry. We do not want anything as massive as a Royal Commission, and I do not agree with my hon. Friend that a Select Committee is the sort of body for this sort of thing. Hon. Members are busy with a great variety of subjects. I should have thought there were enough of all sorts of specialist people in this field whose experience could be brought together to bear upon the matter, and I should have thought that a Departmental committee could do the job.

We need not, however, quarrel about the sort of set-up. It seems to anyone who has done any sort of research into the matter, even in the Library, that there is a great deal of information which we still need to get about people, about illegitimacy, about the delinquency which follows deprivation—all that sort of thing. Therefore, I would hope that the Joint Under-Secretary of State would respond today on behalf of his Department.

The Home Department has not a very good record for jumping to attention upon these matters. I remember that the former Member for Ealing, North, Mr. James Hudson, who is still remembered with affection in the House, called the Home Department the great squasher of humane causes. We shall see how far that is true at the end of the day. The Under-Secretary started his political life here, I can remember, by speaking at the 1945 Labour Party conference. He was speaking then about liberties, not squashing them, not squashing the old Liberal tradition. On the morrow of Orpington, I find that rather moving. However, I can at least ask him to remember with compassion the fact that he did have a leftward look at causes not so very long ago.

We should get together a body of evidence on these social disabilities and on how they can be met, in view, particularly, of the changed social pattern. There are so many girls being put in the position of mothering children even when still at school themselves, and the figures are frightening. I think that if the Government would have this inquiry they would be fulfilling a social purpose. With great respect to the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Surrey, East, we could then look objectively at this body of evidence and decide whether we could take some further steps which would increase these people's social esteem.

I take it that we are all on common ground here, that a man is a person in his own right. He has a right to be judged, as he passes through life, without reference to what his father was. As a Socialist, I happen to believe that people should not be judged by inherited wealth, or by what family they spring from. Having said that one way, of those people who are well endowed with this world's goods, I say it also the other way, that a person should not be disadvantaged unduly by the circumstances of his birth.

Surely that is not unreasonable. If we could take away the stigma from these people so that as they pass through life they are judged as persons making their contribution to society and not by consideration of their beginnings, we should, I think, be at accord with the aspirations of hon. Gentlemen on both sides of the House.

I therefore hope that the Home Secretary will be able to do something about it. He is a Butler. He traces his kinship with the greatest of the women who took up the cause of women, Josephine Butler herself, and one of her sayings was that that which is morally wrong can never be economically right. That which is morally wrong, I think, can never be legally right. These are the sorts of considerations which we all of us should have in mind in accepting the Motion which has been so well moved by my hon. Friend today.

As I listened to the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Parker) moving his Motion I must say that the sentiment he left on my mind was one of wanting to agree with him as much as I possibly could. I congratulate him on bringing this subject before us, and particularly on the way in which he moved his Motion.

I am only sorry that that impression has been so smudged and almost eradicated by the speech to which we have just listened by the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell). The hon. Member for Leeds, West always brings this strident note into our debates, even when they are on such non-partisan subjects as that which the hon. Member for Dagenham has raised today. It is always possible to do as the hon. Gentle man has done, to consider these questions as aspects of the great conflict between progress and reaction—

They are.

of good social attitudes and bad social attitudes. For him to speak, as he has done, somewhat aggressively as a Socialist and turn this whole thing into the great social crusade of our time does not really help at all in a subject where one is bound to start from the proposition that there can be no happy solution.

Once children are born outside wedlock, and more especially if they are not legitimised by a subsequent marriage, one is faced with an unhappy situation and no theorising will turn that into a sunny and fortunate situation, as the hon. Member for Leeds, West seemed to think it would.

I did not say so.

The hon. Member did. That is the trouble with approaching this matter from the point of view of principle. The hon. Member said that it was a question of the status of women. He indicated that that was the root of the problem. He gave the analogy that men used to want to bring virgins to the altar, to use his own phrase, but they themselves to behave as they liked. He said that there was now a much better attitude and equality was attained. I do not know what he meant by that.

It is not the case that all men now go chaste to the altar. I fear that the result of the change to which the hon. Member referred is that women less frequently go chaste to the altar. This is not my idea of progress, if it is his. If the hon. Member's view is that we should not take too bad a view of women having illegitimate children because men have always been promiscuous in their behaviour, it is not a helpful approach to one of the great problems of human life.

It was not a question of rationalising my own feeling. I referred to the Married Women's Property Act and to all sorts of things. I meant to refer to the legal structure of society. I referred to divorce legislation in the early 1920s. The legal structure of society was based on what Josephine Butler used to call "dual morality"—one morality for men and another for women. We have got away from that to some extent, and I am not saying where women or men have reached now.

The hon. Member says that we have got away from dual morality for men and women. He instanced the different approach now from what it was when women were supposed to be chaste at marriage. If one wanted to summarise the difference between the hon. Member and myself it could be conveyed by my saying that he regards Josephine Butler as a noble person whilst I regard her as a silly old woman who never said one good thing in her life. I regard everything that she wrote as thoroughly uninformed and misdirected.

The hon. Member must realise that there are two sides to these controversies and that people are entitled to have their views on a moral question without this foolish admixture of reaction and the rest being brought in. We have the problem because someone has misbehaved and there are children who are born outside the family framework. The question, which to some extent is a practical one, is what we can best do not to abolish the sorrow caused—because we cannot do that—but to lessen it, and not just for the children who are the result of the misbehaviour but for the community as a whole.

It is important to bear this in mind because, as my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East (Mr. Doughty) said, and as I have said in previous debates on this subject, the great difficulty that we face here is that if we lessen some of the consequences of being born out of wedlock we run the risk of lessening the importance of the marriage bond itself. Somehow we must try to steer a course between the evils of unnecessary cruelty to the children, on the one side, and damage to a basic institution of civilised human life on the other.

Let nobody think that there is any unreality in this problem. The hon. Member for Dagenham mentioned Scandinavia, which offers us a terrible example of where one can get when one begins to weaken the bond of marriage and to attempt, as he said, to abolish illegitimacy—whatever that means. I have never verified the statistics, but I believe that in Stockholm and that part of Sweden the illegitimacy rate is about 50 per cent. That is a quite dreadful thing. I am sure that there is no hon. Member who would think otherwise.

We know, and we have had reference to it in debates on the Commonwealth Immigrants Bill, that in the West Indies the average illegitimacy rate is between 65 per cent. and 70 per cent. Therefore, of countries of that kind one can either say, as in the case of Scandinavia, that the institution of marriage has to some degree broken down, or, in the case of the West Indies, that it has never really become established. We must be careful that in humanitarian zeal in trying to benefit one section of the community we do not inflict a terrible detriment on another section. This, therefore, is a question of how far we can go in humanitarian betterment of the condition of the children without doing serious damage to the institution of monogamous marriage on which, so far as we can tell, all progressive human societies have been based.

The legal consequences of being illegitimate are nowadays pretty small. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East mentioned them and so did the hon. Member for Dagenham, who listed a number of the disadvantages which still survive. He might possibly agree with me that they are very small. All the major ones have already been abolished, though not without much battle. Legitimatio per subsequens matrimonium has been fought against throughout the centuries. One can go way back beyond the Reform Act to the barons, because the Church was always trying to get a change introduced and the barons were against it. We all know of the famous occasion when they clashed their shields and said, Nolumus leges Angliae mutare. There has always been very strong instintive feeling that we might weaken the institution of marriage if we went too far in abolishing the attributes of illegitimacy.

In the present century we have, on the whole, overcome our doubts and scruples about that, and in the last 30 or 40 years we have passed a series of Measures which have abolished all the serious disadvantages. The ones that are left do not make an impressive list. It comes down to the question of the division of an estate on intestacy. That is the only substantial one, and there it can be seen that there is a difficulty. The law of intestacy has always been based upon the assumed intention of the deceased. If he had made a will, the terms of the will would have been carried out. If he fails to do so, the law, basing itself upon the average dispositions of reasonable men, provides a law of intestacy which takes the place of a will. And so we have to approach it from that point of view.

What would the ordinary reasonable responsible man have done had he remembered to make a will? The law of intestacy has not, on the whole, been regarded as an instrument of social policy. It has always been an attempt to fill a gap. It is probably rather difficult to know what the average person would do in relation to an illegitimate child. Of course, if he did not recognise the child he would do nothing. That is pretty obvious. If he did recognise it, probably he would want to make some provision, if he made a will, but not the same provision as for his legitimate children. So I think that there is scope for looking into that. But, with respect to the hon. Member for Dagenham, I should hate to think of it being looked into by a Select Committee of this House.

Does not the hon. Member recall that this question was ventilated and debated at length in this House when the intestate succession legislation was passed about ten years ago?

I remember the Act, but I have not refreshed my memory recently by looking up the debate. I was in the House at the time.

It is obviously a difficult question. I agree—here I adhere to what was said by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East—that one does not want an inquiry into this matter, but one would certainly be interested to know of legislative proposals which might be made. Someone must give a judgment of Solomon on that matter.

The hon. Member for Dagenham seemed to indicate that there was some disadvantage relating to nationality still surviving, but I do not think that there is much substance in that point. The German cases, arising out of the presence of British troops in Germany, are not typically—indeed, extremely rarely—cases of a British soldier having an illegitimate child born in Germany by a British woman. They are, more characteristically, cases of British men having illegitimate children by German women.

Surely that is a different problem. But the other cases do arise, not only in Germany but all over the world, where illegitimate children born of British parents acquire not British nationality, but only the nationality of the country in which they are born.

The number of cases arising out of the presence of British troops in various parts of the world where an illegitimate child is born to British parents is extremely small and hardly raises a problem worthy of being dealt with by legislation. Unfortunately the cases where there is an illegitimate child and the mother is not British, though the father is, are far more numerous. I think that most people would regard it as reasonable that in such cases the child should take the nationality of its mother and not be able to claim British nationality because its putative father was British. To do otherwise would be striking at the structure of the family for a really trifling advantage.

The hon. Member for Dagenham has included in his Motion the words

"… legal and social disabilities of illegitimate persons.…"

In common with my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East I think it would be absurd to set up a committee to inquire into the social disadvantages of illegitimate persons and try to cure them by legislation. I know that the hon. Member for Leeds, West thinks that there is nothing inherently unreasonable about that. The hon. Member argued that esteem and status are raised by Parliamentary legislation and that if we wish to raise the esteem and general social regard in which illegitimate persons are held, the right way would be by some act of Parliament.

I should like to ask the hon. Gentleman, assuming that was a desirable thing to do, how he would set about doing it. The surviving legal disadvantages are negligible. Perhaps we could amend the law relating to intestacy a little bit, but it would not come to much. The point regarding the law of nationality is quite a trifling one, and even assuming that there was some adjustment which could be made the impact would be infinitesimal. The scope for reforming the law is exceedingly narrow and trifling compared with what has been done. Therefore, I ask both the hon. Member for Dagenham and the hon. Member for Leeds, West how we could do anything about the social attitude to illegitimacy, assuming that it were desirable to do anything, by legislation—unless we were directly to legislate about the attitude of people, as is proposed by the Bill relating to racial discrimination which the hon. Member for Eton and Slough (Mr. Brockway) desires to introduce. Once we begin to try to do that by Act of Parliament it is not much use talking about freedom and liberty.

I would not intervene again except that the hon. Gentleman has referred to the Bill which my hon. Friend the Member for Eton and Slough (Mr. Brockway) seeks to introduce. I think that the hon. Member has made a fair parallel. Surely what this House sets out to do is to assert human principles on which a civilised society should work. I do not say that the feelings and prejudices of people against either coloured people or illegitimate children can be entirely overcome by legislation. But in the light of history—I mentioned women as an example—I think that the hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Ronald Bell) would find it difficult to put up a case which would convince me that no contribution may be made to social esteem by legislation.

I agree that if a certain class of the community were under grave legal disabilities we might raise its status if we removed the legal disabilities. But when we reach the point where those legal disabilities have virtually disappeared, we have also reached the point where legislation cannot do any more, I should have thought, unless the next step is taken—as the hon. Member for Eton and Slough desires to do—to make it a criminal offence to think and to act upon certain social attitudes. That is direct action by Parliament to force a set of values upon the people of the country. I am sure the hon. Member knows that that is something which I would fight against to the last ditch for reasons which are constitutional, moral and all the rest of it, and which I need not go into today. I do not suggest for a moment that the hon. Member for Dagenham wishes to clamp a particular standard of values about illegitimacy on the people of this country. He is not a militant extremist of that kind. I put it in that way because I ask him to say what it is proposed could be done by Parliamentary action in that direction, assuming that it were desirable to do anything.

We might gain some consolation on this subject by reflecting that the facts given by the hon. Member for Dagenham and the hon. Member for Leeds, West about the increase in the number of these people are wrong. The number is not increasing. It is increasing in London and Manchester and in other places to which at the moment there is considerable immigration. One understands that, because of the characteristics of West Indian immigration to which I referred just now, the illegitimacy rate is about 65 per cent. to 70 per cent.

I think that the hon. Member is incorrect. The figures I gave show 16,000 more illegitimate persons in 1960 than in 1938.

I was primarily concerned with the last ten years which I think are a better indication, because the number of illegitimate births rose steeply during the war period and then settled down to about 5·1 per cent.

The figure is 5·4 per cent.

It is 5·4 per cent., as the hon. Gentleman rightly says, for last year, which is ·3 per cent. up. If he examines the figures he will see that the increase is due entirely to the dramatic rise in the figure for the County of London, where it stands at about 11½ per cent., and for Manchester and one or two other centres of Commonwealth immigration. If we eliminate the effect of Commonwealth immigration, which is localised in a very few centres, we find that the illegitimacy rate in this country has remained absolutely stable for about eleven years, having fallen to the level of about 5·1 per cent.

While it certainly is very sad that even one child in twenty should be illegitimate, let us congratulate ourselves on the fact that this is one of the best figures for any large nation in the world. The truth is that, in spite of all that is said, this is a highly moral nation with a very low illegitimacy rate of which we ought to be proud. We are quite right to be critical of ourselves and try to make ourselves better, but let us not deceive ourselves into thinking that there is some rising tide of illegitimacy which threatens to engulf our institutions and threatens us with a particularly urgent, growing problem, because that is not true, apart from the special problem of Commonwealth immigrants which can, one hopes, be dealt with.

Whether or not we regard one illegitimate child in twenty is a serious matter and whether or not we should try to abolish the whole definition of illegitimacy—and I regard it as a very sad phenomenon even in that degree—I do not think that one should try to get rid of it by masking it.

The hon. Member for Dagenham said that 39 per cent. of these children are in what he called settled families, although later he most properly qualified that by saying that a foster family was in no way the same as the natural family, because a child was moved from one foster family to another, sometimes from a foster family to a home and sometimes the natural parents re-took the child. But with all these qualifications, the figure is still 39 per cent., which means that 61 per cent of all the illegitimate children are not in families at all. They are under the care of local authorities or in homes or charitable societies, like the Church of England Children's Society, Dr. Barnardo's Homes and many other societies which do such excellent work for children in this unhappy position.

One really cannot be satisfied or happy about a category of children of whom 61 per cent. are without any family background. If one bears this in mind, and bears in mind the fact that the legal disabilities are now virtually non-existent although minor adjustments might be made, we are up against a problem to which Parliament, unfortunately, can make little contribution. That is the main point I want to make in this debate. It would be a bad debate if it left anyone with the impression that a major contribution to this subject could be made by Parliament. It cannot. We have done quite a bit, but the scope from now on will be limited. There is some scope for administrative action, and in so far as administrative action involves money Parliament would have to come into it; but with the low illegitimacy rate that we have, I think that the next step is to use centres of action outside this House. Perhaps we get a little pot-bound in our deliberations here and think that there is no reality outside this House, that the centre of action is here and that to say that remedies must be taken outside is to take a mere procedural objection and to shuffle off responsibility.

The unreality is in it.

The hon. Member says that the unreality is in it, but one can be too much of a politician. Many things which happen outside this House do not owe their source to this House, nor their end to this House.

There is no real solution to the problem of the 5 per cent. of illegitimate children now except the raising of the moral standards of this country—high as I emphasise they are—and the growing acceptance by people of both sexes that it is a grossly irresponsible thing to have illegitimate children. We may make the best provision we can for them and the most well-meaning people in the world can make speeches about their being treated exactly as anyone else with no regard being had to their origin, but, nevertheless, the child born illegitimate has three chances out of five of not having a family background at all, and, if he is one of the lucky two out of five, it will still be a permanent disadvantage to him throughout his life that he was not born inside matrimony. These are facts which we have no right to mask, or to pretend do not exist.

I am quite sure that Sweden will lose very much in its national life by trying to pretend that it does not matter very much whether a child is born inside or outside the family circle. Stockholm will be a poorer place for having 50 per cent. of its children illegitimate. We can all recognise that. I emphasise to the hon. Member for Dagenham, whose whole activity in this matter I greatly respect—I make that clear—that I say this not to indicate that he is wrong in asking for action and bringing this matter before us, but because I want to emphasise that side of the problem lest his emphasising of his side of it should lead to the erroneous impression outside in the country that the inevitable line of progress is that less and less and less attention should be paid to the question whether a child is born inside or outside a properly constituted British family.

I hope that the hon. Member will take what I have said this afternoon as a contribution made only in that spirit.

I begin by thanking you, Mr. Speaker, for permitting me to take part in this debate, particularly because for many months I have been silent. It is, therefore, quite an experience for me. I say to hon. Members opposite that the fact I have entered the field today bears no relationship whatsoever to any events which may have happened this week, although I must confess that there are some blessings in being an Independent which have been brought home to me in latter days.

I am sure that hon. Members on both sides of the House will agree that the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Parker) has rendered valuable public service by drawing attention today to this very important matter. I also take the opportunity of expressing, on behalf of my colleagues in the children's services and voluntary organisations throughout Britain, their sincere thanks and appreciation for the monumental work which the hon. Member has already accomplished in this field, for, as we all know, it was due to his labours that the Legitimacy Act, 1959, came on to the Statute Book.

This Act was an important social Act, if ever there was one, and it was long overdue. Its importance cannot be overstated. To bear witness to the truth of my assessment, one need only quote the words of Lord Denning, in another place. The noble Lord said:

"Your Lordships are asked to set … your seal on a great change in the law of England—or, rather, on the last step in it …".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, House of Lords, 16th June. 1959; Vol. 216, c. 1190.]

Set their seal they did, to the everlasting fame of the hon. Member for Dagenham.

The Act was highly controversial, because the problem of illegitimacy, throughout the years I have been connected with child care and the welfare of children and young persons, has been acute. But, of course, it has been politely ignored. It is of academic interest that, in considering the findings contained in the Reports of the last 22 bodies which this House has, from time to time, set up to inquire into various problems of the welfare of children and young persons, I find that none of these Reports dealt with the problem of illegitimate children, apart from the Royal Commission on Marriage and Divorce, which reported in 1955.

I have always accepted the Report as such, but I have always rejected it when anybody has attempted to saddle the children with its recommendations. It does not belong to child care, but rather to the world of delinquent and immoral adults who do not care.

However, as I have often said, the work of the children's service is still carried on in the face of apathy, misunderstanding and ignorance. I say that with all due respect to hon. Members on both sides of the House. I hope to say a great deal more about this in another debate. There is, perhaps, ample excuse for this unfortunate state of affairs. It is purely and simply, in my view, due to the fact that very many complex sociological factors exist in Britain today. Particularly do they exist in large cities like London and Manchester, and they adversely affect every section of the very wide field covered by the Children's Service.

I will not enlarge upon this subject. Let it suffice if I say that this work is divided into eleven main sections, ranging from abandoned babies to delinquent, 17-year-old youths who are often steeped in criminality and probably in approved schools. Each section is divided into subsections—into many subsections in some cases—and the problem of the illegitimate child forms a subsection.

When, in addition to the complexity of the work and of the factors involved, we consider the legislation affecting children and young persons, an already desperate situation begins to deteriorate rapidly. Because of the time factor, I cannot deal further with the legislation today, but it is of interest to note that there have been no less than eight Acts of Parliament directly affecting children, which shows that there is a considerable measure of misunderstanding and confusion abounding in this work.

Despite the admitted complexity to be found in every section of this branch of social welfare, hon. Members in the last Parliament showed a remarkable degree of understanding of the problems occurring in the subsection to which I have referred, namely, illegitimacy. A few of us who were concerned at the time were surprised, albeit agreeably, to learn in 1959 that the Measure promoted by the hon. Member for Dagenham had received the Royal Assent and was safely home. All honour, therefore, to those who, like the hon. Member for Dagenham, have had faith in their own clear appreciation of the value of such work and have carried on in spite of all the difficulties involved and achieved the ultimate success of their heart's desire.

By the passing of his Bill into law the hon. Member for Dagenham achieved a great deal, because prior to 1926 an illegitimate child, according to the old common law, was the child of nobody. It is on record that in 1236, at the Parliament of Merton, the House was asked whether it was willing that our law should be changed so that a child born before marriage would be just as legitimate as one born during marriage. It is recorded that the House replied, "We are not willing to change the laws of England".

It was not until 1926 that the law was changed so that children born before marriage were legitimated by subsequent marriage. The present position, which has been brought about by the hon. Member for Dagenham, in effect means that a child born out of wedlock becomes legitimate by Section 1, which has the effect of extending legitimacy in a number of cases. Probably the most important part of the Act is Section 3, which introduces the fathers of illegitimate children by means of the Guardianship of Infants Act. In my experience, this is very largely used. It is a procedure which naturally involves the acceptance of the child by the father. Perhaps the hon. Member has thought about this difficulty.

The hon. Member for Dagenham made affiliation orders the main background to his speech. There are dangers here, both to the child and to the alleged father. In my experience, an affiliation order often involves an unwilling father, sometimes a man who absolutely denies paternity. In another place, Lord Denning pointed out the danger of the woman who makes a trumped-up case against an innocent man. The hon. Member for Dagenham has realised these difficulties.

The problem of illegitimacy, as with almost every other aspect of child care, permits of no easy solution. The work presents a tangle of problems which one comes to realise are part of the story of life itself. As Sir Basil Henriques once said to me—as hon. Members will know, he was a man of vast experience—"There is no short-cut remedy to any one of these problems. You will discover that fact sooner or later as you gain experience in this work. There can be no short-cut remedy to problems which have existed since the beginning of time and which will, I believe, exist even unto the end of time". I entirely agree with those words. Sir Basil's religion was vastly different from mine, but that makes little difference here, because these problems are of great complexity and their true lexicon lies in God and eternity.

Our canon law accepts that human life is transmitted by means of the family. The family is based upon marriage, which our Catholic brethren hold to be indissoluble, and which they and all other Christians have raised to the dignity of a sacrament. The transmission of human life is the result of a personal and conscious act, and, as such, is subject to the inviolable and immutable laws of God, which man ignores or disobeys at his cost. Man is not permitted to use certain ways and means of transmitting life that are permissible in the propagation of plant and animal life. At the same time, canon law accepts that human life is sacred, and we all recognise that. Therefore, while God forbids adultery and adulterous unions, he does not forbid or condemn the child of such a union, and that is how we should regard this matter.

I promised to sit down at twenty minutes past three Mr. Speaker, so, with the leave of the House, I will sit down.

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham (Mr. Parker) on having initiated this debate and so once more putting us into his debt by bringing to our attention the status of illegitimate persons—a field in which he already has such a large record of achievement to his credit.

I agree with the hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Ronald Bell) that this difficult problem is not one that admits of any easy solution. It appeals to some of our deepest humanitarian emotions, but in dealing with it we are all conscious of a real dilemma. The dilemma is that our whole civilisation is based upon the sanctity of marriage and the integrity of the family as a unit of society. That concept, which is derived from the Christian law of monogamy, is widely accepted, regardless of any particular religious belief. It is one of the foundations of society.

It follows that if anybody is born illegitimate there has been a breach of the recognised law of marriage. We have, therefore, to try to reconcile our natural sympathy with the illegitimate person—who, himself, has done no wrong—with our other desire to do nothing to erode the sanctity of marriage. That is the dilemma.

There must, inevitably, be some limit to what we can do by legislation to remedy what the Motion calls "legal and social disabilities". The difficulty is that, whether or not we like it, whatever we do by way of alleviating legislation an illegitimate person in most cases inevitably feels a sense of shame and frustration which, very often, nothing can remove. We cannot make him legitimate. We can do all we can to remove any possible disability from him; we can treat him just like any other member of society, and do all we can to see that he does not suffer in our esteem, but with the best will in the world we can never affect his own self-esteem and self-regard.

There are many cases in history—one of my hon. Friends mentioned the case of William the Conqueror, and there are many others—where the persons concerned have transcended any disabilities that might have been thought to have attached to their state of bastardy, but we know that in our generation men of eminence in more than one walk of life have suffered throughout their lives from a sense of shame and humiliation at their illegitimate birth. Unfortunately, laws passed by this House cannot change that. Ultimately, we can remove that cause of concern only by ensuring that the number of illegitimate births is reduced, as was suggested by the hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, South.

I hope that as the social conscience of our country becomes more developed, refined and educated we shall be able to discriminate between natural feelings for illegitimate people, and that, at the same time we shall do nothing to erode the fundamental concept of the sanctity of marriage. We have made considerable legislative progress in recent years. The Act of 1926 was a great step forward. Other hon. Members have referred to the fact that since the Statute of Merton, in 1236, there has been on the Statute Book the curious and anonymous rule that nobody could be legitimated by a subsequent marriage. There was never any sound reason for that rule, which has now been abrogated.

As I recall, when the barons threw out the suggested amendment of the law in 1236 they did so in the teeth of opposition from the Church, which led by Bishop Grosseteste, of Lincoln, took a far more liberal, humane and enlightened view, and wanted the law of England changed to conform to the canon law and the law prevalent in other parts of Europe whereby a subsequent marriage did legitimate a person. It was that conservatism among the baronage, rather than any interest in legitimacy, that prevented the change being made seven centuries earlier than it was.

I can understand that in those days the status of legitimacy was of much greater interest to the nobility than to the Church. It affected inheritance and titles, although it may be observed that it does not seem to have caused very much concern either in the Royal family or among the nobility. We remember that in the debate on the legitimacy or illegitimacy of Queen Elizabeth I it was quite impossible to contend that both Mary and Elizabeth were legitimate, but they each became Queen of England. A large part of the nobility was replenished by the illegitimate sons of Charles II. It is, therefore, clear that at one time or another, many people have been able to overcome the disadvantages of illegitimacy.

In our own day we have done a good deal by social legislation to ensure that there are no financial disabilities. Illegitimate persons have complete equality in the eyes of the law in our social legislation and it would, of course, be intolerable if that were not so. All steps are taken to see that children, in particular, suffer no discrimination or any inferiority complex at school, work or elsewhere.

I come to this question of intestacy that has been raised. I think that was the strongest ground raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham. Fortunately, anybody is able to make will and anybody, by his will, is able to dispose of his goods as he pleases among legitimate or illegitimate children or others. It is unfortunate if some parents fail to make a will and their illegitimate offspring suffer as a consequence. But I would remind my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham that this matter was examined at great length only a few years ago when the law of intestacy was changed by Parliament.

There are arguments on both sides. We cannot necessarily assume that a person who fails to make a will and dies intestate had intended, if he had made a will, to leave his property or part of his property to his illegitimate children. To make such an assumption might be doing an injustice to his legitimate children. Therefore, I do not think that on this aspect of the subject we can hope for much change in the law, but what I think we can do is to emphasise the particular duty of anybody who has illegitimate children to make provision by a will of how they want their property disposed of on their death.

Reference has been made to what can be done by administrative action. I would have hoped that we would hear from the Minister, at any rate, that so far as he knows there are no disabilities suffered by any illegitimate people in a sphere that can be dealt with by administrative action. Reference was made to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and, I have no doubt, other universities, which require production of the longer birth certificate. I should not think that it can be argued that any illegitimate person, on that ground, suffers any disability in getting to a university.

We have heard today about entry to the Foreign Office. It seems to me that it would be intolerable if the status of legitimacy or illegitimacy were allowed to weigh with the rights of entry either into the Foreign Office or any other branch of the Civil Service. In view of the fact that that suggestion has been made, I hope that it will be repudiated.

There are some other spheres outside the action of the State where certain disabilities remain. I suppose that the chief one today is the disability of an illegitimate person to be ordained either into the Church of Rome or into the Church of England. That is not a matter for this House. It is a matter for the ecclesiastical authorities. To some extent, I suppose, it goes to this question of social esteem.

I was particularly glad to learn recently that in the revised Canons of the Church of England now being considered by the Church Assembly, and which will, no doubt, shortly come before this House for approval, it is proposed to remove that particular disability, so that in future there will be no objection to an illegitimate person being ordained a priest in the Church of England.

The disability will still remain in the Church of Rome, subject, as I understand it, to the possibility of dispensation by the Vatican. Anything that can be done in spheres of that kind to eradicate any impression in the public mind that an illegitimate person should be under any disability to fulfil any kind of office, because, through no fault of his own, he is subject already to the hardships and unhappiness of being an illegitimate person, is to be profoundly desired and encouraged, and the more that can be done in that sphere, the better, I am sure, will not only my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham, but the whole House, be pleased.

Having said that, I must say that I share the view expressed by the hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, South. There is, unfortunately, a limit to what we can do to improve still further the status of illegitimate persons, and there are limits to which any amount of legislative action can carry it out. I should like to express the hope that whether or not the Joint Under-Secretary for the Home Department accepts the proposal that there should be a committee of inquiry he will give the most careful consideration to the various suggestions, largely of detail, whereby, by legislative action, further steps can be taken to remove the legal disabilities of illegitimate persons.

The hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Parker), who introduced this Motion with such restraint, and yet with such obvious emotion, has already left upon our Statute Book in the form of the Legitimacy Act, 1959, a permanent memorial which will be known as "Parker's Act" as long as this subject is debated.

This was a great achievement with a Measure that was by no means uncountroversial, and was an outstanding example of how much it is still open to the private Member to accomplish in the field of social reform. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would be the first to acknowledge the help that he received from the Government at various stages in the passage of the Bill. Indeed, it will be within the recollection of this House that, in another place, it ran into some very heavy weather at one time, and but for the fact that subsequently the Government gave time for the consideration of the Lords Amendments, it might have been lost. It was a good example of partnership, although the first credit must undoubtedly go to the hon. Gentleman.

The Act of 1959 takes its place in a series of Measures enacted in the course of this century which have progressively both narrowed the area of illegitimacy as a legal concept and improved the legal position of those who were still left within its scope. I should make clear that I am dealing throughout with English law, as the provisions of the Scots law on this subject are different, though they have in some respects served as models for our reforms, as so often happens between the two systems.

The series began with two Statutes passed in 1926. The Legitimacy Act is best known for having introduced into English law the concept of legitimation by subsequent marriage, but, of course, under that Act it was necessary for both parents to be single at the time of the birth. At the same time, the Act improved the position of the child who remained illegitimate by enabling him to succeed on his mother's intestacy if she had no lawful issue. That, too, was an innovation.

In the same year came the Adoption Act introducing another new concept, legal adoption, which has given so many children, the vast majority illegitimate, the security of new homes and a new status in the eyes of the law. It is even possible for the mother of an illegitimate child to confer that adoptive status on him by adopting him herself. The law of adoption has undergone several amendments and improvements and was recently consolidated in the Adoption Act, 1958, as the hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. A. Brown) reminded us.

The Legitimacy Act, 1959, Parker's Act, removed the requirement that the parents must both have been free to marry at the time of the child's birth and it also conferred the full status of legitimacy on the children of void marriages where the parents reasonably believed the marriage to be valid. Not only did it reduce the number of illegitimate people, but it dealt with some problems of those who remained illegitimate. It enabled the courts to grant the father of an illegitimate child custody of the child if that was the best arrangement, as it might sometimes be, and it enabled a woman who was unmarried at the time of the birth of her illegitimate child to apply for an affiliation order even though she had since married another man. Those were small amendments but they were generally welcomed and recognised as improvements in the law.

In 1958, the Matrimonial Proceedings (Children) Act extended the powers of the High Court in matrimonial proceedings to a child of one party to the marriage, including an illegitimate child, who had been accepted as one of the family by the other party. The court can, therefore, make an order as to the custody or maintenance of such a child and must be satisfied, before making a decree absolute, that proper arrangements have been made for its care and upbringing. Similar powers are exercisable by magistrates' courts under the Matrimonial Proceedings (Magistrates' Courts) Act, 1960. I should mention also the provision first made in the Births and Deaths Registration Act, 1947, for the issue of a short form of birth certificate which gives no particulars of parentage or adoption. These certificates are accepted for all ordinary purposes for which evidence of date and place of birth is sufficient. An important fact is that they are not used only by people born out of wedlock. About half of all the birth certificates issued are short certificates and, therefore, the mere holding of a short certificate does not automatically carry with it suspicion.

The hon. Member for Dagenham and the hon. Member for Islington, East (Mr. Fletcher) asked me about the requirement of the longer birth certificate by the Foreign Office. There is nothing peculiar to the Foreign Office in this. The Civil Service Commissioners for all purposes require the longer certificate as evidence of British descent where British descent is an essential qualification for the appointment. Therefore, there is in that requirement no suggestion of a social stigma which might be considered unsuitable for the Foreign Service.

It may be helpful to the House if I give some figures showing the extent to which advantage has been taken of the main statutory provisions. The number of illegitimate children each year is rising both absolutely and as a proportion of the total number of children born in the year. I was much interested, like the House, in the explanation of this given by my hon. Friend the Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Ronald Bell). His speech was a mine of information and of good sense. If I did not altogether agree with his strictures on Josephine Butler, he must put that down to my pious duty in my present position.

In 1958, there were 36,174 illegitimate children; in 1959, 38,161; and in 1960, the latest year for which figures are available, 42,707. This represents 49, 51 and 54 illegitimate births to every 1,000 births in the year. The number of illegitimate children legally adopted in a year is over 11,000 and the number whose births are re-registered in consequence of legitimation by subsequent marriage is usually between 2,000 and 3,000, although in 1960 it rose to 6,000 because of Parker's Act. Thus, a substantial proportion of those born illegitimate ceased to be classed by the law as illegitimate.

I take it that the figures are for England and Wales and do not include Scotland and Northern Ireland?

I think that that is right. If it is not, I will write to the hon. Gentleman.

The hon. Member for Dagenham accepts, I believe, that we have gone some way to remove the legal disabilities which once lay on the illegitimate child—and a very long way, too. The remaining disabilities are extremely few and on the whole relate entirely to inheritance. Now the law no longer regards illegitimacy, if it ever did, as a quality inherent in the person whom it affects, colouring all his legal relationships and reducing him to the level, as the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell) put it, of a second-class citizen. It does not do that. It takes the view that illegitimacy is a feature of a person's relations with his mother and more particularly with his father, reflecting the absence between the parents of the marriage bond which has so often and so rightly been called in this debate the basis of a secure and stable family life.

Why is he no longer a second-class citizen? He is no longer a second-class citizen because of the "Parker" Act and other Acts. In effect, the hon. and learned Gentleman has rejected the argument of his hon. Friend the Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Ronald Bell), who seems to think that social legislation would do nothing to affect a person's status.

That is a travesty of my hon. Friend's argument. My hon. Friend said that it is no good assuming that all proposals for reform are automatically good and that all resistance to them is automatically bad. He wishes to examine each one on its merits—

And oppose the lot.

No—irrespective of these slogan words.

In practice, what is left? There are many things which we have not discussed in respect of which Parliament has specifically removed any suggestion of disability. The question of insurance and road accidents was mentioned. There are many others. There are the Rent Acts in which, for the purposes of being a member of the family and thus being able to succeed to a rent controlled tenancy, illegitimate children are included. The same applies to the workmen's compensation Acts. This is so throughout this field, except in inheritance.

Why is it so? I think the reason is that throughout the law of inheritance it has been, and still is, considered essential that there should be certainty—even at the expense, as so often happens, of efficiency, of fairness or of other desirable qualities—because the prospect of the squabble over inheritance has to be reduced to the minimum. That is why, as the hon. Member for Leeds, West reminds us, there was the necessity of virginity at the altar, that is why the old barons clashed their shields at Morton in 1236—very reactionary: it was because they were determined to preserve certainty at all costs, because they knew the dangers to society if there is a squabble over inheritance, certainty even at the expense perhaps of fairness and efficiency, and that, of course, is ultimately at the root of primogeniture. That is why there was this insistence on chastity in brides, because of the dangers if there were an unchaste bride of somebody saying that this was not the son or that this was the son of somebody else. That is the historical origin of the system, whatever its justification may be.

What does it mean in practice? In our determination to preserve as far as we can this quality of certainty in inheritance it means first of all—I do not think this is a matter which the hon. Member for Dagenham would mind about—that an illegitimate child cannot succeed to any dignity or title of honour Which his father may happen to possess, even though he is subsequently legitimated. It may certainly be that some Members of this House at this time may wish that they were legitimated in that fashion rather than by another fashion. I do not know, but I think it would have spared them what they very much dislike the prospect of. Secondly, an illegitimate person cannot share in his father's estate under an intestacy.

This was considered by the Morton Committee in 1951, and its Report on this point emphasises with great force the importance of certainty. I should like to read it all, but I cannot; but what it says is:

"Moreover, considerable difficulty might arise in considering the claims of persons claiming to have been the mistress or to be the illegitimate child of the intestate, and it might become necessary to adjudicate between the merits of rival applicants, a situation made more complicated by the absence of the one person who would be in a position to know all the facts, namely, the intestate."

There we have set out in the Morton Report the argument which emphasises in cases of inheritance, particularly intestate inheritance, the importance of certainty, and that, again, was, of course, the reason why illegitimate children are unable to apply to the High Court under the Inheritance (Family Provision) Act which is the corollary of their not being able to succeed on intestacy.

Mr. Justice Harman, as he then was, in 1955 said this, that if they were allowed to apply

"The tasks of the courts would not only be odious but impossible to carry out, for who could know what other dependants might enter the lists to make further claims to a share? It would indeed be visiting the sins of of the father on the children."

So, therefore, in the field of inheritance where certainty is so important we feel we cannot go any further.

Some people may think that the expression "illegitimate children" is a bad one and that in our universal dislike, which has been expressed from both sides of the House today, we should somehow find a way in which to alleviate all possible social stigma because it is not their fault that this has happened to them. It is sometimes suggested that some other expression should be used, though I think all of us will agree that it is a much better word than that which used to be used for the same state.

On this question of social disabilities I must disagree with the hon. Member for Leeds, West, that we can remove these by legislation. I think that what he said was that social esteem does depend on legislation. If we do remove their disabilities we cannot further promote them in social esteem. I agree very much with my hon. Friend the Member for Buckinghamshire, South, that if a person has the misfortune to be born out of wedlock that is a matter he must come to terms with himself, and as to the views of other people we cannot by law say what their attitude should be. Indeed, their attitude to such people has often been kinder. They have certainly been prepared to receive them in society with all sorts of honours in days long before these disabilities were removed and when they were very heavy. One has only to read of the honour with which the Fitz-Clarences were received in society more than 130 years ago, and the honour with which M. Waleski, the Ambassador of Napoleon III to this country, was received. It may be that social esteem did not depend one way or the other upon the legal disabilities which they then suffered and which were very great.

The most that we in Parliament can Jo is to ensure that neither the law nor the exercise by public authorities of their discretionary powers inflict upon people who are illegitimate any disability which does not arise necessarily out of the fact of the illegitimacy itself. I am glad that there is to be a Measure from the Church Assembly to remove disability as regards the ordination of an illegitimate person. I will certainly see if there is any field for which the Government have responsibility where we can make that sort of administrative change which the hon. Member for Dagenham suggested should be looked into. That must be done if we are to make sure that at least in this attempt to achieve social esteem they have no legal or administrative disability behind them.

The forces of education and example have done much to dispel prejudice over the years, and people are much less ready than they were once to visit the sins of the fathers upon the children. This process, I am sure, will continue, aided by the efforts which the hon. Member for Dagenham and others are making to create an informed public opinion on the subject, but I fear that Government action affords no hope of a quicker or more effective remedy.

This being so, and this being our view, we do not think that there is anything that could come out of a committee such as that proposed by the hon. Member for Dagenham, upon which one could take action, in view of the fact that the only remaining disabilities are there for very good purposes which have been recently and frequently affirmed by Her Majesty's Government. It would be dishonest to suggest that one could somehow win a little popularity by appointing a committee, knowing that one was not going to do anything about it. It is an instinctive reaction of a Minister confronted with a problem of this kind to appoint a committee, but I must tell the House that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary does not feel justified in accepting the hon. Member's invitation to do so.

I submit that we ought not to ask a group of distinguished and public-spirited people to give up their time to study a problem if it is one which has been examined already in the recent past or if it is obviously one whose solution lies outside the proper sphere of Government action, as I submit this is. We have had, and still have, many committees and we do not want to add to their number unless it is essential or productive to do so. I have to tell the House that we do not think that it would be so in this case.

The legal disabilities of illegitimates have been the subject of a gradual process of attrition and those left have been recently examined and on grounds of public policy have deliberately been allowed to remain. The social disabilities, likewise, are tending to disappear, but there is no reason to think that we can hasten the process in the way that the hon. Member for Dagenham or any hon. Member has suggested. This must be a matter for the education of our children by our people and I believe that that is growing fast. That being so, I cannot advise the House to accept the letter of the Motion. Its spirit commends itself to us all, and the hon. Member for Dagenham has again done a valuable service—

In seeking the Adjournment debate on the future of the cotton and textile industry, I am not unaware that there have been two recent debates on this subject. One was on 21st December, 1961, when the hon. Member for Middleton and Prestwich (Sir J. Barlow) addressed himself to the problem. The second was on 23rd January of this year, when my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale (Mr. Greenwood) similarly performed such a task.

I seek this debate for reasons which are very important, at any rate to me. On both those occasions I considered that the Minister's reply was unsatisfactory. The position in my own constituency has become progressively worse. Consequently, I felt that I should be doing less than my duty to my constituency were I not to raise the matter again. It is in this spirit that I now attack the problem. I hope that I can use this privilege to some effect. Because of my background, which is mining and engineering, I do not claim to be in any way encyclopaedic on this vitally important industry, but I believe that the House will agree that I have tried to do my homework.

At one time, in Burnley, 23,000 people were employed in this vitally important industry. Today, there are less than 5,000. Out of the 35 mills that remain no less than 10 are working short-time. It does not take one long to realise the impact of such a situation. It is typical of north-east Lancashire.

I have no doubt that the Minister's reaction to this aspect of the problem, as was evidenced in the last debate, will be that there are still vacancies in the industry and that there is little, if any, unemployment. This is almost massive deception. It just does not do. At one time, Burnley had a population of over 100,000. Today, its population is just over 80,000. Within the memory of comparatively young people, it has lost about 20,000 citizens. Over the last decade north-east Lancashire has lost 9,276 citizens.

Making comparisons with the national picture, this is what one finds. Despite a 5·3 per cent. increase in the national population there has been a decrease in the population of north-east Lancashire of 5·1 per cent. During the same period there has been a decrease in the insured population—this is rather different, but it is a very important difference—of 9·3 per cent. That is why, there can be no doubt, there are vacancies and no large-scale unemployment.

To bring the position back again to north-east Lancashire and to Burnley, we find—these figures have been supplied to me by the Town Clerk and I have no doubt that they are completely authentic—that in the last decade there was a decrease of 4,332 in population, of whom 2,497 were insured workers. In the textile industry—the one to which I make specific reference—we lost 6,446, 1,057 being lost last year. One can easily see from that that this is a constituency problem of some magnitude. I pause to say, with some significance, that the position of the capital assets and finances of the town is being progressively worsened by this situation. We can, I think with a good deal of justification, connect this unfortunate situation with the decline in the cotton textile industry.

It is an unnecessary decline. If the decline were inevitable there might be some stoical acceptance. One need go back only two years, a very short time in the life of the industry Just two years ago, in 1959, reorganisation was brought about by the present Government. At that time, we find in a local paper the headline "Better Times for Lanes", meaning, of course, Lancashire. I will quote what the President of the Board of Trade said:

"I am convinced that the reorganisation scheme is going to give a new lease of life to Lancashire industry. There is without question a feeling of more security and confidence that better times are ahead."

That statement was unqualified. It was made by the President of the Board of Trade.

Had that statement anything to do with the General Election of 1959?

The answer to my hon. Friend—and I am trying not to make this a partisan contribution—is that the the date was 16th September, 1959. The point that I want to stress is that this was said by a very responsible Government official only two years ago and it was entirely without qualification.

What has happened since that time? One had only to listen to the contribution made by the hon. Member for Rossendale. He made the claim, which the Minister did not contest, that the import of cotton textiles into this country has risen by 40 per cent. Indeed, I tell the House—and I do so with some regret—that since this reorganisation, with all the costly apparatus attached to it and all the definite and unqualified promises made by the President of the Board of Trade, the increase of imported cotton cloth into this country has exceeded 200 million yards. I say, with some significance, that this is from non-Commonwealth countries.

I said that I was not an expert on this industry, but that I had tried, imperfect creature that I am, to do my homework. I have a quotation to make from the Daily Express. This is what was said by its commercial reporter, Mr. Philip Ditton, when writing about the cotton textile industry:

"This means that 60 per cent. of Britain's cotton cloth last year came from overseas—and no other country bought so much. In the U.S. imported cloth and yarn accounted for only five or six per cent. of home needs. In Europe the figure is probably two or three per cent."

The article is headed:

"The Once-proud Tag That So Often Lies."

I can tell the House about that. The significance is that we have a situation today in which manufacturers as well as cotton importers are buying cotton cloth, making some conversion in their establishments, and then sending it out ostensibly as stuff which has been manufactured in Lancashire. It is said, possibly with a great deal of justification, that this is done to amortise costs. That is the thin end of a most dangerous wedge which can destroy the industry if it is driven in hard enough.

I do not want to give the impression that it is there that the trouble lies. That article, by a responsible journalist, shows that 60 per cent. of our cotton cloth came from overseas, not 40 per cent. as was cited by my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale. I offer another illustration, a quotation from the Guardian. This is an opinion expressed by the French cotton industry in relation to our own and to the degree of husbandry which the Government show towards it.

As time is short, I shall quote only briefly. The article said:

"The British Government is accused of deliberately sacrificing its cotton industry by opening up its markets to India, Hongkong and Pakistan, and the association states that the textile industries of the Six must be concerned about the entry into the EEC of a country which has accepted the destruction of one of its most traditional industries."

It is not only imports from Commonwealth countries, but, as can be clearly seen by the figures I have quoted, importation from other countries that has made a disastrous impact on the industry.

The commercial editor of this newspaper says:

"The French syndicate therefore urges that the British Government should introduce a system of quotas for imports on a scale which would permit the greatly reduced Lancashire industry to operate with confidence and efficiency. It considers it ludicrous that the Government should offer re-equipment grants to Lancashire while encouraging the imports which undermine the mills' position."

I believe that to be a fair observation. I said that I would quote people who know the industry wall. I now quote what a Free Trade thinks about this. The hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Holt), in a contribution to our last debate on this subject, said:

"The trouble concerning Lancashire is that, whatever Ministers think about it, the Lancashire textile industry does not know what policy the Government have for it. It has been a mixture of toughness with unfairness—no other industry has been treated in the same way—and political expediency just before the 1959 election, when votes were required."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 23rd January, 1962; Vol. 652, c. 167.]

That is a quotation from a Liberal Free Trader. I must agree that it has a great deal of substance in it.

I would like to take the argument a stage further, to the point which we may be rapidly approaching—the question of ourselves and the Common Market. I shall not discuss the pros and cons of the Common Market, except to say that I have serious misgivings about the wisdom of our joining but that it would seem that the Government intend to go in. Therefore, how wrong am I when I say that, during this particular time, there should be almost massive re-equipment to meet that challenge?

At this time, it is important to remember that there is a crisis of confidence in the industry which betokens ill if and when we join the Common Market. It cannot possibly face the initial challenge from European countries with the present scale of importations from Commonwealth countries. In our last debate, the Parliamentary Secretary said:

"Surely the overriding interest in this country must be to devote itself to those industries in which it can compete with other countries."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 23rd January. 1962; Vol. 652, c. 171.]

That is a clear statement. If that is precisely what he means, he should tell the cotton industry.

I do not accept that the competition faced by the industry is fair. I spent twenty years negotiating wage rates and conditions in the engineering industry, and I know what I am talking about. It is not only a matter of wage rates. In this country, there is also legislation, the implementation of which entails a lot of money. The competition from abroad is not something which the Government should hurl at our industry, with hand on heart, saying, "I am asking for something from you that I would not be prepared to face myself".

I have three questions to put to the hon. Gentleman. Does he regard the situation in the cotton textile industry as unsatisfactory? If so, does he agree that excessive imports are the main contributory cause? If the answer to these first two questions is "Yes", what precisely do the Government intend to do about it? I have every right to ask these questions. It is within my memory, and ought to be within the memory of the Government, that between 1945 and 1951 this industry made a massive contribution to our balance of payments. It was almost indispensable to our economic well-being. Having made such a contribution at that very important time, it is fair that the industry should ask the Government to give practical recognition of it by dealing out fair play and not dispensations.

We in Burnley balance our economy on three industrial pegs—coal, cotton and light engineering, not necessarily in that order. If any of these pegs is dislodged, then Burnley is in serious trouble—there is no doubt about that. I serve notice on the Government that I would fail in my duty if I were to sit idly by while these pegs were being dislodged, and I do not intend to fail. The hon. Gentleman has listened with courtesy to me, and I will listen to him with courtsey.

I apologise to the hon. Member for Accrington (Mr. H. Hynd) for not allowing him to speak, but time is getting on and I have short enough time to deal with the rather gloomy picture painted by the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. D. Jones). The hon. Gentleman spoke about a crisis of confidence, but it was precisely to try to restore confidence and to increase efficiency that the Cotton Reorganisation Schemes were designed to enable the industry to compete with other countries. The essential background to that scheme was that we in this country have Commonwealth free entry. We have an obligation to accept goods from Commonwealth countries which they send to us as a means of increasing their standard of living. Secondly, as a nation we depend for our livelihood on exports and we depend to a greater extent on them than ever before. That being so, we are bound to try to remove obstacles to trade. We cannot expect to export unless we are willing to import.

The aim of the Cotton Reorganisation Schemes made under the 1959 Act was to encourage the industry to modernise itself by a programme of scrapping and replacement. Some firms had already started that process and were inclined to criticise the Schemes as helping the laggards rather than the more enterprising firms. The scrapping scheme for spinning, doubling and weaving ran for a year and ended on 31st March, 1960. Nearly half of the total installed capacity in spindles was scrapped and two-fifths of the looms at an estimated cost to the Exchequer of £10·6 million. Practically all the labour displaced which desired re-employment had no difficulty in finding new jobs, admittedly not always in the same place.

The Scrapping Scheme for finishing ended last December having run for nearly 18 months. The installed capacity eliminated was about one-fifth and the cost to the Exchequer is likely to be £1·2 million. The Government assistance took the form of payments of two-thirds of the compensation payable for machinery scrapped under the Schemes.

The other side of the Government assistance was designed to encourage those in the industry to plan to re-equip or modernise their mills. The expenditure occurred in the purchase and installation of machinery or equipment is eligible to the amount of one-quarter of the cost provided that application is made by 8th July, 1962, and the installation or modernisation is completed by 8th July, 1964. The House may be interested to know that so far 697 applications have been received covering expenditure to the extent of £40·3 million and involving an Exchequer grant of approximately £10·1 million. That admittedly is below expectations. No doubt the reason why better results have not been obtained so far is the admitted lack of confidence.

Is that lack of confidence justified? This is what we are discussing. It is true that the labour force has declined. During 1961 the industry lost 20,000 workers which represents nearly 10 per cent. of the labour force. But scrapping and modernisation was bound to result in a decline in the labour force. The trade unions accepted that in making itself more efficient the industry would have a decline in its labour force. The important thing from the point of view of labour is that there does not seem to have been much difficulty in absorbing those who left the industry into other jobs although I say again not always in the same place. It may well be that labour is attracted to other industries—

Not married women.

Undoubtedly some married women do not want to work except in cotton—

And the population erosion.

That applies to some extent. The percentage unemployed, including some part-time workers, is 2·1 per cent. in the cotton belt which is practically the same as for Great Britain as a whole.

That does not include the married women.

The proportion of machinery actually in use does not reflect the extent to which it is employed for shift working. But it is worth telling the House that the proportion in January was 87 per cent. for weaving, 85 per cent. for spinning and 79 per cent. for doubling.

I wish now to deal with the vital question of imports. It is true that retained imports of piece goods rose considerably up to this time last year. But in the fourth quarter they were running at only three-fifths of the level of the first quarter. It is true that the January figure was higher this year and imports are running at about the same level as in the third quarter of last year. But the main sources of imports are now under control and it does not matter in which month they come in.

Nearly 60 per cent. of our retained imports of cotton piece goods come from India, Pakistan, Hong Kong and Spain, All these are limited by inter-industry agreements, supported by the Government, which are to continue in force to the end of this year. Imports from Japan, Formosa and the Sino-Soviet bloc countries are subject to control by quota. Therefore, on current figures, 65 per cent. of the imports are subject to some form of restraint. If we add the imports of piece goods from Western Europe, and from the United States and Canada, these sources account fox 95 per cent. of our imports.

The President of the Board of Trade has stated that, if imports again increase sharply, exceed the level of the base year envisaged in the Short Term Geneva Arrangement, and cause disruption, he would consider what action would appropriately be taken within the limits of the Arrangement. That Arrangement expires on 30th September, but there has been recently drawn up in Geneva a five-year arrangement for cotton textiles to take effect from that date.

The basic provision is that imports which cause or threaten disruption can be restrained at a level not less than the trade in the twelve months ending three months before the request for restraint, so that if there is a sudden surge it is possible to restrict imports back to the level three months before the time when restraint is requested.

The Arrangement will also contain provision for increases in quotas already maintained by the industrialised countries on imports, especially from the under-developed countries. During the negotiations, the Government negotiators were advised by industrial representatives from Lancashire, who were kept in close touch with the discussions and whose assistance was most helpful.

The Government now has to decide whether or not to accept the Arrangement. In this, they will be guided by the views of the Lancashire industry, and it will be necessary also to take into account the views of Hong Kong. If the Government accept the Arrangement, they will do so subject to the reservation that they would not be committed by the Arrangement to allow increased access of low-cost textiles to the British market. It was generally agreed during the Geneva discussions that we were entitled to make such reservation in view of the large volume of low-cost textiles we were currently importing, and the decline in our industry over the last ten years.

What happens as regards the Asian Commonwealth countries after 1962? Agreements with Commonwealth interests are involved, and it is not possible for me to make a statement today, except to say that, in consultation with the Cotton Board, the Government are already considering what should be done. We appreciate the need for an early decision. In any case, the Government have made it clear that restraint on imports from the Asian Commonwealth countries will undoubtedly be necessary throughout the whole period of the re-organisation and re-equipment of the cotton industry in Great Britain. It is our hope that the problem can be dealt with by agreement with the industries concerned, and I would not wish anything to be said that might prejudice agreement.

As my right hon. Friend said yesterday, there is no certainty in this world, and it is not possible to give the cotton industry—or any industry, for that matter—complete certainty as to the future. Undoubtedly, as the hon. Gentleman said, because of the Common Market negotiations, the present is necessarily a period of more than usual uncertainty, but there is no reason why a modernised British cotton industry should fear Continental competition. On the contrary, entry into the Common Market should give it new opportunities and, certainly, there is no reason why we should continue to be net importers from such countries as Canada and the United States of America.

As to imports from low-cost Asian Commonwealth countries, I hope that what I have said will help to restore confidence to the industry. One thing is certain; the industry is much more likely to be able to hold its own if it re-equips and modernises now than if it does not. My right hon. Friend therefore very much hopes that those who have not yet submitted modernisation plans will do so in the course of the next fifteen weeks. Submitting a plan will not commit a firm to expenditure; failure to submit a plan will deprive it of the chance of Government assistance.

Although low-cost imports now account for about 30 per cent. of the market, the major sources of low-cost imports are now subject to some form of limitation or restraint. The remainder of the market is there for the industry to win in competition with countries whose standards of living are much the same as our own, but it will not be able to compete effectively unless it takes the fullest advantage of the opportunities for re-equipment. That was the whole purpose of the re-equipment scheme. One can dispute whether it was brought in too soon or too late, but that was the purpose of the re-equipment scheme; and unless our industry takes advantage of it, it will certainly have less chance of competing and sustaining its position. Therefore, whatever the future may bring, there can be no question that the need to increase efficiency to the utmost is over-riding.

I understand very well the hon. Member's anxieties, and the anxieties of all places, many of them in Lancashire—and many of them, also, in Scotland—that are losing population; but, at the game time, we must have an efficient industry—