With permission, Mr. Speaker, I wish to make a statement.

Since the debate on Monday, I have considered, as promised by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, the form of a further inquiry into the security implications of the events leading to Mr. Profumo's resignation.

I think that it is generally agreed that there should be an investigation in the light of this case into the operation of the Security Service and their relationship with the police in connection with matters of national security.

The Government intend to establish an inquiry for this purpose. But before I describe it there are certain other questions which I must now bring to the attention of the House.

It will be within the knowledge of many hon. Members that in connection with the recent episode, rumours are circulating which affect the honour and integrity of public life in this country and, if they were true, might point to a security risk. Such a situation cannot be tolerated. I have, therefore, decided that the public interest requires us to establish a judicial inquiry.

Lord Denning, the Master of the Rolls, has agreed to conduct this inquiry and to render his report to me as soon as possible. His terms of reference will be as follows:

To examine, in the light of the circumstances leading to the resignation of the former Secretary of State for War, Mr. J. D. Profumo, the operation of the Security Service and the adequacy of their co-operation with the Police in matters of security; to investigate any information or material which may come to his attention in this connection and to consider any evidence there may be for believing that national security has been, or may be, endangered; and to report thereon.

In the course of the discussion with the Leader of the Opposition I have explained to him the reasons for which the Government believe that, in the circumstances with which we are now confronted, this inquiry should be of a judicial character and should cover a wider field.

When I receive the report I will discuss it with the right hon. Gentleman. The Government will then decide the form in which it should be published, whether in whole or in part.

The procedure which has been announced by the Government—I think, on a Cabinet decision—is totally inadequate to allay public anxiety and the impression will persist that the Government are engaged in a bigger and vaster cover-up even than we have had.

Is the Prime Minister aware, first, that the terms of reference are far too narrow to deal with the situation? Is he also aware that the judge, however distinguished, will have no power to compel the attendance of witnesses, or to require the production of papers and other evidence? He will have no power to examine on oath, or to compel truth—and is the Prime Minister aware that in this case some of the evidence required will be collected from some of the most unmitigated liars in the country?

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in addition to the question of security, there is the whole question of the affront to this House? The House was manifestly not satisfied by the answers we got to the questions about the secret meeting downstairs in March or about the general Government responsibility for this question. This can only be settled by the House of Commons and not by a judge, however distinguished and however learned.

When the right hon. Gentleman refers to the rumours, is he aware that these cannot be dissipated and the men concerned enabled to clear their names, as they have every right to do, from some of these rumours, which not only are circulating in this country, but are being openly printed, with names, in many foreign journals from France, Germany and other countries, to the detriment of the name of this country abroad?

Is the Prime Minister aware in that context that the question of what he rightly called the integrity of public life goes far beyond an inquiry limited to security? Is he aware that we would have accepted, if he had proposed it, a tribunal? We did not think that it was the ideal solution. We proposed a Select Committee of this House.

In view of the feeling, which is very widespread in the country and in this House, on more than one side, that there has been over the months an attitude to this whole question more related to preventing the facts coming out than to ensuring that they do, is the right hon. Gentleman aware that he is creating the impression that whereas, last November, he almost fell over himself to set up a tribunal when he thought that he had the Press by the throat, when it is now the Government, and the whole Government, who are causing public anxiety he is running away from the idea of setting up anything that will establish the truth?

The right hon. Gentleman appears to be addressing himself to this subject in a somewhat different mood from that which he showed in Monday's debate. He is now purely generating a party attack. I will answer his questions.

A tribunal under the 1921 Act: that is open to us. We, my colleagues and I, considered it seriously. It has this great disadvantage that was shown up in the last and the Bank Rate Tribunal, that although the judge can sit in private he can only do so if there is what one might call absolute security—a question affecting security in its more technical sense; and that means day after day all kinds of statements being made, all kinds of assertions being made, which are highly damaging and terribly hard upon innocent people, and which perhaps, after six weeks or two months, are waved aside in the report—but all the damage has been done. I thought that that was the general view of the House and of the country.

I then suggested the procedure in that debate we had on the Lord Radcliffe Report, which we had on the Vassall case, which I followed. First, there was no question of the Privy Council—I think that there is some misunderstanding—holding an inquiry, but discussion among Privy Councillors as to what was the best procedure to follow. That we have had. We had two meetings yesterday. I reported our decision. We did not agree. That is the argument against the tribunal at the start.

Of course, it may be that Lord Denning will have to report that he is unable to get the evidence he wants. Then the House will have to consider whether to clothe him with further powers, so that he becomes, in effect, a tribunal. That has not been the experience of the cases which have been investigated by this machinery. I doubt whether that will apply. Let us see.

Then there was the question of a Select Committee of the House of Commons, and that is certainly a possible procedure. But it is one open to the kind of things which, I fear, are going to come to Lord Denning affecting men in many walks of life. I think that it would be terrible if 24 men, even if kept secret to the end, however much we trust our colleagues to try to deal with that aspect—[Hon. Members: "Shame."] I do not think that hon. Members quite realise some of the things which may be said. There is nothing to prevent, in the form of these trials which we have to face, any statements from being made about any public man of any kind, whether a politician or not, and with no power to refute them at all under the legal procedure.

All whitewash.

On the Select Committee, it has had, of course, the disadvantage in the past that they very often have to divide on a party basis. But with regard to the question the right hon. Gentleman raised on the conduct of Ministers in their Ministerial capacity, my handling of the affair, that is a matter for the House of Commons. We debated it on Monday. If he wishes to debate it again there can be a debate, but the House of Commons is the place to debate it, not a Select Committee.

What is the point of debating these things when the Prime Minister himself will not answer questions put to him, as he failed to do on Monday? The right hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that the anxieties which I stated a few minutes ago are anxieties felt all over the country, in all parties, and in all parties in this House. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware, as I have indicated to him, that we share some of his anxieties about the tribunal? But only the tribunal or a Select Committee have power to compel witnesses to answer questions; and Lord Denning will not have that power.

I want to put one final question to the right hon. Gentleman and then as far as I am concerned I shall leave it. I ask him to weigh the words of his answer carefully. Last Monday, I asked him a question which he did not answer. I asked him whether he was satisfied that we had had a full disclosure of this business so far as the Government were concerned, or whether we had had only that part of the iceberg which was above the surface of the water. Will he now stand up and tell the House that as a result of his inquiries—because he is responsible, and the Government as a whole are responsible, for the conduct of public affairs—he is satisfied that we have heard—

This is a speech not a question.

—the whole story of this matter?

I quite understand the unusual—[Hon. Members: "Sit down."] I am raising a point of order.

Then say so.

It is obvious.

I quite understand the unusual nature of this occasion and I very much regret having to speak, but it does seem to me that whatever may be said about anything which has happened hitherto this particular question, whether or not it would be to the advantage of the public, of the country, of the House, or either side of the House, cannot possibly be anything like a question supplementary to the statement.

Covering up.

I have listened to the hon. Gentleman the Member for Carlton (Sir K. Pickthorn), as always, with the greatest care. On this occasion, extra ordinarily, I do not wholly agree with him, just on the merits of the proposition.

On the question which the right hon. Gentleman has asked me, I do not quite know what he means by top of the iceberg, or what lies below. We have investigated so far as lies within our present power, and I told the House on Monday the whole story from beginning to end with every detail, so far as I know it. I am happy to think that, however strongly people may feel, they acquit me of any dishonour, acquit me of any injustice, but perhaps, as they have every right to do, condemn, or wish to criticise, my efficiency in handling all these matters.

But the question the right hon. Gentleman asked me is a matter of honour. I know of no thing which I have not told the House, but I have heard these terrible things being said about all sorts of people which, if allowed to go on, will destroy not only one side of the House of Commons, but the other side of the House of Commons. I do not know whether they are strictly security or not; it is difficult to say, because if people are said to be behaving in a terrible way it is a security risk, in a sense, in the modern world.

I think that the course of sending for Lord Denning and asking anyone who feels himself aggrieved to ask for an inquiry into the rumours about him, apart from the technical side, is the best and, indeed, the only efficient way of getting the matter handled.

On the question about the terms of reference, which include, according to the right hon. Gentleman's statement, the relations between the security organisation and the police, ought not the terms of reference to include also relations between the security personnel and organisation and the right hon. Gentleman himself? He will recall that in the course of the debate on Monday last he referred to the fact—apparently it is a fact—that he was not informed by the security people about certain events. Ought not that item to be included in the terms of reference?

I think that they do cover it. They say "operation of the Security Service"; that is to say, the whole operation throughout the affair.

Is the Prime Minister aware that the very distinguished judge who has been appointed will give great confidence to the whole of the rest of the country? If in any way he feels that he lacks power, then the House at any time can grant powers to him, and I am certain that on both sides of the House we shall be pleased to do so.—[Hon. Members: "Give them now."] The result of this tribunal will be to see not only that justice is done, but, what is more important, that justice will be seen to be done.

If a Select Committee of this House is appointed—and I am not criticising any hon. Member from any part of the House who might sit on it, for we all have party affiliations—and someone issues a minority report, it is open to the criticism, however unjust, that the decision is given on party lines and not on the facts and the merits or the demerits of any particular case.

The wide terms of reference of the tribunal cover almost every aspect not only of this matter, but the most unpleasant rumours—which, I hope, are quite wrong—which are circulating about Members in all parts of the House.

May I, first, ask the right hon. Gentleman why Lord Denning should not be qualified at the outset with the power to summon witnesses and to call for documents and other evidence? Secondly, may I ask whether it is contemplated that the evidence itself, apart from the report this morning, will eventually be published if Lord Denning thinks fit? Thirdly, will the right hon. Gentleman say how and by whom the evidence will be presented to the tribunal?

I think that I have covered the first part of the hon. and learned Gentleman's question. As to the second part, it will be a matter for consideration, of course, by Lord Denning. Even there, I think that, when he has taken note of how he should proceed, we would rely on him to suggest how he can best conduct this matter to its conclusion.

While I welcome Lord Denning to this appointment, may I ask the Prime Minister whether he is aware that the principles of the Conservative Party do not permit the debasing of public or political morality in this country, nor do they permit anything to be done which would attempt to deceive the electorate or the party as a whole for the sake of holding and maintaining personal power?

The principle of the Conservative Party, as I understand it, and, I hope, of every party in this House, is that honourable men should be condemned not by rumours—something which I have never accepted—but only by fact.

May I, first, refer to the question raised by the right hon. Gentleman relating to the terms of reference? Is the Prime Minister aware that the investigation, to quote the terms of reference, is into:

"…the operation of the Security Service and the adequacy of their relationship with the Police?…"

The relationship with the Government is, therefore, by implication excluded. Are we not, therefore, faced with the situation that half the problem here is not merely the efficiency of the security service, but the efficiency and competence of the Government in relationship with the security service?

May I ask the right hon. Gentleman two minor questions of detail? First, are we to take it that the Law Officers will be presenting the evidence before Lord Denning. If so, will he bear in mind that these are two Ministers who proved as gullible as any in the matter? Secondly, will privilege attach to the witnesses giving evidence before Lord Denning?

In regard to the first point, I think that—quite unintentionally, I am certain—the hon. Gentleman has misread and misstated the terms of reference. The first part of the terms of reference is:

"…in the light of the circumstances…the operation of the Security Service…"

That is part one. That will include the relationship of the security service with the Government, with the Home Secretary, under whom it is officially, and with me, under whom it is on the whole. The second part is:

"…and the adequacy of their co-operation with the Police…".

That is the second item. I think that covers the whole of it.

The other question is the matter of the witnesses. While they will, of course, have what I believe is called "qualified"—[Hon. Members: "Oh!"] They will be protected from any action unless they are totally malicious, but I am bound to say that that is the most that could normally be expected. They will not be attacked by the Crown, and in any action taken by a private person against them, it must be proved not only that they were wrong, but that they were maliciously wrong.

May I ask my right hon. Friend—I think that it was clear in his statement, but I ask this so that there shall be absolutely no misunderstanding and so that everybody may be certain about this—whether, if this respected judge should feel at the beginning of his inquiries that he has not the powers to conduct this inquiry as he sees fit, the Government would immediately give him these powers at the outset?

Yes, Sir. Of course, Lord Denning has been told, in what short time we have had, of the general position and has studied it, and what is involved and what would probably be the sort of things that he will have to do. It has been made quite clear that if he wishes, if he thinks he cannot conduct the inquiry without the full tribunal procedure, he can ask for it and the House can pass such a Resolution.

The difficulty about it is that under the tribunal procedure the judge of a tribunal cannot sit in private unless a matter of security is concerned, and I think that is often interpreted to mean security in its rather narrow sense. Yet I think that everybody would agree that it would be quite wrong to have some of the things which he would be investigating day by day—statements, or com- plaints, or rumours—referred to and to have to wait perhaps several weeks before they could be refuted. That is one of the difficulties. But if Lord Denning finds that he cannot operate without the powers, he will, of course, tell us.

May I clarify one point? Are we to understand that the statements which will be made to Lord Denning will be made on oath?

I imagine that Lord Denning cannot demand that they should be made on oath, but I think that they can be made on oath. I imagine that there are really three categories of statement. There will be information from the police and the security service which has come to light as a result of these recent events. There will be the statements of Ministers and other people—anybody else—whom I shall inform, against whom, in the course of these inquiries, accusations have been made. There may also be complaints about rumours circulating in regard to them outside.

I do not doubt at all that a judge of this capacity and experience will be able to find the truth, or that, with his high character, if he finds himself prevented in any way, he will immediately inform me and the House of his difficulty.

rose—

All this is at the expense of private Members, whose interests have to be in my care. We cannot take this matter further now.

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

We had no debate on the Bill on Second Reading and as I am sure that the interest in it is out of all proportion to the number of hon. Members present, the House might like me to explain briefly the contents of the Bill. In so doing, I shall not repeat anything that I said in Standing Committee.

Clause 1 confers the necessary powers to administer an oath on all persons appointed by foreign courts to take evidence in civil proceedings. It is normal and convenient international practice for courts to appoint persons to take evidence in foreign countries. Here, the practice is expressly sanctioned by a number of civil procedure conventions with foreign States, but our present law permits oaths to be administered only by duly authorised persons and this category of persons may not in all cases include a person appointed by a foreign court. This Clause therefore confers the necessary powers to administer oaths on all persons appointed by a foreign court to take evidence in civil proceedings.

Clause 2 is designed to meet circumstances which arise when diplomatic relations between this country and another are broken. The House will remember that this happened with certain Middle Eastern States in recent years, and at present there are no diplomatic relations between the United Kingdom, on the one hand, and Albania and Somalia, on the other. When diplomatic relations are broken off it is normal for a protecting Power to be appointed and it is in the British interest that consular officers of the protecting Power should be able to act in place of British officials and be able to administer oaths and perform notarial acts.

In the late war, when our relations were ruptured with enemy Governments, powers were given to consular officers of the protecting Power. This was done under the Evidence and Powers of Attorney Act, 1940, as amended by Section 1 of the Evidence and Powers of Attorney Act, 1943, but this wartime legislation has been repealed. Therefore, Clause 2 would enable powers to be conferred in future by the making of an Order in Council.

Clause 3 simply fills a rather odd gap in the Commissioners for Oaths Act, 1889. The persons who are empowered by Section 6 of that Act include diplomatic officials, senior and junior to counsellors, but not counsellors themselves. The Clause simply enables counsellors to act. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs may think that I am right in thinking that although there are not counsellors at all Her Majesty's missions in foreign countries, 70 counsellors are at present posted abroad.

Clause 4 refers to the Foreign Tribunals Evidence Act, 1856. This Act empowers our courts to comply with requests from foreign courts to obtain evidence in relation to commercial and civil matters which are before them. There is doubt whether this power extends to international tribunals. In any case, I should have thought it desirable that our own Government should be able to distinguish between those international tribunals whose requests ought to be acted upon and others such as, for example, judicial bodies belonging to international associations, such as the Council of Europe, of which the United Kingdom is not a member.

The Clause removes the ambiguity in the application of Section 1 of the Foreign Tribunals Act, 1856, to international tribunals. It limits the tribunals to which this Section is to apply to those specified in an Order in Council. The Clause would also allow an Order in Council to be made in respect of international commissions of inquiry and arbitrations.

Section 2 of the 1856 Act provides for authentication of the request of a foreign court by a certificate from the diplomatic representative of the country where the court is situated. The Clause provides for authentication by certificate of a person specified in the Order, that is, by persons concerned with the international tribunal. I suppose that, normally, it would be the clerk or the registrar of the tribunal.

Clause 4 has also a subsection which provides against perjury in evidence given before any person authorised to take evidence at the request of an international tribunal. It expressly applies to false statements the appropriate subsection of the Perjury Act, 1911. The Clause covers such statements made in England or Northern Ireland, but I understand that no new provision is required in Scottish law because Section 1 of the False Oaths (Scotland) Act, 1933, will apply and needs no amendment.

The purpose of Clause 5 is further to facilitate the proof of entries in public registers overseas. In the absence of statutory provisions simplifying the process of proof, I am informed, although I am no lawyer, that proof of an entry in a register outside the United Kingdom, for example relating to a birth, marriage or death, is often cumbersome and expensive. The Evidence (Foreign, Dominion and Colonial Documents) Act, 1933, enables Orders in Council to be made whereby copies of entries in overseas registers specified in the Orders and duly authenticated are rendered admissible as evidence of the facts stated in the entries. Under this Act, however, an Order in Council can be made only where the foreign territory concerned affords reciprocity by similarly recognising the public registers of the United Kingdom.

This is of no advantage to this country. Apart from the Colonies, where reciprocity is ensured by the Evidence Act, 1851, only a few Orders in Council have been made in relation to certain Commonwealth countries—Australia, New Zealand and Sierra Leone and certain provinces of Canada, and to Belgium and France. The reason is that it is frequently impossible for Her Majesty's Government to be satisfied as to reciprocity, but since the object of this legislation is to assist litigants in the United Kingdom the facilities available in converse circumstances to litigants in foreign courts are irrelevant. What matters is not the recognition accorded to our registers by the foreign country but the reliability of the foreign records.

Clause 5(1) therefore does away with the requirement of reciprocity, which is unnecessary for our purposes. It provides, instead, that the registers must be kept under the authority of the law of the overseas country and recognised by the courts of that country as authentic records, and that they must be properly kept. Subsection (2) makes the appropriate amendments to the Act of 1933.

Clause 6 defines "diplomatic or consular representative", interprets references in the Bill to the administration of oaths and takes power to vary or revoke any orders made under the provisions of the Bill.

Clause 7(3) makes it possible to extend any provisions of the Bill to the Isle of Man or any of the Channel Islands by Order in Council. As a member of the Parliamentary delegation to the States of Guernsey, I am glad to say that there has been no attempt to put anything over on the Channel Islands. The insular Governments have been consulted on this and have agreed.

This Bill has all-party support. Its purpose is to set in order a portion of our law and to further the discharge of our international obligations. I hope that the House will see fit to afford it a Third Reading.

As one of the co-sponsors of the Bill, which is supported from both sides of the House, I should like to say in a few words why I am so glad to support it. It is, of course, by our standards a minor Measure, but it is important as a tidying-up Measure and it is one which will, at the same time, I hope, contribute to the growth of international co-operation in the administration of the law.

An example of the tidying up is Clause 1. Where the practice of taking evidence on behalf of a foreign court is covered by a civil procedure convention concluded with the country of that foreign court, the authority for the administering of an oath can in England be found in the Rules of the Supreme Court. Lawyers might be interested to know that it is in Order 37, Rule 19 of the Rules of the Supreme Court, which provides:

"Any officer of the Court, or other person directed to take the examination of any witness or person, or any person nominated or appointed to take the examination of any witness or person pursuant to the provisions of any convention now made or which may hereafter be made with any foreign country, may administer oaths."

That sounds rather broad, but, in practice, the operation of the rule depends upon some very technical requirements which the courts insist upon before allowing that rule to come into operation. In any event, the rule does not extend to oaths administered by people appointed by the courts of countries with whom we have no civil procedure conventions and, surprisingly or not, it does not apply at all to Scotland.

Clause 1, therefore, in a straightforward way confers the power to administer an oath on any person appointed by a court or other judicial authority of any foreign country for the purpose of taking evidence in civil proceedings.

It may be that hon. Members have noticed that the unusual word "jurat" appears in Clause 2(2), and I must confess that I do not remember seeing that word in a Bill or Act of Parliament before. I wonder, therefore, if I may make one or two comments because, strangely enough, the word has some significance in the substance of the Bill.

The word here refers to the statement to be signed by the person before whom the oath is sworn. The facts to be stated in the jurat would be the date and the place of the administration of the oath and the designation of the person before whom it was administered. Therefore, a court in this country considering a document which had been sworn abroad in pursuance of this Bill would have to look very carefully at the jurat and at the facts contained in it in order that the court could be satisfied that the matter had been properly validated.

There is another interesting and rather important matter mentioned in Clause 5 which deals with public registers. We normally think of such registers as those relating to births, marriages and deaths. Indeed, the only orders that have ever been made under the Evidence (Foreign, Dominion and Colonial Documents) Act, 1933, have been in relation to those sorts of registers. But there can be other types of foreign register involved, such as registers of patents and trade marks, company registers and various other types of register.

To prove the entry in a foreign register at present is a most complicated business. It is a most tiresome and elaborate procedure. It is often necessary to tender evidence in one of our courts, including that of an expert on the foreign law, to show, first, that the register cannot be removed for production in our courts, that it cannot be brought from the foreign country to this country—it seems strange that that has got to be proved, but it may well have to be; secondly, that it has been personally inspected by the witness and found to contain the particular entry; thirdly, that it is kept in the place where it was inspected abroad by a public authority duly authorised under the law of his own country to keep it; and, fourthly that entries init are recognised in that country as an authentic record by the foreign courts there.

That is a formidable list of matters on which to have to bring evidence in our courts of what may be a very simple fact recorded as a matter of course in the foreign country. I am sure that any Measure such as this designed to simplify the proof of such facts, the proof of simple entries in foreign registers, is to be welcomed, provided of course that there are proper safeguards. Having carefully studied my hon. Friend's Bill, so far as Clause 5 is concerned, it seems to me that the safeguards here are adequate and that there is no real danger of an evil-minded fraudulent person proving with too great ease something which either does not exist or is wrongly stated.

As I say, this is a minor Measure, but I think that hon. Members on both sides of the House will agree that the consideration of Measures such as this is just as much part of the functions of this House and, indeed, of legislation by statute, as their deliberations on the larger issues which come before them. My hon. Friend the Member for Chigwell (Mr. Biggs-Davison) is, indeed, to be congratulated on his willingness to devote his time and thoughts to the Bill. I must agree that its complications are a little daunting, but it is a Measure which I am sure in many respects will be of some consequence and advantage both to private persons and companies and the business community generally in our country, and to foreign Governments and business people abroad.

In my opinion, international co-operation of this kind is much more likely to bring together the nations upon earth than vague, controversial and premature conventions relating to world government, although I have always respected the intentions of those who apply their minds to such conventions. Let us, by Measures such as this, break down international barriers, and one day our great-grandchildren will find that they matter very little more than our parish boundaries.

In adding my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Chigwell (Mr. Biggs-Davison), I should like to say that the Bill relieves what I have often regarded as a very great difficulty—the expense for litigants in proving certain very elementary matters simply because in our law no machinery exists.

I asked myself one principal question when I first saw the Bill: does it achieve its object without in any way detracting from the reliability of evidence? I am more than satisfied that the Bill achieves simplicity in producing and proving evidence without in any way detracting from the reliability of that evidence as brought into our courts.

Clause 1 says that a person appointed by a foreign court shall be a competent person. That seems to me a most reasonable and sensible provision, because it is the courts under which the law of the country is administered, and it is a sensible solution that the person or persons appointed by the court should be the person or persons to whom we should look to produce the evidence concerned.

Clause 2 clears up, as far as can see, an anomaly which was left when certain war-time Measures were taken off the Statute Book.

Clause 5 is one of the most important Clauses. I do not intend to go into it, because my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Mr. Renton) cleared the matter up. I know from practical experience that this question of the public register, to which he referred, has caused considerable difficulty. I remember an occasion on which a friend of mine who had to produce this evidence was not allowed, even if the registrar had been willing—as he was in this case—to produce a certified copy. He had to produce the evidence that one of our consular officials had personally examined the register and was personally prepared to vouch for the veracity of the entry.

This may not seem very harsh, but, in fact, it caused a considerable delay in getting the evidence. It caused the person a large amount of additional and unnecessary expense in order that this procedure should be gone through. Had a copy of the register been admitted, it would have been just as reliable and would have saved the litigant much expense.

This is a little Bill, if I may so describe it, but although it has few pages, it goes a long way. I re-emphasise what was said by my right hon. and learned Friend, that it is this sort of Measure which goes a long way not only to simplifying our own legal procedure in the courts but to making it apparent to other countries that we accept their evidence in the way in which they themselves accept it. In particular, Clause 5, dealing with the register, is very important. If we could expand this type of arrangement I am sure that it would go a long way towards improving judicial processes and towards understanding not only between the legal fraternity, but between the general public in all parts of the world.

This is a very limited but useful Bill and I trust that the House will give it an unopposed Third Reading.

When listening to the claims which are made on behalf of a limited Bill of this sort, I feel that there ought to be better machinery for the passing by the House of Bills of a technical and non-controversial character such as this. In practice, the Government of the day seem to rely in these matters on the support of private Members, and if private Members are unfortunate or minded in other directions, then small but useful and necessary Measures simply do not get through the House.

That applies to questions of judicial procedure such as this, if I may use a broad term, and also to non-controversial legal Measures which have been recommended by a learned committee or other, which are no doubt required, but which the House does not find time to introduce with any promptitude.

Accordingly, on behalf of my numerous friends on this side of the House, I welcome the Bill and congratulate the hon. Member for Chigwell (Mr. Biggs-Davison), who has used his place in the Ballot to such good purpose.

I ask the indulgence of the House to say a few words about the Bill, because it received its Second Reading without discussion and the Amendments introduced in Committee were introduced without objection. I dare say, therefore, that a word of welcome and one or two comments from the Government are desirable.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Chigwell (Mr. Biggs-Davison) on his work upon the Bill and the very lucid way in which he presented it to the House. I thank my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Mr. Renton), who gave an equally lucid exposition of various points in the Bill. This has very much lightened my task.

When the Government considered the Bill we naturally asked ourselves the same question as my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham (Dr. Alan Glyn) asked himself: does it achieve its object without detracting from the reliability of evidence? We took advice and considered the question carefully, and we are satisfied that we can give a satisfactory answer to it. The Bill closes one or two gaps in present legislation, and it also adapts earlier legislative Measures to the needs of our time. I should like to men- tion one or two points in it and, in particular, the provisions of Clause 4.

Broadly, they empower Orders in Council to specify international tribunals whose requests for the taking of evidence should be complied with by the courts of this country. The Government have hitherto taken the view that power to take evidence on behalf of such tribunals already existed under Section 1 of the Foreign Tribunals Evidence Act, 1856. We have assumed obligations to comply with such requests in respect of two international tribunals, the Arms Control Agency Tribunal set up under the Convention concerning the Agency for the Control of Armaments under Protocol No. 4 of the Brussels Treaty of 1948, as modified by the Protocols signed in Paris in 1954; and the tribunal set up under the Convention on the Establishment of a Security Control in the Field of Nuclear Energy and its Protocol on the Establishment of a Tribunal signed in Paris on 20th December, 1957.

I understand that no request has so far been received from either of these tribunals. However, the existence of the power to take evidence in this way is not, in fact, altogether beyond doubt, and, in any event, the accompanying provisions of the Act of 1858 as to the authentication of the requests are, as has been said, highly inconvenient. What is more, it does not follow that, because Her Majesty's Government would like to be able to comply with letters of request from some international courts, we should wish to do so in respect of all of them. The case for assisting the court is obviously not so strong if, for instance, it is one set up by an international organisation of which we are not a member. Clause 4 confers a valuable discretion in this matter enabling appropriate foreign tribunals to be specified by Order in Council.

Subsection (2) closes a small lacuna in our present law under which, owing to the wording of the relevant Section of the Perjury Act 1911, it would not at present be any offence to give false evidence on oath in this country for the purpose of proceedings before an international tribunal abroad. I am sure that it will be agreed that it is very desirable to achieve that.

I should like to say a word or two on Clause 2. The need for a means of authorising diplomatic and consular representatives of protecting Powers to administer oaths and take affidavits was felt during the war and has been felt occasionally since. This Clause will permit an Order in Council to be made to enable these functions to be performed where the United Kingdom does not maintain direct diplomatic relations with a foreign country but has entrusted the protection of British interests to a friendly power. It might be that, owing to the paucity of British subjects or interests in a country with which we have no relations, the need for making an Order would not be felt. But in other countries the ends of justice and the interests of British nationals might not be capable of being served without the use of the power given under this Clause.

I think that Clause 5—

Before my hon. Friend departs from Clause 4, I wonder whether he is in a position to state what are the intentions of the Foreign Secretary with regard to the laying of Orders in Council under Clause 4? Is there any chance of fairly immediate use being made of the power?

I am not sure whether I should be in order in referring to that matter, but I think that it would be premature for me to make any statement about the actual intentions concerning the use of the power at this moment.

I believe that the provisions of Clause 5 will be of real assistance to persons in this country who, in the course of litigation, or for other purposes, need to prove such matters as foreign birth, marriage, or death. At present, unless the strict formalities of the law can be waived, such proof can, in our observation, be a matter of very considerable difficulty and may, indeed, involve the attendance of an expert in the foreign law concerned. Where the fact is reliably recorded in a foreign register of undoubted authenticity, a copy of the extract from the register duly authenticated should, in our view, be all that is necessary, in the way of proof.

The Evidence (Foreign, Dominion and Colonial Documents) Act, 1933, is designed to simplify proof in this way, but it has not proved very effective in practice. As my hon. Friend the Member for Chigwell pointed out, its pro- visions can be applied to a foreign country only where reciprocity is provided by the law of that country. Her Majesty's Government are quite clear that there is little interest in some foreign countries in negotiating the necessary conventions affording reciprocity mainly because their rules of evidence are often less strict than ours.

On the other hand, it is clearly in the interest of litigants in this country that they should be able to establish proof of entries in foreign registers of proper authenticity in a simple and inexpensive manner. Reciprocity, therefore, is not a strictly relevant consideration. It is my hope that if the Bill reaches the Statute Book we shall be able to take advantage of Clause 5, which removes the need for reciprocity in these matters, and to extend the benefits of the 1933 Act so that they will cover a considerable number of foreign countries.

There is one small matter under Clause 3 to which I should like to allude and which may, I think, be of interest to the House. My hon. Friend the Member for Chigwell has pointed out what may at first sight seem the curious and anomalous fact that counsellors were not empowered to administer oaths and perform notarial acts by Section 6 of the Commissioners for Oaths Act, 1889, whereas senior and junior diplomatic officers were so empowered. I have been looking into the history of this a little bit and I think that the explanation is worth giving.

My recollection of the records of Queen Anne's reign and of that time is that there was then an official, generally found in a mission of any size, called the secretary of legation and that he performed a number of very important functions in the discharge of the duties of the mission. Under 1st April, 1904, in the Foreign Office List, there is the following entry:

"Counsellors of Embassy. The title of Counsellor with a Commission as Counsellor of Embassy in Her Majesty's Diplomatic Service to be conferred on the eight Secretaries of Embassy, the Secretaries of Legation at Peking, Teheran, Tokyo and Cairo, the Chargé-ďAffaires at Darmstadt and the Consul-General at Budapest, with precedence according to seniority in the new grade. Secretaries of Legation to be discontinued".

I think, therefore, that it is clear that what happened was that a new category of official appeared upon the scene at that time, and that this fact was not recognised in our law until my hon. Friend the Member for Chigwell, with extraordinary observation and learning, detected this flaw in our legislation and put it right in the Bill.

Before my hon. Friend leaves the point, could he tell us how many extra commissioners for oaths are involved in this? I must declare an interest here. He will know that the job of commissioners for oaths is a closed shop, and it seems to me that we may be watering down that closed shop by Clause 3. Some of us earn the enormous sum of 5s. per oath. On occasion I have earned myself five pints of beer by going through the Division Lobby in this House, and I do not want this closed shop to be watered down too much.

From such knowledge of the law and practice in this matter as I have, I think it is correct to say that a counsellor of embassy can exercise his function only within the boundaries of the country to which that embassy or legation is accredited. Therefore, I think that neither my hon. Friend nor those who practise this, I hope, lucrative profession need fear any serious competition.

Finally, I thank the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) for his support of the Bill, as Her Majesty's Government would very much like to see it pass into law. I also wish to offer to my hon. Friend the Member for Chigwell my personal congratulations on the skill with which he has conducted it.

The Bill has reached this stage in the House without being debated and I hope, therefore, that the House will bear with me if I put on record what it is all about. Briefly, the intention of the Bill is to simplify the procedure upon the transfer of shares. The ideas embodied in the Bill have been canvassed for many years. It has long been realised that Section 75 of the Companies Act, 1948, as well as certain other Sections of that Act and certain other statutes relating to companies, have crystallised a process in the transfer of securities which is cumbersome in modern share dealing.

Section 75 of the 1948 Act states:

"Notwithstanding anything in the articles of a company, it shall not be lawful for the company to register a transfer of shares in or debentures of the company unless a proper instrument of transfer has been delivered to the company".

By custom, practice or convenience, a proper instrument of transfer has become fairly well known as one which relates the number of shares passing from the transferor to the transferee, states the consideration, is signed by transferor and transferee, their signatures are witnessed, and so on.

In 1959, a committee was set up under the chairmanship of Lord Ritchie of Dundee, chairman of the London Stock Exchange, to consider whether the process of transfer of securities could be simplified. That committee set up an advisory committee to go into the matter in more detail. Represented on the advisory committee were the Issuing House Association, the Committee of London Clearing Bankers, the Accepting Houses Committee, the Chartered Institute of Secretaries, the Bank of England and the Council of the Stock Exchange.

Thus one had what might be called a high-powered committee representing the issuing, the registration of and the dealing with securities. That advisory committee issued its report in December, 1960. At that moment, I happened to be spending a month or two in hospital, with a certain amount of time on my hands, and while sitting up in bed in hospital I drafted a Bill to embody the recommendations of the advisory committee.

The committee had recommended, and my draft Bill included, a system of transfer by stock transfer forms to which I will refer in more detail presently. Although that Bill received a First Reading in 1961, it was not fortunate in finding Parliamentary time for a Second Reading. Nevertheless, it served a useful purpose in that it brought comments from those who were involved in the procedure of share transfer and it was then possible to produce this scheme in the form of a Bill, almost wholly agreed by all those concerned, for the present Session. That is the Bill to which the House is now asked to give a Third Reading.

I express at once my gratitude to my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary to the Treasury and to his Department for the help they have given to ensure that this is a Bill which comes before the House with the approval of all concerned—lawyers, accountants, stockbrokers, the secretaries and registrars of companies, banks, and so on.

The only major alteration from the previous Bill is that in the present Measure power is given to the Treasury to change by order the form of stock transfer, which is set out in Schedule 1 to the Bill. This, I hope, will give a flexibility to the system and allow slight alterations to be made as one sees how the procedure works out in practice. The power for the Treasury to amend the form by order is given in Clause 3(2).

The Bill has already been through another place, where it was so ably piloted by Lord Clitheroe that until this stage it has needed no debate in this House. What emerges as the new form of procedure which the Bill will authorise is shown in Clause 1 and I will endeavour to explain it by means of example.

Let us suppose that the owner of shares desires to sell them. He instructs his broker, who arranges the sale and then completes a stock transfer form, which is set out in Schedule 1 to the Bill. As hon. Members will see, the form of transfer is simple to complete. The first alteration in the law to which I want to call attention is that the transfer will be under hand and not by deed. There will be no need for a transfer of shares to be by deed in future.

At the stage when the selling broker completes the form, he leaves out the purchaser's name, because at that stage, having arranged the sale with the other broker, he would not know the purchaser's name until the accounting day. The seller then signs the transfer. Here, I come to the second reform in the law. The transferor will not need to obtain a witness to his signature. Attestation of the signature will no longer be necessary. Therefore, having signed the stock transfer form, the transferor returns it to his broker with the share certificate.

There is one point which worries me a little. Does not this mean that the registrar will have a greater duty to compare the signature of the transferor with the original signatures which used to appear on the old forms of transfer, to make sure that there is no forgery?

The fact that at present there must be a witness to one's signature does not make it any more authentic. Even with the witnessed signatures, I imagine that if they thought that there was any suspicion about the transfer, registrars would compare them with the previous signatures. There will always be a duty on the registrar of a company, if he suspects anything wrong, to investigate. I do not think that this procedure will make it any more difficult for him to investigate or any more necessary to do so.

At the stage which I have reached in my example, a document signed by the transferor is ready to be dealt with on the accounting date. At that date, the selling broker will learn by ticket who is the purchaser. If the sale is to a single purchaser, the broker will affix his stamp to the stock transfer form; he will insert the consideration and he will put the Inland Revenue Stamp on the transfer. He will have it stamped at that stage. He then delivers it to the buying broker with the ticket to identify the purchaser and with the share certificate. The buying broker will insert the buyer's name, put his stamp on the transfer, and lodge the transfer with the certificate for registration with the company.

Here is the fourth item of reform. That transfer form will not in future require the purchaser's signature. The transferee will not have to sign the form in future. That transaction, as I have described it, can apply to the sale and purchase of shares either on or off the Stock Exchange. It need not be a Stock Exchange transaction when it is done by the stock transfer form alone.

If, however, there is more than one buyer of a block of shares which the seller desires to dispose of, the system which I am now going to describe must be restricted to Stock Exchange transactions. Where there is more than one buyer this process is the same up to the accounting date, but then, on the accounting date, when the selling broker learns of the several purchasers, he will cancel the lower half of the stock transfer form which hon. Members will see in the First Schedule and he will turn the form over and complete the list of purchasers on the back of the form.

He then puts his stamp on the transfer form and proceeds to complete the broker's transfer forms, the form of which appears in the Second Schedule to the Bill. He signs in the broker's transfer form the number of shares and the consideration for each purchaser, making a separate broker's transfer form for each purchaser. At that point there is no need for the transferor to sign again. The transferor has his own transfer form and there is no need for him to sign the broker's transfer form or separate transfers to the separate purchasers.

The broker for the seller then signs the stock transfer share certificates and the broker's transfers to the company for certifying by the company. The company will return them. The broker puts his stamp on the broker's transfers and the selling broker will have each transfer stamped. He will put the consideration on the broker's transfer form so it can be stamped with the appropriate Inland Revenue stamp. Having stamped the transfer forms he attaches the tickets to each and delivers them to the buyer's brokers, who lodge them for registration.

When one describes an example of this sort it may sound rather long-winded and perhaps a little complicated, but in action it boils down to a very simple process, and the result of it is that no witnesses will have to sign either for the transferor's signature or the transferee's signature. In future no transferee will have to sign, and no transferor need sign more than once.

I concede at once that I have been trying to look at an exceedingly complicated document, but I am wondering what happens in cases of shares where calls are to be made on the owner of shares. What evidence is there that the transferee has assented to the obligation he is undertaking to pay calls in the future?

The hon. Gentleman has anticipated me by about a sentence. If he will look at Clause 1(4) he will see that the whole process is restricted to fully paid up registered securities.

I am much obliged.

This cannot apply to shares on which there is to be a call. If the transferor is undertaking an obligation he must sign on the transfer. This is the sort of process which the hon. Member will know applies in ordinary conveyancing and has applied for centuries. The purchaser of real property does not need to sign the conveyance unless he is entering into a covenant of some sort, and this principle is now to be applied to the transfer of shares. I personally am delighted that those of us who do conveyancing in solicitors' offices have been vindicated over this, that our old and stodgy conveyancing procedure is now to be applied to the stock form of procedure in the transfer of shares on the Stock Exchange.

This brings up the point I raised earlier. In the future there will be no need for the signature of the buyer on the transfer form, as I understand it. That means that if the registrar at some future date is in some doubt about the authenticity of the signature of the seller he has no specimen to which he can refer to compare the signatures, if he wishes to check a signature or resolve some doubt in his mind as to the authenticity of the signature of the seller.

This does not prevent, nothing in the Bill prevents, the registrar from requiring specimen signatures, or using the signature on a direction for payment of dividends.

If the registrar feels nervous about this procedure he can require, as many of them do on separate forms already, a specimen signature, but I think there is no real danger through the reduction in the number of signatures in the process of transfer of shares.

I have not calculated exactly how many signatures are to be saved, but I imagine that the number of transfers which occur every year must run into the millions. We are saving at least three signatures on each, those of two witnesses and the transferee, and so one can multiply those millions by three, and so we are saving some considerable time in the signing of documents.

I think this is an important point, raised by the hon. Member. Is my hon. Friend suggesting that if a company is worried it should use as a specimen signature that on a dividend allocation? In that case would he go so far as to say that registration would be refused till the purchaser had applied on an entirely different form?

No. I think that the registrar would be under the obligation to satisfy himself of the authenticity of the transfer before accepting it for registration. If he has any doubt I suggest comparison with the previous signature on the form he may have obtained.

In addition to this simplification there is, as I mentioned, the fact that transfer will no longer have to be by deed. But, as the hon. Gentleman the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale) rightly called my attention to just now, this process is limited to fully paid securities and under Clause 1(4) the House will see that is limited to a list of securities there set out in which there are certain exceptions mentioned. For example, Government stock, stock in the Post Office Register, has its own form of transfer. Obviously one cannot use this new form of transfer for Premium Bonds, Tax Reserve Certificates or National Savings Certificates, or, indeed, Defence Bonds, which, again, have their own form of transfer.

I pass to Clause 2 which sets out the supplementary provisions for the simplified form of transfer. Subsection (1, a) preserves the right of a company to refuse to register the transfer in some other cases than the form in which the transfer is made. It also preserves the requisites of a company if indeed a company is a party to the transfer—the requisite as to company execution by use of a seal. Perhaps it is a pity that this Bill is not the appropriate vehicle to do away with some of those formalities of sealing for companies which frequently seem to me to be pure formalities and quite unnecessaryy. At any rate, the Bill preserves those requisites.

Clause 2(2) deals in particular with a Section of the Companies Act, 1948, which speaks of the certification of an instrument of transfer. The subsection provides that the new forms—the stock transfer form and the broker's transfer form—are instruments of transfer within Section 79 of the Companies Act, 1948.

Clause 2(3) was inserted to remove any doubts particularly about Stamp Duty. It would perhaps be better if I left any comments on that subsection to my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary.

To turn to Clause 2(4), it is amazing what comes to light under the glare of reforming zeal. One thinks one has a nice, simple, little reform of the law, and then one finds that a Scottish Act of 1896 somehow stands in the way. The Clause is intended to say that the Scottish Act of 1896 which might have the effect of making blank transfers null and void shall not harmfully affect the Bill. It was also discovered that another Scottish Act, the Conveyancing (Scotland) Act, 1924, needed specific mention. That is an Act in which law agents, notaries public and justices of the peace are required to sign on behalf of blind persons. So it is necessary to insert these saving provisions.

I have already referred to Clause 3 as being the one which gives flexibility in the application of these forms. It gives the Treasury power to amend the two Schedules to the Bill and to provide different forms or different parts of the forms from those set out in the Schedule. This, I am sure, is wise. When one is setting up a new process one wants to see how it works out in practice. If minor amendments are needed, it should not be necessary to have to come back to the House to ask for new legislation; it can be done without harm, I should think by the Treasury.

These Orders are, of course, subject to Prayer in this House—subject to negative Resolution procedure—and if it is thought that they go beyond what one reasonably expects in a Bill of this sort, objection can be made to them on the Floor of the House.

The remaining Clauses of the Bill need be mentioned only very briefly. Clause 4 sets out the definitions. Clause 5—and I trust—

Before we leave the definitions, I was hoping that the moment had come when the hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) was going to convey the glad tidings of the amount that would be saved by the humble buyer or seller of stocks by this considerable reduction in the work to be done by the brokers. As I understand the situation, if I ask my bank to buy some stock for me, the brokers may have to send me half a dozen transfers of odd bits and odd sizes. But we are now saving them that. What will the brokers do about it? By how much will they reduce their commission?

I hope that, a simplified procedure having been provided, the brokers will respond by reducing the commission and so on.

Does the hon. Gentleman expect it?

I believe that a certain part of their commission is based on the number of transfers, and, therefore, they should be saved that right away. I certainly hope that those who own, sell or buy shares will press their brokers, faced with this simplified procedure, to reduce their charges.

Will my hon. Friend deal with the point raised by the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale), which is whether my hon. Friend's method of transfer includes the type of transfer where shares are bought in packages from a certain person and from different owners?

If I understand what my hon. Friend is asking me, it is that whether, if there is a seller of a block of shares and there are a number of purchasers buying—

It is the other way round.

If there are a number of sellers, there will be only the one form, the stock transfer form, which will cover "packets" to the one purchaser. There must also be a transfer from the owner of the shares. There is no new process for that in the Bill. One cannot simplify that process.

To proceed with my summing up of the Bill, Clause 4 gives certain definitions which I do not think need any elaboration from me. Clause 5 also will not, I hope, need any elaboration from me. I understand that it is in the common form. It deals with Northern Ireland. Frankly, I have not a clue what it is about, but I am assured that it is in the common form. Clause 6 states when the Bill is to come into operation. I hope that the Economic Secretary will make some comment on this, for the date when the Bill may come into force is put in the hands of the Treasury. I hope that it need not be too long delayed.

I hold the view that a useful function of private Members' legislation is to delegislate rather than to create more law, to remove some of the useless laws which we have, to cut away some of the dead-wood of the Statute Book rather than put more restrictions on it. This Bill, I hope, cuts away a number of unnecessary legal formalities.

I think that in legislating we ought to have in mind the burden which the law places on ordinary commercial practice and on the ordinary individual. In so many cases in legislation we are imposing on the individual some duty which he has to carry out on the part of government, whether it be local government or central government. One of the greatest saboteurs of productive effort, in commerce at any rate, is what I might call the "hidden boss"—the local authority or the central government—which is making the office workers do its job for it, sticking on the receipt stamps, calculating P.A.Y.E., sticking the stamps on the cards. All those things are done by the office worker to carry out the job of government. The more we can cut down the processes which the law requires office workers to undertake, the better.

I apologise for keeping the House so long, but the Bill did not receive any discussion on Second Reading and I felt it right to put on record what it endeavours to do.

Before the hon. Member sits down, will he help me on one point? It seems to me that the effect of the Bill will be to decrease the revenue from Stamp Duty to some extent, owing to the way in which the Stamp Act is drawn. Can he make any comment on that?

In my view, this process will not have that effect. At present, it is possible to use blank transfers—transfers without the name or signature of the transferee on them—for certain purposes. The Bill makes no change in that procedure. It makes it possible to use a stock transfer form without the name of the transferee in it. Whether it is a purchase by one purchaser or a transaction where there are several purchasers, the process will be that the seller's broker has the document stamped. That will be the practice as foreseen by this Bill, and I doubt whether the Bill can be carried out unless that practice is observed.

Before passing the stock transfer to the buyer's broker it will be stamped by the seller's broker. Before passing the broker's transfer forms to each of the buyer's brokers they will be stamped by the seller's brokers. The seller's broker can pass them on unstamped in the same way as at present he can pass on blank transfers unstamped. It makes no difference in the law.

On the other hand, my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary and his Department have thought that perhaps there should be some protection over this, and no doubt the hon. and learned Gentleman has seen on the Order Paper in connection with the Finance Bill a provision which makes quite sure that the Treasury will lose no duty over this.

In Committee, I felt rather like the young lady who goes to a party with her music and is not asked to play. I had no opportunity to say anything in Committee, beyond thanking the Chairman for taking the Chair. That is my excuse for using up so much time of the House on this occasion.

I shall not delay the House for more than a few minutes, and I shall certainly not take part in any obstruction because, in the first place, I do not like doing it, and, secondly, because I have an interest to delare later in the list of Orders of the Day.

It is, of course, difficult to get a complicated Measure like this very clearly explained by the hon. Member who moved it, and it would seem to be an eminently sensible Bill. One of the problems is that I imagine that, except for those who were on the Committee, there are many hon. Members who have not taken cognisance of the Bill.

I know nothing about the Stock Exchange. Only recently, I got a little money because my life has lasted long enough to enable me to draw some life insurance. I therefore sold some shares a fortnight ago and found that in the slump that followed the shares that I had sold were the only ones that had gone up by 2s. 6d. each in about a week. They were British sugar and authority investments, so I have another loss to regret.

There are problems which may have been explained in Committee and, if so, I apologise for raising them now but, from my point of view, as the hon. Member for Oldham, West, there is a serious problem. It arises from the definition of stock exchange which is contained in Clause 4. Oldham is the only provincial town of its kind which has a recognised, reputable and respectable stock exchange which continues to operate. I would have thought that a recognised stock exchange would have been recognised in the Statute, instead of by the extraordinary provision that only the Stock Exchange in London automatically has the right to operate and that the Treasury, by order, will decide what others are recognised stock exchanges within the meaning of the Bill.

I would have regarded it as almost a fatal defect but for the presence of the Economic Secretary, who, I hope, will say that it is perfectly clear that the Oldham stock exchange will be authorised by the Treasury to act in present circumstances, that an order will be made, and that I need not fear the loss of another industry in Oldham, even if it is less productive than some. I hope that I can have that assurance. Subject to that, I conclude by saying that, once again, we on this side should give benevolence to a Bill produced from the other side on a Friday, and I hope that spirit of conciliation will continue throughout the day.

When I first came into the House to listen to the Bill which preceded this one I had the pleasure of hearing the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) call upon the support of his right hon. and hon. Friends. It so happens that he had no right hon. and hon. Friends present to support him. Since that time the attendance on that side of the House has gone up by 100 per cent., which shows how misleading percentages can be.

I think that the House would wish to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) on bringing this Bill forward so successfully to this point in its procedure. I must congratulate him, too, on having withdrawn his original Bill so that a similar Bill should be introduced in the other place to speed up the procedure and get it on the Statute Book rather quicker than otherwise might have been the case. Greater love has no man than to give up his own Bill to others to present for him. This is a matter for congratulation.

I think that my right hon. Friend will agree that the inspiration for the Bill was given by Lord Ritchie, when he was chairman of the Stock Exchange and set up a committee under the secretary ship of the Shares and Loans Department of the Stock Exchange, Mr. Wells. It is that committee, under the excellent guidance of Mr. Wells, which has done so much valuable work. It is quite remarkable that the report of that committee, which, I think, was published in December, 1960, should have been acted on within two-and-a-half years. It must be almost a record for any report to result in legislation quite so quickly. It shows, perhaps, the need for it.

I have some professional interest in the Bill because I am a chartered secretary myself, although I no longer practise. I started my business career as a junior assistant, assistant secretary in the days of my youth, which, I must say, nowadays are rather like looking at those days through the wrong end of a telescope. During my long course as a junior assistant, assistant secretary I was called upon to undertake most of the registration work for a large public company, at a ludicrous salary—grossly underpaid—but at least I had a great deal of experience in handling registration work of this kind.

I remember only too vividly the amount of detail that I had to watch in checking transfers. I had to check the signatures both of the transferor and the transferee, make sure that they were properly witnessed and make certain that no wife witnessed her husband's signature or vice versa. I had to see that all the transfers were properly certificated, and where I had a number of transactions out of one shareholding involving a number of transferees all this work increased tremendously.

I understand that under the Bill—as the hon. Member for Oldham, West Mr. Hale) has said, it is a complicated Bill—all this will be rendered unnecessary, apart from the necessity of watching the transferor's signature. I am a little concerned about this. I can remember many occasions when I was a little doubtful about the authenticity of the transferor's signature, but I had at least available the original transfer form on which his signature had appeared when he first bought the shares, and, therefore, it was possible, by reference to the archives, if they were properly recorded and maintained archives, to compare the two signatures. This will not be possible in future, as I understand it. This will make one slight problem for registrars in future, although much of their work in other respects will be reduced.

Therefore, I welcome the Bill, because it will help the parties to these share transactions and reduce the amount of work carried out by stockbrokers. Incidentally, I doubt whether they will find any way of reducing charges. I think that their answer will be that their expenses are rising so rapidly that this relief will merely enable them to keep the charges at their present level. However, like the hon. Member for Oldham, West, I would like to think that perhaps they might be persuaded to reduce their charges. Above all, I welcome the Bill because it will reduce the burden of work on registrars, always an overworked and underpaid body of men in my experience.

I want also to refer to the form which appears in Schedule 2. As was mentioned in another place, this is a novel form, owing its origins to Mr. Bell, of the Bank of England. The Bank is not an institution notable for being highly original in itself, so that it is interesting to find this particularly acceptable idea emanating from that source.

One point I wish to raise has been touched on a little already. In Committee, the hon. Member for Gloucester (Mr. Diamond) drew attention to what was said on Third Reading in another place that, under certain circumstances, this might lead to the avoidance of Stamp Duty. There is an Amendment to the Finance Bill on the Notice Paper which, I believe, is designed to avoid this happening, and I would like an assurance from the Economic Secretary that in his view that Amendment will completely meet the point. It is not, perhaps, quite so important as it was when the Bill was introduced, because the Stamp Duty is being reduced from 2 per cent. to 1 per cent. To that extent it is half as important as it was. Nevertheless, it remains quite important.

Another point which is not covered by the Bill is that of the registration fee. This is a very irritating fee charged by companies for registering transfers with them. In many cases it is 2s. 6d. The fee is a nuisance to collect and irritating to pay. With the reduction of work on registrars which will come from this Bill, I hope that the companies will abolish this fee.

The Bill does not extend to overseas companies which have their registrations here. The reasons for this are acceptable but perhaps it will be possible for such companies, by a simple alteration in their articles of association, to permit the adoption of the procedures outlined by the Bill, and I hope that they will do so.

I hope that will also be possible for Commonwealth and Government stocks to be included as well. If I understand it aright, it will be quite simple for registrars, by a change in their regulations, to make it possible for these Government stocks once again to be included within the scope of this Measure. In some cases, it may require legislation by the Commonwealth Governments concerned but I hope that it will not be long before they introduce it.

That brings me to Clause 5, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) referred. If I understand it correctly, Northern Ireland will be excluded from the provisions of the Bill, including securities and companies in that country. Again, by legislation in Northern Ireland, it would be possible to bring them within the purview of the Bill, and I hope that that will be done.

I welcome the introduction of the Bill, which has gone through with the minimum amount of trouble.

The hon. Gentleman says that he has experience as a chartered secretary. Suppose an elderly and impotent bedridden husband owns £20,000 worth of securities which have been transferred to him and registered in his name, and that certificates have been issued in respect of the transfers which he has not signed. What is there now to prevent his wife from transferring the whole of these to a gigolo, on what would admittedly be a forged and criminal document, for a figure inserted in the transfer which is never paid and which is not intended to be paid? Would not that now be registered, continue to be registered, and, indeed, go on being registered until the husband's death, without any question arising because letters addressed to the husband have been opened by the wife?

I do not think that the situation is very much different from that applying today. The only difference is that the signature has to be witnessed and, therefore, there is the possibility of making forgery difficult in that way. But if one set out deliberately to perpetrate a fraud, I do not think that it would be very difficult to get a forged signature witnessed by the gigolo or friend.

The company would have no sample of the genuine signature of the original transferee.

This is a possible weakness and it was suggested that perhaps company registrars might secure that a purchaser of shares should provide a specimen of his signature, perhaps on a dividend mandate form, or something of that kind, which would give them a signature to compare for future transactions.

This process is really meant to apply mainly to Stock Exchange transactions. Certainly, where the two forms are used, this is restricted to Stock Exchange transactions. It is an established practice of law that when an agent delivers a transfer to a company for registration he warrants the signatures on it. That is accepted.

Subsection (1) of Clause 1 is not linked to Stock Exchange transactions.

This point has caused anxiety on both sides of the House. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary will give his views. Subject to that small proviso, I welcome the Bill very much. It will relieve the burden of a great many people engaged in these transactions and in so far as it reduces the amount of paper and the filling of forms it must be welcomed.

I, too, welcome the Bill. In doing so, I have no wish to obstruct the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale) who has a Bill down for consideration later in these proceedings. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page). He said that he gave birth to this Bill in hospital, which is perhaps not an appropriate place so to do. I must confess that it did not occur to me when I was in hospital to dream up Bills. I will bear it in mind for the future, however.

I also pay tribute to Lord Clitheroe who, I believe, was a predecessor of my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary at the Treasury some years ago. Like other hon. Members I feel that it would be right to pay tribute to the report of the Stock Exchange Committee which looked into this matter about three years ago, and particularly the part played by Mr. Wareham. It would be appropriate for me to declare an interest in that I am a director of an issuing house which has a large registrar's department.

Having said that, I assure my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr. John Hall) that this Bill will not alter substantially the amount of work which will fall upon registrars of companies. Having paid heart-felt tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby I wish to make three specific points. The first is that I should like my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary to tell me why this Bill is necessary. The procedure of buying and selling shares is one carried out on the Stock Exchange. Is it not possible for a transfer, which is merely a document intended to pass the ownership of shares, to be altered by agreement with the Stock Exchange?

I appreciate the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe. There is a parallel if one takes the definition of a bank. What is a bank? The answer is that it is anything which engages in banking business. Who engages in banking business? The answer is that it is those people whom the Board of Trade decides are engaged in banking business. That problem arises elsewhere, too. Is it really necessary to have the Bill? Could this not be done otherwise?

Secondly, when is it the intention to bring this Bill into force? Having said that this is a good Bill, I should like to see it come into force as soon as possible. The present position is difficult. I do not intend to go over the ground already covered, but in the case of a family trust it is frequently difficult to get the signatures of all the trustees for any purchase of shares. I can well remember an occasion when there were three trustees, of whom I was one, the other two being octogenarians, and it was a question of whether we could get their signatures witnessed in time before one of them passed to the other side. This sort of difficulty would be obviated by a change such as my hon. Friend has proposed.

I should like to reiterate the remarks of the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) about Stamp Duty, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary will be able to assure us on this point.

Before giving the Bill a welcome push, I should like to assure my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe that the registration fees are a matter for the company and are normally inserted in the company's articles. They are a means of deriving some money from transfers which are themselves extremely expensive to the registrar. If the registration fees were to be abolished by the company, it would mean only that the charge to the company for undertaking this work would be increased. The cost would therefore fall not upon the shareholder, but upon the company. Having said that, I welcome the Bill.

It is right that the Bill should be reasonably aired because this is the first opportunity which we have had of discussing it in the House. I should like to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) for the very full way in which he went into the provisions of the Bill, and at the same time I pay my tribute to Lord Clitheroe who has done so much in another place towards making the Bill a possibility, I am sure that the Bill has a general approval, but, as the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale), who made a number of pertinent points, we all have a duty to ask my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary a number of questions about it. In this connection I should like to say how glad I am that my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary is in his place today, because this is a matter in which he is very experienced.

This is an extension of a Bill which we had the other day in which local authorities were at last allowed to simplify their methods with this kind of issue by using the procedure of bonds. I am sure that any method of transfer of shares between individual companies or trusts which is simplified will be welcome not only by the House but by the general public and by stock exchanges and those connected with the laborious process of the transfer of shares.

I am glad that the Bill has been limited to fully paid shares because, as the hon. Member for Oldham, West said, if it were not it would be almost impossible to operate. I am equally glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby has had the foresight to take out of it specifically methods of transfer such as the Post Office Register and various other special procedures for which there are already laid down clear methods of transfer.

I should like to ask my hon. Friend—and I hope that this is not a fast ball and I ask it as a matter of interest—what the Bill represents in the amount of transfers which are not dealt with through the stock exchange as compared with those transactions which go through the stock exchange. I should like immediately to meet the point raised by the hon. Member for Oldham, West and say that I mean not only the London Stock Exchange but all stock exchanges.

I should like further clarification about signatures, a question raised during the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby by myself and by my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr. John Hall). As we all know, at the moment when making a transfer the registrar of a company has a specimen signature of the original purchaser. This will not be the case today. My hon. Friend the Member for Crosby reasonably suggested that companies have another method of getting a signature, that is to say, through the dividend mandate. That is perfectly correct and I suppose that any company can reasonably demand that that mandate shall be completed, but it would have to say that it was complete before the further transfer; and normally the dividend mandate would not in practice be sent out until the transfer was complete, so there is a time interval. If the transfer took place very rapidly, the specimen signature would not be available and the company would have one of two alternatives—either to authorise the transfer without the signature, or hold up the transfer until such time as the dividend mandate specimen signature had been obtained. We may be making rather heavy weather of this, but I should like to ask my hon. Friend whether we are running any additional risk of fraud and, if so, whether that risk is not balanced by the simplification of the procedure.

The necessity for the Bill was dictated by a clause in the transfers which said that any transfer had to be effected by the proper instrument. I presume that the old method can be used if it is so desired. That question has not yet been asked, but I think that it is fairly reasonable to assume that that would be the case. The hon. Member for Oldham, West stressed the importance of the other stock exchanges. I agree with him that Oldham is an important and well-established stock exchange, but I remind him that there are also Manchester and Liverpool and other stock exchanges which are well founded. I agree with him that it is now up to my hon. Friend to say which other exchanges can be included. I think that that is fair because others might be created in the future and all my hon. Friend would have to do would be to include them in the list. That would not be a problem because any stock exchange which was recognised by the public and in which dealings were carried out would have no difficulty about being recognised by my hon. Friend.

The hon. Member also asked about the position when shares were purchased from a large number of owners. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby answered this when he said that as they were different vendors each would have to have a separate transfer. I think that that is fairly obvious because they would be individual dealings with the purchaser from whom the blocks of shares were being acquired.

I hope that my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary will also assure us about the revenue, because if the Bill in any way diminished the revenue there would obviously be two methods of transfer, one more attractive to the revenue than the other. I may be wrong, but it struck me that the revenue would not be affected by this process.

I should like to refer to the transfer fee which companies levy. This is rather a matter for the company. Some companies, especially smaller companies, may have to employ a staff which they would have to pay and I have often wondered whether accounts for the sums collected when the fee is only 1s. do not offset the financial advantage given by the charge. The answer is for the companies themselves to consider the matter. As the hon. Member for Oldham, West suggested, this charge for transfers is a vexatious one and perhaps in the future many companies will think that it is not only economic but helpful to abolish this fee. It is entirely within the purview of a company to charge what it thinks fit.

This Bill accords with a view to which many of us on this side of the House strongly adhere. We hope that members of the public in all walks of life will continue to take an interest in all forms of security. We hope that as time goes on the public will become not only property owners, but owners of property in the true sense of the word, by owning their own shares.

It would not be out of order to say that the simplification which this Bill introduces will attract people from all walks of life to become share owners. This is one of the most democratic processes which can take place, particularly if the person concerned happens to be the owner of shares in the company in which he works, and I hope that this Measure will enable many ordinary members of the public to buy shares in small denominations and thus become part of our property-owning democracy. The Bill is simplicity, security, and simplification, with, I hope, security and safety, and I welcome it and congratulate my hon. Friend on introducing it.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham (Dr. Alan Glyn). I very much welcome the Bill and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) on all that he has done in connection with it. I am delighted to see my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary to the Treasury in his place, because I know that over the years he has in many ways supported the theme of a property-owning democracy and the passing of this Bill will bring great pleasure to him.

Although, in terms of legislation and of improving and simplifying the process of stock transfers, this Bill is important, it will have no great impact and importance unless those connected with making available the services to enable people to purchase shares take advantage of the simplification which has been brought about by it. There is, unfortunately, in existence the situation that the City of London has shrouded itself in a mystique with lots of jargon and words which the normal person does not come across in every-day life. As a result there is a basic fear of the unknown when the ordinary family man living in the provinces contemplates the possibility of purchasing some shares.

One of the best things which I welcome in the Bill is the fact that the actual stock transfer form is in modern English and in languge which the ordinary man can comprehend. When confronted with the previous forms, I think that there are many occasions when the stockbroker or the bank manager concerned has to assist in the filling in of the form, partly because the person concerned is not quite certain as to what the various pieces of jargon and certain words and terms mean; and I very much welcome the easily understood wording of these new forms.

I suggest, however, that there has now to be a process of educating the public as to what actually physically happens when a share changes hands. This is a task for the London and provincial stock exchanges. It is absurd that at this time when there is a need to encourage investment in the private sector of industry—and I think that both sides of the House will agree that there is this need—this investment should be confined basically to persons who happen to have contact with a stockbroker or with a bank manager who is not prejudiced against equity investments—and we all know that certain bank managers are so prejudiced.

It is, therefore, important that the stock exchanges see that there is created a system whereby the small investor is able to constantly make contact with persons who are able to buy and sell shares on his behalf, and I hope that as a result of the step which I trust the House will take later in supporting the Bill stock exchanges will take action to see that there are very few provincial towns lacking all the facilities and services of a branch of a stockbroker's office.

It is absurd that the process of purchasing shares should be handicapped by the fact that it is against the regulations of the London Stock Exchange for branch offices to be opened in other parts of the country. I think that much more expenditure has to be encouraged to advertise the facilities of stockbrokers in selling shares, to outline how simple it is, particularly after the passing of this Bill, and to make the ordinary member of the public feel convinced that the purchase of shares in a company which provides him with employment, or perhaps a company whose goods he admires and considers are typical of a progressive company, is as simple a process as going to the Post Office and investing a small amount in a Post Office Savings Bank or buying a National Savings Certificate.

I am sure that this is what my hon. Friend envisages and hopes he will achieve by the contribution that he has made to simplifying the administrative process of purchasing shares. I hope that the initiative he has taken will be followed by a similar initiative by men of responsibility and power in this sphere to see that their services are readily available to the British public.

I support the Bill because I believe that in the short term its provisions will prove advantageous to the small investor—and it is on his behalf that I am taking part in this debate—and, in the long term, will prove advantageous to the nation.

As my hon. Friends have said, this new system will unquestionably save a great deal of time and correspondence with stockbrokers, but the important thing is the simplification which the Bill introduces. This simplified system will be readily understood by the man in the street, and I am sure that this will be of great benefit to everyone.

I think that hon. Members on both sides of the House will agree that for far too long the average citizen has tended to avoid investing his money in stock exchange securities because of the difficulties, under the present system, of buying and selling shares. Reference has been made to the obscure terms used, such as bulls and bears, and, of course, this jargon, as with the system, has not been readily understood by the average citizen.

It is essential that we should do everything we can to encourage the spread of ownership of industrial shares over as wide a range of the population as possible. It is vitally important that employees in our industrial undertakings should be encouraged to become shareholders. It gives them a real stake in their business—and who can deny the incentive of the pride of ownership? Compared with the United States, Western Germany and certain other prosperous countries, Britain lags far behind in the matter of the spread of ownership of industrial shares.

I am sorry that the Bill does not go further. The 2 per cent. Stamp Duty has been mentioned. This imposition is just as great a deterrent to the average citizen who is considering investing part or whole of his savings in industrial shares as is the present difficulty of doing so. The ownership of industrial shares is an essential part of any plan directed towards the development of a property-owning democracy, and I sincerely hope that the House will give the Bill a Third Reading.

This, again, is a rather limited Bill. On its Third Reading we are now apparently discussing the principles of a property-owning democracy. However that may be, I have never quite understood what the phrase means. The party opposite seem very fond of it, but whenever the democracy has got any property the Government take the necessary legislative and administrative steps to take it away from the democracy and hand it over to their friends in the City. However, that argument is perhaps beyond the scope of the Bill. I want to confine my remaining remarks to the Bill.

One of its substantial objects is to avoid the practical nuisance of a large number of small transfers when there is a seller of a large block of shares and a considerable number of buyers of small parcels, making up the total amount of that block. Another thing that has gone by the board is the necessity to face the difficult problem of describing ourselves. A lady of my acquaintance, faced with the task of signing a number of these transfers, and called upon to describe herself on each one, went through a number of quite correct descriptions. She started off by describing herself as a married woman—and, incidentally, I can never understand why "married man" is never considered to be a sufficient description—and then as an authoress, and after that one thing and another, finally becoming so impatient with the possibilities that she wrote under "Description" the words "You know what". That description was rejected by the people who had to deal with the transfer. The requirement was a trifle absurd, and I am glad that it has now disappeared.

There is one small but serious point that I should like to mention concerning Stamp Duty. I hope that the Economic Secretary will be able to deal with it. It may be that I am slightly anticipating matters by referring to a table in the Finance Bill, but it is convenient to do so. Let us suppose that we have a single transaction, effected on one form, by which a seller sells to six buyers a similar parcel of shares in each case, amounting to £81, making £486 in all, and another block worth £14 to a seventh buyer. The total sum involved is £500, but if it is to be treated as a transaction dealing with a consideration of £500—and that is the total consideration—the amount of Stamp Duty charge able is considerably less, in this instance, than it would be if the transaction were carried through by way of seven separate transfers. That is due to the way in which the Stamp Act table and the present table in the Finance Bill are prepared. I can give the House the figures if necessary, but the point is clear enough.

No great principle is involved; it is not the sort of thing that would cause one to reject the Bill. Nevertheless, I should like to know what the position is, and what the Treasury thinks about it.

Surely, under the present procedure, the transaction given as an example by the hon. and learned Gentleman would be carried out by separate transfers from transferor to transferee, and the same result would come about in respect of Stamp Duty. I cannot see that the present Bill alters the position.

With respect to the hon. Member—I may have misunderstood his Bill—I doubt whether that is so. Taking, for the sake of convenience, what I hope is a pardonable anticipation on a Friday, the ordinary rates of Stamp Duty under Schedule 9 of the Finance Bill, it is clear that a consideration of £500 will attract a duty of ten times 10s., or £5, and that each of the £81 transfers, of which there were six, will attract a duty of £1, making £6, besides the 3s. attracted by the other £14. If that is the way it works the duty payable appears to be definitely less than what would be paid if the same transaction were effected by a number of transfers.

I mention the point not as a vital objection to the Bill—I would not wish to reject a useful Bill for that reason—but since the Treasury deals with these matters, and no doubt has done so in this case, I should like to hear what steps have been taken or are being taken to ensure that there is no substantial Joss of revenue.

The Treasury has been collecting revenue in this way for years from the unfortunate buyer. If I instruct my broker to buy £1,000 worth of shares I have no option as to whom he buys them from. I am spending £1,000, and I pay duty on £1,000. He writes to me and says, "I have bought £70 from one person, £72 from somebody else, and £47 from somebody else" and so on. I then sign, say, 15 transfers, and have to pay the duty, and the Treasury gets the money because the transaction is split up. Surely that is being put right.

I think that my hon. Friend and I can at any rate agree that the Treasury must have gone wrong somewhere, whether in the past or in the present. Perhaps, on a Friday, I may be relieved from speculating about the intentions of the Stamp Act. They are a little difficult to ascertain.

On broader points I welcome the Bill. I notice that the Bill is supposed

"to amend the law with respect to the transfer of securities."

But it does not repeal anything. That makes me wonder how far his hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-East (Mr. Hopkins) was correct in suggesting that all this could be done without legislation. The hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) has his uses. He reminds us of very welcome little points that the public at large have often forgotten. His Cheques Act certainly had that effect. It reminded people that they could do things, which they have been doing ever since, because those things appeared in the Statute. Perhaps this Bill is similar. No doubt the Economic Secretary will tell us how far the Bill is necessary and how far it is a convenient way of making arrangements, in a statutory form, which will undoubtedly be an improvement on the present ones.

I hope that I shall not be considered ungenerous in the comments that I have made, because I sincerely welcome the Bill on behalf of hon. Members on this side of the House. It removes a number of inconvenient and sometimes rather absurd things that have grown up in the past. It will make life simpler for people in this respect, and, therefore, it is surely a Bill which we ought to welcome. Again I would say I am very glad that the Bill has come forward, but I hope that it will not be necessary for hon. Members to fall ill and to go into hospital and draft Bills there in order to get the Government to attend to matters of this sort which are really their business.

I am glad to have the opportunity to say a few words about the Bill. I should like, shortly, to describe the Government's attitude to it and to refer, in particular, as appropriate, to the Government's intentions towards the matters raised by the Bill. I will, of course, do my best to answer the several questions that my hon. Friends and others have asked me during the course of our most interesting debate.

First, I would say as clearly as possible that I am convinced that the Bill is a worthwhile Measure and that there are substantial benefits to be gained from simplifying transfer procedure. There is no doubt that the present system is extremely laborious. It often causes delay, not only because one has to deal with several transfers when one only is necessary. The hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale), the hon. Member for Clapham (Dr. Alan Glyn) and the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr. John Hall), who, apparently, had a great deal of experience of these matters as a young man, all said something on this point, and, indeed, they were entirely right.

I was interested in the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr. Walker), who explained that he could not be here to listen to the winding-up speeches this afternoon, when he approved of the fact that the new transfer forms are written in English as opposed to jargon, a point on which my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) also commented. But having given my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby full marks for his knowledge and command of simple English, my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester then went on to split an infinitive in a most appalling way. I hope that Hansard will record it and that my hon. Friend will take note of the opprobrium of the House on the point.

I was interested, too, about the point of description which the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) made in his example of the married woman. I have always thought that an even more fatuous description was that of "gentleman" which is open to all sorts of people in all sorts of circumstances and often seems to be severely misplaced. But today we have been agreeing on all sides that there are substantial benefits to be gained from a new system.

The old system can perfectly well continue, but the legal obligation is upon persons using the old forms only to complete them to the extent that the new system requires. They can volunteer more information and more signatures if they think that appropriate, but there is no legal requirement now, or will not be if the Bill receives the Royal Assent, to do so.

We are not considering the reform of a process which is a rare thing. Quite the reverse. Markings on the London Stock Exchange have varied in recent years between 3½ million and 4¼ million in a year, and as the House knows very well much business takes place on the Floor of the London Stock Exchange which is not marked at all. So perhaps we can express the hope that we shall before very long have complete figures of turnover. I think that they would be useful and desirable, when it is possible to obtain them.

But in addition, as the hon. Member for Oldham, West very rightly reminded us by inference, there are all the transactions on the more than 20 other stock exchanges in the United Kingdom. Most of our great cities have their own stock exchanges—Glasgow, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Bristol and many other cities. And, of course, last but by no means least there is the somewhat independent and thoroughly effective Stock Exchange in the ancient and fine old Borough of Oldham.

In addition still, there are, of course, certain associations, in particular, the Provincial Brokers' Stock Exchange, which cover many more and much smaller towns on the whole throughout the United Kingdom. Furthermore, endeavouring to catalogue those transactions, those institutions, those persons, those professional people to whom this Bill will be of use and of benefit, a large number of transfers, of course, never come through the stock exchanges at all. There are all those entered into by solicitors, by executors and so on—a great mass of transfers that involve, for example, private and non-quoted companies.

In sum, therefore, the overall saving of time and trouble to people concerned with the transfer of securities which will result from the introduction of this new procedure is bound to be considerable. The particular point which has a bearing on the subject raised by a number of my hon. Friends including my hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr. A. Brown) is that it must have a similarly beneficial effect in the future, and an increasingly beneficial effect.

Let us take the position today. There are, we understand from surveys, between 3½ million and 4 million shareholders. Lord Ritchie, to whom tribute has very rightly been paid during the debate, estimates that another ½million potential shareholders are on the threshold of investment. The Inland Revenue's 105th Report of January, 1963, stated that the number of ordinary shareholders rose between 1960 and 1961 by 130,000 and that the number is growing at the rate of about 10,000 a month.

There are remarkable new developments, the sort of "Do-it-Yourself" or unit trust clubs. There are about 1,200 of them today. Five years ago, I believe, there were about 100. There are now about 1 million unit trust holders, all of whom will benefit; and the potential, I suggest, is even greater. I will not go into the detail of the direct side. There is also the indirect side. So many today, of course, invest through insurance companies, through pension funds and through the trade unions—and how wise the unions are in this regard. The indirect investors will also benefit.

I hope that I have said enough to indicate the sound reason why the Government should be anxious to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby and to welcome the introduction of this Measure. Indeed, I think it most appropriate that it should have been introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby, for this reason particularly. Its whole purpose, as my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham and my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester pointed out, is simplification. It is in the tradition of other Measures in which my hon. Friend has taken a leading part.

On the Third Reading of the Cheques Bill, in 1957, my hon. Friend said that if that Bill was, in fact, accepted it would result in the saving of the time spent in making no less than 630 million signatures a year. My hon. Friend the Member for Clapham asked if I could do some precise calculations of the numbers of transfers that go through in the course of a year. I am sorry that I cannot; I do not have this information, and I cannot conceive of any way of getting it. All one can do is to make an estimate. My estimate is that my hon. Friend must have saved a further 20 million signatures a year by the introduction of his Bill, if the House sees fit to give it its Third Reading and if it receives the Royal Assent. So I think that it adds not insubstantially to a score which was itself not insubstantial. But, quite apart from that, perhaps it is not an inappropriate Measure for National Productivity Year. I hope that I may be allowed to make one comment in passing. It is sometimes said by learned commentators who watch our Parliamentary affairs and write and speak about them that the day of the private Member is over, that he has no contribution to offer and that he is mere Lobby fodder. I believe that my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby has quite clearly indicated that there is much that any hon. Member on the back benches can do to bring about reforms and appropriate progress which are both desirable and necessary.

I have been specifically asked by the hon. and learned Member for Kettering and by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-East (Mr. Hopkins) why this legislation is necessary for what might be regarded as purely a change in administrative practice. The answer is, as the hon. and learned Member himself said, that there as both practical and legal reasons for legislating on this subject of a new system of transfer. From the practical point of view, it is necessary, if there is not to be confusion on the stock exchanges, that the new system should come into operation in relation to as great a number of securities as possible at one single time.

The Bill, by over-riding provisions in articles of association and similar instru- ments, will save companies time and trouble in which they would otherwise be involved in changing the instruments governing their operations—changes which a few companies might be unwilling to make or dilatory in making. In a rather similar way, this legislation has the effect of over-riding much subsidiary legislation in relation to the transfer of Government and local and public authority stocks. If investors and stock exchanges are to get the full benefit of the new system, it is obvious that it should come into operation over as wide an area as possible at a given date.

Even, however, if companies have been left to amend their own articles of association, and so on, the legal validity of the new system might still have been in some doubt because of the provisions in various older statutes. I am told that there are examples of that in the Company Clauses Act, 1845, and certain sections of the Companies Act, 1948 and the Finance Act, 1946. In relation to Scotland, it has also been necessary to over-ride the old provisions of an Act of the Scottish Parliament which might have had the effect of making a blank transfer null.

The Bill makes it clear that any contrary provisions relating to transfers of registered securities in other Statutes are over-ridden. It also contains provisions which remove uncertainties arising from the use of two transfer documents—for example, in deciding by reference to which document the date of lodgment is ascertainable. It is one thing to decide how a system should be reformed, but another to put those proposals into a suitable legislative framework—although, if I may say so, my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby has succeeded very well in doing this. I think, however, that it is clear from the discussion—or, to cap what my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby said, perhaps the absence of discussion—in earlier stages that this Bill, which implements the Report of Lord Ritchie's Committee, has commanded general support.

I should like to pay tribute here to Lord Ritchie. I have not always agreed with everything that he has said on all occasions, but I believe that he and his Committee—and some of his officials, like Mr. Wareham, and other distinguished names—have done a great service by sorting the matter out, considering it with great care, and by making the clear and wise recommendations which this Measure follows.

I was asked particularly by the hon. Member for Oldham, West—for what, I am sure, are very good reasons, he is not now in his place, but no doubt he will read my words in Hansard—why we gave London a particular place in the Bill and neglected to mention specifically by name other stock exchanges about which I have already spoken. I would assume that the reason is that my hon. Friend has followed word for word the provisions of the Prevention of Fraud Act, 1958.

It is clear, as was stated by my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham, that new stock exchanges can appear and that old stock exchanges can, perhaps, die. At any rate, there may well be changes, and the present provisions would enable the Treasury to incorporate, if it was thought appropriate, associations of brokers—as, for instance, the Provincial Brokers' Stock Exchange. I can tell the hon. Member very clearly that it would be our intention to include Oldham.

Another point raised by my hon. Friends the Members for Wycombe and Crosby related to the considerable number of operations begun on one stock exchange and completed on another. This is very often the case in transactions that are routed to London through the provincial stock exchanges. In this connection, I have been very interested to see that the Northern Ireland Parliament has introduced a Measure of similar intent to this Bill. Assuming that that Measure becomes law in Northern Ireland and that this Bill is enacted here, transactions between the Belfast and London stock exchanges, or those relating to purchases or sales by residents in Northern Ireland where the register is in Great Britain, or vice versa, will operate under the new system.

Perhaps I can now also answer an ancillary point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe on the subject of Commonwealth Government stocks. Commonwealth Governments and their registrars will certainly be invited to bring their stocks under the new transfer procedures. I am sure that would be right.

There are four other matters about which I have been asked and to which I have to refer. The first is the protection of investors generally, and the avoidance of fraud. The hon. Member for Oldham, and my hon. Friends the Members for Wycombe and Clapham asked particularly about this, and I thought that my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby spoke some wise words in answer. My hon. Friend the Member for Clapham asked whether we were not making rather heavy weather of this point. There is, perhaps, something in that comment. On the other hand, it is right to give serious consideration to a matter as important as this.

The first point I want to make, additional to the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby, is that, as I understand it, company secretaries and registrars have seen this Bill, and have thoroughly approved it. I am very content to leave judgment in such a matter to the experts. Many other bodies have seen this Bill besides company registrars and secretaries—the people whom my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe indicated from his own experience are so much concerned with the practical aspect of the matter.

The point has already been made that much information is in any case available to company registrars and secretaries but, even if that were not so, they are free—they may even think it necessary and desirable in certain cases—to obtain further information if they wish; for example, through protection letters which, although not sent out as much as they once were, can still be sent out to establish the bona fides of an apparent transferor. Of course, nothing in the Bill in any way affects the civil rights, so to speak, of people engaged in such transactions.

Then there is the question of the powers given to the Treasury under Clause 3 to amend the specimen forms—to which my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby made some reference—either by alterations in the forms themselves or by the substitution and introduction of new forms. The general object of the Clause is to give some discretion to the Treasury and, in other words, to introduce a degree of flexibility into the Bill.

I certainly agree that we must have regard to the possibility of new means of handling documents becoming available in future. In the short time during which I have been concerned in the past with registration work, I have been astonished at the enormous development and changes which have come about. One can foresee further changes, particularly through the introduction of computing and transferring machinery of the most modern kind, and in the immediate future. We therefore must have regard to the possibility of new means becoming available which will make it desirable perhaps to change the forms which are set out in the Schedule without changing the formalities.

This is a wise safeguard in present circumstances though the new forms should serve well enough in the immediately foreseeable future. The Treasury will not have to approve every tiny alteration made. Clause 3(1), in any case, will give stock exchanges the opportunity of using forms larger in size than those scheduled in the printed Bill.

This has a bearing on what my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester said. He was kind enough to say that the forms were clear. They will be clearer when printed in a different size and when different kinds of type are used. I also understand that it will be the intention of the Stock Exchange that the brokers transfer forms specified in Schedule 2 will be printed on blue paper so that registrars may readily distinguish them from stock transfer forms. That is obviously sensible and an example of the sort of small improvements which can be made without reference to the Treasury—and a very good thing too.

The third matter is perhaps much more important. It was raised in Committee by the hon. Member for Gloucester (Mr. Diamond) and the hon. Member for Westhoughton (Mr. J. T. Price). It was also raised very clearly today by the hon. and learned Member for Kettering and my hon. Friends the Members for Clapham, Wycombe and Tottenham. This is the question of safeguarding the Revenue. The point which we were considering in Committee was the fundamental question of those who, because they are naughty people, might attempt to avoid Stamp Duty altogether. In Committee, I said it was necessary to make provision which would have the effect of preventing the circulation of blank transfers with consequent loss of Stamp Duty revenue.

I also said that if the Committee thought fit to approve the Bill a new Clause would be tabled for the Report stage of the Finance Bill. This has now been done and I hope that it will be generally welcomed when we discuss it next week. I might mention to the hon. and learned Member for Kettering, in reply to something I was asked in Committee, that not only has this been done but I hope that he and the hon. Member for Gloucester will think that it has been done in good time with plenty of notice.

I cannot now go into all the reasons why we thought it appropriate to put the new Clause down for the Finance Bill rather than at the time of the passage of this Bill, since I have already discussed the matter earlier. On the other hand, we now come to an entirely fresh subject which was raised by the hon. and learned Member for Kettering when he asked, "Do not we have a position here where although it may be the intention of the Government to block up, so to speak, an avenue through which ad valorem transfer duty might be avoided altogether yet less duty might be paid if a series of transactions were dealt with than if there were a single transaction?"

The hon. and learned Member was interrupted by the hon. Member for Oldham, West, who complained of the earlier system. He said that the Treasury had been behaving outrageously in the past and taking more duty than it was entitled to take. He said, by inference, that it was good that the position was being regulated. Therefore, the new is wrong, and the old is wrong, which makes me fancy that at the Treasury, for once, we have it about right. To be serious on the subject, you, Mr. Speaker, would not wish me to pursue now that matter of Schedule 9 of the Finance Bill, but I will pay strict attention to what the hon. and learned Member for Kettering said. I should like to check the figures which he gave, not that I suspect them of being incorrect, but to see how they compare over a wide range of examples.

The fourth and final matter was the question of Clause 6, raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby and my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-East. Subsection (2) puts the responsibility on the Treasury to decide the date on which the main provisions of the Bill will come into force. It is quite clear that stock exchanges, their members and staffs will have to undertake a considerable amount of preparatory work. Forms must be printed. The new procedures must be studied and understood by those who will have the practical management of them, and the general arrangements for the handling of transfer documents will have to be reviewed. I am given to understand that attention has already been given to these matters and, indeed, I have seen some of the very good and clear notes prepared by the London Stock Exchange in that connection.

I see no reason to revise the estimate I gave during the Committee stage to the effect that we would envisage a period of three months from the Royal Assent as being appropriate. One would, therefore, perhaps expect to see the Bill come into effect in October or November.

I was not asked specific questions, but none the less many comments were made, on the subject of company registration work in general. My hon. Friend the Member for Worcester made a powerful plea to the effect that those concerned—company registrars and others—should take full advantage of this simplification by simplifying their own procedures. My hon. Friends the Members for Clapham, Wycombe and Bristol, North-East all similarly referred to the point.

I do not think there is any doubt at all that the length of time which many companies allow to elapse between the lodgment of the transfer and the issue of a new share certificate causes general inconvenience and additional work. I hope very much that when the Bill reaches the Statute Book companies in general will re-examine their internal arrangements for the issue of certificates and, in particular, audit procedure.

There is the question of sealing. Often sealing does not take place at sufficiently frequent intervals, and it seems in these days that it may well be appropriate for companies to dispense with some of the formalities of signing certificates which may have been appropriate and desirable in the past, but which now, with modern techniques, machinery and protection systems, might be dispensed with.

We have heard a lot about registration fees. This is a matter for the companies themselves. Many companies have already abolished them. But whether or not it is appropriate to do so in individual cases, I think that the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester was entirely valid. The more that companies can do to take advantage of these improvements in the law, so much the better, because then it will be a case of following up the work that has been done in the introduction of this Bill by my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby.

A great deal has been said on the subject of brokers' charges. I would not wish to comment on that; my hon. Friend said some wise words on the subject. But, of course, brokers' charges are not only made to pay for transfer work. They are also made in order to provide for all the research and effort which go into advising their clients. My hon. Friend the Member for Worcester is only too anxious that brokers should spend much more money on expanding, and so on. It is a matter for them to decide.

It is true that one can make comparisons with other international centres, and it is essential that those who wish to see London developing as an international capital market—a process which I hope will be assisted by this Bill—should keep their eyes on this point. I do not doubt that this matter frequently engages the attention of the Stock Exchange Council. I am sure, too, that the Council will heed some of the things which have been said during this debate.

The object of the Bill is not to prevent anyone doing anything. On the contrary, as I see it, its essential object is to enable companies and other bodies issuing securities to take advantage of the simplified arrangements for their transfer and to enable those simplified arrangements to be introduced in the most efficient manner. I am sure the House owes my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby and Lord Clitheroe, a former Financial Secretary to the Treasury, who introduced the Bill in another place, a deep measure of gratitude for the part they have played in bringing it forward and, I hope, finally onto the Statute Book.

The changes which the Bill makes may appear unexciting, but they are not without their legal interest, as the hon. and learned Member for Kettering said, nor, I am sure, was the drafting of the Bill without its legal complications. I agree with the hon. and learned Member; I hope that we do not all find that the only place in which legislation can be drafted is in hospital.

Speaking for the Government, I join in the general welcome which has been given to the Bill and express again the hope that all who can will take advantage of its provisions. I express the hope particularly, as I said a moment ago, that the Bill may assist London to obtain an increasing share of international stock transfer business. I am sure that that is very much in the general national interest, besides the fact that the more that stock transfer procedures are simplified, the more it is possible for people more readily to comprehend them and thus to take part in processes of stock ownership which I have always believed, and which I know many of my hon. Friends have always believed, to be thoroughly desirable.

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

The Bill was fairly well considered in Standing Committee, but I think that it would be right for me to say a few words about it on Third Reading. The object of the Bill is to implement the recommendations of the Report of the Lord Chancellor's Private International Law Committee and to enable the United Kingdom to ratify The Hague Convention on Testamentary Dispositions. I am sure that hon. Members on both sides of the House will agree with me when I extend thanks to the members who sat on that Committee and produced the Report.

Clearly, a major aim of the law relating to wills is that documents should be accepted as valid only when it can be said with reasonable certainty that they were executed by the testator with the intention of disposing of his assets after death or revoking previous dispositions of that nature. Equally, a document which fulfils these conditions ought to be regarded as valid, and it is a defect in the law if the document is excluded because of some technical imperfection of which the testator might not reasonably have been aware.

If a testator executing his will complies with the formal requirements of any system of law which he might assume to apply to his case, the will should be treated as valid. Equally, it is desirable that a will treated as valid in one country should be treated as valid in another, as a testator may have assets in more than one territory.

As I understand, at common law the form of a will was governed by the testator's domicile at the time of his death. But a major statutory change took place in 1861, when the Wills Act was passed. Under it, a will disposing of personal property is valid if made in accordance with the formal requirements of the law of the place in which it was executed or his domicile at the time of execution or his domicile of origin—if within Her Majesty's Dominions—in force at that time.

There were two defects in this situation. First, a distinction is made between real and personal property which is no longer necessary since the property legislation of 1925. Secondly, the Act makes a distinction between British subjects and others. As the Act became law in several Commonwealth countries it has become difficult to apply as the concept of British nationality has become much more complex over the years.

Accordingly, the Private International Law Committee recommended, and those attending The Hague Convention agreed, that a will will be held to be validly executed as regards form if it meets with the requirements of the internal law of the following: the place where it was made; the place of the testator's domicile; the country of the testator's nationality; the place where he had his habitual residence; or, so far as it disposes of land, the place where the land is situated.

Those are the short general principles and ideas underlying the Bill. If passed, as I hope it will be, the Bill will enable the United Kingdom to ratify the Convention, which I believe the Government are anxious to do, and, for those reasons, I very much hope that it will receive the support of hon. Members on both sides.

This is obviously a very sensible and very desirable Measure, but there are one or two points which I should like to make. I think that I am right in saying that the Bill still has to go to another place and certainly I have no desire to stop its progress. If relevance is found in any of the observations which I have to make, there is a chance that they will be dealt with there.

I know that there is always a passion on the part of all reformers, when they introduce a useful Measure, to make it of almost universal application. I think that the provision introduced by Amendment in Committee in Clause 2(1, a) is a highly controversial and somewhat difficult provision which the courts will have very great difficulty in interpreting, applying or an understanding. One of the reasons for this is the insertion of the words "or other relevant circumstances", which have no definition at all. What is being said is that, if any man makes a will on board ship, it shall be valid if it is made in accordance with the law relating to that ship and that the law relating to that ship shall be ascertained, not only by reference to its country of registration, which in about four cases out of ten is Liberia, but by any "other relevant circumstances."

What "relevant circumstances" are I do not know. I do not know whether they are the nationality of the captain, the nationality of the owning company or the nationality of the flag of convenience; or whether in the case of the "Nancy" brig the fact that only one person remained and the rest of the crew were consumed by him and therefore their nationality had been absorbed in the process of mastication and became consolidated in that of the survivor. These are all matters which might have to be determined by a court, and I should have thought that Her Majesty's judges would express surprise on being called upon to say what was a relevant circumstance in connection with a voyage of Mr. Onassis' yacht in the Mediterranean, possibly under Liberian registration, with a French captain and a crew of international entertainers.

The words in Clause 2(1,b) were "real estate". The phrase has now become "immovable property", because, we are told, that is fully understood on the Continent, although it is not understood here. As I read the Clause, it means that if I as an Englishman make a will which is invalid in England and which attempts to dispose of real estate in Nigeria, if it is not executed according to English law it is invalid but that if it is executed in accordance with Nigerian law it shall be valid only in relation to the disposition of the property in Nigeria. That seems to be what it means and it raises some problems. If we are passing an Act to say that an invalid will can be valid in relation to one clause only because that one clause only, disposing of property outside the jurisdiction of the court determining the validity of the will, would operate to be an effective disposition of that property although all the rest of the Clauses were invalid, we are raising some problems.

My third point concerns Clause 4 There is no definition of "construction". I can well understand that "construction" in its normal meaning would mean the rules which a court would have to apply in ascertaining its meaning, and its meaning only, but in this sense one does not have to go very far to wonder whether "construction" also includes the application of our general laws, in particular provisions like the old Thelusson Act, the statute against perpetuities, and so on. Is it now possible under Clause 4 for someone to avoid all our laws against perpetuities and our restrictions on the disposition of estate to people who go a generation beyond the youngest descendant of the late Queen Victoria, which was the standard clause which was used in my time?

Will this make valid dispositions made by a well-to-do Englishman who has gone on a yacht for the purpose in accordance with Clause 2(1, a), or on a liner or an aircraft, so that he can avoid some of the provisions of our law which restrict the disposition of property over a long period?

Clause 6(1) states:

" ' internal law' in relation to any territory or state means the law which would apply in a case where no question of the law in force in any other territory or state arose".

There is no provision about soldiers' wills, which are a case in point. The hon. Member for Edinburgh, South (Mr. Clark Hutchison) knows perfectly well that we have always had special provisions for testamentary dispositions by soldiers on active service.

I should have thought that a soldier on active service who was making a will in France in the course of a war against some other State was in a situation in which a question of the law of the territory in which he is stationed might arise and that, therefore, it would be desirable, proper and suitable to add words to say that nothing in this Bill should adversely affect our own provisions, because I do not see why a soldier's will should not have the benefit of the Bill. I do not want to be restricted by the Act in relation to the execution of a will made by a soldier on active service.

Subject to these small points, I am happy to give the Bill my individual blessing.

I intervene on this rather technical and legal subject only to express shortly a few views by a non-lawyer. I was interested to hear that the Bill will take consequential action to bring provisions into line with something that was enacted in 1925. As a layman in these matters, I suggest that thirty-eight years is not too long a period to elapse to enable the lawyers fully to consider these matters. I say this to indicate that in my view the Bill is timely and, perhaps, in some senses overdue.

The hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale) raised some interesting and, perhaps, important detailed points and I am sure that he will forgive me if I do not try to answer them. The hon. Member would not be very interested in my opinions. I hope, however, that my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General will answer them, or that my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, South (Mr. Clark Hutchison) will deal with these points, some of which were of importance.

Underlying some of the points made by the hon. Member, however, was the view that British law in respect of wills is superior to that elsewhere. He seemed to fear that some of our provisions might be overthrown in bringing them into line with what is going on elsewhere. I think that we must beware of having too nationalistic, too proud, a view of our own excellence, because, after all, the legal systems of other countries have also had to face many difficult problems, and although they may have quite different ways of dealing with these matters, they may be just as good. I do not think that we should assume, if we have to change our methods of dealing with these problems, that we are necessarily going to be worse off. I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend, in replying to the debate, may confirm that.

I rose specially for this reason that, as I think is probably well known, I personally very much favour the broadening of national outlooks and attitudes into more international outlooks and attitudes and I think it is the duty of this House and of the Government to support and subscribe to The Hague Convention. I myself would be very pleased if the citizenship of live people were not too strictly determined within national boundaries, but at least I think that people who are dead should be internationalised and given international citizenship through the passage of the Bill.

Perhaps for that wider reason more than any other I welcome the Bill, and congratulate my hon. Friend on bringing it forward.

I also wish to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, South (Mr. Clark Hutchison). This is the second occasion today in private Members' time when we have been able, through the foresight of private Members, to implement international agreements and integrate them into our law.

I welcome the Bill from that point of view. It remedies certain anomalies, and by amending legal process enables the wishes of testators not to be frustrated. For that reason, I particularly welcome the Bill. It will make very much simpler the making of wills and testaments by those people who live abroad and who are habitually resident abroad. I gather that one thing made clear by the Bill is that those habitually resident abroad are being brought in for the first time. I welcome that. I should like the Attorney-General to comment on that.

I noted with interest what the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale) said, and I would just say to him that it is not necessary to travel in a ship or aircraft to make a will in order to travel in the company of entertainers. We have our entertainers here.

I too, welcome the Bill, which has the support of both sides of the House.

I should like to take the opportunity also to welcome the right hon. and learned Gentleman on the Front Bench in the matter of this Bill which was originally introduced by an hon. Member on the other side of the House whose name is not on the Bill and who knew no more about it than what he read out shortly before four o'clock one Friday, and I talked it out. It has now reappeared.

But, really, the Government ought to take these matters a little more seriously. This is, after all, an international convention to which they are parties, and this is, in substance, their Bill. Personally, I think that it is entirely wrong that private Members should be called upon to give up private Members' time on a Friday to carry through things which the Government themselves ought to be able to put through. It is not as though this were a contentious matter, or one likely to take up much of the time of the House; but it is not the only one today.

I trust that those responsible for arranging the Government's timetables, to whatever party they belong, will pay a little more attention in future to enabling Her Majesty's Government to carry out their international obligations, and also to enable this House to put through non-contentious Measures of law reform which it seems incredibly difficult to find time for, except by asking private Members to provide it.

This is, of course, a private Member's Bill, and I should like to add my congratulations to those uttered by the other hon. Gentlemen who have spoken and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, South (Mr. Clark Hutchison) upon having brought the Bill to this stage. The Government were represented by my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General during the Committee stage when some points were raised from the other side on this matter. Some improvements were made in the Bill during the Committee stage, when the Government gave their assistance to my hon. Friend, the promoter of the Bill.

So fair a wind has this Bill been given that it would be ungracious not to acknowledge the Government's gratitude to the pilot and give him their good wishes. The whole House will, I am sure, admire the facility and expedition with which he has managed the voyage, and its successful conclusion in this House is a matter of particular pleasure to all of us, because we understand that at the very outset of the voyage my hon. Friend had some difficulty in mustering a crew to carry the Bill through at that stage. Those little staffing difficulties were successfully overcome at the end, however, and with support from both sides of the House, not least from the hon. and learned Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Hector Hughes), who took a part in the Committee, my hon. Friend's Measure is now well on its way towards the Statute Book without any of the disasters of the "Nancy" brig. I can see, Mr. Speaker, that if I pursue this metaphor further I may get into very deep water indeed.

I think the House would wish me, as there was no suitable opportunity on Second Reading for the courtesies common on these occasions, to thank also the Private International Law Committee of my noble Friend the Lord Chancellor, whose Fourth Report forms the basis of more than one of the provisions of the Bill. The fact that it reported as long ago as 1958 is not a cause of reproach to the Government and still less to my hon. Friend, since its recommendations involved negotiations with foreign countries which in due course were considered by the Hague Conference on Private International Law.

This seems to me a suitable opportunity to pay a tribute to the work of that Committee in general and to the members who produced the Fourth Report in particular. It may be of some interest to note that although it reported only five years ago, no fewer than three of its members have subsequently become High Court judges, one a judge of the International Court of Justice, and one Counsel to Mr. Speaker in this House. We congratulate them on their advancement. The Private International Law Committee seems to be a royal road to advancement. We regret their departure from it, but thank them once more for their labours in that respect.

Although for a number of reasons, one of them being quite conclusive, my hon. Friend was not able on Second Reading to expound to the House the essential object of the Bill and the effect of its detailed provisions, the House will not, I think, expect me to remedy the position now, and, indeed, I might well be thought to be out of order if I did so. But I think I ought to say that, as has been mentioned, the passing of the Bill will enable the United Kingdom to ratify The Hague Convention on the Conflict of Laws relating to the form of Testamentary Dispositions. This, I am sure, is a welcome advance, and it is something which this country ought to do, and we are very glad that the Bill will enable us to do so.

I am sure that the House will rejoice to see a Measure which is designed to preserve wills which might otherwise fail for a technical defect, because the Bill is dealing with the formalities of wills and not with the substance of them. I think that all lawyers, and many lay men, too, are familiar with a remark made by a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary when he said that as a result of a decision of the other place in its judicial capacity:

"I anticipate with satisfaction that henceforth the group of ghosts of dissatisfied testators, who, according to a late Chancery judge, wait on the other bank of the styx to receive the judicial personages who have misconstrued their wills, may be considerably diminished."

The hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale) touched upon a very difficult point in connection with the Bill, and that is the question of wills which are made in aircraft and on ships. I know not why anybody should ever want to make a will in an aircraft or on a ship, but some people may wish to do so. I should have thought that wise testators would have done so before they embarked on the journey; but should they wish to do so the position will be covered by the Bill.

This raises a very difficult problem in addition to those mentioned by the hon. Gentleman. People are travelling in space ships nowadays, and the exact nationality of a particular space ship might well raise a very nice question. It is, I concede, an extraordinarily difficult problem for the draftsmen. The solution that has been adopted is to make it a question of fact for the court to decide what country the vessel or aircraft ought to be taken to have been most closely connected with. I think we can leave it to the courts to determine that upon the basis of not only the registration of the vessel but any other circumstances which will assist the court in determining that particular question of fact.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman said that he did not know why people wanted to make a will in an aircraft. I had the privilege of flying in Western Australia with a gentleman called George in a two-engined aircraft and it was recorded that one of his passengers said on being informed that one engine was out of order "What happens when the other goes out of order?" George said "This is when we find out whether that fellow Newton was right. That is when you want to scribble a will".

I am astonished that the hon. Gentleman, with his professional experience and skill, should embark on journeys of that sort without making provision beforehand, or at least without having taken the sensible decision to die intestate.

One other point that the hon. Gentleman raised was the question of soldier's wills. I can assure him that soldier's wills will not be affected in any way. The provisions for soldier's wills will remain as they are. This Bill deals only with formalities and does not touch that question.

The other questions that he has raised I have no doubt will be considered by my hon. Friend who is promoting this Bill and by others to see whether it is necessary as a result of the points he raised that some improvement should or ought to be made.

Finally, although as an English lawyer I do not pretend to understand the subtleties of Scottish law that are dealt with in Clause 5, the Scottish element in my blood is warmed by the knowledge that we find in this Bill, whose promoter and all its supporters represent constituencies north of the Border, some small room for a provision dealing specifically with Scotland, which will, I am informed by the Lord Advocate, be of use in that country. With those few words, I commend my hon. Friend's Measure to the House and congratulate him again on his efforts thus far.

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

I have to confess—I use the word in the light of what has been said—that this is a Bill the purpose of which is to allow Her Majesty's Government to ratify an international convention. I hope that this Bill will bring no sorrow to the mind of the hon. and learned Gentleman for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison). I confess to him that this is the second time that I have done this, although not actually in this Session of Parliament.

However, I would suggest to him that we ought not to accept too readily the assumption, which is assiduously encouraged by executive Governments these days, that the function of initiating legislation in Parliament somehow belongs especially to the Executive and that no Bill of any major significance ought to be introduced by a private Member. I think that is a dangerous heresy. Whether we should allow Governments to introduce Bills into the legislature at all, I do not know. It is a point that we might consider one day, but I am sure that they ought not to have a monopoly.

This Bill was introduced in another place by my noble Friend Lord Mancroft, who piloted it through there with his usual skill, and in looking after its progress in this House I have found myself immersed in a subject of enormous complexity, a branch of the law in which I am happy to think that I am not normally called upon to offer opinions to anybody.

It is, however, a modest Bill in its scope, although the subject with which it deals is complicated. The law of international copyright is primarily regulated by two international conventions. The first is the extremely well-known Berne Convention of 1886, which forms the substratum of this subject but of which the United States was never a signatory. The second is the more recent Universal Copyright Convention of 1952, which provided a bridge between the United States and countries signatory to the Berne Convention.

But these conventions deal only with the rights of authors, an expression which for this purpose includes writers, composers of music, film makers and artists. But they do not include such people as performers, makers of gramophone records and broadcasting organisations. The copyright for these ancillary persons—performers—has not been adequately protected in the past by the two main copyright conventions.

In order to deal with this gap, a diplomatic convention was held in Rome in October, 1961, to draw up a new agreement upon the subject, and this resulted in the International Convention for the Protection of Performers, Producers of Phonograms and Broadcasting Organisations. That splended word "phonogram" is fortunately defined in Article III of the Convention as meaning

"…any exclusively aural fixation of sounds of a performance or of other sounds…"

which I am sure makes the whole thing extremely clear, and "producer of phonograms" means

"…person who or legal entity which first fixes the sound of a performance or other sound".

This again carries the matter one stage further. The House will perhaps be relieved to know that in English law we have not found it necessary to use the expression "phonogram" at all, and that it does not appear in this Bill.

The scale of the Rome Convention is, therefore, fairly ample. It covers a considerable branch of the law. Hon. Members may wonder how we can fulfil our obligations under the Convention by so short and modest a Bill. The explanation is one which is rather satisfactory and pleasing to us. It is that the Convention very largely reflects the English law on the subject and that the English participants played a very considerable part in drawing it up.

Accordingly, while the other signatories—it was signed by 25 countries—may have substantial alterations to make in their domestic law in order to be able to ratify the Convention, we have to make only a very few marginal adjustments in our legal provisions.

We mainly rely on the Copyright Act, 1956, for the regulation of copyright, a system under which we give to the author or producer of a work of art a kind of industrial property in his production. Performers, as distinct from authors, are not protected in that way by the grant of a property right or copyright but by an Act known as the Dramatic and Musical Performers Protection Act, 1958, which makes it a criminal offence to record or broadcast a performance of a performer without his written consent.

The performer does not have a copy-right, but it is made a criminal offence to pirate his performance, and that, of course, puts him in a bargaining position in relation to broadcasting organisations or gramophone record makers so that he can strike his bargain by contract with them. Unless they get his consent by contract, they would be guilty of a criminal offence if they pirated his performance.

Are Members of Parliament performers and thus protected?

My experience of my colleagues on both sides of the House is that they are not terribly anxious to restrict the reproduction of any of their artistic efforts. However, I hope that my hon. Friend will not ask me any too difficult questions on this subject, because, although I shall do my best, in this highly specialised branch of the law, it would be best if I confined myself to an exposition of what the Con- vention and the Bill do rather than why they do it.

That is a method of using the criminal law. The 1958 Act is a consolidation Act. It was in 1925 that the main provisions were introduced. They were amended in the 1950s and consolidated in 1958. The 1958 Act is the principal Act referred to in the Bill, whose provisions take the form of minor changes in the wording of the 1958 Act.

Perhaps I may refer to the Bill because it passed Second Reading on the nod and inevitably the Committee stage had to be rather formal, because one cannot amend in any material particular a Bill which is to enable one to ratify an international convention. In a way, therefore, this is the first chance which I have had to explain the Bill's purport to the House.

In Clause 1(1) the definition of the Dramatic and Musical Performers Protection Act, 1958, is extended. The principal Act refers to a performance of dramatic or musical work, but the Bill replaces that by references to the

"performance of any actors, singers, musicians, dancers or other persons who act, sing deliver, declaim, play in or otherwise perform, literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works…"

The House will see that that is a wide definition.

Can the hon. Gentleman tell me whether this international convention is available in the Vote Office, because these words include everything? They include a weather report. They would apparently include the noble Lord, whose recent television appearance was the subject of some comment, in almost every possible capacity—declaiming and acting, drama and the theatre and everything. Is there anything left out? Is not every word ever said on the B.B.C. covered by it? Is there any reproduction, other than by Hertzian waves, which is not included in the definition?

If the hon. Member will listen to me, I was coming to Hertzian waves in a moment. I can reassure him because nearly all the words are common to the Bill and the Act. The material difference is that in the principal Act it is "dramatic or musical work" and in the Bill it is

"literary, dramatic, musical or artistic".

All this business about singers or people who sing—an interesting distinction—and, even more damaging, actors or persons who act, with the slur which appears to be implied in those distinctions, is common both to the Bill and the Act, and at ten minutes to four on a Friday I do not think that we need to inquire further into them. There it is. It is the difference between dramatic or musical, and literary, dramatic, musical or artistic. That is Clause 1, to carry out the Rome Convention.

I turn now to Clause 2 which fills a small gap in our English law, which is covered by the Convention, because by English law it is only an offence to make a record without the written consent of the performer in this country. By this Clause it will be an offence to sell or distribute in this country a record made without the permission of the performer in some other country where it has been made in contravention of either the civil or criminal law of that country. That is the short point, and I hope that I need not amplify it.

I come next to the matter which is of particular interest to the hon. Member for Oldham, East (Mr. Hale), this question of Hertzian waves. Clause 3 extends the protection which at the moment applies only to broadcasts by Hertzian waves to cases where the pirating is carried out by line transmission. This does not apply to re-transmission by line of a broadcast performance, but to an original pirating by line transmission. I confess that it is difficult to imagine circumstances in which a performer's performance would be reproduced without his permission by line transmission without ever having been part of a broadcast first, but this is the sort of thing which the law has to cover.

After the introduction of pay-T.V. it would be very applicable, and I think that the provision is most timely.

I do not want to get involved in a controversy about pay-television, but I see the point about the applicability of that to Clause 3.

Clause 4 is an Amendment added to the Bill in another place just to make doubly sure, though it is perhaps scarcely necessary, that if permission purports to be given by somebody who has no right to give it, and therefore purports, fraudulently, to give it, that is a criminal offence.

Those are the only four provisions in the Bill. They are modest provisions to enable this country to ratify an international Convention. The reason for this is that the other 24 countries who have to make the changes are basically adopting the English law on the subject. We have been pioneers in this sphere, and I think that we can derive some degree of satisfaction from this fact. It would be nothing more than an act of courtesy to the other countries who have ratified the Convention on that basis to take a legislative step which will enable us to ratify the Convention.

Will the hon. Gentleman say whether the record made by "Private Eye" last year of the Prime Minister singing rock and roll would be within the law under this Bill?

I did not hear that record, but it sounds as though it must have been a phonogram.

I thought that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade was going to rise to help the House with an explanation of the Bill. I waited for him to do that, because I do not understand this Measure.

The hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Ronald Bell), who has introduced this interesting Bill, has been foremost among those who have demanded that on Fridays no Bill should be passed without adequate consideration. His action in taking14 minutes out of the 20 which were allotted for the discussion of this Bill places us in a difficulty. I regard it as a most worrying Measure, and I had hoped to hear the Minister speak before I did so, because I do not profess to understand the details of this Bill.

When the whole question of performing rights was discussed during the term of office of the Labour Government from 1945 to 1951, I am on record as saying that the Performing Right Society, which may be an estimable one, used to use the heavy club of litigation very cruelly against people who played gramophones in public places, or who invited friends in to listen to the gramophone. These rights were enforced by the issue of writs in the Chancery Division, by the claim of a modest sum and very large costs.

This is a very arbitrary right, which can operate very severely, and in respect of which anyone transgressing has virtually no possibility of explanation or reply. When one receives a writ from the Chancery Division, claiming two guineas as a copyright fee for having transmitted a gramophone record in the bar of a public house, it is obvious that any solicitor whom one consults will say, "You may have a defence, but by the time that you have established it it will cost you a great deal more than this. You had perhaps better pay the money and be done with it."

Now we are asked to ratify an international convention which is not in the Vote Office—

The hon. Member is wrong about that. It is Cmnd. 1635, and has been in the Vote Office for fifteen months.

That may be so, but it should be available for today. Those of us who do not take part in international meetings or conventions hear of these matters only when we arrive at Westminster on a Friday. The principal Act which was passed in 1958 itself seemed open to objection. I did not take part in the discussion on it.

I realise that there is little time, but it is my task to explain the Bill. I must point out that this is a Bill which gives the performer rights against the gramophone or broadcasting company. It does not affect the public. Members of the public have to get their permission to rebroadcast from the gramophone or wireless company. The Bill protects the performer as against the company.

It creates two criminal offences, one of which is a very surprising one, and it provides for an astonishing state of the law in the matter of the giving of written consent for a public performance. It also provides for the prosecution of a person who gives a public performance. I do not wish to obstruct the Bill, if there is adequate time to discuss it, but we have reached a situation in which the Minister has not made any observations on behalf of the Government; my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) has not yet made any observations, and in which there are only two or three minutes left. I do not think that it is possible for the House to let this Measure go through today after this limited discussion, when we do not know what is the full significance of the Convention or of the implication of the use of these tremendously wide-ranging words.

I notice the word "declaim". Is that in the Act of 1958? I have never noticed the use of that word in previous legislation in respect of a limit upon the right of reproduction. The hon. Member said that we could not imagine line transmission of anything except through a broadcasting company, but every factory has line transmission and radio-communication—and most offices have. We can disseminate things over any form of radio-telephone. The hon. Member says that this applies only to gramophone companies.

I must be frank; I object to obstruction, and I am not obstructing, but this is too complex a Measure altogether. My hon. and learned Friend made the point, which is a fair one, that the use of Fridays for the ratification of international conventions, by way of Bills introduced by private Members on behalf of the Government, results in private Members who have their own Measures being deprived of their time and of a chance of having those Measures discussed. It is a method by which controversial Measures can be shelved and discussion can be shelved. I have assisted in the passage of two Measures today, one of which ratified an international convention, but I say sincerely that this Measure strikes me as being of very great complexity and as raising issues which need full discussion.

I submit that on another Friday we shall have the opportunity of discussing it. I will do no more, on any other Friday, than try to discover what are the implications of the Bill and how far it relates—

Object.

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I wish to draw the attention of the House to the success of the City of Birmingham's dipped headlights experiment, and I will explain how it came to be made, describe it and then draw one or two conclusions from the result thereof.

With the object of endeavouring to take some action to reduce the appalling accident rate in the City of Birmingham as shown by the figures for the year 1961, it was decided that for a fortnight motorists should be asked to drive with their headlights on and dipped, and not with their sidelights on only. This scheme resulted in such a fall in the casualty rate and there was such cooperation from motorists—and it was welcomed so wholeheartedly by pedestrians—that it was decided to hold a much longer experiment for five months from the end of October, 1962.

This pilot scheme had shown that the discomfort of being followed by dipped headlights or meeting opposed dipped headlights was not sufficient to prevent their use by the majority of road users. It had clearly intimated that the use of dipped headlights would reduce the accident and casualty rates, but it was felt that the short period of the experiment and the good weather which had attended it did not allow the scheme to prove conclusively that dipped headlights would save lives in all weather conditions. It was decided, therefore, to carry out a long winter experiment from October, 1962, to March, 1963.

The scheme was supported by the R.A.C., the Automobile Association, the Pedestrians' Association, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, the police, the city authorities, the Road Research Laboratory and also the Traffic Department of the Birmingham University. Moreover, publicity was given to it by the Press and on television and notices were erected on all radial roads leading into Birmingham.

As a result of this propaganda—and, more important, the co-operation of motorists—whereas before the scheme was introduced less than 5 per cent. were using dipped headlights on well-lit roads and about 10 per cent. on badly-lit roads, these figures increased to 50 per cent. using dipped headlights on well-lit roads and 70 per cent. on badly-lit roads by the end of the experiment. At the same time, the flashing of headlights in retaliation to dipped headlights became a thing of the past, and very soon after the campaign had commenced, and as motorists began to appreciate the advantages of driving in this way—in fact, the longer the campaign continued—the greater became the number of motorists co-operating.

The results were absolutely remarkable. During the experiment, there were 138 fewer accidents—a reduction of 16·9 per cent.; 19 fewer fatalities—a reduction of 49 per cent.;. 84 fewer injuries—a reduction of 8·5 per cent.; 16 fewer pedestrians killed—a reduction of 66 per cent.—and a reduction of 63 per cent. among those over 60; 28 fewer pedestrians injured—a reduction of 9·2 per cent. All those figures are in comparison with the figures for the same period in the year 1961–62. There is no doubt that a large proportion of these reductions was made possible through the use of dipped headlights.

There are three factors on which the success of the experiment must be judged: first, the overall reduction of accidents relative to previous years, and to other cities; secondly, the specific cause of accidents; and, thirdly, the possible deterioration of driving due to alleged glare. On all these counts, the experiment was a success. The reduction of accidents was 16·9 per cent., and of pedestrians killed at night, 55 per cent. In only three out of 677 accidents was glare alleged to be a contributing factor.

A comparison with four other major cities—Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds—shows that night accidents per 100,000 registered vehicles for the same period of 22 weeks were: Birmingham, 312; Leeds, 518; Manchester, 683; Liverpool, 783; and Glasgow, 765. The only city to carry out a dipped headlight campaign was Birmingham, with that excellent record of 312.

The opinion of the public was also sought during the experiment. The Highways and Traffic Engineering School of Birmingham University asked members of the public to complete a questionnaire. A report compiled from the answers showed that in answer to the question:

"Do you feel that dipped headlights give you a better warning of the approach of a vehicle?"

93 per cent. of motorists and 92 per cent. of pedestrians were of the opinion that dipped headlights did give them a better warning of the approach of a vehicle. In addition, 60 per cent. of motorists and cyclists and about 80 per cent. of pedestrians expressed themselves in favour of all moving vehicles using dipped headlights at night on well-lit streets.

Some people are afraid that driving on dipped headlights will cause a lot of discomfort because of dazzle. The plain fact is that there will be no dazzle provided one's headlights are aimed properly, so that the beam does not strike the driver of the oncoming car. In view of this, it was considered important to ascertain whether motorists' headlights were aimed properly, and whether their electrical equipment was in an efficient condition.

For this purpose, 72 garages co-operated in carrying out checks on headlight aim during the campaign, and about 1,000 cars were checked in this way. Unfortunately, only 35 per cent. were found to be aimed correctly; 19 per cent. were found to be aimed too high, and 40 per cent. were found to be aimed too low.

To sum up, the experiment has been a complete success, as is shown by the reduction in all types of accidents. The lessons that have been learned are these. It is a great advantage, particularly to old people, to be able to see clearly a vehicle when it is approaching. Sidelights alone cannot be seen and when they can be seen it is extremely difficult to judge the distance they are away and decide whether the vehicle is moving and if so at what speed. The driver gets a better view of the road. He is able to see pedestrians more easily, as the majority wear dark clothing and cannot be seen easily with the use of sidelights only. He will be able to pick up the reflectors of other traffic on the road, such as bicycles and lorries, whereas reflectors do not reflect from sidelights.

It is an interesting fact that a reflector can then be seen as much as five times further away when headlights are used. Motorists also get better vision, enabling them to see all cyclists and parked cars. They can also see better in dark shadows between pools of light, and particularly when pedestrians step into the road. Dipped headlights help too at cross-roads and give warning of the approach of another vehicle.

Finally, the experiment has shown that the essential point to remember is that by using dipped headlights motorists can see and can be seen by other road users. The sponsors of this scheme would like this method to be adopted over the whole country, so that it would be known that when one saw a vehicle with its headlights on it was a moving vehicle and that when one saw a vehicle with its sidelights on only one would know that it was stationary. If this could happen it could contribute immensely to the safety of our roads.

The imposition of the 50 m.p.h. speed limit resulted in a reduction in the number of fatalities by 34 per cent. The Birmingham dipped headlights scheme resulted in a fall of 49 per cent. in the death rate. Therefore, if the speed limit is worthy of regulation, how much more is the use of dipped headlights which have proved themselves over 22 weeks and not just over a few weekends. Inquiries have shown that 60 per cent. of pedestrians favour the use of dipped headlights on all vehicles, even in well-lit streets, and over 90 per cent. of all classes of road users feel that dipped headlights give them better warning of the approach of a vehicle.

I ask the Minister, therefore, to make the use of dipped headlights at night compulsory in the United Kingdom next winter, either by temporary regulation or by a voluntary national campaign sponsored by the Ministry. I estimate that a national campaign would save at least 950 lives and prevent 15,000 injuries. These figures have been compiled by applying the Birmingham reductions to the national casualty figures for 1961–62. I hope that we can have an early decision on this matter. These experiments take some time to organise, and if we have to wait until August it might well be too late for anything to be done this winter.

Not only are Birmingham citizens convinced that this method of driving is the safest but many coroners and judges, whose duty it is to deal with the aftermath of the carnage on our roads, are constantly advocating the use of dipped headlights. For example, the coroner at Middleton in June last, when bringing in a verdict of "Accidental Death" on a motor cyclist said:

"Here again is an example where dipped headlights might have saved a life."

Again, the deputy coroner of Leicester said in May that a motorist might have seen a man lying in the road had he been driving on dipped headlights. Unfortunately, he was not, with tragic results.

Mr. Justice Glyn Jones said in the High Court:

"With street lights, shop windows and advertisements, little sidelights on an approaching car are missed over and over again. That is why I think it is quite a good thing for motorists to drive on dipped headlights, not for their own benefit but so that they are more clearly visible."

I understand the Minister to be waiting for a report from the Road Research Laboratory. I should have thought the information given by the Birmingham experiment was quite sufficient to justify him taking action straight away. It is really remarkable that when 80 million out of 125 million motorists in the world already drive on dipped headlights, we have to experiment about it.

This method of driving with dipped headlights on has proved over an extended period to have reduced the death and casualty rates on the streets of the City of Birmingham. If applied nationally it could do the same thing. We cannot afford to ignore any means whereby we can make our roads safer for motorist and pedestrian alike. The remedy to many accidents is at the motorist's finger tips. He should put his headlights on. I ask the Minister to make it compulsory for him to do so.

I wish, first, to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Mr. Cleaver) for the interest which he has taken in the safety of road users at night. It was in pursuit of this interest that he played a leading part in organising the first experiment which was carried out in Birmingham last year between 12th and 25th March. Although that experiment was too short to provide any conclusive results, all concerned were agreed that a further experiment should be held lasting throughout the winter months.

My hon. Friend has given us a most interesting and informative account of this further experiment. May I say on behalf of my right hon. Friend that we are grateful to him for what he has done, and also to the other authorities and bodies which helped in making the arrangements. In this connection, I should like to mention the then Lord Mayor of Birmingham, Alderman Ernest Horton, and the chief constable, Mr. Dodd. Their work in support of the experiment has been invaluable.

The Highway and Traffic Engineering School of Birmingham University also made a very valuable contribution by collecting the material for a report on public opinion about the experiment. I should also like to mention the work done by Messrs. Joseph Lucas who, incidentally, I understand, arranged a free service of headlamp adjustment to prevent dazzle by dipped headlights.

Before going on to talk about the experiment itself there is one point that I must make. There is no substitute for good night vision and constant alertness to ensure safety on the roads at night. We in the Ministry of Transport do what we can by helping to improve street lighting and by making regulations about the lighting that vehicles must carry, but these do not relieve anyone using the roads at night, be he pedestrian, cyclist or driver, of his individual responsibility.

In considering the Birmingham experiment I want to make it clear to the House what my right hon. Friend hopes will be gained by it. He hopes that it will help him to decide what use to make of his new powers under the Road Traffic Act, 1962, so as to promote greater safety on our roads.

Perhaps I could say a word about the present position. At present the only condition imposed on drivers at night is to use their sidelights. There is as yet no requirement for any vehicle to carry headlamps in any circumstances. The only regulations about headlamps are those laying down the conditions they must comply with if they are used, including the prevention of dazzle which is, of course, very important.

The present practice which drivers should follow at night in city streets is set out in Rule 50 of the Highway Code which advises the use of dipped headlamps at night in built-up areas unless the street lighting is good. In practice, not many drivers use headlights when there is any street lighting. There is, of course, something to be said for leaving the matter to individual judgment where street lighting is good because the standard of night vision varies so greatly from one person to another. Nevertheless, we do not think these provisions go far enough.

My right hon. Friend therefore obtained additional powers in the Road Traffic Act, 1962. These new powers are contained in Section 15 of that Act. They enable my right hon. Friend to require vehicles to carry headlamps; to prescribe the conditions with which they must comply; and the circumstances in which they must be used. My right hon. Friend is, as I have said, looking to the results of the Birmingham experiment to help him in the exercise of these powers. He attaches great importance to this question of controlling the use of headlamps. It is too early to forecast what regulations will be made under these powers. I can, however, say that there is certainly a case for requiring the use of headlamps on unlit roads. In deciding what regulations are desirable in towns we shall certainly be assisted by the results of the experiment which has been conducted in Birmingham.

May I say a word about pedestrians? One thing I think is clear: the use of headlamps often helps pedestrians. It has been pointed out that it is difficult for them to judge the speed of an approaching vehicle at night when all they can see is two points of light from its side lamps. A moving patch of light thrown on the roadway by dipped headlights is much more helpful. Yet even here a word of caution is necessary, since a pedestrian, after seeing a mass of headlamps, might perhaps fail to notice a bicycle.

As my hon. Friend stated, the Lord Mayor of Birmingham has sent a most interesting interim report to my right hon. Friend giving considerable detailed information about what happened in Birmingham during the period of the experiment. Some of the figures in that report are most encouraging. We have heard them from my hon. Friend. But we must be careful about making an appreciation of the actual results. It is probable that the mere fact of the experiment taking place had some effect. It may be that the publicity which it was given and the safety consciousness which the experiment inspired in both the public and the police played a part in reducing the accident figures. Another difficulty lies in the fact that on average only about 60 per cent. of the drivers in Birmingham used their headlamps. It has unfortunately not been possible in every case to distinguish between cars which used their headlamps and those which did not.

To arrive at an objective assessment we need to know how the experience in Birmingham compares with what happened in other districts. I know that certain comparative figures are contained in the report. The Road Research Laboratory has been asked to make an investigation of accident statistics both for Birmingham itself and for selected control areas. The Laboratory is also analysing the accident figures by reference to the standard of street lighting in various Birmingham streets. We hope to have its report very soon, and that it will be possible for it to be published during the Summer Recess. We are grateful to the Road Research Laboratory for undertaking this task with dispatch.

Until we have the Laboratory's report it would clearly be wrong for me to express any views to the House about the results of the experiment. What I can say is that the decrease in casualties, and particularly in fatal casualties, during the experiment is most welcome. However, work already done by the Road Research Laboratory shows that the fall in night-time accidents was accompanied by an almost identical fall in day-time accidents. This is just one reason for awaiting the Laboratory's full report before we attempt to form conclusions.

My right hon. Friend suggested that if the evidence of the Birmingham experiment does not prove to be conclusive we should have a nation-wide experiment, making the use of dipped headlamps at night compulsory throughout the country next winter. Similarly, it is being suggested that an experiment should be carried out covering the whole of the Metropolitan Police District. I do not wish to pre-judge the Road Research Laboratory's conclusions, but I must say that if further experiment is shown to be necessary, I do not think that this would be the best form in which to carry it out. To obtain the best results we should probably need a carefully controlled experiment covering an area small enough to permit more detailed study. Other similar areas where conditions were normal would then have to be selected for study so that a true comparison could be made. In any case, it is premature to consider a further experiment until we have a full evalution of the Birmingham one.

I must, however, add a word of caution. Even if it were proved conclusively that accidents were substantially reduced as a direct result of using dipped headlights, we should still have to think carefully before making their use compulsory everywhere. It would be a major departure from existing policy to make dipped headlamps compulsory on all roads after lighting-up time regardless of the standard of street lighting. But anything short of that would involve yet another classification of roads within built-up areas, together with suitable signs to indicate where dipped headlamps would be required. We should also have to consider the adequacy of batteries and electrical equipment if vehicles had to be used in urban traffic with their headlamps switched on all the time.

We hear much nowadays of the harrying of the motorist and we really would have to be convinced of the necessity for such action before imposing additional burdens upon him, both, perhaps, financially and by adding yet one more to the list of offences for which he can be punished. But, as I have said, before we go further we must await the report of the Road Research Laboratory. At this stage, therefore, I can only repeat our appreciation of the valuable work which has been done in Birmingham and thank my hon. Friend again for raising this interesting and important subject today.