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

The purpose of this Measure is to amend the Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Act, 1963, with respect to the provision of amusements with prizes. It does not affect the provision of gaming machines in premises not open to the public. "Amusements with prizes", the expression used in the 1963 Act, described a minor form of gaming in which a small sum of money is paid and small prizes are given—the sort of situation with which one is familiar in fun-fairs and the like. The 1963 Act sought to provide safeguards against abuse in two ways. First of all, subject to an exception for travelling fairs, the amusements can be carried out only under a permit granted by the local authority. Secondly, conditions were laid down with the object of ensuring that the element of gambling is small.

How have these safeguards worked? In practice, they have been out-flanked. The first bit of out-flanking has arisen from an interpretation of the courts of the wording of the Act, as a result of which local authorities have been obliged to issue permits more widely than was the intention. Further, a loophole appeared in the conditions dealing with the provision of the amusements, the effect being that substantial prizes, instead of small ones, can be given by the device of the delivery of a token that is exchangeable for goods.

Local authorities have been faced with applications for permits from public houses, safes, and similar premises and, in view of the unqualified expression "any premises" in Section 49 (1, a) of the 1963 Act, some local authorities have felt bound to grant such applications. Others have refused such applications as a matter of policy, but in some cases the decisions have been overturned on appeal, the appeal court taking the view that each application must be considered on its merits and not by reference to policy determined in advance by the local authority.

As a result, therefore, the situation has been reached where local authorities have simply not felt it open to them to refuse permits for such premises. Amusements in the shape of gambling machines are now installed under permits in a whole variety of places, including cafés, coffee bars, public houses and shops. My Bill seeks to remedy this situation by strengthening the hands of local authorities to refuse permits for such premises. On the other hand, everything we try to do in the Bill is completely within the intentions of Parliament as expressed during the passage of the 1963 Act. We have not gone one whit beyond those intentions.

Another development has been that the restrictions on the amount of stakes and prizes laid down in Section 49(3) are being evaded by the installation of machines operated by and delivering tokens which are exchangeable for prizes in kind worth considerably more than the one-shilling limit which was intended. Some of these machines installed in public houses are operated by tokens purchased over the bar and the jackpot prize can be a bottle of whisky. There was a case fairly recently reported in the Press in which a shopkeeper in Bridport, Dorset, had installed a machine like this, under a permit, in his toy shop.

With the permission of the local authority?

Yes, it could not refuse. The intention, evidently, was to attract children to play the machine in the hope of winning an expensive toy. There is nothing unlawful about that as the Act stands.

Could my right hon. and noble Friend say how widespread is this practice in shops? I am sure that it has come as a surprise to many of us to find that it exists at all.

I cannot say that it has happened in any other shops. This is the only case I know, but it could happen. It is an ingenious and perfectly lawful thing to do. Its very ingenuity makes one wonder whether it is wide-spread.

Am I not right in thinking that as the law stands a local authority could refuse permission for any of these machines to be installed in a toy shop?

No, it could not and I was about to refer to the opinion of a judge in a High Court judgment which would apply in this connection. In the case of Hewison v. Skegness Urban District Council, reported in Law Reports 1963. 1, Queen's Bench Division, at page 584, this part of the judgment puts the matter in a nutshell:

"It seems, however, unfortunate that Parliament should not have given to the local authority power to attach other conditions to the permit, for example, conditions limiting the number and type of gaming machines which should be upon the premises. When a local authority considers an application such as was made to this local authority by the applicant, what it has to decide is whether, having regard to the character and record of the occupier of the premises, the nature of the premises and the general requirements of the neighbourhood, it is desirable that there should be gaming machines on these premises. It may well be that although some of these considerations indicate that in some premises it is desirable that there should be, say, six gaming machines, they also indicate that it is highly undesirable that there should be, say, 36 gaming machines. The Act seems to me, however, to be so drafted that the local authority has no power to limit the number of machines but can only say that permission shall or shall not be granted for the provision of amusements with prizes on those premises."

I see that this is not quite the point that the hon. Member for Islington, East (Mr. Fletcher) made.

No, I am familiar with that judgment. My point is that even as the law stands a local authority would be entitled to say as a matter of policy that it was undesirable to have even one machine in a toy shop.

That is so. Local authorities are very reluctant to take that line because of the way in which the Act is drafted, but they could take it.

If the local authority refused permission to install, then presumably the applicant would be entitled to go to the courts and the local authority would have to show good reason why it refused permission.

That is perfectly true and, as I have said, some of these refusals have been revoked on appeal to the court. This may explain the reluctance of local authorities to refuse permission. The judgment which I quoted continues:

"I have not lost sight of the fact that paragraph 2 of the Third Schedule provides that the grant of a permit shall be at the discretion of the local authority. The discretion, however, is to grant or withhold the permit but not in my view to impose terms."

That is another restriction of what was the original intention of Parliament.

The relevant parts of the 1963 Act are Section 49 and Schedule 6 and it is Section 49 that deals with amusements with prizes at such places as pleasure fairs, amusement arcades, and parks. Section 49(1) allows amusements with prizes

"on any premises in respect of which a permit has been granted by the local authority under Schedule 6."

The local authorities who are responsible for the granting of permits are defined in paragraph 9 of Schedule 6. I do not intend to worry the House with those details. They are perfectly orthodox. But Schedule 6 also provides that application for a permit should be made by the occupier or the intending occupier of the premises.

Section 49(3) is important. It lays down the conditions which must be complied with in respect of amusements installed under the Section. Subsection (3,a) provides that the amount paid by a competitor for what is called "a go" shall not exceed one shilling. Subsection (3,c) provides that no money prize shall be given which exceeds one shilling. The point to note, however, is that no limit is imposed on the value of the prize in kind and this is where the loophole in the Act has appeared.

I come, therefore, to what my hon. Friends and I want to do by means of this Bill. Clause 1 adds a further condition to Section 49(3) of the Act. It is proposed to add to that subsection a new paragraph the words of which in (f,i) will limit the prize which can be won by playing the machine. The money prize must not exceed one shilling and in the case of prizes other than money the article must not have a value exceeding one shilling. Condition (f,ii) precludes the giving of any other prizes either in addition to or in exchange for the prize obtained under the first condition. That is to ensure that there can be no arrangement by the proprietor to evade the limit on prizes in kind—for instance, some cheap article which it might be possible to exchange for something more expensive. The House will see that the Clause does not prohibit the use of tokens as such for operating machines. The essential point is that we want to limit to 1s. the value of prizes in kind which can be won by the operation of the machine.

The object of Clause 2(1) is to make clear that it is open to a local authority to refuse a permit other than for an amusement place on the ground that it is undesirable that amusements with prizes should be provided on the premises in question for any of the reasons stated in the subsection. Those are three in number: the purposes for which the premises may be used; any circumstances in which the premises may be used; or persons by whom they are used. As the House will see, the purpose of this provision is to overcome the difficulty with which, because of the absence of any specific provision in the original Act, local authorities have been confronted in the matter of withholding permits for public houses, cafés and those sorts of places. Local authorities take the view very strongly that they should have an effective discretion in the matter of refusing permits, and I believe the House will agree with them. As I said just now, that they should have this discretion is completely within the intention as expressed by Parliament when it passed the Act.

Paragraph (a) of subsection (2) empowers a local authority, on the grant or renewal of a permit, to impose conditions limiting the amusements to machines of the kind specified in Clause 1 and specifying the number of such machines. Paragraph (b) deals with the right of appeal and penalties. The subsection does not and is not intended to apply to amusement places as such. This in practice means that it will not apply to arcades or funfairs.

Subsection (3) provides that a court, on convicting the holder of a permit of an offence under Section 49(2) of the Act, may order the forfeiture of the permit. This is comparable to the situation of the conviction of the holder, for instance, of a bookmakers' permit or a betting agency permit. There is nothing new about this.

Subsection (4) relates to paragraph 3 of Schedule 6 of the Act providing that a local authority shall not refuse to renew

"a permit otherwise than by reason of the conditions in which amusements with prizes have been provided under the permit or the manner in which those amusements have been conducted."

The purpose of this provision was to preclude the refusal of the renewal of a permit for a funfair or amusement arcade on grounds strictly unrelated to the provision of amusements under the permit—for example, noise or nuisance caused by roundabouts and such things.

Subsection (5) defines the expression "amusement place". I do not think there is anything particularly mysterious about that. It speaks for itself.

Clause 3 provides that the provisions of the Bill other than subsections (1), (4) and (5) of Clause 2, shall not come into operation until after the lapse of six months. I think that is a fair provision to allow time for the disposal or alteration of machines by those who have been operating them.

As I have said, this is an amending Bill. It is not amending in terms of new thoughts. It is amending in terms of putting right something which went quite unintentionally wrong in the drafting of the original Act. I hope the House will not consider this Bill controversial and will give it a Second Reading.

I should like to begin by congratulating the right hon. Member for Edinburgh, Pentlands (Lord John Hope) on his success in the Ballot and on having used that success to introduce this Bill which, as he said, is not controversial. I support the Bill wholeheartedly and I should like to explain in a few words why I support it.

As the hon. Member has said, this Bill stems in whole, or at any rate in part, from a judgment, that he has quoted, of Mr. Justice Salmon in the case of Hewison v. Skegness Urban District Council, reported in 1963 1 Queen's Bench at page 584. A relevant passage which has not already been quoted is this at the end of the judgment:

"This court can give effect only to what Parliament has enacted. It is not permissible for us to guess at what Parliament probably intended. Still less is it permissible for us to give effect to what we think Parliament ought to have enacted. If Section 24 leads to the most fantastic—and I do not think that is too strong a word—results, it can be cured only by legislation. For my part, I consider that it does lead to fantastic results but leads to those results quite clearly and inescapably."

When one reads criticisms of that kind by a learned judge about the apparent failure of Parliament to give effect to its intentions, one does so with somewhat mixed feelings, because I, in common with a number of other hon. Members, spent a very long time on the Committee stage of the Betting and Gaming Act, 1960, with which the learned judge was concerned, and which is now codified in the Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Act, 1963, which this Bill seeks to amend. These observations of Mr. Justice Salmon only go to show how very difficult it is in this complicated field, notwithstanding all the care and attention that is given to a Bill in its Committee stages in both Houses of Parliament, to get it right and foolproof.

On behalf of those who served with me on the Committee, perhaps I may remind the House that this particular provision, which was Clause 24 of the 1960 Bill and is now reproduced as Section 49 of the 1963 Act, was reached in Committee only at our 23rd sitting. I am not saying that we were completely exhausted at that point, but we had already spent 22 sittings on the Bill dealing, as we then thought, with far more important aspects of the Bill than this particular provision. As the Under-Secretary of State will recall, the Bill introduced a great many sweeping changes in the law of betting and gaming. It abolished street betting. It introduced the highly controversial betting shop, about which, one day, Parliament may still have a good deal to say as to their desirability or otherwise.

It was only at the very end of a very long Committee stage that we reached this provision which, as the noble Lord has said, was intended to legalise, with abundant safeguards, what is generally regarded as the quite harmless and innocuous form of amusement of putting a penny or a sixpence in one of these machines.

Perhaps I ought to declare an interest. I am myself an addict whenever I have the opportunity of putting a penny or a sixpence in one of these machines in a café—which I incline to pronounce as "caff" but which some people prefer to pronounce as "caffay"—or in a public house.

I think that one says "cayfe", not "caff".

In my part of the world, I find that people call it "caff". No doubt, the pronunciation varies from one part of the country to another and according to one's taste in using a French or Anglicised form of pronunciation. We all know what we mean.

A great many people find these amusements quite interesting and entirely harmless. I think that both the Committee and the whole House thought that it was a form of amusement in public houses and cafés which it was quite right for Parliament to sanction, with adequate safeguards. However, as the noble Lord has said, loopholes have been discovered in the Act in the sense that local authorities have found themselves in a difficulty. When an application comes before them for permission to install one of these machines—no machine may be installed anywhere without the approval of a local authority, or approval on appeal—the licensing authority is not entitled to impose conditions as to the number of machines which may be installed in any such place. I think it is perfectly reasonable that local authorities should be able to say, "Yes; it is proper that there should be two or three or, perhaps, six machines in a particular public house or café, but it would be unreasonable for there to be more."

The noble Lord has told us that in certain parts of the country there has been an attempt to install these machines in toy shops. I have not myself seen them in a toy shop, and I doubt that it would be generally thought everywhere that a toy shop was a proper place for any of these machines. But this must be a matter for the local authority concerned.

I think that the whole House will agree, the law being what it has now been decided to be in the Queen's Bench Division, that effect should be given to what, I entirely agree, was the clear intention of Parliament, that a local authority in exercising is discretion whether to grant or withhold permission for machines in a particular place should be able to limit the number of machines, and also to deal with the loophole about the token prize which can be won.

Having said that, I have only two comments to add, and I hope that the promoter of the Bill or the Under-Secretary of State will consider them in Committee. I am not quite happy about the drafting of the Bill, for two reasons. I draw attention, first, to the closing words of Clause 1 whereby it is sought to amend Section 49(4) of the principal Act by inserting towards the end, after the words "subsection (3)(d)", the words "or (f)(ii)". The operative part of Section 49(4), omitting unnecessary words, would then read:

"the conditions set out in subsection (3)(d) or (f)(ii) of this section shall not be deemed to be contravened if "—

and so on.

With respect, I do not consider that it is a very happy form of terminology to say that such-and-such conditions or such-and-such conditions shall not be deemed to have been contravened. As I understand it, what is intended is that neither the conditions set out in subsection (3,d) nor the conditions set out in subsection (3,f,ii) shall be deemed to be contravened. As a mere matter of language, it seems to me that, unless one uses the negative first before the disjunctive, one will produce further problems of construction for the courts. If one says in an Act of Parliament that such-and-such a condition or such-and-such a condition shall not be deemed to be contravened, what is the result if one of the conditions applies but the other does not? I feel sure that the right hon. and learned Member for Chertsey (Sir L. Heald) will agree.

My second observation is this. Clause 2 of the Bill, which I regard as perhaps the more important, seeks for the first time to introduce a new distinction in our law between an amusement place and a place which is not an amusement place. I suppose that that is probably necessary to give effect to the intentions of the promoters of the Bill.

If it is, I ask two questions. First, why is it that the operative part of Clause 2, which is designed to give local authorities discretion which they do not have at present, is introduced by an Amendment to Schedule 6 of the 1963 Act and not as an additional condition to be inserted in Section 49 of the 1963 Act, which is the kind of change that I should have expected and which, I believe, Mr. Justice Salmon would have expected? Perhaps in Committee the right hon. Member and the Home Office will consider that point.

Finally, I throw out this question for consideration. Granted that it is now proposed to introduce into the law this distinction between an amusement place —by which is meant, I understand, an arcade where there can be a number of these machines and to which people go for amusement only and for no other purpose—and places like public houses and cafés and some shops where in future there is to be a limit on the number of machines, which I think is desirable, is the Home Office and the hon. Member perfectly satisfied that it is still right not to give the local authority any discretion concerning the number of machines which can be installed in an amusement place?

I believe that I am right in thinking that under the Bill as drafted a local authority will still have no control over the number of machines which can be set up in an amusement place. That may be right and proper. Perhaps someone will confirm my interpretation of the Bill as drafted and that it is desirable that that should remain.

With those words, I endorse the principles of the Bill.

I endorse the congratulations to my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Pentlands (Lord John Hope) on introducing this Bill and for using his time to clear up what was obviously a mistake in the legislation. As far as I can see, there seems to be only one difference of opinion among hon. Members, and that is about the way of pronouncing the word "café".

I should like to ask my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State one or two questions. First, is he satisfied with the definition of an "amusement place" in the Bill? I should like to ask him particularly whether this amending Bill in any way restricts the use of these machines, or, rather, the licensing of them, in such places as political clubs. I am not clear on this point. I do not know whether a political club is a place of amusement or not. It can be in some cases. I think that these machines are used extensively in these clubs.

What are the criteria on which a licence will be issued under Clause 2? A local authority may refuse a licence on three conditions. If I read the Bill correctly, the last condition on which it can refuse a licence is on the grounds of the persons by whom the machines are used. It seems to me that this is a wide Clause, and I am not altogether happy about it. Perhaps at a later stage my right hon. and noble Friend, with the help of the Home Office, will agree to insert some slightly more definite words in the Clause.

What is the position if a person who wishes to install these machines has been in prison or is a bad character? What are the criteria? In considering whether the Bill should be amended, it would be a good thing to look at this aspect.

Obviously there are many points which we can consider in Committee, but I congratulate my right hon. and noble Friend on attempting to bring the law on this matter up to date. There is no question that in this country there is a very heavy wave of gambling. I do not wish to introduce a controversial note, but people today find that they have more money in their purses and perhaps this is a way in which the natural instinct of people of this country to gamble is employed.

Although it does not come within the compass of the Second Reading of this Bill, it seems to me that before long we shall have to look at the whole question of these machines and to see whether the Revenue can be given a more direct method of acquiring money by way of taxation from them. It seems to me that no taxes flow from these machines and that the Revenue does not have much control over the amount of money put into them or the profit made from them. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will consider this point when framing his Budget.

What is the machinery for checking these machines? My right hon. and noble Friend said that he wants to do away with tokens. Has the local authority the right to inspect these machines at intervals to ensure that the provisions of this amending Bill, when it becomes an Act, are implemented?

For the record, may I correct my hon. Friend. I was not recommending the abolition of tokens. I wish to limit them to the value of 1s.

I am sorry. I meant to ask whether local authorities would have any machinery whereby they could check that the value of the tokens was not in excess of the sum laid down in the Bill and whether there would be any routine checking to ensure that this amending Bill, as I like to call it, was adhered to?

Once again, I congratulate my right hon. and noble Friend on using his time to deal with something which is obviously of great public interest and importance.

I wish to say only a few brief words. I must confess that I was one of the Home Office Ministers concerned with the 1960 Act. My recollection is that I did not pilot the Clauses dealing with amusement and gaming machines through Standing Committee, but I remember taking part in the discussions on them. We found this a very difficult and baffling problem, for this reason. Conditions which we might attach in order to secure that there was no abuse in one set of circumstances might very well cause the making of onerous conditions in another set. That is one of the dilemmas with which we are often faced in legislating in a general way.

I wish particularly to invite attention to the point about local authorities having greater control in this matter. If my recollection serves me correctly, the reason why we put the equivalent Clause into the Betting and Gaming Act, 1960, was that people who had travelling fairs wanted to ensure that they could provide a modest form of amusement for the public through gaming machines. In a fairly short time, a few weeks of the summer, these travelling fairs travel around the districts of many local authorities. I congratulate my right hon. and noble Friend on introducing the Bill, but I ask him to ensure that when we give power to local authorities to investigate the circumstances in which the machines are being used and to attach conditions, we do not set up a procedure which is administratively impracticable for the people operating these travelling fairs. We have to be very careful about that, or we might defeat the very purpose for which the provision was originally inserted in the 1960 legislation. Having raised that difficulty, I do not propose to offer a solution to it at this stage, but it is something of which we should not lose sight.

Section 49 of the Consolidation Act, the Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Act, 1963, has some interesting conditions about the chances which are allowed. Subsection (3, a) says:

"the amount paid by any person for any one chance to win a prize does not exceed one shilling".

Paragraph (b), however, says:

"the aggregate amount taken by way of the sale of chances in any one determination of winners, if any, of prizes does not exceed fifty shillings…

Therefore, the person staking a maximum of one shilling may compete in what is virtually a competition of chances against no more than 49 other people. In other words, the most the Statute allows him to have is a 50 to one chance. But then we go on to paragraph (c) which says:

"no money prize shall be distributed or offered which exceeds one shilling".

As I understand it, that means that although a person make take a 50 to one chance in his competition with others, it is a 50 to one chance of winning only even money. If I am wrong, I shall be glad to be corrected, but that is what it appears to be as the law stands. It is a very strange situation and is a further point which may require attention when we are legislating afresh.

In conclusion, I should like to say that, like much of our other social legislation with which the Home Office is concerned, the Betting and Gaming Act, 1960, was highly experimental, especially with amusements with prizes. We must not be ashamed of the fact that in the test of a few years the original experiment turns out not to have succeeded. We must realise that when we legislate to amend it, that also may be experimental to some extent. This very small experiment seems to have failed to have worked as we would have wished and it is right that we should try to put it right, but while doing so let us do it as thoroughly as we can.

I join with other hon. Members in congratulating my right hon. and noble Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Pentlands (Lord John Hope) on his initiative in introducing this helpful and necessary Bill. It is directed against what I hope I may legitimately describe as the almost limitless ingenuity not so much of the gambling public as of the people who exploit gambling for their own benefit. Most of us are to some extent gamblers. The human race might be described more by the Latin term homo lusor than homo sapiens. As there has been some doubt both about the spelling and pronunciation of French, I should say that that is spelt l-u-s-o-r and not l-o-s-e-r.

Nor l-o-o-s-e-r.

I think that it will be most convenient if I deal with the points raised by my right hon. and noble Friend and reply to the questions as I go along.

Te said, quite correctly, that the Bill would not affect gaming machines in premises not open to the public. This answers the question of my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham (Dr. Alan Glyn) about political clubs. I am very glad to get this on the record, because I would hardly dare show my face this evening in the Cowley Conservative Club if I had not made that quite clear. There is a separate provision in the Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Act, 1963, for the installation of such machines in clubs or other premises to which the public does not have access. That is Section 33 which does not include the same restrictions on stakes and prizes which are provided in Section 49 for amusements which may be provided in premises open to the public.

The purposes of section 33 was specifically to allow gaming machines to be installed in clubs to raise money for club funds. It is true that there are now gaming machines installed in premises open to the public under Section 49 which, because of the loophole to which my right hon and noble Friend has drawn attention, allows expensive prizes in kind and which, structurally at any rate, are not very different from those installed in clubs. The additional restriction of prizes provided for by Clause 1 will remedy this. Clubs get the best of both worlds, because, if they wish, they can equally well install and operate machines for which the Bill now provides as well as those to which they are entitled under Section 33.

My tight hon. and noble Friend alluded, as did the hon. Member for Islington, East (Mr. Fletcher) to the intention of Parliament at the time the 1960 Act was passed. This can be briefly summarised in a sentence from a speech by the then Minister of State for the Home Department in which he said:

"The purpose here is to provide licences or permits for the major fun fairs and amusement parks which grace our seaside resorts and Battersea Park, and not to set up in coffee bars and shops similar institutions which, under this Schedule, could be approved if the licensing authority thought fit to do so."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 10th May, 1960; Vol. 623. c. 333.]

It was clearly Parliament's intention that this provision should cover small-scale gambling and that local authorities should have power to limit the places at which this gambling, even on a small scale, would be available.

As the debate has already shown, defects in the existing law have been found by the ingenuity of the gambling organisers. Local authorities have felt obliged to give permits more easily than they wished. When they have tried to apply restrictions in their interpretation of the law, they have in a number of cases been overruled on appeal. This case accounts for the admittedly exceptional but disturbing case of the Bridport toy shop. In that case a permit was issued by the local authority. It is not for me to say what was in the authority's mind, but there seems good reason to assume that it felt obliged to allow the permit because of difficulties which had arisen in previous cases over Appeal Court decisions and felt inhibited by precedents from refusing it in that case.

There is, I am glad to say, no evidence of widespread abuse of the intention of the Act in this way. In fact I have heard of no other toy shop where such a machine has been allowed to be installed. But there is undoubtedly disquiet on a very large scale among local authorities, which has been conveyed to us not only by individual authorities but also by local authority representative associations, who have made it quite clear that this anxiety is not localised or confined to one or two places here and there—it is general throughout the country.

The local authority associations made representations to us in favour of tightening the restrictions under the Act, and it is, of course, for consideration in committee how far Parliament would wish to go in the direction of restriction. It is only fair to my right hon. Friend and the House that I should put it on record that in representations that have been received by the Home Office it has been suggested that the restrictions available to local authorities might usefully go even further than is contemplated in the Bill.

The desire has been expressed that a local authority should have power to make a decision in advance that it will not in any circumstances issue permits for certain specified types of premises. In other words, this would remove from the local authorities the onus of even considering applications from certain specified types of premises. Under the Bill as drafted they will still have to consider each case on its merits, but, of course, in considering each case they will have available to them much stricter criteria as set out in Clause 2 of the Bill to guide them in refusing a permit if they wish to do so.

The criteria in Clause 2(1) are much more strictly drawn than they were in the previous Act. The scale of permissible gambling under the Bill is much reduced in financial value by Clause 1 and is therefore less likely to be attractive to those who wish to exploit gambling for commercial purposes, and the number and type of machine permissible in any premises can be limited by conditions imposed by a local authority following the animadversions contained in the judgment of Mr. Justice Salmon. These restrictions will, I think, considerably lighten the local authority's task, and given these restrictions it might well seem unduly repressive, especially to small proprietors, to give the local authorities the unqualified power which it has been suggested from some quarters they should have. This is a matter, like many others, which can be looked at again in Committee, if an Amendment were to be put down.

I do not think that I need recapitulate or comment on the exposition which my right hon. and noble Friend correctly made both of the scope of the present law and of the other provisions of the Bill. I will go straight on to comment on some of the technical questions which were raised in speeches by the hon. Member for Islington, East (Mr. Fletcher) and other hon. Members.

The hon. Member for Islington, East, made two comments on the drafting of the Bill. One was on Clause 1 and another on Clause 2(5), which was also echoed by my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham. The final words of Clause 1, as the hon. Gentleman pointed out, have the effect of amending Clause 49(4) of the principal Act. That subsection covers a type of machine which is normally played for a small coin, and the successful operation of which results in the return of the coin inserted and a free turn, the successful use of the free turn resulting in the machine putting out a further coin. That would be contrary to the condition of subsection (4,d), but the subsection permits it, subject to a limit of 1s. on the total amount which may be won as a result of the insertion of one coin. That is what the present provision does.

The provision in Clause 1 of the Bill for the amendment of that subsection is consequential upon the earlier part of Clause 1, and its intention is to put beyond doubt that the proposed new conditions in subsection (3,f), which we are inserting in the Act, will not preclude a successful player on a machine of the kind specified in the subsection from being given a further turn of play without payment. That is the intention, and we shall certainly look very care- fully at the wording, in conjunction with my right hon. and noble Friend, to see if it requires or is susceptible of improvement. I hope that undertaking will meet the hon. Gentleman's point.

The second point which he raised and which my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham also touched on was the definition of an amusement place. Both hon. Members asked if the Home Office was perfectly satisfied with this definition. I would say at once that the Home Office is never perfectly satisfied with anything; least of all is it likely, after the experience of the administration of gambling legislation, ever to be perfectly satisfied with the precise provision of legislation of this kind. We are certainly always ready to look at it again. The first half of the definition of an amusement place relates to premises used wholly or mainly for the provision of amusements by means of machines. This will in general cover amusement arcades. The second half of the definition refers to premises used wholly or mainly as a pleasure fair consisting largely or entirely of amusements.

This definition relates to Clause 2(1) and (2) which both provide that the provisions will not apply to an amusement place. The reason for this is to safeguard the interests of the legitimate amusements industry. The definition in subsection (5) is intended to cover amusement arcades such as may exist in any town, and permanent fun-fairs like those of Bellevue in Manchester, and also fun fairs and pleasure parks normally found at seaside resorts.

It might help the House if the hon. Member would clear this up. Am I right in thinking that an amusement place as now defined does not have to be licensed by any local authority and that it will be open to anybody to open an amusement place?

I am coming on to that point. They are not entirely free from restrictions. They are merely outside the scope of this Clause. I think it would be generally agreed that the criteria set out in Clause 2(1) are not applicable to such places and it would be unreasonable that the powers of a local authority which are to limit the numbers and type of machines should apply in respect of such places which have such machines as their basis of existence. This does not mean that amusements in fun-fairs and amusement arcades will be free from all restrictions because they will be subject to the conditions laid down in Section 49(3) of the Act, as it is proposed to be extended by Clause 1 of the Bill. They are not, therefore, entirely outside the scope of the licensing provisions.

My hon. Friend the Member for Clapham raised the question of Clause 2(1) about the words

"the persons by whom … the premises are, or are to be, used".

The intention is that the other criterion set out in the Clause is to give the local authority a reasonable discretion to exercise its own judgment, which local authorities are very well qualified to do; but, obviously, the kind of persons contemplated would include young people, and especially if the premises were premises where alcoholic liquor were available.

As a matter of fact this Clause does not go so far as the Royal Commission of 1949 originally contemplated, because that made the recommendation in paragraph 431 of its Report that the local authority granting the permit should have power actually to prohibit the admission of persons under the age of 18 years to such premises. The recommendation followed from a careful discussion by the Royal Commission of the possible harmful effects on young people of constant resort to amusement arcades. This recommendation was not implemented in the Act of 1960.

It was thought then that the harmful possibilities envisaged by the Royal Commission were strictly only applicable to one category of amusement place, namely, town arcades, and there was evidence that the number of town arcades had diminished very considerably, since the particularly bad period just before the war and also between the Royal Commission's Report and the debates on the 1960 Bill. The estimates were at that time that the number of such arcades in Greater London had dwindled from 130 just before the war down to only seven in 1959, and I understand that the estimate of the total number of town arcades in Great Britain a few years ago was probably not more than 20.

It can be argued that cafés—or "caffs" —and coffee bars are now popular places of resort for young people. I think the powers written into Clause 2(1) which relate both to the type of premises and to the kind of persons who may be expected to frequent them are sufficiently strong to enable any local authority to exercise its discretion without difficulty in order to avert any evil to young persons.

I do not want to keep interrupting, but could we just probe this question of the definition of amusement places a little further? Would the hon. Gentleman say, for example, whether in his opinion a pier at a seaside resort is an amusement place under this Bill or not? As I read it, it is not, because it is not a place for the provision of amusements merely by means of machines. If so, do I take it that the local authority would have no power to limit the number of machines there?

Subject to taking technical advice on this point, I would hazard the opinion that a pier would not be an amusement place within the terms of subsection (5) because it is not a place for the provision of amusements by means of machines exclusively, and it is obviously not a pleasure fair, but I should like to take expert advice on that point, and perhaps it would be reverted to in Committee.

Questions have been raised not only about those parts of the existing law which are touched upon by this new Bill but also about some parts of the existing law, which is lengthy and comprehensive, which are not directly touched by the present Bill. I would not want to delay the House by going into these matters, which are beyond the scope of the Bill. They are matters for future consideration and decision. I have in mind particularly the points alluded to by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Mr. Renton) as well as by the hon. Member for Islington, East. It is perfectly possible that future legislative action may be necessary on other provisions of the existing law, but in some cases experience of the operation of the law is not yet sufficient, and in other cases interpretation of the law by the courts is not yet sufficiently conclusive to justify the Government in bringing forward amending legislation.

Meantime we have this very useful and, I think, necessary Bill to close loopholes in the law which, although they are small, are clearly defined, and are undoubtedly damaging. It is the Government's view that it would be wrong to postpone action, where it is already clearly and demonstrably required, in order to await more far-reaching and perhaps much more controversial revision of other parts of the law.

My right hon. Friend's Bill is desirable beyond question, and it cannot be said beyond question of other parts of the law. Therefore, I am very happy to join other hon. Members who have spoken in commending it to the House.

I join other hon. Members in congratulating my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Pentlands (Lord John Hope) on introducing the Bill, which may become known as the "One-Armed Bandits Bill".

I want particularly to draw attention to the provisions in (f, i and ii) in Clause 1. I wonder whether the Clause is widely enough drafted. The people with whom one is dealing here are of very great ingenuity, as is shown by the way they got round previous legislation. I wonder whether the phrase:

"or a prize other than money of a value not exceeding one shilling"

might not be used for evasion. The valuation of a certain item of goods allows considerable elasticity, and this may be used to get round the provision.

Another alternative which I do not think is caught by the next subsection is when someone who wins on one of these machines gets a disc in the form of a ballot or tombola ticket. I am not convinced that this would be covered by the words:

"the winning of that prize does not entitle any person to, or to exchange that prize for, any other benefit'.

There might well be a ballot in which the odds of winning a much greater prize were fifty-fifty. There might be a tombola in which every second person won a prize. I am doubtful whether these would be covered by the Bill, but I am not certain.

I suggest that we might consider whether we may not ultimately be brought to the conclusion that there can only be a cash prize or another turn. The method of giving a prize other than money opens the matter up very much more widely. Perhaps this point might be looked at in Committee.

I want to draw attention to the extraordinary extension which there has been in this type of gambling in recent years. The inquiry into gambling conducted recently by the Commissioners of Customs and Excise showed that £10 million a year net profit is made by Britain's one-armed bandits—this is indeed big business—and that the total membership of gaming clubs, including bingo clubs, is now more than 16 million. These figures are very much on the increase. This has very considerable social implications. In addition, about 24,000 gaming machines are in use.

One is driven to consider the desirability of this type of gaming and the problems which its extension pose. I have some figures which may be interesting. A village club with a membership of under 500 made a profit of nearly £600 in four months from a 6d. fruit machine. A Conservative club made more than £500 from two machines in three months. A billiard hall company with a number of halls had a surplus of £29,000 in a year from its gaming machines alone.

These machines can be bought for cash or on hire purchase or through a variety of types of rentals. There are about 3,500 working men's clubs and institutes which have these machines. I am told that a Bristol firm, which has a country-wide maintenance service and caters essentially for this type of club, reckons that about 10 per cent. retention in the machine is fair to the player while still making it an exception for a £400 machine not to pay for itself in the first year of operation. Therefore, the profitability of these machines is very well demonstrated.

To go further on this point would take one out of order. I thought that while we were considering this legislation I might draw to the attention of the House the vast scale on which this kind of gambling is operated and is apparently expanding, and I merely pose the social question of how much further it should be permitted to go.

As one of the supporters of my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Pentlands (Lord John Hope), I should like to say on his behalf how very pleasant it is to find that the Bill is welcomed.

This is an example of the utility of Private Members' Bills. Sometimes there are Private Members' Bills which deal with a great question—not very many and not very often, but they occasionally arise. There are Private Members' Bills which some people think should never see the light of day. There is a third class of Private Members' Bill which is an example of the working of our system in this House, whereby private Members are able to assist in the process of legislation and fill loopholes and make improvements where they are badly needed in cases where the Government might be in a difficult position if they tried to bring in a general Bill.

I want particularly to say a word of appreciation—an opportunity to do so is given us on the occasions of such non-controversial matters as this—of the attitude which was adopted by the hon. Member for Islington, East (Mr. Fletcher). I do not say that anybody has to be red-faced about it, but here was a situation in which Parliament had failed to carry out its intentions. It would have been easy for the hon. Member to say that here was another example of Government bungling. We ought to appreciate that on this private Members' day he did not do that at all. Actually, he made a very clear statement. I intended going into that myself, but the hon. Gentleman did it so well that I will not take up time doing so.

One appreciates that the famous 1960 Bill, which was the result of the Report of the Royal Commission of 1951—it was the 1960 Bill which is known sometimes as the Butler Bill—was in Committee for a very long time, and I think that some people were very worn out by the time they reached this point. That does not mean to say that a mistake was not made. I myself was not personally responsible for it—I might have been if it had been a year or two earlier—but I know from experience how these things go.

One sees from paragraph 432 of the Royal Commission Report that the 1s. prize was taken in its stride, as if that were the answer to the problem. It did not occur to anyone that the things which have been done would be done. Only when one gets people with ingenious minds, like my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, North (Mr. Stratton Mills) does one see what can be done, and when one finds out what the position is, steps have to be taken.

Perhaps I may be permitted to say that one should appreciate that the scope of the Bill is very limited. It is true that the Long Title states:

"A Bill to Amend the Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Act 1963 with respect to the provision of amusements with prizes."

But, at the same time, the only specific matters mentioned are Section 49(3) and Schedule 6 of the Act, which is, of course, connected with Section 49. The matters about gaming machines, although rightly commented upon by my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, North are not really germane to the present discussion. Section 50 of the 1963 Act states:

"Nothing in section 32, 33, 34, 41, or 42 of this Act shall apply to a game played by means of a machine in accordance with the conditions set out in subsection (2) of this section."

The Act dons draw a distinction between the type of machine with which my hon. Friend was dealing and the type of machine which concerns us here. I am sure, however, that the House will generally agree with the concern he expressed.

The Bill really has only two basic objectives. The first is to deal with the situation created by the legal decision of Mr. Justice Salmon. It makes the position of the local authority clear and also has the valuable result of drawing the attention of the local authority, in clear terms, to its powers and therefore its duties. The other provision is that of principle.

With regard to matters of detail, I feel that I should say that those who are promoting the Bill will pay very careful attention to everything that has been said. I do not think that there will be much difficulty about dealing with the points that the hon. Member for Islington, East so clearly stated. I would not think it right to take up time in arguing with him now, but when he said that he was sure I would agree with a certain point I felt I would rather reserve my position on that for the future. As between lawyers, it is always a pity to destroy the basis of a good argument.

I am not so sure about my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, North and the very ingenious suggestion that he made about Clause I. There may be something in it. It is clear that, if one has a position where one can argue that all one has is a ticket which is obviously worth much less than ls., it is quite immaterial that that ticket enables one to do something quite different and not mentioned in the Bill. What Mr. Justice Salmon said about it I do not know, but he would probably find a way of dealing with that sort of argument. However, perhaps it would not be proper for me now to discuss all these points in detail.

This is not a grandmotherly Bill. All that is being done is to make effective provisions that have already been the subject of consideration by Parliament and which were a direct result of the Royal Commission. My hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State pointed out that one of the recommendations was not being fully met, but I think that, on all the other matters, we are in full agreement with the Royal Commission. We are, therefore, really doing no more than bringing the present legislation into line. It may be that we shall have some quite difficult small points to discuss in the Committee but if they are met and dealt with with the same helpfulness and goodwill that we have had this morning I am sure that they can be overcome.

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

This Bill is designed to remove uncertainties about the effect in Great Britain of adoption orders made in Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. These uncertainties arise in the following way. Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey have adoption laws similar in essentials to the Adoption Act, 1958. Thus, an adoption order made in any of these territories has much the same effect there as an adoption order made in England or Scotland has in Great Britain.

But, save for a few provisions that specifically equate an order made in Northern Ireland with one made in Great Britain, statutes in force in this country are silent on the question of whether adoption includes adoption in one of the other jurisdictions. The existence of specific references could be construed as meaning that, for some purposes in this country, orders made in Northern Ireland are not as effective as orders made here and that for no purpose is an order made in the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands to be equated with one made in Great Britain.

Such judicial decisions as have a bearing on the question suggest that the courts in this country are reluctant to recognise any adoption order made outside Great Britain. An example, perhaps the most important, of the uncertainty that this Bill seeks to remove is the effect of Section 13 of the Adoption Act, 1958. The Section provides:

"Upon an adoption order being made, all rights, duties, obligations and liabilities"—

of the child's natural parents—

"in relation to the future custody, maintenance and education … shall be extinguished …"

and transferred to the adopters as if the child were born to them in lawful wedlock.

Here, "adoption order" means one granted in England or Scotland, but a child adopted in one of the other territories ought also to be treated in Great Britain as if he were the legitimate child of the adopters. The Bill would ensure that an adoption order granted in one or the other territories would be fully recognised for all purposes by courts in Great Britain.

Subsections (1) and (2) of Clause 1 bring about the necessary modification in our Statutes by a general modification of enactments. Broadly speaking, subsection (1) provides that, for the purpose of deciding whether, in relation to any situation after the Bill becomes law, the child should be treated under any of our statutes as if he were the legitimate child of the adopters, an adoption order granted in one of the other territories is as good as an adoption order made here. For this purpose, it does not matter if the order was granted before the Bill becomes law.

The need for the two categories in paragraphs (a) and (b) is, as I have explained, that some enactments already apply to adoption in Northern Ireland as well as to those in England and Scotland but others apply only to adoptions in England or Scotland.

Questions of nationality and one or two other matters that are not caught by the general extension are dealt with separately later in the Bill. Thus, subsection (2) provides that, for certain enactments, adoption orders made in the other territories after the Bill becomes law shall have the same effect here as one of our own adoption orders.

For example, Section 14(2) of the 1958 Act, which provides that if a parent has taken out an insurance policy payable on the child's death the rights and liabilities under the policy are automatically transferred on adoption to the adopter, is applied to an adoption in one of the other territories. There are obvious practical difficulties in applying provisions of this kind to adoption orders made before the Bill comes into force.

Adoption in England, Scotland or Northern Ireland automatically confers on a child who lacks it citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies if the adopter—or the husband in a joint adoption by spouses—is a citizen of the United Kingdom and the Colonies at the time of the adoption.

Subsection (3) provides that adoption in the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands shall have the same effect—even if adop- tion is before the Bill becomes law—but only with effect from the coming into force of the Bill.

The need for subsection (4), which avoids the disturbance of vested property rights, is best explained by giving an example. An illegitimate child is adopted by his mother, adopting alone. Later—perhaps years later—he is legitimated by the marriage of his parents. In the meantime, he may have inherited property by virtue of the adoption order; for an adoption order confers rights of inheritance. After the adopted person has been legitimated, the adoption order may be revoked, and it would probably be held that revocation of the order invalidated the adoption order for all purposes, so that the title to any property that might have been acquired by the adopted person before his legitimation by virtue of his status as a child of the adopter would be invalidated. The legitimation, on the other hand dates only from when it occurs. The subsection preserves the adopted person's entitlement to any property he has acquired by virtue of his adopted status before the order was revoked, just as Section 1(2) of the Adoption Act, 1960, already safeguards the position where the adoption was granted in the United Kingdom.

Subsection (5) deals with "provisional adoption orders" of the kind granted in England and Scotland under Section 53 of the Adoption Act, 1958. Orders of this kind may now be obtained in the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey. A provisional adoption order may be granted to a person who is not domiciled in England or Scotland but who wishes to take a British child to his country of domicile for adoption there.

A provisional adoption order is granted subject, broadly, to the same conditions as a full adoption order, and it has the same general effect, save that it does not confer British citizenship or rights of inheritance in relation to the provisional adopters. Subsection (5) of this Clause provides, save as regards registration, that a provisional adoption order granted in one of the other territories shall be treated in Great Britain as if it were a provisional adoption order granted here.

In the main, Clauses 2 and 3 are consequential on the provision in Clause 1 for the statutory recognition of adoption orders made in the other territories; but subsection (1) of Clause 2 fills a lacuna in the Adoption Act, 1958, by providing that certified extracts from the English adopted children register shall be received in evidence in Scotland, and vice versa. It also provides that extracts from the Northern Ireland register shall be received as evidence in Great Britain. Proof of extracts from the registers in the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands can be dealt with under existing powers in the Evidence (Foreign, Dominion and Colonial Documents) Act, 1933, as amended by Section 5 of the Oaths and Evidence (Overseas Authorities and Countries) Acts, 1963.

I hope the purpose of the Bill will commend itself to hon. Members, and that the House will be ready to give it a Second Reading.

I wish to support my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Ulster (Mr. Forrest). The House will generally welcome any legislation that facilitates adoption in any form. The terms of the Bill are narrow and bring into line Great Britain, the Channel Islands the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland. Certain of our colleagues have contributed to adoption legislation—Baroness Horsbrugh, who is now in another place, and another great friend, Basil Nield, who used to be the Member for the City of Chester.

The rules for adoption generally tend to be a little stringent. When one considers the homes into which so many children are born, the trouble that the authorities take, though quite reasonable, tends to be a little on the strict side, prohibiting more children being adopted than might otherwise be adopted. Particularly in the case of illegitimate children, chances might be taken so that a child might be found a home rather than be left in a public home without the care and attention of a family. I welcome this piece of legislation, and I hope that the House will do so, too.

This Measure makes a good addition to our adoption laws, and we all welcome modification and strengthening of the general adoption rules. This Bill extends the existing provisions, and deals with certain anomalies that have sprung up.

I would welcome a relaxation of our present adoption laws. One has to weigh very carefully the chances in regard to suitable homes, a subject beset with very real and great difficulties. The authorities look into most cases very carefully, but at times they may be more stringent than is really necessary. One has to weigh up the advantage of, perhaps, a home that is not exactly perfect compared with having no home at all. Parliament has to be extremely careful before it relaxes rules that are fairly reasonably interpreted.

Is it correct that Clause 1 comes into effect only after the Bill becomes law and cannot begin sooner than the commencement of the Bill? Or are we saying that it can come into effect now, as if the Bill really commenced on its First Reading? I should be very grateful if the slightly complex legal wording could be made clearer and simpler so that the public at large can understand it more easily.

Am I correct in thinking that the reference to evidence in Scotland means that the Registrar General for Scotland is obliged to make an entry in his register, or is that a voluntary act? What is meant by the reference to annotation of the register in Clause 3? I am sure that there is a perfectly sensible and reasonable meaning but, again, is that operation compulsory, or can the person responsible do it without being told? Thirdly, can the register be altered—as it were, backdated—to when the Bill started, or has any alteration to take place only after the Bill becomes law? These are very small points in a very important Bill.

These rules have a long history. It has sometimes been the history of adoption legislation in this Chamber, as introduced by private Members, that there has been considerable difficulty, but I congratulate my hon. Friend on bringing forward what I am sure we all agree to be a completely non-controversial Bill. Although I have not yet heard the hon. Member for Islington, East (Mr. Fletcher), he looks as though in principle, as on the last Bill, he will lend his support to the Bill. I must not prejudice the issue, but I know his feelings on these problems. I hope that we shall give an unopposed Second Reading to this very interesting and extremely useful piece of legislation.

The number of children who would have been affected in 1960 by the Bill is about 16,000. It is interesting that the increase in the number of adopted children took place during the war. This is a natural consequence of children being left without parents. This is illustrated by the fact that during the years 1941–46 and just after the war the numbers covered by the Bill would have been 58,000 to 66,000 as against 16,000 today. I refer to this only in passing, because it illustrates the point brought out by my noble Friend, that the authorities may have to look a little more carefully into the whole question of homes regarded as suitable or not suitable for adopted children.

When my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State intervenes, will she tell us how many of the applications for adoption result in adoption orders being made? She may not have the figures at the moment, but perhaps we might have them later, because they would be interesting not only in the context of the debate but in the context of adoption generally in this country. I have no hesitation whatever in welcoming the Bill in its wider application, and I hope that the House will give it an unopposed Second Reading.

I am sure that the whole House wishes to join in congratulating the hon. Members for Mid-Ulster (Mr. Forrest) and Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Lord Robert Grosvenor) on having used their good fortune in the Ballot to promote this very desirable Bill.

I think that I am right in saying that historically the conception of adoption came relatively late in English law. During the last generation or two Parliament has given considerable attention to the conception of adoption. The first Act was in the 1920's. Since then, experience has shown how valuable the process of adoption has been. It is designed to remove the hardships to children, not only to illegitimate children but to those who are left fatherless or orphans or who are neglected by their parents. As a result of experience and gradual modifications in the law, additional benefits have been given to children in respect of whom adoption orders have been made.

The object of the legislation has been as far as possible to give adopted children the same security, the same benefits and the same legal position, as far as we can by Act of Parliament, as the vast majority of children who are brought up in the happy homes of their own parents. I am therefore sure that the whole House welcomes a Bill which is promoted to carry one stage further this very desirable process.

Something has been said about whether the existing requirements imposed before an adoption order are too stringent or should be relaxed. My own view is that it is important, in the interests of adopted children, to secure that very necessary inquiries are made and that safeguards are observed before an adoption order is made. In my experience the law on that subject is about right at present, but it is a subject which should be continually reviewed.

Looking at the Explanatory Memorandum, I see that the object of the Bill is

"to secure that an adoption order made in Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man or the Channel Isles shall have effect in England or Scotland as if it had been made in Great Britain."

That seems to be quite unexceptionable. I hope that we can regard adoption as part of the law of status. Surely it follows that in this country we wish to give recognition to an adoption order made in any other part of the United Kingdom.

I am not sure that I follow why we should necessarily stop there. I hope that the same principle would apply in respect of adoption orders made in other civilised countries. It may not be that there is much necessity, if any, to legislate on this subject, but if the question arose I hope that our laws would give the same kind of recognition to a child adopted in France or the Irish Free State, for example, as to a child adopted in the Isle of Man or the Channel Isles. Whether we do so or not I am not quite sure, and it does not arise directly on the Bill, but it seems to me that the principle is right that where the laws of any other country, with whatever safeguards and protections they think are appropriate, make an adoption order, we should recognise it.

Would it not mean that before we did this we should have to look rather more carefully into the the laws of adoption in the particular country and the circumstances in which adoptions were allowed? In the Bill we are dealing with substantially the same circumstances as adoption, whereas we might not be doing so in a foreign country.

rose—

Order. I am always somewhat modest on these occasions about the rules of order, but I think that this point is a little wide on this Bill.

I am obliged. I will not pursue the point. I was saying that the principle embodied in the Bill was right and that where a country makes an adoption order we should regard it as part of the law of status. We should regard it in much the same kind of way as we do matrimonial jurisdiction. The laws of Scotland on divorce differ from the laws of England, but once a divorce has been granted in Scotland it is recognised in England.

This is a very important differentiation. A divorce which takes place in a country such as Mexico certainly is not recognised here.

Yes, it is. A law in respect of parties domiciled anywhere in the world is recognised here.

Not if they are domiciled here.

The Bill, as I understand it, applies to children wherever they are domiciled, provided that the adoption order is made in Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, or the Channel Islands. I imagine this is the intention of the Bill. I suppose this is one of the subjects which should be considered in Committee. For example, if a child had to be adopted in Northern Ireland and he was of English domicile or Scottish domicile, I hope it would not be the case that some issue could be raised as to whether the courts of Northern Ireland had jurisdiction to make the adoption order. I do not know off-hand—perhaps someone will be able to tell us—whether the jurisdiction of the courts in Northern Ireland to make an adoption order depends upon the domicile of the child, or the domicile of the adopter, or follows from the mere residence of the child in Northern Ireland. It might well be said that there should be some distinction between a child whose domicile is in Northern Ireland and a child whose domicile is in England. That could be argued.

The hon. Gentleman has put his finger on a point in broad terms which is not adequately covered by the Bill. Later I will quote an example to the House which is not covered.

I am obliged. This is a matter which is worth pursuing to ensure that we get the Bill right before it is enacted. If the law of divorce is any analogy, the courts of a country have jurisdiction to pronounce on the validity of a marriage, or to dissolve it, in the case of parties domiciled in the jurisdiction. The courts of Northern Ireland or the courts of Scotland could not divorce two persons who were domiciled in England. I am not clear at the moment in respect of what children the courts of the Isle of Man have power to make adoption orders. Is it limited to children resident in the Isle of Man, or children who were born there, or children who are domiciled there? Provided that the courts have proper jurisdiction, it would seem to be quite proper, as the Bill provides, that recognition should be given everywhere to such an adoption order.

I hope that at some stage of the Bill any doubt there may be about the jurisdiction of the places where adoption orders could be made will be cleared up. If there is an illegitimate child living in Northern Ireland whose mother is in England, the paternity of the child being unknown, it might be a matter of some doubt whether the courts of Northern Ireland have jurisdiction to make an adoption order. I would not like to find that, as a result of some legal doubt about particular cases, doubt arose under the Bill as to whether that adoption order in Northern Ireland should be recognised in this country.

I have been able to make only a cursory examination of the contents of the Bill, although I listened very carefully to what the promoter said about it. Although there is no doubt whatever that hon. Members on both sides of the House cordially support the intentions of the Bill, there may well be some problems of detail which can be clarified during subsequent stages with a view to improving the Bill.

The hon. Member for Islington, East (Mr. Fletcher) has raised a very interesting question, which had not occurred to me, about the jurisdiction of the courts in Northern Ireland in relation to domicile. I hope that the matter will be cleared up as the Bill proceeds. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary will tell us about it when she replies. The point obviously should be clarified. I should be in favour of having it clarified in the most liberal fashion. I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman that we want to be as flexible as possible and have equal standards throughout the whole United Kingdom.

I join in the congratulations which have been tendered to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Ulster (Mr. Forrest) upon the lucid and able way in which he adduced the arguments for the Bill. It is a comparatively narrow but extremely important Bill which affects the future of many children. It is right that the House should give it a fair wind.

Almost every argument for the Bill has been used. I do not wish to labour the point. It is a very hopeful thing that nowadays, as the adoption societies will confirm, there are more families wishing to adopt children than there are children waiting for adoption. I am all in favour of facilitating this admirable trend. There is an argument to he made for some relaxation of the rules of adoption, but it does not come within the scope of the Bill, which deals with a comparatively narrow point.

The hon. Member for Islington, East pointed out that legislation on adoption is comparatively recent. The first Measure was in 1926. I have always been puzzled as to why this has always been left to Private Members' Bills. Why have not Governments legislated on adoption? The Adoption Act was passed in 1958. This change is being made five years later. I should like to know why even this Bill had to be left to the caprice of the Ballot and a Private Member's Bill.

I welcome the Bill, and I am glad that it has been welcomed on both sides of the House. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary, in addition to replying to the question about domicile raised by the hon. Member for Islington, East, will tell us when the two Governments between them became aware of the need for this legislation and why it has been left for so long, and then to the caprice of the Ballot?

As has been pointed out, this is not one of the most shattering Bills to come before the House this Session. It has a comparatively narrow purpose, but that in no way detracts from its importance. I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Ulster (Mr. Forrest), and, as one of the cosignatories to the Bill, I can testify to the tremendous amount of hard work my hon. Friend has put in on it.

I welcome the Bill and the fact that it has an Explanatory Memorandum which makes it easier for hon. Members to understand its purpose. I regret that it is not always the practice to have Explanatory Memoranda in Private Members' Bills and I hope that more hon. Members will follow the example given by my hon. Friend in this Bill.

As my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Down, South (Captain Orr) said, it is curious that the four main pioneering Acts on this subject were all introduced by Private Members. Unlike him, I would make no complaint that this Bill has been introduced by a Private Member, because it is obviously the kind of Measure which Private Members should endeavour to introduce. However, the earlier Acts were of a very major nature, setting down the guide lines following the scandalous state of affairs at the time of the Great War, when the whole system of adoption was entirely informal. It was following the Great War that this House took an interest in the subject and legislation eventually took place in the 1920s and 1930s.

I am not altogether certain that I agreed with my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham (Dr. Alan Glyn) that adoption should be even more informal than it is today. I agree more with the approach of the hon. Member for Islington, East (Mr. Fletcher), who said that this was a matter of some balance between what is best for the parties adopting the child and what is best for the child itself.

I think that my hon. Friend has missed the point I was making. We do not say that it should be more informal; merely that constant review should be made into present circumstances under which it is considered right that adoption should take place.

Perhaps I was being unfair in using the word "informal", but that does not invalidate the point I was making; that this is a matter of very fine balance. From my experience as a solicitor of the question of adoption I can assure the House that the present balance is about right. The adoption societies and local authorities trying to place a child take great pains to see that they are putting the child into a suitable family. These organisations then pay extensive visits throughout the probationary period to ensure that the child is getting every chance and is being thoroughly cared for. It would not be right to say that they are too careful and I believe that Parliament has got this balance about right.

I agree with my hon. Friend that this balance must be preserved but, as the hon. Member for Islington, East (Mr. Fletcher) indicated, we should continue to keep this balance under review so that the whole process is kept up to date. I am merely pointing out that the subject should be kept constantly under review.

All Governments keep all subjects constantly under review. In any case, I hope that my hon. Friend's remarks apply merely to detail and not to the essential balance which now exists. I hope that he is thinking solely of detail.

indicated assent.

I am not altogether clear, from the wording of Clause 1, whether this legislation will cover orders made before the Measure comes into force. I understand the intention of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Ulster, but the extent to which it will cover such orders should be carefully looked into in Committee to see if a better formula might not be found. I hope that my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary will give her interpretation of the Clause on this point when she speaks later.

I hope that the next point I intend to mention—and this was touched on by the hon. Member for Islington, East—will be carefully considered in Committee because it does not appear to be covered by the Bill. I have recently come across an example which might be of interest to hon. Members because it is the sort of complication which exists, as Northern Ireland is viewed for domicile and residence as an entirely separate area from other parts of the United Kingdom. This can give rise to great problems.

I came across the example of a soldier who was domiciled in England but who was residing temporarily—how temporarily one could not say because these things are always uncertain with Army personnel—in Northern Ireland. Just before he came to Northern Ireland he and his wife had been given a child for adoption by a local authority. The child, of course, was domiciled in England. This soldier had to leave England right away, immediately after having been given the child, and come to Northern Ireland. The question of where the adoption proceedings should be taken then arose. It was felt, upon looking into the matter carefully, that as the child and the adopters were actually domiciled in England but were both resident in Northern Ireland, the proceedings could not be brought in the Northern Ireland courts. Since they were resident outside England it was agreed that there would be practical difficulties in bringing the proceedings in the English courts.

This is the sort of difficulty the hon. Member for Islington, East had in mind. There are others, and I hope that the Home Office will look at this matter extremely carefully before the Bill is considered in Committee. If the long title is sufficiently wide, perhaps the Home Office could help my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Ulster to cover these cases in the Bill, for the law on this is not at present entirely satisfactory. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Ulster for sponsoring this legislation and I hope that the House will give the Bill its Second Reading.

It might be helpful to hon. Members if at this stage I gave some indication of the attitude of the Government towards the Bill. As has been obvious from the speeches, all hon. Members welcome the Measure and wish it well. We recognise that some points will need to be cleared up in Committee and possibly we shall be able to discuss them at greater length at that stage.

Legal adoption in Britain has a comparatively short history. In England, the first Act regulating the conditions under which adoption orders may be made by the courts and the consequences that follow from the making of an order was passed in 1926. A similar law applying to Scotland was enacted in 1930. For many years before this, of course, de facto adoptions had taken place to a considerable extent; but I need not expand on the defects and dangers in haphazard arrangements of that kind.

As often as not the interests of the de facto adopters took precedence over the interests of the children, who were taken into a family on this informal basis. Apart from the unsuitability of a good many arrangements, there was always the risk that a child would be claimed by his natural parents or other relatives or guardians and the child had no legal standing in relation to its de facto adopters. Unless they specifically provided for the child it had no right to succeed to their property.

The 1926 Act in England, and the 1930 Act in Scotland, largely put an end to that unsatisfactory state of affairs. Subsequent legislation, applying since 1939 to both England and Scotland and culminating in the Adoption Act, 1958, has made further improvements to bring us to a position where I think we can fairly claim that a child adopted here and his adopter are protected by the best safeguards that we can reasonably devise. This goes some way towards answering the point made by the hon. Member for Islington, East (Mr. Fletcher)—who has unfortunately had to leave the Chamber—when he spoke about the rights of children from other countries. We can fairly say that our safeguards are, possibly, the best that can be devised.

I should like to turn to the position concerning adoption orders made in other territories with which the Bill is concerned. Similar advances have been made in the Isle of Man, where an adoption law based on the English Act of 1926 was passed as long ago as 1928. A similar Act was passed in Northern Ireland in 1929. Jersey followed suit in 1947 and Guernsey in 1960, although, of course, their law was based on later legislation in Great Britain. As my hon. Friend has pointed out, the situation is that in each of these territories a law is in force which is similar in essentials to the Adoption Act, 1958.

Can my hon. Friend say why there are no adoption laws in either Alderney or Sark and whether there is any prospect of this kind of legislation being introduced?

I should not wish to give an answer off the cuff, because there are many reasons why legislation in other places does not immediately fall into line with ours. I will, however, let my hon. Friend have a full answer in due course.

The existing position concerning a child adopted in the Isle of Man, in Scotland and in Great Britain is that his adopters would have to satisfy similar conditions as to suitability. There would be no doubt, for example, that in the Isle of Man all rights, duties, obligations and liabilities of the child's natural parents in relation to his future custody, maintenance and education were extinguished by the adoption order and those rights, duties, etc., transferred to the adopters. In short, laws in force in Great Britain, Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands leave no doubt as to the respective positions of the adopter and the adopted person within each of the separate jurisdictions.

What there is doubt about—and this is the doubt that the Bill seeks to remove—is whether a person adopted in Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man enjoys the same position under the law in England or Scotland as a person who has been adopted in Great Britain. My hon. Friend and other hon. Members have given examples of the kind of doubts that can arise. Perhaps it would help if I gave another example.

The Matrimonial Proceedings (Magistrates' Courts) Act, 1960, enables a magistrates court to make orders providing, among other matters, for any child of the family who is under the age of 16. Here, "child of the family" includes an adopted child and "adopted" is defined as meaning adopted in England, Scotland or Northern Ireland. It is, consequently, doubtful, to say the least, whether a court may provide for a child who is adopted in, say, the Isle of Man.

I agree with my hon. Friend that the specific inclusion in some Statutes of references to adoption in Northern Ireland tends to lead to the conclusion that when there is no such reference, a statute does not apply to adoptions in that territory. As far as I know, no enactment in force here refers specifically to adoptions in the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands. There is, of course, a continual movement of people between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. For example, there is nothing unusual in persons who have adopted a child in, say, the Isle of Man removing with their family to England.

We must accept that at some time or other the question is bound to arise of the adopted person or his adopter being entitled to some benefit under the law here or being subject to certain liability. Sometimes there would be an awkward question of the child's right to succeed to property. It is always possible that the adopter may die domiciled here, leaving no will or one that provides for his children but makes no specific reference to the adopted child. As matters stand, it is uncertain whether —again, to use the Isle of Man as an example—a child adopted there would be able to share in the estate or to be provided for as if he were a legitimate child of the adopter.

Perhaps I can give the House an idea of the extent of the problem with which the Bill seeks to deal—

Is is correct to say that if Alderney and Sark, where at present no adoption machinery exists, were subsequently to pass such legislation, the Bill would apply to them and legislation which is introduced there can be made effective under the Bill?

On the whole, we have been talking about Northern Ireland because the interests of Northern Ireland Members are paramount; it is a Northern Ireland Member who has introduced the Bill, the purpose of which is to regularise the position over the whole field.

I should like to give an idea of the extent of the problem with which the Bill seeks to deal by quoting the number of adoption orders made in Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. Last year, a total of 423 orders was made in those territories. Admittedly, this is a comparatively small number compared with the numbers made in this country.

At present, adoption orders are made in England at the rate of about 16,000 a year and in Scotland at about 1,600 a year. But adoption in the other territories is on a not inconsiderable scale. In any event, I am sure that as we have seen today, the House accepts that it is right to put an end to the uncertainties which my hon. Friend has described.

I should like, therefore, to make it clear that the Government take the view that the Bill would make a most useful reform in the existing law. Before concluding, however, I should like to deal with some of the more specific problems which hon. Members have raised. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Ulster (Mr. Forrest), who spoke first, asked whether adoption orders made in this country were too strict. We do not think so. This is a serious problem and one in which tremendous care must be taken. In any event, as my hon. Friend recognised, the Bill does not touch that question. It merely tries to regularise the whole situation.

My hon. Friend the Member for Clapham (Dr. Alan Glyn) asked a series of questions. Statistics of the numbers of adoption applications which fail are not available. The Home Office hopes to put in train a statistical inquiry that will throw light on this question. When we have information that would be useful to my hon. Friend, I will ensure that he gets it.

Another point which concerned the House and which was raised by the hon. Member for Islington, East and other hon. Members is the question of domicile. This is something that we shall discuss more fully in Committee. But the jurisdiction of the court to make an adoption order in Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, as in this country, depends upon the domicile of the adopters, who must be domiciled in the territory of the court, and upon the residence of the child, who must be resident within the territory of the court. Residence means only a comparatively short stay. There would not, therefore, be any particular difficulty in this respect.

Several hon. Members have had difficulty with parts of Clause 1—

Before dealing with something new, I do not think that what my hon. Friend has said meets the last point. The problem arises that someone who is domiciled in England, who comes to Northern Ireland and who is resident there temporarily is unable to adopt a child in Northern Ireland, and vice versa. Perhaps this wider point might be considered.

These are matters which will be considered in Committee, because to a great extent they flow from the original enactments.

I should like to say a word about when Clause 1 will begin to apply. Subsection (1) applies only to Acts already passed and only as regards things done or events occurring after the Bill becomes law, but it applies to adoption orders made before as well as after the Bill becomes law. The need for the two categories in paragraph (a) and (b) is that some enactments already apply to adoptions in Northern Ireland as well as to those in England and Scotland—for example, Section 63(4) of the Superannuation Act, 1949—but others apply only to adoptions in England and Scotland. For example, there is Section 21(4) of the Family Allowances Act, 1945. All the enactments are extended to the rest of the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. There are other matters which I am sure are of interest to the House and which have been touched on by hon. Members in the course of the debate—

Could my hon. Friend expand a little on the reason why it is not possible to be retrospective in Clause 1 and go back to validate an order made from the time of the Adoption Act, 1958?

I would not wish to pursue that at the moment. These are probably matters which my hon. and gallant Friend will wish to pursue at greater length in Committee. My purpose at present is to give, as it were, a blessing to the Bill as it stands.

I understood my hon. Friend to Say that the provisions in Clause 1 were designed to overcome certain legal difficulties. An assurance on this point would be of interest, because the Clause is a rather complicated one for the ordinary person to read.

Yes, the Clause is designed to overcome certain legal difficulties which have been discovered in the working of the Act. This brings me to the point made in the debate about there having been a delay. These matters have come to light with the working of the Act. They do not normally come to light until children reach a later age, and it is not that long since we passed the 1958 Act. Something has also been said about his matter being left to a private Member, but I would say that this is the sort of subject that generally commends itself to private Members and it is a very useful field in which private Members can concern themselves with legislation.

I should like to say something about citizenship, a subject which has been already touched upon in the debate. Clause 1(3) extends Section 19 of the Adoption Act, 1958, which relates to the nationality of an adopted child, to adoptions in the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man. It already applies to adoptions within the United Kingdom. Section 19 of the Act provides that where a child who is not a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies is adopted by a person who is, or by a married couple of whom the husband is, a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies, the child acquires that citizenship. The subsection will apply to adoption orders made after the Bill becomes law. It will also apply to adoption orders made before the Bill becomes law, but only with effect from the coming into force of the Bill.

As for legitimacy, which is dealt with in Clause 1(4), Section 26(1) of the Adoption Act 1958, Section 1(1) of the Adoption Act, 1960, provide that where a person adopted by his father and or mother is subsequently legitimated by the marriage of his parents, the adoption order may be revoked on application to the courts that made it. There are similar provisions in the law of the other jurisdictions of the British Islands. Subsection (4) avoids the disturbance of vested property rights where an adopted person has inherited property by virtue of the adoption order before he has been legitimated and the order revoked. But for this subsection, the courts would probably hold that the revocation of the adoption order invalidated the adoption for all purposes, so that the title to any property that might have been acquired by the adopted person before his legitimation by virtue of his status as a child of the adopter would be invalidated.

A similar provision in Section 1(2) of the Adoption Act, 1960, safeguards the position where the adoption order was granted in Great Britain. This subsection will prevent the Clause from affecting a distribution made, under English or Scottish law, before the revocation of an order upon the legitimation of the adopted person in one of the other parts of the British Isles.

Section 53(5) of the Adoption Act, 1958, enables a court in England or Scotland to grant what is known as a provisional adoption order "to a person who is not domiciled in either country, and so is not eligible for a full adoption order, but who wishes to remove the child from Great Britain for adoption in the country in which he is domiciled. The order authorises the removal and gives the adopter custody of the child in the meantime. A provisional adoption order does not confer citizenship or rights of inheritance, but otherwise has the same effect in England or Scotland as a full adoption order. There are corresponding provisions in Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man but not, so far, in Northern Ireland.

I am sure that the House will not wish me to go further into the Bill at this stage. I hope that I have said enough to convince hon. Members of the usefulness of the Measure and to underline the hope that in its passage through Committee it may be improved, that it may have a speedy passage through all stages and may play the useful part which we all hope for it.

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

It may seem rather unusual for a Member representing a Northern Ireland constituency to bring in a non-controversial Measure into this House, but I assure hon. Members on both sides that this small Bill will be uncontroversial, that it is essential and that it will remove an anomaly which now exists in the Protection of Birds Act. I am not a lawyer, but my constituents credit me with a certain amount of common sense and the Bill is a common sense Measure.

In order to explain to hon. Members the position in Northern Ireland in the matter of the protection of birds, I should like to give an example of what can happen under the present legislation. We have in Northern Ireland two pieces of legislation, one dealing with birds and the other with animals. The first is the Protection of Birds Act, 1931, and the other is the Protection of Animals Act, 1911.

This is the kind of thing that can happen in the present anomalous situation. I am a farmer. If I wanted to destroy certain wild birds which were attacking my crops I could apply to the Secretary of State here and obtain a licence to poison those birds with bait. If I did that, the authorities in Northern Ireland would prosecute me under the 1931 Act. I would be taken to court and I should use as my defence the argument that the 1931 Act was superseded by Section 10 of the Protection of Birds Act, 1954 passed by this House. That defence might be or might not be accepted and then there would be litigation.

The lawyers would have to decide whether or not an Act passed by this House was superior to an Act passed by the House of Commons in Northern Ireland. This will give hon. Members some idea of the Irish nature of the situation which exists in the matter of protecting birds at present.

The intention when the 1954 Act was passed was to provide additional power to the 1931 Act passed in Northern Ireland. The 1931 Act did not cover the importation of wild birds or their eggs or nests into Northern Ireland, and when the 1954 Act was passed by this House it was thought that the omission should be made good. I agree that it was a necessary step, but unfortunately section 16(3) of the 1954 Act provided that the whole of Section 10 of the Act should apply to Northern Ireland. This meant, in effect, that a duplication occurred in respect of the taking of birds for scientific or educational purposes. But there was an additional provision, which was barred in Northern Ireland by the Protection of Animals Act, 1911, relating to the taking of wild birds by the use of poison or stupefying bait. This oversight on the part of the legislators at Westminster leaves the law in a very anomalous state. I am using my time as a private Member to try to correct this situation and bring the law into repute.

If Section 10 of the 1954 Act is deleted, leaving only that part of it which makes the Minister of Home Affairs in Northern Ireland the licensing authority in respect of any person in Northern Ireland who wishes to import birds, this will correct the law. There have been many instances where this House, perhaps through pressure of work, or as a result of Members becoming tired in Committee stages or during long debates, has allowed small points like this to become overlooked. I have no doubt that if the House accepts this small Bill, the law in Northern Ireland and in this country will be brought up to date.

I have pleasure in presenting this small Bill, and I hope the House will give it an unopposed Second Reading.

It is with great pleasure that I support the Second Reading of this Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Armagh (Mr. Maginnis). I think he has clearly stated the reasons behind the Bill, and he has also explained the legal position. I should like to say something about birds and their protection.

This Bill will place in the hands of the Minister of Home Affairs in Northern Ireland powers for the protection of wild birds. It is right that this House at Westminster should, after discussing great affairs, turn to matters of wild life, and I think it is peculiarly appropriate that on a day such as this we should think the protection of birds and animals.

Very little was known about birds until quite recently. One thinks of Mr. Peter Scott, his pictures and his interest in the protection of birds, and his films which are shown on television. In passing, how one wishes that we could have coloured television so that we could see them in all their glory. Interest in wild birds is quite a modern tendency. In the past birds were regarded as things to be shot and killed whenever the opportunity arose. The ordinary song birds were admired, but very little was known about their habits and, when rough weather came, little was known about the possibility of their protection.

Unfortunately, the collector stepped in, and when a rare bird such as a hoopoe arrived it was shot and stuffed in a not very natural position, and after a few years it disintegrated with the moth. There has now been a welcome change. In schools the pupils take an interest in nature, an interest quite apart from the collection of eggs. That has been a step forward.

There are many rare birds. Only a week ago in Kent I saw a nuthatch arrive to peck at a coconut. Perhaps it is not so rare in this country, but in Northern Ireland it is definitely a rare bird. It is only seen in the southern part of England. On the other hand, there are many birds—

Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. and learned Member in this very interesting disquisition, but this Bill has a very narrow point transferring certain powers from an Act to the Minister in Northern Ireland. It would help me a little if the hon. and learned Member could show how his present remarks are directed to that.

I am most grateful, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I apologise if I have strayed. May I turn to the subject of the birds in Northern Ireland. I should like to mention in particular the brent geese at Strangford Lough. They will be protected under this Measure by the Minister allowing certain close seasons. As I understand the position—no doubt I shall be corrected if I am wrong—the Minister will have the power to amend the close season. As we know, in this country the close season for grouse is 12th August. It is interesting to note that in Northern Ireland the close season has now been moved to 1st September. That, I think, is a help in the protection of grouse which are not very common in Northern Ireland.

I hope I shall not be out of order if I say that brent geese have been decreasing considerably in number and, therefore, are in need of a certain amount of protection. Another bird which needs protection is the goldfinch. These used to be caught by liming and kept in cages. Power is given to the Minister of Home Affairs in Northern Ireland to protect them.

I should like to give an instance of the way in which protection has helped to increase these birds. I was going through my constituency and visited a school in Islandmagee. I noticed pictures of various birds in the schoolroom. One was a picture of a goldfinch. I said to the children, "You do not see those here." They said, "Yes, we do. They are quite common". Remembering my boyhood days, I said, "No, they do not exist in Northern Ireland. They are found in England, or in Southern Ireland possibly, but not in the north." I pressed the point but the children were adamant. Then I realised that they were entirely right and that I was wrong. I talked to the master and discovered that in the last few years there had been a phenomenal increase in the number of goldfinches in that area. That welcome state of affairs has come about by protection which can be exercised by the Minister of Home Affairs.

I should like to refer to one other rare bird, the crossbill. That appears in Ulster on certain occasions and is a most attractive bird. It certainly deserves protection. One remembers the tradition, the belief that one was taught long ago, that the crossbill with its flecked breast of almost blood-like colour and its beak crossed, was the bird which went to the Cross in an attempt to pull out the nails. Of course, that is only an old belief, but it is an attractive bird which is very rare and is not often seen in Ulster, For that and for the more common birds such as the robin and, of particular interest in Northern Ireland, the wren—I need not digress on that because it is a bird held in great esteem and affection in the North—the Bill will be of considerable help. I am delighted that the Bill has been brought in by my hon. Friend and I am very pleased to have been able to add my name in its support and to say a few words in commending it to the House.

I shall not detain the House for very long and I wish to do nothing to delay what I now believe to be a commendable Measure, but I am in my place this morning because I was anxious about some of the wording in the Long Title of the Bill which at first led me to think that its effects would be damaging. I shall explore this aspect of the matter a little with my hon. Friend the Member for Armagh (Mr. Maginnis), whose enterprise in presenting the Bill to the House I commend most warmly.

Unfortunately, I cannot address the House with the ornithological exactitude of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Antrim, South (Sir Knox Cunningham). Indeed, I speak with some trepidation. I well remember once, having been asked to preach a children's sermon and wishing to attract the attention of the young people, opening with the word, "Are you as interested in bird watching as I am?", whereupon all the choir boys dissolved into peals of laughter. I succeeded in holding the congregation more than I had expected.

In what I have to say, I intend no suggestion of criticism of the Minister of Home Affairs of Northern Ireland in his personal or official capacity. It so happens that the distinguished Minister in Northern Ireland has been a personal friend of mine for a considerable number of years and I have the deepest respect for him personally. It will be obvious to the House that I wish to say nothing which reflects in any way whatever upon him personally or officially. However, I think that English Members would be glad to be assured, before we part with the Bill, that the machinery in Northern Ireland is adequate to give the protection to birds there which, as I understand it, this small Bill is designed to do.

One or two of my constituents have written to me to say that they were very bothered because it seemed that the protections of Section 10 of the Protection of Birds Act, 1954 were, as a result of the Bill, no longer to extend to Northern Ireland. Of course, I realise that they and, until I had studied the matter, I myself had not appreciated the safeguards which my hon. Friend has so clearly put before us. The merit of this short debate will be that those in England who have a natural anxiety for the protection of birds in Ulster will have their fears put at rest.

I think that it would be helpful if my hon. Friend the Member for Armagh or, perhaps, another of my hon. Friends from Ulster could explain to us a little, without going into great detail, the measures in effect in Northern Ireland for bird protection. Incidentally it might well be set on record that, if English Members were present today in the same proportionate numbers as Ulster Members are, we should have a very full Chamber indeed. As always, the Ulster Members are extremely assiduous in representing the interests of that great part of the United Kingdom.

We should like to be assured that there is the necessary machinery for supervision, enforcement and control in the operation of the appropriate Northern Ireland legislation as it will now be after the Bill is passed. Very few things have changed in any part of the Kingdom so dramatically as our attitude to these matters over the years. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Antrim, South has given several specific examples which I could not improve upon in any way. Only a few years ago, in Ulster as elsewhere, we raided nature without any reservation at all. In Ulster as elsewhere, we now realise that we have a reservoir of nature which we destroy at our peril. If it were in order to do so, one could draw upon analogies in many other countries where very tragic things are happening in the world of nature and some interesting animals face extinction.

I have often been enchanted on my visits to Ulster by the bird life, and I appreciate that there are people there who are as anxious as people in England, Scotland and Wales to protect, while keeping a sensible balance with the needs of agriculture, the birds which come to Ulster and nest year by year or are indigenous to the country.

I hope that we can be assured—I am certain that it must be so—that, when we have passed this modest Bill, those who will have responsibility for the administration of these matters in Northern Ireland now, the doubt having been removed from the law, will carry on the tradition which we have built up in the United Kingdom as a whole. With that assurance, I, for one, will be very content. This short debate, in setting at rest the anxieties of bird lovers throughout the United Kingdom, will have done much good and will speed on its way the uninhibited control vested in Ulster with the good wishes of the rest of the United Kingdom.

The law in Northern Ireland for the protection of birds is as good as, if not better than, it is in England. Actually, the legislation was brought in in 1931. At first sight, it may have appeared to my hon. Friend that, by removing Section 10 of the Protection or Birds Act, 1954, we were removing any protection from the birds of Northern Ireland. I assure my hon. Friend that our 1931 Act affords the same protection as the 1954 Act. The only thing we lacked was the licence procedure for the taking of birds or eggs or nests in Northern Ireland.

I am very happy to support this small Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Armagh (Mr. Maginnis), which will rub out the rather ridiculous situation that one can be wrong and right under two different pieces of legislation, a state of affairs which can make life very difficult if one gets into trouble at any time.

There is one small point which I hope that my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State will deal with. In Section 10 of the principal Act there is reference to stupefying bait. This is one method of collecting, catching or destroying birds. I wonder whether my hon. Friend has considered the use of the stupefying gun. Hon. Members will recall that, when the Kariba Dam was being built, a great many wild creatures were saved from extinction by drowning by being stupefied by a shot fired from a gun which rendered them unconscious and made it possible for them to be taken safely away. Perhaps my hon. Friend will bear in mind that this might be a subject for future legislation in this connection.

Other than that, I think that there is little to be said about the transferance of power. I know very well, as do my hon. Friends from Northern Ireland, that a great deal of attention is being paid to the preservation of wild life in all its forms. We have what I can only call a reservoir of wild life, of which we are very conscious. My hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. van Straubenzee), who raised a slight doubt about the matter, can be assured that any action taken by the Minister of Home Affairs in Northern Ireland, who will be responsible for putting the Bill into practice, will not be detrimental to the wild life of our country.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Armargh (Mr. Maginnis) on introducing this Bill. His point about the 1931 Act passed in Northern Ireland and Section 10 of the 1954 English Act was paramount. I do not wish to be controversial, but I should have thought that the answer to it was in the Government of Ireland Act. It seems to me that the Bill removes any misunderstanding about recourse having to be made to the courts. It is therefore worthy of consideration.

I do not share the misgivings of my hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. van Straubenzee), although I must admit that I have not experience of the position in Northern Ireland. However, I am sure that the Minister of Home Affairs in Northern Ireland will ensure that a proper and exact balance is struck between the reasonable demands of agriculture, which should not be despoiled by unnecessary wild life, and the necessity to preserve those natural specimens of bird life which are so cherished and important. Therefore, I am happy about passing the administration of the Bill —I will not say passing the buck—to the Government of Northern Ireland, who I am sure are very competent to administer it. My hon. Friend the Member for Armagh has introduced the Bill at a very topical time, because we have just had one of the very few prosecutions concerning osprey eggs.

I hope that the House will give a Second Reading to this very interesting and, I think, non-controversial Bill. It is an ideal Bill for discussion on a Friday. I am very happy that my hon. Friends from Northern Ireland have made a very considerable contribution to the profitable use of private Members' time on a Friday.

I do not want to delay the House, because I understand that after this Bill we are due to discuss a very important Measure dealing with the problem of road safety, which is of great and major concern to the whole country. I wish simply to add my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Armagh (Mr. Maginnis) for bringing this important Bill before us. It is a very small but vital Bill.

I should dearly love to debate the various ornithological questions which my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Antrim, South (Sir Knox Cunningham) raised, but since you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, were becoming restless about what he was discussing, it would be unfair to try your patience.

It is clear that the Bill has arisen because of an oversight. I should think that what happened was that at the time of the passing of the 1954 Act it was overlooked that this duplication would take place. I imagine that those who drafted the 1954 Act were unaware of the provisions in the Northern Ireland Act, 1931. Therefore, this Bill is necessary to clear up doubts about the legal position.

I should like my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State to say something about the machinery which exists among Parliamentary draftsmen, in the Home Office, elsewhere in the Government, or anywhere else for ensuring that every piece of legislation passed by this House is examined to see whether it conflicts with legislation already in existence in the Parliament of Northern Ireland. Legislation like this is necessary from time to time and usually has to be promoted by private Members, although occasionally we have Bills promoted by the Government extending or altering Sections of the Government of Ireland Act, 1920.

Recently there have been too many of these oversights. There should be someone in the Home Office or elsewhere who has the job of scrutinising each piece of legislation to ensure that legislation is not duplicated. What is the procedure and who is responsible for it? It is very pleasant to see the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) in the House today. I know that he takes a great interest in Northern Ireland matters. As a former Home Secretary, he was once responsible for these great affairs. Maybe that is why he is wearing a green waistcoat today. Perhaps he will tell us whether in his time provision was made to ensure that there was not a conflict in legislation between one Parliament and another.

This is a narrow Bill, and my hon. Friend the Member for Armagh has done the House a great service in bringing it forward. I hope that hon. Members will give it a Second Reading.

I have been sitting here for the last three-quarters of an hour while my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, East (Mr. Fletcher) had some refreshment. I have been fascinated to hear about Northern Ireland and the subject of birds and bird-watching. I was particularly fascinated by the very interesting speech of the hon. and learned Member for Antrim, South (Sir Knox Cunningham). I was very sorry, Mr. Deputy-Sperker, when you called him to order, because all hon. Members were very interested in what he was saying.

The hon. and gallant Member for Down, South (Captain Orr) asked whether my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) was wearing a green waitcoat for a particular purpose.

In fact, I am wearing it to keep warm.

In case anyone was wondering about the green costume which I am wearing, may I explain that it is entirely accidental—[Laughter.]—accidental in colour, I should say.

I am sure that this is a necessary and desirable Bill. I was interested in what the hon. and gallant Member for Down, South said about the necessity to have someone in the Home Office to ensure that legislation is not duplicated. He will probably be told that this is done, but this seems to be one occasion when something has slipped through the net. I am sure that we and all the people of Northern Ireland are very pleased that the Bill has been introduced, and I hope that it will be passed.

We have heard about the plumage of hon. Members as well as about the plumage of wild life, and I am now sorry that I am wearing a red blouse. I apologise to the House.

Like all hon. Members who have spoken, I welcome the Bill and thank my hon. Friend the Member for Armagh (Mr. Maginnis) for introducing it, because it will be very useful. It will help to clarify the law both in Northern Ireland and Great Britain and so it is doubly welcome to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary in his capacity as Secretary of State responsible for the administration of the Protection of Birds Act, 1954, in England and Wales, and also with especial concern for the affairs of Northern Ireland. The Secretary of State for Scotland and the Minister of Agriculture also welcome the Bill. The removal of doubt on a point of law, although it may appear to be small, can have useful and practical effects, and in any case it is only right as a matter of principle that anomalies and doubts should be removed.

The hon. Lady the Member for Leeds, South-East (Miss Bacon) was right to say that there is machinery, and I hope very good machinery, for seeing that there is no conflict in these laws, but, as in all things, something slips through occasionally and mistakes are made. We are therefore grateful to the hon. Member for Armagh for bringing in the Bill.

Is the machinery in the Home Office?

Yes, we have a special department in the Home Office watch- ing the interests of Northern Ireland and making certain that this sort of thing does not happen. Naturally, being human, mistakes of this kind are made, although in many ways this is a very small loophole.

It may help if I give a brief outline of the present position of the law. Section 16(3) of the Protection of Birds Act, 1954, clearly provides that the greater part of the Act's provisions do not extend to Northern Ireland. Those which do not so extend are Sections 1 to 6, 8, 11 and subsections (2), (4) and (5) of Section 13. The result is that the only Sections which apply to Northern Ireland, are Sections 7, 9, 10 and 12 and subsections (1) and (3) of Section 13. Sections 14 and 15 deal with general interpretation and repeal respectively and are not relevant in this connection.

Section 7 in effect provides that, save as may be authorised by a licence granted under Section 10, the importation of a number of birds is prohibited. It also gives power to the Secretary of State to extend by order the period of prohibition or the list of birds whose import without licence is forbidden. It is these important provisions which have always applied to Northern Ireland which are still to apply to Northern Ireland if the Bill is passed.

In so far as it affects Northern Ireland, Section 9 gives power to vary the list of birds in the Third Schedule of the Act. These are birds which may be shot outside the close season as laid down in subsections (2) and (6) of Section 2. Although there is power by Order to add any wild bird to the prohibition on importation in the close season from 1st February to 31st August, the importation of dead birds listed in the Third Schedule is prohibited. Hon. Members will see that there are some 25 birds so listed in the Third Schedule.

Section 10 deals with the procedure for issuing licences. In Northern Ireland we are concerned only with licences to import live or dead birds or their eggs where these would otherwise be prohibited under Section 7. Section 10(5) reads as follows:

"For the purposes of the application of this section to Northern Ireland with respect to importation—

(a) for the reference in paragraph (a) of subsection (2) thereof to the Secretary of State there shall be substituted a reference to the Minister of Home Affairs for Northern Ireland;

(b) the expression 'appropriate advisory committee' means the Wild Birds Advisory Committee for Northern Ireland established under section eleven of the Wild Birds Protection Act (Northern Ireland), 1931."

Section 12 lays down penalties for offences under the Act.

I should like to explain briefly how the present law is defective. There was never any doubt about what part of the Protection of Birds Act the Government in tended to apply to Northern Ireland. Section 10 contains a reference to Section 8 of the Protection of Animals Act, 1911, under which it is an offence to place poison in or upon any land or building unless the person placing it can show that he took all reasonable precautions to prevent injury to, among other things, wild birds. It would have been possible for the Minister of Agriculture here in exercise of his powers under Section 10(2,d) of the Protection of Birds Act to issue licences under Section 10(1, d) to kill birds in Northern Ireland by using poisoned bait. This was never the intention of the Protection of Birds Act and no such licence has in fact been issued.

The point cropped up in practice when a Belfast warehouse owner applied to the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food for a licence to place poisoned bait to destroy pigeons which were eating grain in his stores. The licence was not granted.

The amendment of the law will have a two-fold effect. First, it will remove the anomaly which has been known to exist since it was brought to light by the case of the Belfast warehouse. We have a position, quite unintended, in which the Minister of Agriculture here appears to have power to issue licences in Northern Ireland to allow a person there to use poison bait against wild birds in a manner which would otherwise be an offence against Section 8 of the Protection of Animals Act, 1911. If the Bill becomes law, that will no longer be the case. Secondly, the way will be clear for the Northern Ireland Government, if it so wishes, to introduce its own legislation for controlling the use of poison for the destruction of harmful wild birds. In this connection I have taken note of what was said about subsequent legislation concerning wild birds.

I suggest that hon. Members on both sides of the House welcome the Bill whose sole object is the clarification of the law by removing an anomaly. I hope that this brief debate, which we have all enjoyed, will enable us to straighten the law in this respect.

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

The purpose of the Bill is two-fold. The first is to create a special road safety police force. The second is to create an offence if a person is driving a motor vehicle with a certain quantity of alcohol in his body—making that an absolute offence in addition to the existing offence of driving while under the influence of drink.

The strength of support for the proposals for the creation of a special road safety force was shown in the recent Friday debate on a Motion moved by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Eye (Sir H. Harrison) when almost every speaker demanded that the enforcement of road safety in future should be dealt with on a national basis. The inadequacy of the existing police forces to deal with safety on the roads is obvious. Something far more effective and definite must be done to tackle the terrible toll of death and injury on the roads. But we shall never tackle this problem until we have a specialised section of the police force, or specialised force itself, to deal with these dangers.

That is why I propose in the Bill a commissioner for road safety whose duty would be national and not merely over localities, as with present police forces, and under him safety enforcement officers. The Bill describes in Clause 3 the qualifications and conditions of service of safety enforcement officers, giving the Minister power to prescribe their powers and duties, and Clause 4 deals with their remuneration.

Will my hon. Friend explain exactly what is meant in Clause 2 which states:

"It shall be lawful for a Commissioner for Road Safety to appoint and swear such numbers of constables for preserving the peace …"?

Does he suggest that this traffic force shall consist of policemen or is it to be specially constituted body whose members will not enjoy the rights of policemen?

I think that the best simile I can use for this is the Metropolitan Police. Clause 2 is the form in which ordinary policemen are appointed, and what I have in mind is a police force consisting of a commissioner of police and police officers and policemen in the same way that the Metropolitan Police is a separate body under a commissioner. In this case, this would be a body with national duties rather than duties merely for a locality—national duties because of the need to deal with wide areas in connection with road safety.

Perhaps the best example of this is the motorways. I believe that the M.1 is controlled by a large number of police forces—the local police forces of each county along the M.1—and I have been told that the radio communication between those forces is not between the men in the several cars from the different forces, but that they have to radio back to their headquarters and the headquarters radio on to the next section.

I find this very interesting in connection with what has happened this week in Committee on the Police Bill. I should like to ask the hon. Gentleman, if he envisages a separate police force, how he will differentiate between traffic offences and criminal offences. How can we put traffic offences under one police force and criminal offences under another? Surely the two overlap.

The members of this force would be sworn in in the same way as ordinary police officers and would be qualified to undertake any of the work of a police officer, but, in the same way as sections of the force at the moment have special police duties, they would have special duties under a commissioner for road safety.

The hon. Member has made it quite clear now. He is asking that certain policemen should not be under the jurisdiction of local authorities, but that they should be national. This, of course, is a very important departure.

I am very grateful to the hon. Lady, who has expressed it exactly as I would have liked to be able to express it. I believe that by means of a force of this sort, with special knowledge and training in road safety matters, we could reduce the number of accidents very greatly and control the traffic much better than we are able to do at present.

Would my hon. Friend make this a little more clear? In London, for example, what would be the relationship of this new police force to the Metropolitan Police when it comes to questions of prosecution? Would it have entirely separate powers not coming under the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, or what would be the relationship?

There would be separate powers to bring prosecutions and the force would come directly under a commissioner, as proposed in Clause 1, in the same way as the Metropolitan Police Force comes under the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. It is to provide a force, not to usurp the present duties of the existing police force, but a force with specialised knowledge, controlled by a national head, and not restricted by the areas of the local police forces.

My hon. Friend will appreciate that we need to be quite clear as to what he proposes to do. Will the effect of this proposal mean that Metropolitan Police will no longer be responsible for traffic in London and that this responsibility will pass to this new body which he proposes to create?

I think that the main duty of traffic control and of prosecuting for traffic offences would fall to this new body, but not exclusive of the Metropolitan Police. There would still be the power both in local police forces and in the national force which I am suggesting to take action for traffic offences, and one would not be exclusive of the jurisdiction of the other.

I understood my hon. Friend to say to the hon. Member for Leeds, South-East (Miss Bacon) that this would not be a separate force. But as I read Clause 3 certain qualifications are laid down which provide means mainly for motorised safety police, traffic control police and road patrol wardens. As I understand it, these new enforcement officers will have these specific qualifications. That, surely, must mean an entirely separate force. It will not be the ordinary constable, the chap who protects property and deals with crime, or anything of that sort. This will be a separate force with separate qualifications.

I envisage the members of this force as having the groundwork training of police constables with the addition of special training for traffic duties. It would be a special category, no doubt under separate scales of pay, but not only to have the qualifications which I have mentioned in Clause 3. They would be constables, police officers, first and foremost, but specially trained for traffic duties and for those duties which I have endeavoured to describe in Clause 3.

Would they have power of arrest and will it be confined to traffic offences?

They would have power of arrest for any offence. They would be sworn in as constables, but they would be constables with special ability in traffic control and the apprehension of traffic offenders.

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I have given way sufficiently on this point. If hon. Members are able to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, they can make their points in their own speeches.

The second part of the Bill would make it an offence to have a certain quantity of alcohol in the blood or in the body while driving. I have not endeavoured in this Bill to lay down the amount which would constitute an offence. This requires scientific research which may not yet be complete. I leave it in the Bill to be laid down by order by the Minister, by an order which, of course, would have to come before this House for approval.

I do not think I ought to try to escape expressing my own view of what that figure should be, and perhaps I could express it very roughly as the quantity of alcohol which a normal man of, say, about 11 stone or 12 stone might drink and which would affect his driving. I think that the normal man's driving is certainly affected after a couple of pints of beer or two or three whiskies. It might be necessary for the Minister, at first, to set a higher figure if it is to be acceptable to the House and the public, but there is no doubt that even small quantities of alcohol do seriously affect driving. The statement at the beginning of the Highway Code is, as hon. Members well know:

"Alcohol, even in quite small amounts, makes you less safe on the roads. The only safe rule is if you are going to drive, don't drink."

My right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport in a recent debate in this House expressed the view that at particular times of the day and of the year the taking of alcohol by a driver may well be the cause of some 56 percent. of the accidents. He said that he was carrying out an investigation of the accidents which occurred during the Christmas period, and, to take his words, that

"if the Christmas accident inquiry provides us with even more conclusive evidence of the affect of drink on accidents and that the powers of the 1962 Act are shown to be inadequate, I shall not hesitate to come before the House of Commons with fresh proposals." —[OFFICIAL REPORT, 24th January, 1964; Vol. 687, c. 1529.]

He was referring to fresh proposals as compared with those which were included in the Road Traffic Act, 1962.

If he were to find that alcohol did have a very serious effect on the Christmas road accidents, and he wished to bring Forward proposals to this House, my Bill which I am proposing today would provide him with the ready made structure on the Statute Book for bringing forward those proposals. He could then bring forward the proposals in the form of a Statutory Instrument for creating it an offence if the driver has a certain quantity of alcohol in his body.

Hon. Members no doubt saw the television programme at Christmas time when the interviewer took the camera and the microphone around the car park outside a public house. I am sure that anybody who saw that programme must have been deeply shocked that those drivers were intending to drive not only themselves but cars full of passengers some distance on the public roads in the condition in which they were when they were before the camera and speaking into that microphone.

I am sure that if we had an absolute limit of this sort, not dependent upon whether the person appears to be incapable of driving or not, but an absolute limit above which one should not drink if one is driving, it would be observed by the general public and observed readily. It is certainly observed in the Scandinavian countries, where it is recognised that one particular member of the party who is driving the car on that evening refrains from drinking. This is a social habit which I think would be accepted here if it were clearly shown by the medical and scientific evidence that even a small quantity of alcohol affects the driving to an extent to which accidents are caused, and if it were laid down by law that it is an offence to take that amount of alcohol.

I believe that unless we take some drastic action of this sort we shall not get a really effective reduction in the rate of accidents. One can differ on the proportion of road accidents which are due to drink, but there is no doubt that a significant proportion are due to it, and that means not only that a significant proportion of the number killed on the roads and maimed on the roads have been killed and maimed because someone has been drinking; it means that if we can lay down some limit which people will observe in their drinking we shall be able to save that number of lives on the road.

At this time in the afternoon I would not wish to take up any more time in proposing the Second Reading of the Bill.

Would my hon. Friend clear up one point? If my hon. Friend, who, I assume, is something like 11 stone or 12 stone, had two whiskies in his own house, heard an accident outside on the road, rushed out to help, then would Clause 5(1,b) make that an offence? It says:

"when unaccompanied upon a carriageway".

He might be unaccompanied on that occasion.

I apologise for not having dealt with the question of pedestrians on the carriageway who have been drinking a certain amount of alcohol. The penalty against pedestrians was inserted in the Bill because there is no doubt from the investigation, particularly of accidents at holiday periods, Christmas time and so on, that it does appear that pedestrians who have been drinking and are crossing the carriageway or walking in the carriageway have been responsible for a number of accidents, and there is no reason why they should not treat the carriageway with just as much respect as we are asking the motorist to do when driving.

Is the hon. Member really proposing that anybody who uses Her Majesty's highway after having a couple of whiskies is to be guilty of an offence? Because that is what the Bill seems to say.

The hon. Member did not, perhaps, catch the word I was using—"carriageway". I am not making it an offence for the pedestrian to walk along the footway, the pavement, in any condition, so long as he is not drunk or disorderly, but if he is using the road in a condition—

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If he is using the road in a condition in which by reason of drink he cannot properly judge the traffic on the road then he should be penalised as much as the driver who is driving his car in that condition.

It is only in urban areas we have got pavements and carriageways. Throughout all the rural areas we just have a highway. If I understand the Bill aright, a member of the public who has had a couple of whiskies will not be able to go out on the highway.

The hon. Member may well have a Committee point on this, that one should restrict this Bill to the built-up area, an area where the pedestrian is most likely to become intermingled with the traffic, but I do not think it would be fair to impose on the driver of the vehicle alone the responsibility for keeping himself safe on the carriageway. The pedestrian also uses the carriageway, and I consider it to be his responsibility to keep himself as alert as he can when using it.

Suppose a car driver has had the two whiskies that my hon. Friend regards as the maximum and, knowing that, decides to leave his car and walk home along the highway. Is it really suggested that he is guilty of the same offence in walking home on the highway as he would have been if he had driven his car?

This is surely the same as the point on which I replied to the hon. Member for Islington, East (Mr. Fletcher). It may well be that one must restrict this to built-up areas where there is a pavement or where danger is likely to arise from pedestrians who are not alert by reason of having taken drink. The only fair way to deal with this is to put the same responsibility on the pedestrian as on the car driver.

I do not wish to take any further time of the House because I hope that other hon. Members will contribute to the debate.

Those who know my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) cannot fail always to detect a note of intense sincerity in his voice when he deals with road safety matters. When we criticise his Bill, as I think many of us may, we should at the same time do him the honour of paying tribute to him for that sincerity and the long campaign he has waged in a very worthy cause.

I will say nothing about Part II of the Bill except that I agree that one can never too often stress the danger of alcohol in regard to the driving of motor cars. Even if some of the drafting of Part II needs a good deal of attention, nevertheless it has been a worthy attempt.

It is on Part I that I have to take very grave exception to the Bill. Nor- mally, if one seeks to impose a national police force on top of and in addition to the well-known locally controlled police forces, it is the sort of step, though not done with that motive, which is one of the most dangerous constitutional steps that one can imagine. It is the classic way in which a dictator proceeds. He doubts the loyalty of the existing police force and he erects another parallel police force so that one may be set against the other. That is not my hon. Friend's intention, but it might well be the effect.

Can one conceive it as operable, taking London alone, for two police forces to be operating in exactly the same area and with exactly the same powers, though with different ostensible functions? Suppose a car is stolen. Whose job is it to apprehend the thief? The thief having been apprehended, whose job it is to decide whether there should be a prosecution? If the Metropolitan Police Commissioner decides on a prosecution and the other does not, who wins? If either decides on a prosecution, how is the man prosecuted?

It would be an impossible division of responsibility in an area where responsibility has to be clear and definite. On that ground alone the scheme must be condemned. No member of the public would know, unless they were wearing different coloured uniforms, by what sort of police he was being dealt with—unless he was an expert on uniforms and detected different numbering and so on.

What my hon. Friend has in mind is the motorways and highways like motorways which run through various counties and county boroughs and which should be uniformly controlled. That has always been a difficulty in dealing with highways on our former basis as soon as one comes to the motorway problem. But I think the problem is soluble, and I am very glad that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is to institute, in conjunction with the chief constables concerned, a uniform system of patrolling the M.6 as an experiment. This is surely all that my hon. Friend is after.

The dangers in having a superimposed national police force are so many and so clear, particularly to the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) who has had some experience of these matters, that it is hardly necessary for me to detail them. It is sometimes said that the railway police are a national police force and are in a sense parallel to the existing police forces controlled by local authorities. Is that really so? They operate in a special area, on railway premises. The police about whom we are talking would operate on the highways where the ordinary police must continue to operate, whether on the footpaths or the carriageway. So they would be overlapping, physically and functionally, and I think they would soon come to blows. The railway police have, in practice, exclusive operation over goods yards, termini, stations, the permanent way, marshalling yards and such places, and I think I am right in saying that the ordinary police do not enter as a matter of practice unless invited. Therefore, in that case there is a clear division of responsibility.

But here there would be no such division. Suppose a car is stolen. The ordinary police have to go after it. Perhaps in the course of stealing the car a traffic offence is committed, as so often happens. Both sets of police arrive at the same moment when the car has crashed. Who makes the arrest, and for what, and who decides to prosecute, and on what evidence? It is an impossible suggestion. Much as I honour, as always, the motives of my hon. Friend, I ask the House to reject the Bill firmly.

I add my tribute to that paid by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Darwen (Mr. Fletcher-Cooke) to my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page). Although I do not agree with the terms in which my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby commends the Bill, no hon. Member can doubt his sincere interest in the great problems of road safety, which, indeed, have often engaged our attention in the last week or so.

My hon. Friend is probably wrong in trying to advance this very excellent cause by the particular procedures which he proposes in the Bill. Broadly speaking, his Bill, under Parts 1 and 2, tries to do two things. In Part 1 it seeks to establish a second or parallel police force specially trained in traffic control and traffic problems. In Part 2 my hon. Friend seeks to set down procedures whereby those who are suspected of having had too much to drink can be summarily arrested and tested for the alcohol content of their bodies. The intention behind all this is quite excellent, but I wonder whether we are going the right way about it. I intended to say something about Part 1 but my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Darwen has made all the points I had in mind.

I see very great difficulties here in setting up what is really a second and parallel police force. Apart from the legal and constitutional objections posed by my hon. and learned Friend there are practical ones also. Most people would agree that one of the urgent requirements in terms of road safety is more police, and if we are to set up a second force—which is what this amounts to—we should be drawing on the same pool of manpower for recruitment for both forces. The training, character, discipline and physical fitness standards would have to be the same for this new force as for the existing force.

Then we should he duplicating administration. We should have to have extra administrators. By all means let us stick to the chief constables and the Commissioner. Do not let us bring Commissioner Parkinson into this as well.

Then there is the question of the testing of individuals for the amount of alcohol being carried in their bodies. This sounds to me a very risky and imprecise procedure. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby did not go into detail and, I thought, rather left it to the Minister to sort out. I wonder whether we are entitled, in the present state of our knowledge and of the efficiency of the sort of devices which might be used to test people in this way, to assume that one could say that one man proved to have a certain percentage of alcohol in his body is necessarily drunk and incapacitated while such a test may not necessarily produce the same answer for another man.

I believe that, just as human beings differ very widely, so an intake of alcohol which would be quite incapacitating for one person might have relatively little effect on another. This question is at the heart of the suggested summary testing by the roadside of people for their fitness to drive, which is what the Bill foreshadows.

It must be within the experience of hon. Members that some of their colleagues with a very moderate intake of alcohol are rendered quite excitable and possibly not fit to control a motor car whilst others can take on board a much larger quantity and apparently emerge quite unscathed from the experience. This is a practical point and we cannot lay down a rough and ready yardstick saying that, if a person has x-amount of alcohol in his blood, as estimated by a breathalyser or some other device, he must ipso facto be incapable of going about his business. Therefore, I do not think that we can base our thinking on this kind of test.

My hon. Friend the Member for Crosby is perfectly right in thinking that drink is probably the main cause of road accidents. Hon. Members will recall that following the appallina toll of casualties over Christmas, the Daily Mail, with its National Opinion Poll, in association with the Ministry of Transport, carried out a survey and produced some answers which entirely support what my hon. Friend clearly thinks is the main cause of road accidents. In the evidence collected there was no doubt that there was close consonance between ordinary citizens who were not necessarily drivers and who were questioned about what they thought was the main cause of accidents and people who were drivers as well.

The hon. Member says that there was evidence, but is that really so? Was not this a poll of opinion among perfectly ordinary lay people?

If I have been using a term rather loosely, I will withdraw it. I intended to convey that, according to the poll, about three-quarters of the people canvassed, whether motorists or not, came to the conclusion that drink was the major cause of road accidents. If that makes it a little easier for the hon. Member for Greenwich (Mr. Marsh) I am glad to concede the point.

If that is the case, it is clear that we must direct our attention to trying to improve our way of dealing with motorists convicted of offences involving drunkenness. I do not think that my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby, with his tests, has really got the thing quite right. I do not believe that our machinery for testing is sufficiently advanced or sufficiently reliable. I advocate a much simpler scheme.

I feel that we have to arouse public concern about all this and that, if only we can do that, we shall find half our problems settled. At the moment, drivers who are learning to drive have to carry an L plate as a warning that here is a man under instruction or who is not sufficiently experienced to be fully qualified. It seems to me that such a device could well be extended.

I should like to see an arrangement, which would cost very little, whereby a man convicted for the second time of driving under the influence of drink should be forced to carry a—"D" plate—"D" being for drunkenness. The "D" would not be separated from the number plate but would be part and parcel of the same thing. When convicted for the second time, he would have to turn in his old number plate for a new one. In return he would get a massive "D" plate which would include the car number. The plate would be large and coloured rather offensively in order to make it conspicuous and it would quite ruin the appearance of any otherwise attractive car.

Does my hon. Friend envisage the danger of interferring with German tourists who bring their cars to this country?

I recognise that difficulty. Perhaps I may borrow a word from my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby, who, when confronted with an obvious difficulty concerning this Bill, seemed to regard it as a Committee point which could be sorted out later.

With a "D" attached to the vehicle, would there not be difficulty if it was being driven, not by the drunken driver, but, perhaps, by his wife, who would not be so pleated? Would it not be easier to have a large yellow armband with the letter "D" on one's clothing?

My hon. Friend has made the very point which I hoped that somebody would make: that is, the added deterrent effectiveness. There is usually one car per family. If father was the offender, just imagine the kind of stick that he would get from mother and other drivers of the car if they had to take out this odious looking car carrying the badge of father's carelessness or neglect.

Would my hon. Friend include mothers-in-law?

I see no reason for making any statutory exemption for a relative, even of that exalted kind.

I would go even further. If a man was convicted, say, of dangerous driving but not while under the influence of drink, I would give him an "M" plate, meaning maniac or menace. The effect of this would be utterly profound. The public at large, whether drivers or pedestrians, would see advertised by these plates somebody who had been convicted of serious driving offences and would, therefore, be disposed to give him a wide berth. There would also be the advantage that a certain social stigma would be attached. People privately are proud of their driving. After, perhaps, a couple of drinks, they get the idea that they can drive their car through the eye of a needle, and they go on to do so.

Will my hon. Friend consider an alternative to this interesting suggestion? Instead of imposing this brand on someone who is convicted of drinking and of driving while under the influence of drink, would he not think it simpler if any motorist who had been drinking was compelled to exhibit a special plate on the car to indicate that he had been drinking, thereby warning other people that he might be a nuisance on the road? Does not my hon. Friend consider this a better and simpler way of dealing with the matter?

That is a refinement of the suggestion which I was making. I am happy to know that my hon. Friend is thinking along the same lines.

The only point of my intervention was to say that while my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby has the right ideas, he is going about them in the wrong way. I do not believe that we should have a second and parallel police force. We should not rely upon the uncertain apparatus of tests, as yet not satisfactorily defined, to determine whether one man or another had too much to drink. Since, however, we do not want to sweep away all these suggestions and leave the question of road safety simply where it is now, I believe that we could do much more along the modest lines which I have suggested, without great expense and with the minimum of legislation, which would draw public attention to those who had fallen down on their job, while in charge of a car, of taking proper care and precautions for the safety of other road users. I believe that by this method of publicity, exposure and derision we could secure a considerable reduction in the number of casualties.

I hope, therefore, that the House will not give a Second Reading to the Bill in its present form, although I end, as I started, by commending my hon. Friend for once again giving a public demonstration of his great interest in this human and urgent problem.

My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, East (Mr. Fletcher), my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South-East (Miss Bacon) —who was with us earlier—and 47 other hon. Members have been spending some 18 mornings recently in considering the Police Bill in Committee. On Tuesday last the hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Worsley) moved a new Clause which appears suspiciously to be a condensation of the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page).

I join with everything which has been said by hon. Members about the zeal with which the hon. Member for Crosby keeps bringing before us the need for additional measures to secure road safety. The figures of casualties are so appalling that no hon. Member can feel other than anxious about that phase of modern life. I join him in desiring to see that these figures are reduced effectively. But I do not think that creating a new police force is one way of doing it.

The hon. Member for Oxford (Mr. Woodhouse), who is one of the Joint Under-Secretaries of State to the Home Office, opposed the Clause introduced by the hon. Member for Keighley.

Order. The right hon. Member must forgive me for stopping him, but we have not yet had the Report of that Committee, and we cannot discuss its proceedings.

I managed to get a copy of the Report of the proceedings, but in view of what you have said, Mr. Speaker, I will not further allude to it.

I understood when the Police Bill was introduced that it was an effort to bring within one Bill the whole of the law relating to the organisation and control of the police in this country. If we could do that it would be a very great advantage. I do not understand how it is believed that what is proposed in the Bill can be other than detrimental to the general police operations in the country. I agree with the hon. and learned Member for Darwen (Mr. Fletcher-Cooke) about the effect that this is bound to have.

I asked the hon. Member for Crosby whether these officers would have power of arrest, and he said, "Certainly. They will be constables". Will they have power of arrest for anything? Will the ordinary police lose their power of arrest for offences of this kind? That would be a very serious thing, and I doubt whether it would be easy to frame a Bill which would relieve them of their power of taking effective steps to deal with any misconduct on the part of the public which they happen to see.

It is not the intention of the Bill to remove any powers from the existing police.

Therefore, for some things there will be two sets of policemen and for other things there will be two separate forces dealing with different parts of the conduct of the public in this important matter. I do not think that that will add to the efficiency of the policing of the roads of the country, and I certainly would never contemplate the creating of a special force outside the police force to deal with road traffic.

We are told by the chief constables of the country that about 5 per cent. of police time—that is, 5 per cent. of existing police force time—is taken in policing the roads. It is a very heavy toll. With the passing of their duty in connection with the discipline of street bookmakers, I imagine that this is the heaviest de tailed duty which now falls on them. But I am certain that it is better for them to handle it than to bring in people with only this limited duty.

One of the reasons which we have been given is that enforcing the traffic laws makes the police so unpopular that it would he better to have a separate group of people clearly understood to be the people who harass the motorists on what are called technical motoring offences. I do not subscribe to the doctrine that a breach of the law with regard to motoring is in some way or other less of an offence than an offence against the ordinary criminal law. It would be wrong to attempt to get two sorts of offences, some of which are called criminal, and others of which are pure technicalities which anybody might commit once he becomes the owner of a motor car. I speak with some freedom on this matter, because I do not own a motor car, nor have I ever driven a motor car, nor do I take alcoholic liquor. So far as I can see, I shall be of very little interest to the hon. Member for Crosby should the Bill become law.

I regard it as fundamentally quite wrong to attempt to establish a special police force to deal with this matter, important though I admit that the matter is. Because of its importance, it should be understood that it is a proper duty for the ordinary police to handle, Although there may be occasions when the police become very unpopular in the course of doing their duty under the motoring laws, they joined the police force knowing that it is part of their duty, knowing that it incurs a certain amount of unpopularity. I commend the way in which they attempt to do what everybody recognises they ought to do, that is, to attempt to reduce the appalling toll on the roads. I could not vote for this Measure, because I believe that it would be more destructive of the position of the police than anything I have ever heard advocated.

I join other hon. Members in expressing appreciation of the intentions of my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page). I am reminded of the American who on being asked his views in the Presidential Election said, "I am against sin". My hon. Friend the Member for Crosby and I are both against danger on the roads. So is every Member of the House who is present today. What is in question here is the method by which my hon. Friend is trying to achieve a reduction in the danger. By raising certain questions with my hon. Friend I shall try to show my trouble over the Bill. It is a very difficult Bill.

As I understand it, the Bill proposes two separate police forces, one a national force, or, rather, a number of other forces which will be the ordinary police force of the country, and a national force. The right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) pointed out the difficulties that exist in such a set-up. I understood my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby to infer that it would not be quite like that but merely that certain members who formed the national police force would have certain special qualifications.

I draw the attention of the House to what the chief constables said about these special qualifications when they gave evidence to the Royal Commission:

"Traffic patrols are trained and experienced police officers capable of dealing with crime or any other emergency which may arise in the course of their duties. They are, before setting out, briefed with the latest crime information and they are in touch with their Force Headquarters by wireless. Throughout the country there are schemes for stopping and checking vehicles on main roads, usually organised on a District basis, and for sending police officers to key points when criminals are being pursued. Motor Patrol officers as well as C.I.D. officers are used for this purpose. On the London-Birmingham motorway, for example, the five county Forces in conjunction with the Metropolitan Police can put into operation an emergency plan as soon as information is received that wanted criminals are travelling along that route. In fact, during the first twelve months of patrolling the M.1 motorway, 58 arrests for crime were made by traffic patrols."

It is clear that chief constables are emphatically against having a separate force. They think it right that the ordinary police force should deal with motoring offences.

I join with those who say that it would be difficult to apply the first part of the Bill, and I find the second part equally difficult from the point of view of its application. I understand my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby to be suggesting that a new offence should be created—not the offence that the person was incapable of being in charge of a motor vehicle, but the offence of that person having taken a stipulated amount of alcohol, that amount being determined as the result of an analysis made by an instrument,

"when using or attempting to use, or when in charge of a vehicle on a road or other public place …"

I appreciate the point about the person being or attempting to be in charge of a dangerous instrument, but it is difficult to understand subsection (1,b) which states:

"when unaccompanied upon a carriageway".

My hon. Friend estimated that about two whiskies might be the test for a normal person, but according to the wording of the Bill if someone goes out into the country for a walk and goes on the road or crosses the road that will be an offence if that person has had two whiskies. This is an extreme piece of proposed legislation, and I hope that my hon. Friend, on reflection, will see that in trying to create a new offence of this sort he is introducing a wide ranging provision which it would not be advisable for the House to adopt.

According to Clause 5(5), my hon. Friend would enforce this by simply saying that if anyone refused to have a test taken that, too, would be an offence, because it would be an obstruction of the police. Thus my hon. Friend is not only creating a new offence, the one I described, but a further new offence by stating that refusal to be tested would be an offence. I hope that, this matter having been aired, hon. Members will not give the Bill a Second Reading. I say that with due respect to my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby.

Like other hon. Members, I recognise and respect the motives which have led my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) to introduce the Bill. We all share his desire to reduce the number of road accidents and to make our roads safer than they are. The question we must decide is not whether this is a desirable objective, for there is no disagreement about that, but whether the Bill contains acceptable proposals. I suggest that none of its proposals can stand the test of scrutiny.

The Bill proposes to create a special traffic police force. This idea has been frequently advocated, sometimes in the terms of the Bill—a special kind of policeman with the normal powers of a policeman but with special traffic responsibilities—and sometimes in terms of saying that we should create a separate police force to cope solely with traffic. I think that each idea is based on the same fallacy—the fallacy that is possible to separate traffic duties from other kinds of police duties. As soon as one looks at the possibility of separating those duties in this way, one sees that it cannot be done.

One hon. Member has quoted the opinion of chief constables that the idea in the Bill is not practicable, and Sir Joseph Simpson, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, in an interview appearing in the London Evening News a few weeks ago, also said that this idea, whilst plausible, cannot be made to work. The truth is that the maintenance of law and order cannot be fragmented. It is not practicable to say that some offences against the law shall be dealt with by one kind of policeman and that other kinds of offences shall be dealt with by another kind of policeman.

It is just not practicable to make any kind of distinction between traffic offences and other offences—certainly not in London. Sir Joseph Simpson has said that about one quarter of all crimes committed in London are committed with the aid of motor vehicles. Therefore, in dealing with crime in London, the police are also dealing with traffic, and vice versa. Coping with traffic and coping with crime are two aspects of the policeman's job, and I do not believe that we should even consider any attempt at fragmentation, or at carving up or at the creation of parallel police forces to do what is, in effect, the same job.

I am not quite clear, either, whether or not the effect of this Bill would be to create a traffic police force that would have powers greater than those enjoyed by the ordinary police. The people referred to in this Bill would aparently have certain powers or responsibilities other than those conferred upon the ordinary police, and to me, at least, the Bill does not precisely make clear what distinction there would be between the traffic police and the ordinary police in respect of either their function or their authority—

There is no intention in the Bill to give the police who would be created under Part I any policing powers in excess of those enjoyed by the existing police force.

I appreciate my hon. Friend's explanation but, if they would not have any additional powers, would they have any function or authority not shared by the other police? I take it that they would be concerned particularly with traffic but would not have any power in dealing with traffic that was not equally enjoyed by every policeman, so we would be creating an elaborate system of duplication, since the ordinary police would, I take it, be quite as free to deal with traffic as would the special police—

indicated assent.

We are therefore engaged in a large process of duplication, and I cannot see what end is served by that, or in what way the maintenance of law and order on the road, or anywhere else, would be advanced by doing this. We would simply be creating a sort of administrative jungle—

My hon. Friend will realise that there are at present officers with different powers of enforcing the law. At the bottom of the scale, if I may so put it, are the traffic wardens; then the special constables, who are not on full time, and then the members of the ordinary police force. Each of these has different functions.

That is perfectly true, but the Bill proposes something on an altogether different scale. It is proposed to create a national parallel police force. That is a very large order, and we have to look at the dimensions of what is involved before deciding whether or not to accept it.

None of my hon. Friend's arguments makes out a case for doing this, nor do I see much force in the argument that since it is traffic duty that makes policemen unpopular we should create a special force to absorb this unpopularity—that we should create, as it were, a sort of national lightning rod to take the law for motorists and focus it on one part of the police force and not on all. I cannot see that we can make decisions about the police and the maintenance of law and order in that fashion.

Part II of the Bill proposes to make the fact of having taken a certain amount of alcohol into a crime in certain circumstances. We must look carefully and critically at this. It is a completely new departure in English law. Are we to say that a man who buys a product which it is lawful for him to buy, and lawful for him to consume, thereby commits a crime in certain circumstances? If we accept the Bill that is what we shall be saying.

I should make it clear that I have no interest in this matter. I make a declaration of non-interest. I am not a motorist. I cannot drive a car and I have not the slightest desire to learn to do so. I believe in the division of labour and when I travel by car I prefer to leave it to someone else to do the driving.

The Bill affects pedestrians as well if they have had drink.

I want to look at the position of the pedestrian as well as that of the motorist under the Bill. I make no plea for the drunken driver and I have no connection of any sort, direct or indirect, with the manufacture or distribution of alcohol. I can speak here as a totally detached neutral. It seems to me that the Bill will create a new crime. I do not believe that we have any right to do this. I do not believe that the State has a right to punish a man who does something lawful, namely who consumes alcohol, on the ground that he may thereafter do something unlawful. I make no excuse for people who drive cars when they are drunk. If they get involved in accidents they should be punished severely, and probably far more severely than we punish them at present. But this method is wrong because it means the creation of a new offence, which we have no right to do.

This proposal is not just, and I hope that I use the word with precision. It is not just that we should say that in future people who take alcohol, which they are entitled to do and which the State permits them to do, shall then be made subject to criminal proceedings if after taking the alcohol they do something which involves them in collision with the law. We are entitled to say that if people do something that we regard as unlawful we should punish them for doing it, but we should not punish them for doing something which is perfectly lawful.

Apart from the merits or demerits of the Bill, I do not think that this point involves a new principle. At the moment a diabetic who takes insulin and has an accident as a result can be justly charged with driving while under the influence of a drug. It is not a new principle to allow somebody to purchase something which it is lawful to purchase and then to prosecute him if he commits an offence.

I think there is a distinction. The question is whether we punish a man because he drives dangerously, which is what we rightly do now, or whether we punish him because he has taken a drug, whether it is alcohol or something else, which is liable to lead him to drive dangerously. This is the new principle that we are introducing, that the taking of alcohol may make him drive dangerously and that we should punish him because he takes alcohol beyond a certain amount. This is a new principle which we should not accept.

We should continue to punish people who drive dangerously, without having regard to the question of what it is that makes them drive dangerously, whether it is the taking of alcohol, or natural recklessness, or whatever it may be. Let us punish the act by all means, but we should not go behind the act and say that something which precedes it and which is in itself lawful should be termed a crime.

This Bill seeks to punish the act which impairs driving. There is no doubt whatever that taking alcohol, even in small quantities, impairs driving, as the Minister said recently, by at least 15 per cent. That is the act which the Bill intends to penalise.

In saying that, my hon. Friend is giving only part of the effect of the Bill. He not only seeks to penalise the motorist who, before he starts driving a car, has taken a certain amount of alcohol, but he also proposes to punish the pedestrian who, before engaging in the perfectly lawful act of walking upon a carriageway, has engaged in the perfectly lawful act of swallowing alcohol. In both respects this is the introduction of a new principle. I ask my hon. Friend to consider carefully what is involved in doing this.

Has the hon. Gentleman noticed that if two people on the carriageway have both taken alcohol, neither of them is to be prosecuted because they are not unaccompanied?

I agree.

In order to correct that misreading of subsection (3), may I say that it does not mean that at all?

I have listened to my hon. Friend's explanation, but the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) has certainly drawn an inference from the Bill which seems to me to be perfectly arguable.

Surely the effect of subsection (3) is that a person who accompanies somebody else who has drunk two whiskies, even if he himself has drunk nothing at all, might find himself under the necessity to submit himself to a test for alcoholic content if he wanted to establish the innocence of his friend, and to prove that his friend had been accompanied by someone who had not himself been drinking.

One might indeed find that somebody who takes a country walk and who has consumed more than the two whiskies, which my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby apparently regards as the legitimate limit for a pedestrian in the country, must first of all find somebody to walk with him. If he does not do so, he risks arrest and punishment under this Bill.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, Central (Sir P. Bishop) pointed out, a person, even though he were a teetotaller, would find it desirable under this Bill to submit himself to whatever test is to be applied for alcoholic content, not only to establish that he was himself free from alcohol but also to establish that he was a competent person to take charge of someone who had taken alcohol.

If a man accompanies a man who has had two glasses of whisky on a country road or while crossing a street in a town, in order to aid him in his progress, would he be in danger under this Bill of a charge of aiding and abetting the other man?

:That is a fair question which, fortunately, I am not required to answer since I am neither sponsoring nor supporting the Bill. It is a question which might be addressed to my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby. That is a question which would certainly arise if we were to pass the Bill, and it is a question to which, so far as I can see, there is no answer.

The answer is very direct. It is "No".

My hon. Friend says "No", but I think that it is very arguable. If we make it a crime in certain circumstances to walk on the road after having had some drinks, it might well be argued that to accompany a person who had taken drinks in that way and broken the law might be regarded as aiding and abetting the law breaker.

My hon. Friend is misreading the Bill. If he reads Clause 5(1,b), he will find that it is walking unaccompanied on the carriageway which is the offence, and what "unaccompanied" means is defined in subsection (3). My hon. Friend may have good arguments against the Bill, but he should not produce false ones.

If a person having taken a certain amount of alcohol, walks upon the carriageway unaccompanied, he will, under the Bill, commit a crime. In order to avoid committing that crime and the prosecution to follow, he must be accompanied. By being accompanied, he takes himself out of the reach of the Bill. If that is the case, and it certainly seems to be so, we are entitled to ask what kind of person shall accompany him and what sort of testimony will the companion be able to give in order to exempt the putative criminal from the penalties under the Bill.

If my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Curran) and I were both walking along, having each drunk two whiskies, and if my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page), having drunk nothing, were accompanying us, which of us under the Bill would be the offender? Would my hon. Friend be accompanying us both, or one or the other? I find it difficult to follow.

I should imagine that we should be guilty of having taken the whisky and that my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby would suffer from guilt by association.

In the light of the obvious and not frivolous difficulties confronting us as soon as we examine the effects of enforcing Part II of the Bill, we are, I suggest, entitled to conclude that the Bill is both impracticable and highly undesirable. For these reasons, since there are objections equally grave, though of a different kind, to Part I, I invite the House to reject the Bill completely.

I agree very much with the observations made by the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Curran). His speech and the various interjections during the course of it have done a good deal to expose the absurdities and anomalies of the Bill. Nevertheless, I am sure that we all respect the intentions of the hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page). I yield to no one in realising how important it is that we should do everything we can in the interests of road safety. No one disputes the motive of the hon. Gentleman in introducing the Bill.

It is a truism that the carnage on our roads is appalling. It is almost a disgrace to any civilised country. The number of those killed, maimed and injured on the roads week by week seems to increase. There is a public duty on us all to do something about it. But I agree with what so many hon. Members have said. I do not believe that the Bill offers the right solution. Indeed, I believe that it is wrong solution, for many reasons.

It is a mistake to try to draw a distinction between crimes committed on the roads and other crimes. In so far as the Bill seems to draw that kind of distinction and to introduce a new and separate force to deal with these matters, it aggravates one of the underlying evils of the situation. Part of the tragedy on the roads results from the fact that the moral conscience of the nation seems to think that crimes in the form of dangerous driving committed on the roads are in some way less reprehensible than other crimes such as housebreaking, rape, perjury or highway robbery.

The truth is that they are no less serious than other crimes. In their result, they are more serious, because they cause more human misery and injury. Therefore, I agree that we shall not get this matter straight until the public conscience realises that the crimes being committed on the roads are at least as serious as all other crimes.

The basic approach of the hon. Member for Crosby in trying to create a separate force to deal with road crimes is wrong. It is part of the duty of the police to deal with traffic offences and traffic control because the two things are interlocked. We should get into serious social and administrative problems if, as the Bill suggests, we had a separate commissioner for road safety or a special body of safety enforcement officers. We must insist on giving the police the same responsibility in dealing with criminal activities on the road as we give them in dealing with all other criminal activities.

For those reasons, I am strongly opposed to Part I. We must inculcate in the nation the idea that malpractices on the road, such as dangerous or inconsiderate driving, are probably some of the most anti-social offences which can be committed.

I am equally opposed to Part II, the difficulties of which have been exposed. Part II is open to a great deal of criticism. It is impossible to lay down an objective test about the amount of alcohol which any individual, whether as a motorist or as a pedestrian, can consume with safety to himself and others. The quantity must vary, according to the circumstances, from individual to individual. Therefore, any test of this kind would be unworkable.

I agree with the hon. Member for Uxbridge that by adopting Clause 5 we should be introducing into our legal system something quite novel. We should be taking away from the individual the right to do two things which at present are perfectly lawful: first, the right to go and have a drink, and, secondly, having had a drink, to use the Queen's highway. Pedestrians who take more alcohol than they should, involve themselves in greater risks than motorists who do the same. That in itself should have a salutary effect. It would be impossible to legislate on lines which made it a criminal offence for someone, merely because he had had a certain amount of alcohol and was not accompanied by somebody else who had not had the same amount of alcohol, to use the highway in the way to which he has been traditionally entitled.

I very much hope that the House will not give the Bill a Second Reading.

In discussing the Bill no one has attempted to minimise the seriousness of the problem of road safety. Looking at the overall figures of accidents during this century, it is fantastic to realise that there have been over 9½ million casualties and about 275,000 fatalities on the roads. Everyone will wish to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) on the way in which he takes every opportunity to bring this fact to the attention of the House and of most people in the country.

I speak very personally on this matter, because it was only three and a half years ago that my own father was killed on a London road as a pedestrian. One of the terrifying things about road accidents is that one always believes that it will not happen to oneself. One always goes around in one's car as though it is the other person who will be affected, believing that it is the other person who will be knocked down, the other child. But 9,500,000 people have been casualties of road accidents in this century.

Another interesting fact in the background to the Bill is that, although there is a great problem, it is amazing that the number of fatalities is lower than it was 18 or 20 years ago. This is something which should be made clear. This year there were 6,709 fatalities compared with 7,342 in 1934. What is even more surprising is that, in the ten years 1953–62, registrations of vehicles increased from 5,200,000 to 10,500,000 while the number of fatalities remained approximately the same.

I am sure that my hon. Friend does not want to mislead the House. The number of personal injuries is now much higher than it was in 1934. It is true that the number of fatalities is about the same, but that is a tribute to our hospitals rather than to our escape from accidents.

It is true that there has been an increase in the number of casualties of about 40 per cent., but compared with the more than 10 million vehicles of 1962 the number in 1934 was probably about 2 million—I do not have the exact figure. That accentuates my argument.

This is not to say that we should be unmindful of the problem merely because of those figures. I do not pour scorn on some of the ideas behind the Bill, as other hon. Members have done. The Bill contains the concept of a commissioner for road safety. In the present structure of the police—not that envisaged by the Bill—there might be a designation of commissioner for road safety to consider the many and varying aspects of the subject.

I wonder what my hon. Friend had in mind for the duties of such a commissioner. There are certain aspects of paramount importance which he could consider. One of the great problems is the mechanical soundness of vehicles. Too often accidents are caused by vehicles which are mechanically unsound. Investigations on those lines should be pressed forward to see whether the testing of vehicles should be made more frequent. Too many people pay insufficient attention to their tyres, correct pressures and correct forms for the speeds which modern motoring has brought about.

Would not my hon. Friend also agree that some cars are far too highly powered for road safety?

I would have thought that some cars were too highly powered for their drivers. I do not believe that the power of a car is automatically a factor which decreases road safety, but there are many drivers who ought not to have more than 2 or 3 h.p. under them. This question of tyres is of special concern on the motorways. I know of someone who thought that he could drive at 100 m.p.h. of four retread tyres down a motorway. If that was not absolute menace to everybody else—and it was ignorance rather than any desire to cause accidents—I do not know what is. He simply did not realise that this was a factor which might bring about his own downfall, and, indeed, his own fatality.

Is my hon. Friend also aware that if there is shower of rain it is not safe to travel at over 50 m.p.h. on retread tyres that have not a sufficiency of tread?

I realise that. It is not only retreads; it is any sort of tyres with insufficiency of tread. Could not the commissioner for safety, if he should be appointed look very fully into some of the hazards which drivers, I think through carelessness or selfishness, cause by their activities on the roads?

The aspect of motorways with three lanes, where one sees a heavy vehicle or truck overtaking on the third lane, has been mentioned already in this House at different times, but it ought to be thrust home a great deal more. I hope that if the Minister cannot take action as envisaged in the Bill a commissioner for safety would have powers to take action about this sort of behaviour, because this inability of people to realise the dangers that they are creating for other people by their driving is most serious.

This leads me to consider that the commissioner proposed under this Bill might deal with the whole aspect of the state of mind of the person who drives carelessly and dangerously. And it is not only the driver. This question of safety comes into all our lives. One has only to watch pedestrians to see them cutting in and out, and stepping in front of one another. As I was coming to the House this morning, I saw someone behaving in a way which made me think: my goodness, if he were on the road another bumper or fender would have been bent or knocked off.

A commissioner for road safety could help inculcate education in road use. I believe that the Bill would allow that. It is important, because we see the need for it, particularly among the young, and this could be a major use of the Bill. A great deal might be done, I would hope, in educating people to make correct judgments about width. That constitutes a problem, and faulty judgment means misuse of the road. There are drivers, sometimes elderly, sometimes young, who have no real idea how wide their vehicles are. I have seen two drivers sitting glaring at each other because they believed they could not pass each other, but really one could have driven a coach and horses through the space.

Better use of the road would be greatly helped if the commissioner envisaged under the Bill would do a lot more about the use of white lines. I have spoken twice before in the House on the use of white lines on the roads, and I congratulate the Minister for doing considerably more towards encouraging these. Indeed, this is one way of encouraging people to use the roads properly. It is, perhaps, a sorry condemnation that such action is necessary. None the less, it is absolutely true.

There is one matter in the Bill which worries me considerably and that is the powers supposed to be given to those recruited as the secondary police force. If I read this provision properly it seems that the powers which those persons would have would be controlled by and subject to the Secretary of State. As I understand the law, at the moment the powers of the police are powers given by the law of the land, and not by any Secretary of State. It would be a most dangerous precedent, as envisaged in this Bill, that the powers of any form of police should be purely according to the varying opinions of any Secretary of State who may or may not be in control of this secondary constabularly. It is a most dangerous precedent that we should allow a Secretary of State at his whim or will to be able to decide without consultation I would draw attention particularly to the second part of the Bill. When we talk about accidents due to alcohol I believe that the hon. Member for Greenwich (Mr. Marsh), who has now left his place, was making a fair point when he took up the argument of my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South (Sir R. Thompson) when he was talking about a Gallup poll considering and believing that alcohol was a cause. This, in fact, was a belief; this was opinion, not fact. I was very surprised to see some of the factors in the publication by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, which showed that fatal and serious accidents in 1962, according to certain factors which had been analysed, that speed—

Object.

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In this debate I shall refer in particular to two schools in my constituency, but we are speaking in the context of a number of reports dealing with education of one kind or another which have been published in the last few months. Public imagination has been caught by the proposals in the Robbins Report, the proposal to raise the school leaving age at some still distant date, and a number of things of that nature.

But I come down to rock bottom to a type of problem which I fear rather gets lost among the problems with which pupils and teachers are struggling every day and among the far—reaching proposals which both sides of the House accept as necessary and desire to be carried out as soon as possible. We will lose a great deal of our education expansion programme if we concentrate too much on the wider scope without looking at some of the day-to-day problems in the schools in my own and other constituencies.

The Borough of Islington is an old borough and, therefore, it suffers in many ways. It has old houses, it has congested streets and also, because the houses in the area are old and the area has been populated for some time, it has an undue proportion of old schools. Educationally, it also suffers from the problem, which faces several parts of the country, of having a considerable proportion of non—English—speaking pupils. These are the problems with which teachers are struggling, not only in my constituency, but elsewhere in London and throughout the country, and which should entitle them and the schools to better consideration than they are so far getting concerning the physical amenities in which their tasks have to be carried out.

I was first approached by the managers of the Yerbury and Grafton schools in the spring of 1963 because the experience of the 1962–63 winter had particularly drawn their attention to the inadequacy of the toilet accommodation at the schools, particularly as the major part, if not all, of the provision for the junior schools consists of outside toilets.

I went along with the managers, head teachers and representatives of the divisional education office and looked at the toilet provision at these two schools. For the junior departments, all the toilets were out in the open. For the infant departments, there was inadequate, even minimal, indoor provision, but the bulk of it was also out in the open.

In one of the junior schools, the children had to walk over 100 yards from the school building, right round the school and across a playground to get to the only toilets—outdoors—which were available to them. The toilets are basically the same as when the school was built 70 years ago. They were uncovered and made of rough brickwork. Before going further, I pay tribute to the school keepers and others who are responsible for trying to keep this type of toilet in the best possible condition. Those which I saw were as clean as one could expect toilets of that kind to be. Tribute must be paid to those who have the job of keeping them in good condition.

During the 1962–63 winter, these outside toilets were completely frozen up. They had no washbasins, yet one of the teachers' tasks is to encourage pupils to observe personal hygiene. That is impossible in schools of this nature when the toilet provision is outside, was built 70 years ago and no washbasins are attached to the toilets. Not only that, but in wet weather, with no cover over the toilets, the children have to go across 100 yards of playground in the rain or snow to toilets which are swimming with water and the floors of which are soaking wet. Nothing can be done to stop them getting into that condition in wet weather.

On 29th July, therefore, I wrote to the London County Council Education Officer about this problem. I was horrified to find that not only does it apply to schools which I visited and also to others in my constituency, but that in the London County Council area alone there are 440 county council schools and 150 voluntary schools which have only outside toilet provision of the type which I have described and virtually no indoor toilet provision. The view of the London County Council is that the cost of providing indoor toilet accommodation for all the schools for which it is responsible would cost several million pounds, and I have no doubt that this estimate is right.

In order to try to get some of the work done for 1963–64, the L.C.C. requested permission of the Ministry to spend £650,000 on all kinds of improvements to some of the older—and, indeed, some of the newer—school buildings under its control. This would have included steps to provide indoor sanitation for those schools lacking it. It was, however, allocated just over half the sum requested—£350,000.

I agree that there are physical difficulties in carrying out a vast programme of this nature in a comparatively short space of time, involving architects, surveyors and building labour among other factors. But the L.C.C. was quite confident that it could carry out a programme worth £650,000. My guess is that it could do even better if more money were available. However, it was allocated only £350,000 to do part of a job which it estimates will cost, in the end, several million pounds.

In spring last year, as a result of the experience of winter, the L.C.C. pointed out the number of schools still to be dealt with and the difficulty of persuading the Minister to give a sufficient capital allocation for improvements of this kind and stated:

"A vastly increased national allocation for minor works will be necessary, preferably in the form of a specific additional sum set aside each year to enable proper indoor sanitary accommadation to be provided."

That is one way in which this could be tackled. Local education authorities with this problem—and this applies not only to London but to our other large cities and to the rural areas as well —could have, in addition to their normal allocations for minor improvements, special allocations for the purpose of putting indoor toilets into schools which lack them.

Since then, the managers of these two schools have continued to press their case. Apparently, the schools are not only lacking indoor toilets but are in some ways deficient even on that accommodation in view of the Minister of Education's recommendation in 1959 as to the number of toilets which should be available proportionate to the number of pupils. The infants department at Grafton primary school is short of one toilet and Yerbury is short of four. This applies mainly to the nursery classes. A letter from the Chairman of the Managers of the school to me a few months ago said:

"As you know we are actively concerned about the lack of washing facilities for the children to use when visiting the toilets. The managers were informed by the heads that dysentery has continued in the schools after the summer holidays although it is to be hoped that the cold weather will mean an improvement."

Dysentery is present in the schools and one of the reasons is that there is no washbasin accommodation in the toilets, which are outside and thus get into a dirtier condition, quite inevitably.

During the last month, I understand that the L.C.C. has given very high priority to these two schools in the provision of some indoor water closets and washbasins. But while this work is partly achieving the purpose and is very helpful, it is actually wasteful, in the long run, of resources and money because the job will eventually have to be done properly and will, of course, cost more. I understand that covers are being pat over some of the toilets which have not so far been covered and the maintenance vote is being used to do this.

As I understand it, a local education authority can, in certain circumstances, without having to go to the trouble of obtaining the Ministry's approval, carry out minor works up to value of £2,000. As these two schools are in the one building the L.C.C. can, by a little judicious "fiddling"—which is going on all over the country——spend £2,000 on each in order to put some indoor toilets in. This means spending £4,000 on each school. Yet the L.C.C., the divisional education officer and the school managers know very well that to do the job properly would involve an expenditure of about £10,000 on each school. But they cannot spend £10,000 because that cannot be fitted into the allocation of capital which the Ministry has given.

By fiddling the books they can manage to spend £2,000 in each school and to provide some indoor toilets, although this is by no means satisfactory or up to the standard laid down by the Ministry. In due course—it may be in five years or in 10 years—they will have to bring the indoor toilets up to the number required and up to the Ministry standard. The two sums of money—£4,000 now and the larger sum in the future—will be far more than if they were allowed to do the whole job properly at present.

I recognise that there are difficulties in the large number of schools which the L.C.C. and other authorities have to deal with in this way, but if we are in a position, as we hope, to spend large sums of money on people who are fortunate enough to obtain university places or places at colleges of advanced technology or other institutes of higher education, we should be prepared at the same time to spend reasonable sums of money to make sure that in areas with older properties, in towns such as Islington and other towns throughout the country, children are given at least good physical conditions in which to receive their primary education—conditions which are lacking in these and other schools throughout the London area at the moment.

I hope that the Minister today will announce that there is a chance that these two schools will get their proper allocation of inside toilets in the very near future and that he is prepared to accept the L.C.C.'s suggestion that, in addition to the normal allocation for minor improvements and minor capital work, there will be, for authorities such as the L.C.C., which have many schools without adequate indoor toilets, a special allocation of capital resources specifically to carry out a job which in my view is essential from the point of view of the health of the children as well as to enable them to receive the full benefit from their education.

May I endorse what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Reynolds)? I know these two schools from personal experience, and I can confirm the truth of what he said. In my opinion, it is a complete disgrace that these two schools in North Islington—and they are not alone in this position—should still have thoroughly unsatisfactory and insanitary accommodation. In these days in which the Ministry is prepared to spend so much on extended university and technical education, it seems to us quite unsatisfactory and most unjust that conditions in some of the elementary schools in Islington and other parts of London should be allowed to continue as they have existed for over 50, 60 and 70 years —conditions which are thoroughly bad and insanitary and which lead to dysentry and other diseases.

As my hon. Friend indicated, what is wanted is Ministry approval to enable progressive local authorities such as the L.C.C. and others to have supplemental grants so that, belated though it may be, they may put an end to the disgraceful condition in which so many children in elementary schools in London are condemned to spend their school lives—a condition in which there is inadequate and only outdoor sanitary accommodation.

I am obliged to the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Reynolds) for raising this subject this afternoon and for giving me an opportunity to say a word or two not only about these two schools but about the wider issues which he raised.

I appreciate the force of the argument with which he opened his speech and I recognise that Islington has particular problems. Much of the area is old and in many of the schools there are a considerable number of non—English—speaking children. He knows that my right hon. Friend has been particularly concerned with the latter problem and that fairly recently we issued a pamphlet on the teaching of English to immigrant children. This is a matter of continuing concern to the Department.

But it is about Yerbury and Grafton that the hon. Member and his hon. Friend the Member for Islington, East (Mr. Fletcher) have spoken this afternoon. I accept that there are deficiencies in both these schools. I am told that the provision for the over-fives in all four departments—that is, the junior and the infant departments in both schools —is adequate as to the amount available but that in all cases it is out of doors across the playground. Sanitary provision for the under-fives is short at both infant departments by our Building Regulation standards. Grafton School needs one more closet to bring the provision up to what we consider to be the requisite standard. Yerbury School requires six more. The provision for staff in the Grafton Infants Department and at the Yerbury School is meagre.

I cannot say that these two schools are among the very worst in the country or, indeed, in London. The managers of both schools have been pressing for some time for indoor lavatories. The L.C.C. has decided to undertake a project at each school in 1964–65. These are what are called "mini-minor" projects. They will cost under £2,000. I should make it absolutely clear to the House that local education authorities have complete freedom to embark upon such jobs costing under £2,000. This is not a question of their having that freedom in certain circumstances, or if it involves a wangle, or if it comes off a maintenance vote. This is a specific provision. We give local education authorities the freedom to embark upon any such jobs which amount to less than £2,000. I believe that this is a sensible provision which is welcomed by the majority of local education authorities. I thought from something that the hon. Member for Islington, North said that he was implying that this was an unhappy division of itself. I think that the majority of local education authorities welcome the opportunities that this gives.

The hon. Member for Islington, North put to the House the argument that in these schools it would be better if a larger job could be done at this stage and that in the long run it would be more economical. I have not got details of the work that the L.C.C. proposes to carry out at these schools. I understand that the details of the project have still to be worked out but that the L.C.C. hopes to get down to planning next month. It will aim at providing some closets within the school premises, either by adapting existing accommodation or by making additions. I have no reason to believe that it would be desirable in this instance to embark upon a much larger scale project.

However, the hon. Gentleman implied that, had the L.C.C. been given a larger minor works allocation, it would have been setting about the modernisation of these schools in a different fashion. Perhaps I should therefore say a few words about the minor works allocation. The hon. Gentleman gave the House the figures quite correctly for 1963–64. We were for that year able to give the L.C.C. an allocation of £350,000. The hon. Gentleman will be glad to know that for 1964–65 we have been able to agree to an allocation of £500,000 for the L.C.C. The overall figure that we have for minor works in 1964–65 is £18 million, as high a figure as the schools have had in the last five years and considerably higher than in the previous two years.

It will be seen that, in comparison with the previous two years, the allocation given to the L.C.C. for 1964–65 will enable the Council to embark upon more minor works projects than it has been able to undertake in either of the two preceding years. There will always be difficulties about the allocation of sums for minor works. I am glad that we have been able to step up that allocation for 1964–65, because I agree that there is a great deal that can be done by means of minor works substantially to improve conditions in some of our worst schools.

The hon. Member for Islington, North asked about the suggestion put to the Ministry by the L.C.C. that there should be a special grant earmarked for the provision of more up-to-date lavatories.

A grant?

I thought that the hon. Member used the word "grant" on one occasion, but he is right to correct me because the L.C.C.'s suggestion was that there should be an authorisation. I suggest to the hon. Member that this would in some ways be a further limitation on the freedom of local education authorities, because we are anxious to give them as much minor works allocation as we can.

Given that that is our intention, it seems doubtful whether it would be advantageous to earmark a part of that allocation for the provision of lavatories. There is much to be said for the view that local education authorities themselves are in the best position to decide their priorities and that if they are given a global sum for minor works it is best that they should be allowed to decide which projects they will undertake in any one year.

The hon. Member for Islington, North was anxious that the physical problems of primary schools should not be lost sight of and he referred to the need to keep a proper balance between expenditure on schools and capital expenditure on higher education, and I entirely agree with him. The Government's response to the Newsom Report has been as expensive as has our response to the Robbins Report. The Newsom Report rightly pointed out that many schools are in need of replacement or modernisation.

It is not just that many of them are inconvenient, that a number of them are lacking in the dignity one would wish to see in the second half of the twentieth century but that, frankly, a number of them are educationally restrictive. A primary school teacher deploying modern techniques needs space these days and in some of our primary schools that space is not available. We recognise all this and we are anxious to replace and modernise the educational plant as fast as we can. We should be able to say this autumn that half our children are in post-war places and the hon. Member for Islington, North will be aware of the rapid rise in the rate of educational building in recent years.

During the course of this Parliament starts on educational buildings have risen by over 40 per cent. We are now in the middle of a £300 million five—year building programme and we are looking forward to the 1965–68 programme, which will be running about 30 per cent. higher. So on the wider front we can certainly point to a great deal of progress. I agree, however, that we must make as much progress as we can in the provision of better sanitary facilities in these schools.

The two schools under discussion are Victorian schools. They are fairly typical of the school building architecture of that period. Lavatories were provided out of doors in buildings erected just before the war and it is not unknown, even in recent years, for the Ministry of Education to receive suggestions from local education authorities for the building of new schools with outside lavatories.

If we want more convenient arrangements in all these schools we must recognise that there is a great deal to do. I am glad that the L.C.C. is finding it possible to carry out the improvements to which I have referred at Yerbury and Grafton.