Commons Chamber

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House Of Commons

Friday, 8th May, 1964

The House met at Eleven o'clock

Prayers

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Orders Of The Day

Riding Establishments Bill

As amended (in the Standing Committee), considered.

Clause 1—(Licensing Of Riding Establishments)

11.6 a.m.

I beg to move, in page 1, line 23, to leave out "ten shillings" and to insert "five pounds".

I am rather loath to move any Amendment to this Bill at all, because I do not know much about horses. The only time when I have been in close contact with them they have had policemen on their backs, which has left me with an attitude towards them somewhat different from that of the promoters of the Bill. Whenever I see a horse I tend to run for cover.

This Bill deals not only with animals but with businesses. Certain persons are to be licensed to keep riding establishments, from which they hire out horses for profit or gain. That is not a bad thing, but, in regulating this business, the local authorities have to hire vets, provide people to inspect premises before granting licences, and make sure that the businesses are being run properly. That means trouble and cost, and I can see no reason why that cost should fall almost entirely on the ratepayers, who are already fairly hard hit.

I rather suspect that the 10s. fee in Clause 1 is a carry-over from the days before the war. Money has lost much of its cutting edge since 1939, and what was valued at 10s. before the war must obviously be valued much more highly now. I therefore propose to substitute a fee of £5. This would give the local authorities a certain amount of revenue with which to finance the entire job of looking after these establishments.

While I appreciate the general desire to save ratepayers' money, I think that it would be a rather strange departure if we were to agree to the fee being increased from 10s. to £5. I would remind the hon. Member for Luton (Mr. Howie) that in two very recent enactments of a similar sort, the House, with the agreement of both sides, insisted on keeping the fee at 10s. In 1939 no licence at all was required. When we debated the Pet Animals Act, 1951, one or two hon. Members proposed a fee of £2, but this was subsequently reduced to 10s. When the Animal Boarding Establishments Act, which I sponsored last year and got through the House, was being debated, it proposed what was in my view a correct fee of £2, and not £5, because I thought that 10s. was too little. The Home Office resisted the proposal for a fee of £2 and in order to get the Bill through the House I went back to a 10s. fee.

I hope that if my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department agrees with this proposal in the Amendment he will give reasons why the Government sought to persuade me that £2 was too big a fee. Whether it is a boarding establishment or a riding establishment, I am sure that the costs are very much the same, and, if my hon. Friend agrees to the Amendment, it would be at least logical to amend in the same way all Acts dealing with animals. If the fee is too low at present it must be too low in all cases, but in fairness to all concerned and in order not to give preferential treatment to one sort of enterprise concerned with animals as against another, I think that it is better to leave the fee in the Bill at 10s.

I was in general agreement with the principles which the hon. Member for Luton (Mr. Howie) enunciated so well, but having listened to my hon. Friend the Member for Torquay (Mr. F. M. Bennett) I feel that we are faced with a difficulty, in that if we adopted the Amendment we should be stepping out of line with similar legislation. The hon. Member for Luton raised an extremely important point, but I think that in the circumstances we would be well advised not to accept the Amendment. I hope that the hon. Member may agree that this is the right way of dealing with the matter.

I was also attracted by the proposal of my hon. Friend the Member for Luton (Mr. Howie). He explained his own attitude towards horses and said that, as a result of his own experience, it perhaps differed from that of the sponsors of the Bill. I assure him that my own experience of horses is very much the same as his, and I am one of the sponsors of the Bill.

I do not think that local authorities should be expected to do something at less than the cost to them if the result of their activities is to help establishments which are run for private profit. This is especially important in view of the growing number of local authorities coming under the control of the Labour Party. I was not convinced by the argument of the hon. Member for Torquay (Mr. F. M. Bennett) about the Pet Animals Act, 1951, because the purchasing power of the £ has dropped so much since that time. I should have thought that it was now time to review the whole question of fees to be paid for licences of this kind.

I do not quarrel with that observation, but I would remind the hon. Member that I also mentioned that there was an Amendment to that Bill to lower the fee to keep in line with other legislation but that I had proposed £2 and there has not been all that drop in the value of money since then.

11.15 a.m.

The hon. Member's explanation shows that fees of this kind should be reviewed. It is a mistake to make local authorities charge fees which give the impression to persons who apply for a licence that it is not an important matter and that the survey made before the granting of the licence will be to a large extent a perfunctory examination. There is also the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Luton that the fee does not cover the expense to the local authorities or the fee which a veterinarian would charge. I hope that the Joint Under-Secretary will consider the whole ques- tion of fees for licences of this kind when the opportunity arises.

My views differ entirely from those expressed so far. I am not happy that a fee should be charged at all. If it is to be charged it should be a fairly nominal one. Application for planning permission dealing with riding establishments incurs no fee. This is a duty on the local authority. If we give it the right to control the perfectly normal operation of user by the individual who owns the premises and we feel that that control is sensible and justified, it seems to me that that, of all things, is a normal exercise of local authority powers and that to impose a fee on one individual would be quite wrong.

Moreover, if my reading of the provisions in the Bill is correct, we must remember that the fee of £5, if it were made payable, would be virtually an annual charge, because the licence is to be renewed each year. We all know that it is unlikely that the premises will be involved in expensive inspection every year. It is the initial inspection that will be the important one.

Clause 1 (3), for example, enumerates the kind of things which may be looked at before a licence is granted—suitable accommodation, food, drink, and so on. These will not change from year to year. Therefore, to impose a fee of even 10s. is something of which I am doubtful, but to impose a fee of £5 would be a quite unfair imposition.

Many, and indeed I suppose all, of these riding establishments are not conducted merely for the entertainment or enjoyment of the owners. They provide a very real source of pleasure and recreation for members of the public. We are always being pressed that local authorities should spend vast sums of money on theatrical, musical and other kinds of entertainment. Be that as it may, when somebody proposes to provide a very welcome and admirable source of recreation for members of the public, even though they are going to pay a hiring charge, surely we should put in their way as little as possible by way of objection, difficulty or expense in establishing such places. We must also remember that while many of these premises are expensive and have many horses there are a great many others which are usually run on shoestrings. It is a difficult and expensive matter these days to keep horses.

If £5 is to be spent each year, I would rather see it spent on the premises or on the care of the horses. Simply, in effect, to spend £5 on the town clerk does not seem to me as much worthwhile as spending it on the horse. While not intending to oppose a fee of 10s.—and I appreciate that, to some extent, my argument is weakened when what I really believe is that there should not be a fee at all—I emphatically oppose a change to a fee of £5 a year which, except for the first year, should only have to cover a fairly general inspection of the premises. I do not, of course, quarrel with the sentiments which have moved the hon. Member for Luton (Mr. Howie), but I hope that hon. Members will think of the implications behind the Amendment and will reject it.

I have listened with great sympathy to three cases put before me today, all argued in a most reasonable spirit. I hope that I can show the same kind of reasonableness in reply as we expect not only of this House but of horses, who are among the most reasonable of animals. The hon. Member for Luton (Mr. Howie) proposes to multiply the licence fee by 10, my hon. Friend the Member for Torquay (Mr. F. M. Bennett) proposes to leave it where it is and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington, South (Mr. Roots) proposes to abolish it altogether, although he has not put down an Amendment to that effect, so he will presumably not wish to force that issue.

My hon. Friend the Member for Torquay and my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham (Dr. Alan Glyn) really put their fingers on the crucial point when they drew a comparison with existing similar legislation governing animal boarding establishments and pet animals. The functions to be undertaken by the local authorities in relation to this Bill are closely comparable to those under the Animal Boarding Establishments and the Pet Animals Acts. Both Acts also require annual licensing and the cost of the licensing processes, one may assume, is very much the same in all cases. I do not think that horses are ten times as expensive to licence as rabbits merely because they are very much larger.

Surely there is a distinction in kind between horses in this context and rabbits in the pet animal context. One does not, as a rule, hire out rabbits for gain.

But people sell them for gain and, as such, are controlled under the Pet Animals Act. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will not wish to press that point. It has not been put to us in that form by the local authorities. It is true that they take the view that the present licensing fee is insufficient but they take that view under existing legislation and no doubt they would also take that view under this Bill.

I readily concede that there has been a decline in the value of money since 1951 but it seems preferable that there should not be inconsistencies in fees charged by local authorities under similar enactments and for that reason only I hope to persuade the hon. Gentleman to withdraw his Amendment. However, by way of greater inducement to him to do so, perhaps I might respond to the invitation made by the hon. Member for Rossendale (Mr. Greenwood) to consider the whole question of the level of fees throughout this range of Acts.

We are in consultation with the Treasury in our consideration of representations that have been made to us by the local authority associations for an increase in the fees charged for a wide range of licences issued under various enactments and if, as seems probable, in due course it were decided to amend the whole range of fees—which would require legislation—opportunity would naturally be taken to apply the revised figure to the fee in this Bill as well as to the fees in the two comparaable Acts which I have quoted.

In this way, it will be possible to keep in step the new level of fees appropriate to licences in general and to licences under the Pet Animals and Animal Boarding Establishments Acts and the present Bill in particular. On these two grounds—that the fees should not be allowed to get out of line in comparable legislation and that, which is impossible to say now, whether the fee should be £5 or £2 or any other figure—together with my undertaking, I hope that the hon. Member will feel disposed to withdraw his Amendment.

Will my hon. Friend give some indication of the criterion by which this matter will be judged? Can he go so far as to say that he will not take too much account of the criterion used by the hon. Member for Rossendale (Mr. Greenwood)—that discrimination should be made against those establishments which are operated, as he puts it, for gain as distinct from those whose activities are presumably operated purely for pleasure? It would be unfortunate if, in the reconsideration of fees, that were to be a substantial criterion.

The essential criterion will be the cost of the processes of issuing licences through the local authorities.

I have listened with great interest, and in view of all that has been said, particularly of the inducement the Joint Under-Secretary of State has offered, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

I beg to move, in page 1, line 27, at end to insert:

(3) Where an application for the grant of a licence for the keeping of a riding establishment at any premises is made to a local authority, they shall not proceed to a decision in the matter unless they have received and considered a report by a veterinary surgeon or veterinary practitioner authorised by them to carry out inspections under the next following section of an inspection of the premises carried out by him within the period of twelve months immediately preceding the date on which the application is received by the local authority, being a report containing such particulars as in their view enable them to determine whether the premises are suitable for the keeping thereat of a riding establishment, and describing the condition of the premises and of any horses found thereon or anything thereat.

Perhaps the House will find it convenient to discuss, at the same time, the Amendments Nos. 3 to 8 and 18, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14 and 15.

I am sure that is agreeable, Mr. Speaker.

Local authorities are anxious that they should have the right of inspecting any establishments at any time to see such things as drains and fire precautions, and the British Horse Society is strongly of the opinion that it is necessary that a veterinarian should be responsible for inspecting and approving the conditions under which the horses are kept.

As things are now, we have with us an hon. Member opposite who has only seen a horse with a policeman on its back and it would be quite possible in some urban districts for council officers who know nothing about horses to inspect these establishments. It is, therefore, surely essential that a veterinary surgeon should be able to give advice not only on how the horses are kept but on suitability of premises. When the Bill was drafted we had a passage which has now been cut out as it was copied from the Animal Boarding Establishments Act. It was that there should be suitable bedding for horses while out at grass. It was cut out, but that was the sort of thing which one had to watch for.

I think that we have achieved a happy solution in these Amendments. It will be necessary for a "vet" to see that the buildings and everything else are suitable to ensure that the horses are properly looked after, properly fed and so on, and the council's officers will be able to inspect the place and see that the drains and other such facilities are satisfactory, for instance, that hay and straw are not kept where fire could be caused as a result of people smoking, and so on.

The idea is that there should be joint approval by both parties for the granting of a licence or, on the other hand, a joint decision for the refusal of a licence. I hope that the House will accept that this is a very happy solution.

11.30 a.m.

I congratulate my hon. Friend for Portsmouth, South (Sir J. Lucas) on achieving, at long last, by these Amendments a very important compromise. We must not forget that this is a voluntary Measure for licensing and inspection to be inflicted upon the horse world by those really interested in it. As the House knows, the Bill is promoted by the British Horse Society and all the other interested parties. As my hon. Friend has said, these bodies have felt that it would be quite wrong that a local authority fire officer or sanitary inspector who knew nothing about horses could prevent the granting of a licence for a riding establishment purely on their background knowledge of one particular item or other which really had no relevance to the welfare of horses. Equally, the local authorities felt that there there be a burden upon them, since they do not normally have veterinary surgeons on their payroll, to employ and pay veterinary surgeons who would, on the other hand, have knowledge about drainage and such matters.

The Amendment moved in Committee, at the last moment and at rather short notice, did not meet the problem. I think that my hon. Friend has an extremely good compromise in this series of Amendments. They provide that, if a local authority's fire officer and sanitary inspector inspect a riding establishment and find that it is all right, the authority need not be involved in bringing in a veterinary surgeon. If, on the other hand, the local authority officer brings in an adverse report and recommends to the authority that the licence should be refused, the authority cannot turn down the application unless there is a subsequent report by a veterinary surgeon. Thus, nothing drastic can be done regarding the establishment without a report from a veterinary surgeon. I think that this gives the Bill the safeguards which the British Horse Society wants.

Amendment No. 3 permits the borrowing by local authorities of officers for this purpose from other local authorities. Obviously, in a large county it would be much easier in some circumstances to borrow a veterinary surgeon at the perimeter than to take one from the centre. Amendment No. 9 also is important because it lays down clearly what the purposes of the inspection are. I congratulate my hon. Friend on introducing these Amendments, and I hope that the House will accept them.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, South (Sir J. Lucas) said, we faced some difficulty in Committee in trying to put certain safeguards and guarantees into the Bill. The Amendments which were moved at that stage did not achieve our object because they were not phrased correctly. In the circumstances, our only solution was to introduce these Amendments at this stage. They achieve a compromise between the rights of the local authority and the duties which it has towards riding establishments. Clearly, it would be wrong for an inexperienced person who knew nothing about horses to make a decision which would jeopardise the licence of the owner or manager of a riding establishment when, in fact, the criticisms levelled were really not valid or supportable in the normal course of keeping horses.

By these Amendments, we have met the views of both the local authorities and the British Horse Society. The keeping of horses requires a great deal of experience. To the outsider, some aspects of it might appear to be wrong whereas someone accustomed to the keeping of horses would understand that the arrangements made were not only adequate but were thoroughly suitable.

Amendment No. 3 is particularly valuable because it allows flexibility in the finding of veterinary officers necessary to carry out these inspections.

I support these Amendments having in mind particularly the situation in urban areas. Nowadays, a growing number of riding establishments are being started in urban areas and people are tending to use their leisure hours more in the recreation of horse riding. In the future, therefore, there will be a growing number of riding establishments in areas where people generally have very little knowledge of the keeping of horses. The local authorities will benefit by having the advice of a veterinary officer and they will be in a very much stronger position if they have cause to say that not only has the sanitary inspector condemned a place as unsuitable for the keeping of horses and the fire officer has said that it is dangerous on account of forage being kept in an unsuitable place but also that these opinions have been fortified by a veterinary expert who knows all about the dangers and requirements involved in the keeping of horses. Their opinion will be accepted much more readily in such circumstances by the keeper of the riding establishment.

I feel that we should express our indebtedness to my hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Mr. Hayman) who, in Standing Committee, stressed the need to reconcile the interests of the local authorities and the interests of the animal welfare organisations. He showed great diligence and perspicacity in Committee, and I know that he would have been here today were it not for important constituency engagements which he had to keep.

I confess that I have not been in touch with the local authority organisations on this matter, although I am a vice-president of the Association of Municipal Corporations. However, I am sure that the compromise which has been reached is a happy one. I have no doubt that it will be acceptable to the local authority associations, and I hope that the House will accept the Amendments.

I got rather lost, Mr. Speaker, as you were reading out the numbers of the various Amendments to be taken together, but I think that I have the gist of what we are about. My own Amendment No. 4 agrees somewhat with Amendment No. 3, and having regard to the terms of Amendment No. 3, I shall not wish to press my own Amendment.

I turn now to the general principle of this series of Amendments. As the Bill now stands, an officer of a local authority is unable to carry out any inspection either at the beginning for licensing purposes or at any intermediate stage for the regulation of the business unless he is accompanied by a veterinary surgeon. This seems to be quite wrong. Clause 1(3,a,) deals with such matters as the construction of premises, size, lighting, ventilation and drainage. These are matters about which a veterinary surgeon, although expert in his own line, is not likely to be at all knowledgeable. I myself would never think of trying to give advice as a "vet" about horses, for the reason I made plain earlier, but as a civil engineer of some years standing I should not listen very long to a "vet" giving me advice about drains, about which I know a good deal.

Subsection (3,e) deals with precautions against fires. It does not seem to me that a "vet" can offer any real expertise about that which would not be better provided by a fire officer.

For these reasons I think that the Amendments very much strengthen the Bill, because although "vets" are experts in their own field and in this context earn their corn well enough, they are not likely to be listened to in fields other than their own. The thing they can tell the borough engineer or architect or fire officer is the size of a horse—how much room it requires; and they can probably tell the engineer a little about what the fundamental requirements for drainage are likely to be, about cleanliness and so on, but on the technical side, on questions as to whether the drainage is adequate or not, and so on, the word of the engineer would have to be paramount.

For these reasons I think that the Amendments very much strengthen the Bill and I should like to support them.

This may have to be my last contribution to the debate because I also have constituency needs, but I am delighted to be able to say to the hon. Gentleman the Member for Luton (Mr. Howie) that for once I find myself wholeheartedly with him, and particularly on his Amendment No. 4, in page 3, line 26, which I think is the best of the lot, if only on account of simplicity.

I have extra encouragement for saying so because we agreed to an early Amendment probably guided to some extent by precedent which we set when considering the Animal Boarding Establishments Bill, and agreed to an almost precisely similar Amendment. It was debated at some length, and we established that dogs are valuable as horses are, and that a "vet" is just as important for a dog as a horse, and that a dog might be just as valuable, judging by some of the prizes which are won at a notable dog show. Therefore, it was felt on that occasion that the local authority should have a degree of discretion over inspections, and that its officers should carry out particular sorts of inspection, at various stages of the licensing, and an Amendment was agreed in exactly the terms of the hon. Member's. I do not know whether he had that in mind or thought it out himself.

I invented it.

Anyway, it is satisfactory.

Section 2 of the Animal Boarding Establishments Act says:

"A local authority may authorise in writing any of its officers or any veterinary surgeon or veterinary practitioner…"

As far as I can find out, and I have done a little research this morning, there have been no complaints, and the local authorities are satisfied that the Act is working all right, and therefore I hope that my hon. Friend will accept the Amendments, but particularly the one in the name of the hon. Member for Luton.

I think that these Amendments introducing the veterinary surgeon to the various duties and operations which have to be carried out are absolutely vital and I support them most wholeheartedly. I speak with feeling on the subject of veterinary surgery because I won my first election by giving "vet" advice. It was clear that the beast would either be permanently maimed, or cured. It was cured, and I am glad to say that the electors showed their gratitude as they should, or, alternatively, they thought that I should be able to help them as I helped the horse.

We have to remember that not all local authorities are equally knowledgeable about horses. I remember that in my own constituency there was a considerable fracas because someone was found keeping a cow in his mews. It took a very long time to explain to the resident of a certain locality that a cow really did not differ fundamentally from the beast for which the mews in question had been constructed.

I think, therefore, that the introduction of a veterinary surgeon, to bring some knowledge of animals to help the borough surveyor, in whom the hon. Member for Luton (Mr. Howie) has considerable confidence, and quite rightly, but who is not qualified to advise on these aspects, is right, and I am sure that the House will welcome the Amendment.

11.45 a.m.

The case in favour of this group of Amendments has been very clearly put by hon. Members on both sides of the House, and I am much relieved on this occasion to find my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington, South (Mr. Roots) not inviting us to reject them en bloc. I do not think I need say much in detail about them because the points have already been sufficiently made, but I should perhaps comment on a point of detail on the one which stands in the name of the hon. Member for Luton (Mr. Howie), in page 3, line 26, and which my hon. Friend the Member for Torquay (Mr. F. M. Bennett) urged me to accept.

Its intention is, of course, perfectly clear and desirable, but, as the hon. Member will see, his Amendment is not quite so far reaching as the one immediately before it, in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, South (Sir J. Lucas), which does provide additionally for an officer of another local authority to perform necessary tasks in this context. The sort of case in which it might be necessary would be, for instance, inspecting fire security precautions. Not every local authority having licensing powers would itself be a fire authority. Therefore, it would be natural for it to call on a neighbouring authority to provide a suitable officer for that purpose.

For that kind of reason, which I do not think I need elaborate in detail, I hope that the House would prefer my hon. Friend's Amendment to page 3, line 26, rather than that in the name of the hon. Member for Luton.

In seeking again to persuade the hon. Member for Luton to acquiesce, I will offer him another inducement, which is to congratulate him on his Amendment in Clause 2, page 4, line 7—Amendment No. 12. I think this first appeared on the Paper under his name. It is a necessary consequential Amendment, and I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, South will not grudge it if I congratulate the hon. Member opposite on having been the first to spot the necessity for that consequential Amendment.

As has been made clear in this brief debate there was some controversy in Committee about the points which are covered by these Amendments. I think that the controversy arose not through any fundamental and irresoluble cleavage of opinion but only because the Amendments appeared on the Paper in Committee as starred Amendments with less than 24 hours' notice to consider them. We have now had an opportunity of going into the pros and cons of this matter with all the interests concerned.

To summarise very briefly what was at issue, it was this. The local authority associations wished to have discretion to authorise inspections by their own officers as well as by veterinarians, and this was clearly reasonable in the case of some of the criteria laid down in this Clause for the granting of a licence, but on the other hand the British Horse Society and other sponsors of the Bill were opposed to the introduction into the Bill of any possibility that the proprietor of a riding establishment should be liable to have his licence revoked following an inspection by a local authority officer alone without any inspection also being carried out by a veterinary expert.

The conditions under which the licence is granted are obviously to be primarily concerned with the health and well-being of the horses. It therefore seemed reasonable to us to accept that there should be no prosecution for alleged non-compliance with these conditions and no withdrawal of a licence unless there had been an inspection by a veterinarian as well as by a local authority officer. This is the effect of the proposed group of Amendments. In particular, the last point which I have just made is covered by Amendment No. 15.

The group of Amendments which is now before us represents a compromise between the views of the local authorities and the sponsors of the Bill and those who advised them in its preparation. I feel sure that the House will regard this as an acceptable compromise, on which I need not dwell further except to explain why the effect of the compromise made it necessary, rather unusually, for the Government to move a Money Resolution, which passed through all its stages on Wednesday and Thursday nights of this week.

The Bill as introduced enabled local authorities to authorise any veterinary surgeon or veterinary practitioner to inspect premises but did not provide for local authority officers to inspect. In that respect, the Bill differed from the Pet Animals Act and the Animal Boarding Establishments Act. The question whether officers of local authorities should also be brought into the inspection procedure had a bearing upon the amount of expenditure likely to be incurred by local authorities in carrying out their functions. The local authority associations have from the outset maintained that their own officers should inspect those aspects of riding establishments which they are competent to inspect. The compromise solution which has been worked out amends the Bill to enable both types of inspection to be carried out, with the additional provision that there should be no prosecution or withdrawal of a licence except after a veterinarian's inspection.

Licences have to be issued annually. This necessitates veterinary inspection yearly. The Bill as thus amended will have the effect of requiring inspections by veterinary surgeons or practitioners before any decision is reached on any application for either the grant or the renewal of a licence. This goes rather further than the Bill as originally introduced. The consequence is that a rather heavier expenditure will fall upon local authorities than they would have incurred had the Bill passed unamended as it was first presented.

The extra expenditure is not likely to be formidable. I am told that on present estimates, it is unlikely to exceed £15,000 a year over the whole country. That would involve an increase in the amount payable in the form of rate deficiency grants and Exchequer equalisation grants of up to about £2,200. It is to cover this additional Exchequer expenditure that the Money Resolution had to be moved last night. The House will, I think, agree that this is not a formidable addition to the burdens of the taxpayer. Since that is the only financial consequence of this group of Amendments, which are otherwise acceptable, I hope that the House may approve them.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause 2—(Inspection Of Riding Establishments)

Amendments made: In page 3, line 26, leave out from "any" to "where" in line 28 and insert:

"such person as the following, namely, an officer of theirs, an officer of any other local authority, a veterinary surgeon and a veterinary practitioner, to inspect any such premises in their area as the following, that is to say,—
(a) any premises".

In page 29, leave out "or".

In line 30, after "( b)", insert "any premises".

In line 32, leave out "or" and insert "and".

In line 33, after "( c)", insert "any premises".

In line 33, at end insert "under section 1 of this Act".

In line 38, at end insert:

"for the purpose (except in the case of any such premises as are mentioned in paragraph (a) above) of making a report to the local authority for the purposes of section 1(3) of this Act or for the purpose of ascertaining whether an offence has been or is being committed against this Act".

In line 39, leave out subsection (3).

In page 4, line 1, leave out from "authority" to "from" in line 2 and insert:

"shall not authorise a veterinary surgeon or veterinary practitioner to inspect any premises under this section except one chosen by them".

In line 7, leave out from "above" to "shall" in line 8.—[ Sir J. Lucas.]

Clause 3—(Offences)

I beg to move, in page 4, line 20, at the end, to insert, "to the rider".

The Amendment concerns a matter about which the National Farmers' Union has been a little worried. It was thought that if a pony bolted, ran out into a street and hurt itself, an offence would be committed. The intention, however, is that an offence would be caused only in the case of defective harness which is visibly defective. One knows quite well that during a race the saddle might slip. Accidents like this are practically unavoidable. If, however, the harness or the equipment is defective, our concern is to ensure that the child is protected. This means that the owner of the horse or pony must keep the harness in good order. If it is merely tied up with string and an accident occurs, the owner must take the consequences.

Perhaps I might briefly add to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, South (Sir J. Lucas) that it seems desirable to clarify the point that the accident envisaged is an accident to the rider. I am sure that this will give comfort and reassurance to the hon. Member for Luton (Mr. Howie) and be acceptable to the House.

This is a small but important matter. It is extremely easy to saddle a horse and not be able to see the defective saddlery until an accident occurs. The Amendment meets the point made by the National Farmers' Union, and I hope that the House will accept it.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause 5—(Power Of Local Authorities To Prosecution)

Amendments made: In page 5, line 16, after "may", insert:

"subject to the provisions of this section,".

In line 18, at end insert:

(2) In England and Wales no proceedings for an offence under section 1(8) of this Act in respect of a contravention of or failure to comply with a condition subject to which a licence is granted in accordance with the provisions of this Act shall be instituted except by a local authority, and a local authority shall not institute any such proceedings except after receiving and considering a report by a veterinary surgeon or veterinary practitioner authorised by them to carry out inspections under section 2 of this Act being a report which in their opinion indicates that such an offence has been committed.—[Sir J. Lucas.]

Clause 6—(Interpretation)

Amendment made: In page 5, line 45, leave out "last".—[ Sir J. Lucas.]

I beg to move, in page 6, line 10, leave out "or a London borough" and insert:

"the council of a London borough or the Common Council of the City of London".

The Amendment is put forward because the City Remembrancer of the City of London was anxious that his rights should be protected. He pointed out that it was extremely unlikely that there would be a riding establishment in the City of London, but that just in case there should happen to be one he would like to have the power to operate.

Amendment agreed to.

12.3 p.m.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

I should like to take this opportunity, particularly as we did not have a Second Reading debate on the Bill, of congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, South (Sir J. Lucas) on introducing the Bill and using his place in the Ballot so wisely. I think that all of us in the House know the strong attachment of my hon. Friend to hounds and particularly to his terriers. All of us who are interested in dogs appreciate what he has done for the breed of Sealyhams.

My hon. Friend has introduced an important and major Measure for horses. I could not help recalling the famous sporting lecture by Mr. Jorrocks in which he reminded everybody that:

"The 'oss loves the 'hound, and I loves both."

This is an appropriate quotation for my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, South.

The Bill which my hon. Friend has successfully got through the House was promoted, or the groundwork was done, by the British Horse Society, the Horses and Ponies Protection Association, the International League for the Protection of Horses, the Ponies of Great Britain, the Association of British Riding Schools and the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. My hon. Friend has succeeded in banding all this group of people together. The remarkable thing about the Bill is that all the people who are interested in horses have voluntarily agreed to put upon the Statute Book a Bill which controls their activities.

It may be of interest to the House to know of the large number of people who are now interested in riding and who derive recreation from horses. In 1939, there were only 7,000 members of the Pony Club, whereas the latest membership figures, for 1963, give a total of 30,000 members. There are about 2,000 riding establishments and about 20,000 animals, and we estimate that there are about 100,000 people who every week take some form of exercise and recreation on horses.

The House is probably aware that a survey was carried out by various people on existing riding establishments. This survey had no statutory authority, and it was carried out mostly by Colonel Boultbee who gave a great deal of time to carrying out a voluntary survey of these 2,000 riding establishments. The result of that survey, which was published by the Horses and Ponies Protection Association, was shattering. Of all the riding establishments visited, those which were conducted properly and kept up to a reasonably high standard amounted to only 30 per cent. Those which came into grade 2, which could be said to have a reasonable standard of horse management and reasonable facilities for instruction, amounted to 40 per cent. Those in grade 3—and this is the point at which the Bill is aimed—amounted to 30 per cent.; these were establishments in which the horses were neglected and kept in a poor condition. If we remember that there are 20,000 horses in riding establishments, it means that 7,000 horses in England and Wales today are kept in poor and neglected condition. This is what the Bill aims to put right.

The House may well ask why the 1939 Act did not achieve this objective. Why, after the passage of that Act, are there still 7,000 neglected horses and many bad riding establishments? The trouble is that the 1939 Act was purely permissive and did not compel local authorities to take action. There was no licensing. Nobody knew where the riding establishments were; it was impossible for the police to inspect them or for anyone else to inspect them because they had no knowledge of their existence. That is why the licensing and registration in this Bill are so important. The hon. Member for Luton (Mr. Howie) spoke of local authorities operating this Act. One-third of the local authorities did not even bother to operate the 1939 Act; they took no notice of it at all and never carried out any inspections.

The House may well ask what will be the immediate effect of this Bill. I hope that, as opposed to the failure of the 1939 Act, the immediate effect of this Bill will be to deal with the kind of case which has been brought forward and which the R.S.P.C.A. feels, quite rightly, that it has no power to deal with under the last Act and under the Cruelty to Animals Act. I should like to quote a case brought forward by the Horses and Ponies Protection Association only the other day. It is of a riding school in North Wales—some very indifferent stables and a few bare stale fields. The person concerned has quite a number of horses and ponies. They are hired out to holiday people and galloped up and down the shore all day. In between rides they are tied to a rail with tack still on and no water or food, in an open field, with no shelter from sun or wind. Some look very poor in condition and all look tired and overworked. There is no one qualified to teach and no knowledge behind the place. The man has been there many years. One horse dropped dead in the road from starvation and overwork. But nobody has been able to do anything about this case.

This was the sort of case which was not caught before but which will be caught by the Bill, and that is one reason why I welcome the Bill. But I hope that there is no feeling among hon. Members that it is purely designed to catch the keeper of a bad riding establishment. That is not the real purpose. We all regret such cases, and we hope that as a result of the Bill the problem will be dealt with, but the real purpose of the Bill is educational and to enforce the proper management of horses and riding establishments, and to give a little teeth and bite to the law. The very fact of putting the Bill on the Statute Book will mean that people who intend to keep riding establishments will have to learn about the proper management of horses.

We have to face the fact—it is very sad—that no longer have we any cavalry regiments and no longer have we any proper yeomanry camps. Up to the war the standard of horse management taught by the British Army was very important in this country. It meant that many people who had an interest in horses went to yeomanry camps or joined the Army and at some point had proper instruction in how to look after and manage their horses. That is no longer the case. We are taught how to look after tanks but not after horses.

Another important point is that the Bill will reinforce the part played by the Pony Club. The House ought to pay tribute to the enormous amount of elementary instruction which goes on throughout the country, not only in the hunting counties but in every part of the United Kingdom, by the Pony Club, increasing the general interest of people in horses and their knowledge of how to manage them. The manual on horse management and stable management published by the Pony Club is the bible of everyone interested in horses, and if only the standards laid down in that manual are maintained, all horses in this country will be properly looked after. The Bill is based on enforcing the basic requirements laid down in the Pony Club's manual.

It would be wrong if the House did not recognise the enormous growth which there has been in the amount of horse riding and in the demand by people to have horses, to have the use and facilities of the countryside and to see the countryside from a horse. The only point perhaps on which we have fallen down in the Bill is that we have not tackled the problem of a warranty for a horse. When a man sells a horse and says that it is sound in wind and limb, there ought to be some warranty. We ought to have tried to put this in the Bill, and I hope that it will be put in some other Bill shortly, so that we deal with the problem of ensuring that people do not sell unsound horses, and do not doctor up lame horses to sell them to someone who subsequently finds that they are lame and in poor condition and that he is unable to sell them again. It is essential that this problem is tackled.

I conclude by quoting once again Mr. Jorrocks, who himself was instructed 100 years ago by another famous sporting writer, Mr. Johnny Lawrence, who asked

"Who shall counsel a man in the choice of a wife or an 'oss?"

I hope that the House will shortly face up to the fact that it ought to issue proper guarantees and counsel to people on the subject of a warranty certifying whether a horse is sound. With that slight reservation I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, South on having put a very valuable Measure on to the Statute Book.

12.14 p.m.

I, too, should like to join in the congratulations which have been offered to the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South (Sir J. Lucas), whose borough took another great step forward yesterday. I congratulate him on that, too.

I do not know a great deal about horses, but I have no animus against them or against their riders, and I am glad to have been able to take a part in the discussions on the Bill, especially since we have improved it substantially today. I am very pleased about that. I notice that in one of the Clauses which we amended today there were references to equipment and harness not causing suffering to the animal or accident to the rider. It struck me that we left out the important matter of the equipment not causing suffering to the rider, which occasionally happens to people with little experience.

Nevertheless, in spite of this suffering, many people seem to enjoy horseback riding nowadays. The street in which I live is enlivened most Sundays by a cavalcade or convoy, whatever is the proper word, of riders making their way to Hampstead Heath for their morning or afternoon exercise. This means that children run the risk of being run over by motor cars from Monday to Saturday and by horses on Sunday. It has its compensations, because my roses benefit in a small way.

Reference has been made to the weakness in the 1939 Act. It is important to realise that in this kind of Measure the weakness is not so much in legislation as in men. To my mind this is the kind of Act which should not be necessary. In a reasonably civilised country people who make their living out of animals should treat them properly. There would then be no need for legislation to oblige them to do so. But we have to face facts as they are and to realise that people do not always behave towards animals in the way in which they should. Sometimes these men are driven, as the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Kimball) said, to try to obtain the last pound of flesh out of a horse in order to make a profit. This is an evil of private enterprise, and I am glad to join other hon. Members in regulating it. I congratulate the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South on his Bill.

12.17 p.m.

The House welcomes the Bill wholeheartedly—a welcome which can only have been increased by the vigorous and enthusiastic speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Kimball), who clearly has this subject very near his heart and who has expressed the feelings of many of us perhaps better than we could have expressed them ourselves. If, therefore, I add one or two points in support of his remarks, I hope that I shall not be thought presumptuous.

He referred to the importance of ensuring a proper standard in riding establishments. One further point justifies the interference by the law with these establishments, and it is that if we eliminate the bad establishments we indirectly, but in a very important fashion, benefit the good establishments. There are many cases in which people quite bona fide manage to acquire two ponies at low price—or perhaps they are left to them by a relative. Immediately they think that it would be a good thing to set up a riding establishment, although they are quite unqualified to do so. In order to get clients they charge a price which is wholly uneconomic. They last only for a year or two, but they impinge in an important way on those who recognise that they must keep a proper standard. The elimination of the establishments which are well below standard will in itself do an immense amount of good to riding establishments as a whole.

I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will give us an assurance on the next point. Do the Home Office issue, in the way in which the Ministry of Housing and Local Government do, circulars in respect of Acts of Parliament recently passed? If so, I hope that it will be stressed that, particularly in the initial stages, the success of the Act will depend on a reasonable and sensible administration by local authorities. It is essential that common sense is allowed to creep in. May I give an example of what could occur? I refer hon. Members to Clause 1(3,b) in which one of the matters to be considered in determining whether to grant a licence is that

"in the cases of horses maintained at grass there will be maintained for them at all times during which they are so maintained adequate pasture and shelter."

My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough will be the first to concede that if one read that strictly according to the law, a shelter would mean some form of hut.

A tree.

A quite adequate and proper method of keeping horses at grass, even during the winter, is to use equipment known as the New Zealand rug. I will not venture to speculate on the question whether our courts would or would not hold that a New Zealand rug was a shelter. The plain commonsense answer is that it would be ridiculous for a local authority to bring proceedings in such an event. I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will say a word or two emphasising the importance of common sense in the administration of this sort of legislation.

Subject to those remarks, I agree with all that my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough has said. I could not have said it better. I support the Bill.

12.21 p.m.

Usually, problems of animal welfare do not involve party differences in the House, and it is therefore right that I should join my hon. Friend the Member for Luton (Mr. Howie), in association with the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Kimball) and the hon. and learned Member for Kensington, South (Mr. Roots), in paying a very warm tribute to the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South (Sir J. Lucas).

Over the last 18 years the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South and I have been associated in a number of matters of this kind, and it is only right to say that during that period I have developed a quite unbounded admiration—indeed, respect—for the work that he has done in animal welfare. Throughout the time that I have been a Member he has shown an unflagging interest in the welfare of animals. If I have had one disappointment it has been that I have not yet succeeded in persuading him of the need to extend further protection to wild animals in the way that we have done for domestic animals. However, I still live in hope.

This is a good and workmanlike Bill, filling a gap in existing legislation, and it is heartening to know that it has been welcomed by the proprietors of riding establisments. The hon. Member for Gainsborough listed a number of organisations which have sponsored the Bill, but I do not think that the R.S.P.C.A. was among them. It is therefore right for me to say that it joins in the general welcome that has been extended to the Measure.

The Society asked its inspectors for reports on riding establishments in October, and two of the reports submitted are specially relevant. One came from Inspector No. 19 and was dated 12th October. It referred to the case of a girl aged 15 having 14 ponies at her establishment at that time, although she herself was attending school. The inspector commented on her lack of competence in looking after the establishment, and on the fact that she was not able to give it the time that was required. Two days later Inspector No. 135 referred to a riding establishment by saying:

"Condition of animals very poor. Stables awful. Feeding and general management very bad. Animals in the hands of inexperienced people."

These two reports illustrate in very graphic form the real need for amending legislation of this kind.

On behalf of the Opposition, I wish to thank the hon. Member for Portsmouth. South for introducing the Bill, and I also thank the Home Office for the help that it has given in drafting the Amendments.

12.25 p.m.

I join with other hon. Members in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, South (Sir J. Lucas) on his success in getting the Measure to this stage. I hope that it will reach the Statute Book with the support of the whole House.

I am not always ready to accept the need for a further extension of the licensing of human activities, but I am sure that this Measure meets a general need. I was very glad to hear what my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Kimball) had to say. There has been a particular need for this Measure in those parts of the country which are well known to the hon. Member for Rossendale (Mr. Greenwood) and to me, who have the honour to represent constituencies in industrial Lancashire. In the past few years we have had our attention drawn to a number of quite appalling cases of inexperienced people setting themselves up in what have euphemistically been called riding schools but what have been an abuse of the word "schools', in that in no sense have they taught anybody anything except very bad habits and very low standards.

In a typically British fashion, I want to refer to the benefit which the Bill may bestow, first, upon animals and, secondly, upon humans. I am confident that there will be fewer cases of neglect and cruelty as a result of the requirements written into this legislation. That fact will be welcomed by all. I am glad that the hon. Member for Rossendale made the point—it having been inadvertently omitted by my hon. Friend—that the Bill has the support of the R.S.P.C.A.

The benefits which will come to those who are beginning to take an interest in riding ought not to be overlooked. I stress that because in those parts of the country which are ordinarily described as industrial areas there is an even greater need for the amenities provided by riding, which have hitherto been more usually associated with the rural parts of the country. Hitherto these opportunities have been limited in industrial areas, and in a number of cases the provision of more reasonable opportunities for riding have been associated with very unsatisfactory conditions. The fact, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough, that about 30 per cent. of the establishments inspected were very much below standard, gives substance to that observation.

The hon. Member for Luton (Mr. Howie) referred to the development of riding in the area in which he lives. I hope that the time will come when his children may also have the pleasures and benefits of taking part in riding as a recreation and exercise. From now on I hope that he will adopt a more agreeable attitude towards policemen and horses, and that he will invariably

find himself on the side of the law and have no need to regard it with any apprehension—he will, of course, not take my remarks too seriously—since he was apparently very apprehensive in his last contact with police officers and police horses.

I know that other hon. Members wish to express their support for the Bill, and I therefore conclude by congratulating my hon. Friend and saying how much I hope that the Bill will do what is expected of it when it reaches the Statute Book.

12.29 p.m.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, South (Sir J. Lucas) upon introducing a Measure which will greatly benefit the horse world. It is also appropriate to pay tribute to the British Horse Society, which has contributed enormously not only in the detailed work but towards the general principles lying behind the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Kimball) has said that 100,000 people are now taking part in some sort of equitation. In the circumstances there may be good reason to believe that the attitude of the community towards horses may have altered.

Before the war great numbers of horses were used by commercial institutions. We have only to cast our minds back to remember the milk floats, and the number of horses that were used by coal merchants and even by the railways, to realise that a considerable amount of knowledge of horses existed in this country at that time. For instance, if a totter's cart was going along the road and the horse was lame, it would not have gone a couple of hundred yards before someone also used to horses would have drawn the attention of the owner or the police to the fact that the animal was lame.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough has said, the amount of training in horses is now extremely limited. When I was a young officer, there were four horse regiments and 13 yeomanry regiments, which meant that every person who passed through those units was trained to a very high standard, not only in riding, but in the management of horses. People who left those units to become grooms or owners of riding establishments did so with considerable knowledge based on the training of many years, or at least on a great deal of training during camps. In addition to those units, there were also units such as the R.A. and horse transport units where training in the management of horses was given, and horses were also used in industry and commerce.

Not only the present lack of knowledge, but the increase in the desire to take up this form of recreation may have given rise to the low standards which have been mentioned by so many hon. Members. My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough said that the Bill was necessary because the 1939 legislation was permissive. It was not operated by many local authorities. I will not weary the House with details, but I have a list of many local authorities which entirely failed to operate the 1939 Act. Others failed to do anything about it even though they knew that it existed. In one instance there were 13 riding establishments in an area and yet no action was taken to ensure that they were properly run.

We have to consider the benefits of the Bill which will accrue not only to the horses, but to the riders themselves. The hon. Member for Luton (Mr. Howie) spoke about the standard of riding schools throughout the country. I have some examples—he may have some of the same and I hope that I shall not be repetitive if I cite a few. A small farmer on the outskirts of an industrial town had eight horses and ponies of which all, except one of recent acquisition, were in an appalling state of neglect. It is alarming that in the 20th century establishments like that should be allowed to continue without any control. The hon. Member for Rossendale (Mr. Greenwood) spoke of the girl of 15 who was running a school in a field without stables or buildings. The horses were saddled by people with no experience; the bits were ill fitting, with the result that the mouth of a horse was cut almost immediately the rider mounted. About 30 per cent. of the riding schools have been run in a way which can be described only as deplorable.

The Bill closes almost all the present loopholes. The disqualifications suggested in Clause 1 are reasonable and will eliminate those people who have shown themselves to be undesirable persons to run such establishments, even though they may have experience of horses. These are the people who are not the type to look after animals and from whom licences should be withheld.

I am extremely glad that we have had an assurance that the question of the licensing fees will be reconsidered. As my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington, South (Mr. Roots) has said, we have to balance the cost which local authorities and ratepayers should bear against these which the establishment should bear, and at the same time not depart from our general principles.

Clause 1(3) seems to cover every aspect of the quality of premises, including matters such as ventilation. It covers many of the matters which we have in mind, such as ill-fitting saddles which give the horses sore backs. In this respect the rôle of the veterinary officer will be very important, because he will be the person qualified to see that the activities of the establishment are carried out in a proper manner.

The establishments will be inspected before a licence is granted and afterwards and will thus cover the three categories of those who wish to have a licence, those who should have a licence, and those who are licensed. This, combined with the compulsory provisions, will close many of the loopholes of the 1939 Act. Many hon. Members were worried in Committee about such things as over-riding and ill-fitting saddlery. I am satisfied that the sort of over-riding which we have known so frequently with ignorant owners of riding stables, where the horses are sent out again and again until they are hardly able to stand, will be covered.

It is only right and proper that the Bill should contain provisions for the right of appeal of a person who is refused a licence. No one will take exception to that. Nor will there be objection to the exceptions in Clause 6.

I agree with what my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington, South has said about Clause 7. In the transitional stage, there will be difficulties for people who are running riding establishments in a way which is not ideal, but they must be given time to put their own houses in order. We cannot just rush in like a bull in a china shop. I hope that the authorities who have to administer the Bill will do so reasonably and in the course of their inspections will offer advice on how establishments ought to be run. If that is the attitude, it will be of great benefit to the riding establishments.

It is too little appreciated that the costs of maintaining horses are very high and that a riding establishment which exists for one year against cutthroat competition is quite uneconomic. If the horses are to be properly trained and so on and if the riders are to be properly trained, money will have to be spent not only on fodder and so on, but on finding experienced people to look after the horses.

I hope that we shall see a very considerable increase in the standards which exist in riding establishments. I feel that our whole attitude towards horse riding is changing. Many people are finding that this is not perhaps what was regarded as a sport restricted to rather rich people. It is now becoming a sport which is enjoyed by an enormous number of people. Therefore, as time goes on, particularly in the municipal areas, I think that we shall find an increase in the number of people who want to hire out horses and that the number of establishments will steadily increase. Because many of these establishments will be on the outskirts of urban areas, where perhaps knowledge of animals is not as great as it is in country districts, it is particularly important that we should have this Bill, so that when new establishments are set up the circumstances and conditions are satisfactory for the animals.

By this Bill we are doing a service to the community. Many people go to a riding establishment and are put on a horse, without any sort of tuition, and then they wonder why horses bolt. There should be very much more careful supervision. I cannot over-emphasise the importance of this in connection with those establishments run in the vicinity of municipal areas. It is all very well to have a horse run away with one on the hunting field, but it is another thing when one is run away with somewhere near the M1. I hope that all those concerned with the horse world will appreciate what my hon. Friend has done in this Bill and will combine in ensuring that the horses are properly turned out, trained, fit, and properly looked after.

In conclude by congratulating my hon. Friend and also those Members opposite who were on the Committee for their co-operation, and I hope that the Bill will be on the Statute Book at an early date.

12.43 p.m.

I should like to say a word or two of thanks. First, I should like to thank the Minister very much. I have been in the House for 24 years and I have never drawn a horse before in the ballot stakes. I am very grateful to Colonel Ansell of the British Horse Society, who rang me up as soon as he knew and asked me to have a shot at this Bill.

I want particularly to thank the Minister because, as I was green even after all those years, he was able to put me right a number of times. I am sorry that I had to give him so much trouble. I should also like to thank all the Members of the Committee on both sides, and my hon. Friends who have spoken today.

The hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Kimball) gave me a tremendous puff about my little dogs, but he rather implied that I had never been on a horse. As a matter of fact, I was a cavalry cadet at Sandhurst before he was born, and I went out as the galloper to the 22nd Brigade in 1914. I know that Indians sometimes say they are "Failed B.A.", but I can say that I am a failed steeplechaser. I should like to thank everyone very much, and, of course, the backroom boys of the societies, who all helped in every way they could.

12.45 p.m.

It is a little paradoxical that we have spent a good deal longer on Report and Third Reading of this Bill than we did on the Second Reading, and in Committee. Because the Bill went through Second Reading without debate, I did not have an opportunity to declare my own personal interest, but I feel that I should now put on the record that 20 years ago I not only ran a riding establishment but had under my control the only horse cavalry unit in the Middle East Command. The squadron was commanded by an American, manned by Greeks, mounted on horses captured from the Italians.

I think that we conformed to all the standards laid down in this Bill, and I would not have felt any anxiety from the local authorities. Personally, I preferred to ride on mule rather than horseback. Perhaps the hon. Member for Luton (Mr. Howie) might take a tip from me that for physiological reasons, which I shall not elaborate, a mule is much safer than a horse because it is less likely to fall over a precipice.

There is another reason why I should like to say a brief word on this Bill. It will make quite a serious difference to the livelihood of many people, and in a way which I hope, like other Members, will be wholly beneficial. The 1939 Act already gives local authorities fairly wide powers in relation to riding establishments, but there is, I know, a feeling which has been voiced by many hon. Members that the 1939 Act has not proved effective for its purpose.

This Bill has been inspired by a recent report of, among other things, the results of an extensive survey of riding establishments conducted by a horse expert. I am naturally not in a position, since this was a private enterprise, either to confirm or to refute the allegations which were made in that report, but I can say that I have no reason whatever to doubt its accuracy. I agree very much with the hon. Member for Luton that it ought to be unnecessary to pass this kind of of legislation, but from what we have heard today from, among others, the hon. Member for Rossendale (Mr. Greenwood) quoting the R.S.P.C.A., the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Kimball) and, indeed, from almost every hon. Member who has spoken, it does not seem that one can look at the situation with quiescence.

There are no statistics available to me of the number of prosecutions that have been brought under the 1939 Act, but I have no knowledge of any and it seems unlikely that there have been many convictions, if, indeed, any, under that Act. One of two conclusions might be drawn from those facts: either the standard maintained by riding establishments is so satisfactory that no prosecutions were necessary—and I have very little doubt, in view of what we have heard in the House today, that in respect at any rate of a proportion of riding schools one cannot accept that conclusion—or, for one reason or another, the 1939 Act has proved to be ineffective. That, of course, is the reason the present Bill has been put before the House.

The provisions of the Bill closely follow the provisions of the Pet Animals Act, 1951, and the Animal Boarding Establishments Act, 1963. The former has not given rise to any difficulties of administration, and there is equally no reason to believe that the latter which has only just come into operation, or this Bill, if it becomes law, will not work smoothly and effectively; so to that extent I think we can be optimistic.

The House will, however, appreciate that the Bill, if it is passed, will mean that riding establishment proprietors will be placed under fairly onerous obligations instead of being free to continue in business subject only to the general law and to occasional inspection at the discretion of the local authority. They will not be able to do so in future except by permission of the local authority, and only under conditions the fulfilment of which may involve a great deal of trouble and expense to the licence holder.

My hon. Friend the Member for Clapham (Dr. Alan Glyn) mentioned the expense of maintaining a riding establishment. This expense is likely to be increased in many cases as a result of the Bill, but I hope that all the points to which he referred both in Committee and today will be met by the Bill. As my hon. Friend knows, I am not in a position to give an assurance about interpretations which a court may place on legislation, but, so far as I can read the Bill, I think that all the anxieties which have been expressed by my hon. Friend and by other hon. Members will be met by it.

This Measure entails a necessary loss of freedom on the part of those operating such establishments, but one must weigh this loss against the fact that unsatisfactory conditions undoubtedly exist in a number of the less reputable riding establishments. This, I think, may well lead the House to the conclusion that the restrictions which the Bill will place on proprietors are justified to ensure that horses are humanely cared for.

As has been pointed out, it is important to bear in mind that this legislation has been supported, if not initiated, by the main organisations of users and breeders of horses in this country. It is to that extent, therefore, to be regarded as a Measure of self-discipline, rather than as a Measure which is being imposed on an unwilling body of proprietors.

If the House decides—and I have no doubt that it will—to give this Measure a Third Reading, I shall certainly consider at a later stage, after it has been through another place, the points made by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington, South (Mr. Roots) about the possibility of giving advice to local authorities, and a similar point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham about the transitional provisions in Clause 7.

I also gladly undertake that the Government will continue to co-operate in the further examination to which the Bill will be subjected in another place, although, following the careful and thorough-going amendment which it has undergone both in Committee and today, it appears to be already an effective and workable Bill.

All that remains for me to do is to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, South (Sir J. Lucas) on his initiative in bringing the Bill before the House, and to wish him and the sponsors of it luck in the further stages.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

Universities And College Estates Bill

Not amended (in the Standing Committee), considered; read the Third time and passed.

Pharmacy Bill

Not amended (in the Standing Committee), considered; read the Third time and passed.

Protection Of Animals (Anaesthetics Bill) Lords

Considered in Committee.

[Sir ROBERT GRIMSTON in the Chair]

Clause 1—(Enlargement Of Classes Of Operations In Which Anaesthetics Must Be Used)

Question proposed, That the Clause stand part of the Bill.

12.55 p.m.

This Clause makes certain vital alterations to the intention of the Act bearing the same title, which was steered through this House in 1954 by the then Member for Hemel Hempstead, Viscountess Davidson. Its intention is to reduce still further the suffering to animals caused by castration or docking.

Subsection (1) repeals paragraph 5 of the First Schedule to the 1954 Act. It requires that forthwith cats and dogs shall be castrated only under anaesthetic, whereas the 1954 Act permitted the castration of any male dog before it had reached the age of three months, or of any male cat before it had reached the age of six months. This Amendment to the original Act has been strongly supported by the veterinary profession, on the advice of an ad hoc committee of the British Veterinary Association which was set up to look into this and other matters contained in the 1954 Act.

Subsection (3) has the effect of removing from the First Schedule to the 1954 Act the reference to horses, asses, and mules, and makes unlawful the castration of those animals at any stage except under an anaesthetic. The complete abolition was resisted during the consideration of the 1954 Bill, because it was clear that, in so far as the operation might involve the throwing of a horse, a valuable racing animal might be permanently damaged in consequence. But since then the development of new anaesthetics and tranquillisers make it no longer necessary to employ the physical force which was necessary in the past in castrating some animals.

It is now possible to carry out the operation without any danger to the welfare of the animal, and without any pain to it. The operation can now be carried out completely safely under an anaesthetic. This is also the advice of the British Veterinary Association, and it endorses this alteration.

The subsection also reduces the age above which a bull or a male sheep may not be castrated without an anaesthetic. Under the 1954 Act this was permitted up to the age of 12 months, but it has now been reduced to three months. The British Veterinary Association pressed strongly that it should be reduced to two months, but the difficulties which would be experienced by some hill farmers in collecting animals was taken into consideration, as was also the possibility that bringing in free-ranging lambs might involve the loss of their mothers, and a compromise of three months was reached. The veterinary profession made the point very strongly that animals become progressively sensitive as they grow older, but I think that the House will agree that it is a great improvement to have reduced the time during which an animal may be castrated without an anaesthetic from 12 months to three months.

Agricultural interests also pointed out that calves of hill-suckled herds are not generally castrated until between four or six months and that it would encourage contravention if the age above which anaesthetics must be used for their castration was set as low as six months, when an extra collection of the cattle would clearly be necessary. It would apply only if it were wished to castrate without the use of an anaesthetic. It might be done on the second collection. In view of the circumstances the R.S.P.C.A., the Council of the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the veterinary profession, agreed with representatives of the farmers that the age above which bulls and male sheep may not be castrated with an anaesthetic should be set at three months.

Subsection (3) will reduce to two months the age at which goats and pigs may be castrated without an anaesthetic. Under the 1954 Act and the period was three months in respect of goats and seven months for pigs, so that there is some gain in respect of goats, and certainly the reduction of the castration period without anaesthetic for pigs from seven months to two months is a considerable improvement. This is in line with the repre- sentations of the British Veterinary Association. In 1954 when the suggestions were resisted it was held that it was difficult to expect farmers in some of the remote areas in Scotland and Wales, and in certain areas in England, to call in a veterinary surgeon to castrate pigs below the age of five or six months. The evidence suggested that there was a general movement towards carrying out this operation on pigs much earlier than heretofore, and that two months would not bring any difficulties or problems for the pig rearing industry generally.

Subsection (3) also makes it unlawful to castrate by use of a rubber ring, or other device to restrict the flow of blood to the scrotum, if it is applied later than the first week of the animal's life unless it is anaesthetised during the whole time it is carrying the ring. This is clearly impracticable, in view of the fact that this castration method takes up to three weeks.

There were some objections from farmers who stated that in respect of lambs of this age it would be extremely difficult to apply the ring, but that is not admitted by the veterinary profession. In view of the difficulty maintained by the farmers and because there are of course other methods available for the castration of lambs without anaesthetic up to the age of three months, this, restriction on the use of a rubber ring has the full backing of the veterinary profession and the animal welfare societies. I repeat that it can cause considerable suffering to the animal to which it is applied.

Subsection (4) refers to paragraphs 7 and 8 of the Schedule to the 1954 Act and exempts minor operations from the general requirements concerning an anaesthetic. This subsection lists operations which may never be counted as minor operations and accordingly an anaesthetic would always have to be used when they are performed. Subsection (4,b) clarifies the position with regard to the dehorning of cattle, making it a surgical operation. This is customarily performed by a member of the veterinary profession. Its performance without an anaesthetic would probably constitute an offence at the present time, but this paragraph will leave no doubt that it is an offence when the Bill becomes law.

Subsection (4,c) makes it unlawful to disbud calves without an anaesthetic except by chemical cautery again in the first week of life. It is unlawful to use any other method without anaesthetic. This again is in accord with veterinary opinion. Subsection (4,d) deals with the docking of lambs' tails by the use of a rubber ring or other device which restricts the flow of blood to the tail. The arguments for its restriction are the same as those used for its restriction in the case of castration. Most of the suggestions contained in this Clause conform with the proposals made by the ad hoc committee of the British Veterinary Association. They certainly conform with views which have been expressed by animal welfare societies. I am thankful to say that, in general, the farming industry is in favour of the implementation of the Bill.

We must all be grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham (Mr. Burden) for having introduced this Bill so lucidly. I rise merely to support what it is that we are endeavouring to achieve by the Bill. Those of us who concern ourselves with the question of cruelty to animals are often asked why we do not appear to devote so much time to the problem of cruelty to children. The inference is not a true one. The House spends a great deal of time on that problem. I spent a morning this week and one last week in a Standing Committee dealing with a Measure relating to adoptions. Our concern about cruelty to children is not so much because children are human, as because they are helpless, and animals are even more helpless.

I am often asked what constitutes cruelty and whether the causing of pain under any circumstances is cruel. The ethical definition must be that cruelty consists of causing unnecessary pain. I do not think that anyone would deny that human beings have a right in many instances to cause suffering for a whole variety of reasons when it is justified by an absolute and overriding necessity. The criterion in the case of animals must always be whether the pain to be inflicted is necessary or whether it might be avoided. Human beings have a perfect right to take animals for food and to keep down vermin. Farmers have a perfect right to prevent the destruction of crops and other human food. The overriding question is whether the pain and suffering caused will be caused necessarily or unnecessarily.

The original Act of 1954, which this Bill amends, was a great advance. It was an excellent Act, but there has been considerable disquiet in recent years about its adequacy, and, in fact, whether or not it ought to be amended. I believe that there is now widespread opinion not only in the animal welfare societies but among veterinary surgeons as well that the Act is very much overdue for amendment, and I understand that my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and those who are sponsoring the Bill have the support of the veterinary profession in everything that they are doing. I think it adds great weight to what they are doing that they should have the support of the veterinary profession as well as that of the animal welfare societies.

The first decided weakness in the 1954 Act is that its provisions do not apply in cases of certain operations mentioned in the First Schedule to the Act:

"The castration of any male dog before it has reached the age of three months or any male cat before it has reached the age of six months."

In other words, the Act of 1954 did not go far enough.

As I understand it, the intention of the Bill is to restrict the exceptions—I think that my hon. Friend said that—in the First Schedule and so to enlarge the classes of operations in which an anaesthetic must be used. I would say that that principle is right unless anyone can show to the contrary that such a provision would not be practicable or workable. I have heard no suggestion from anybody that this is the case, and, therefore, I think that we ought to accept the Bill.

I gather that the effect of the Bill would be to repeal references to dogs, cats, asses and mules altogether, in which case no castration of any male dog, cat, ass or mule could be performed after the passing of the Bill without the use of an anaesthetic. If that is so, I think it is entirely admirable and that we ought to support it.

I gather that what the Bill does then is to substitute for the provisions in the First Schedule of the 1954 Act, as far as they affect bulls, sheep, goats and pigs, the lower ages that are set out in the Bill, that is, three months, three months, two months and two months. I believe that these provisions are right. I understand, too, that even this has the backing of the veterinary profession. In that case, unless anyone can produce any very potent argument against it, I think, again, that it is entirely admirable.

I believe that a good deal of research has gone on into the time at which, for example, a bull comes to maturity. I understand that nowadays it is generally admitted by everyone that 12 months is definitely too old in the case of a bull. The British Veterinary Association has pointed out that the development of a calf and genetilia is rapid—between the ages of 3 and 6 months—and many reach the age of puberty in five or six months. Consequently, any Schedule that lays down that castration can be performed without anaesthetic on what would be a fully adult animal during the second six months after puberty is obviously one which would result in inflicting great and unnecessary pain and suffering on the animal. Therefore, I think that the provisions of the Bill are right.

The British Veterinary Association has endorsed entirely the intention to lower the age to three months in the other cases. Indeed, I understand that it would have preferred two months but that it has agreed to three months on general grounds of practicability—to use its own phrase "to fulfil what is good law, namely, workability." I think that the age limits suggested in the Bill are fair. They are realistic, workable, sensible and humane and should be imposed. A glaring weakness which is apparent even to me in the 1954 Act is the inclusion in the First Schedule of the words, "any minor operation". I do not know how at the time of the passing of the Act I never noticed that weakness, but I imagine that other hon. Members who were more alert in the matter might have done. Perhaps I was not paying the attention that I ought to have been paying to the Measure. It really seems to me extraordinary that we should have included a provision quite so vague as this one.

1.15 p.m.

We have only to read the two subsections in the First Schedule to the original Act to see how vague they are. Subsection (7) says:

"Any minor operation performed by a veterinary surgeon or veterinary practitioner, being an operation which, by reason of its quickness or painlessness, is customarily so performed without the use of an anaesthetic."

Could anything be more vague or unspecific than that? Subsection (8) reads that without anaesthetic can be performed

"Any minor operation, whether performed by a veterinary surgeon or veterinary practitioner or by some other person, being an operation which is not customarily performed only by such a surgeon or practitioner."

Again, we could not have anything quite so loosely worded as that. I cannot imagine how any lawyer permitted it.

Where a prosecution is involved for infringement of the Act, I should have thought it quite possible for any one witness or any one magistrate to regard an operation as painless for the purpose of this subsection and for others not to so regard it. One can see the possibility of confusion there. The door was obviously left wide open for all kinds of indiscriminate practices and it is right, as I understand what the Bill proposes to do, to tighten the matter up. As I understand it, the main purpose of the Bill is to remove these doubts and ambiguities and to prevent under cover of the words "any minor operation", the castration of male animals without anaesthetic, with the exceptions mentioned.

The term "any minor operation", that is, an operation not requiring anaesthesia, should not apply, and very rightly so. The Bill is quite specific about the dehorning of cattle, the disbudding of calves, except by proper cauterisation, and the docking of lambs by the loathsome method of the rubber ring except within the first week of life. Members of the farming community are as human a body of people as the rest of the community, but in their profession, as in others, there are exceptions. This Bill, rightly, will deal with them. I believe that it will prevent a good deal of unnecessary suffering.

Quite properly and constitutionally, the Bill does not apply to Northern Ireland, but it may be of interest to the House to know that our legislation there marches with the 1954 Act—it is, in fact, almost precisely the same as that Measure—and I profoundly hope that if this very proper amendment to the law is made, the Northern Ireland Government and Parliament will see fit to follow suit.

It is quite clear from what we have so far heard that some alteration in the 1954 Act is not only desirable but necessary. Public opinion now quite rightly demands that these processes that have been going on from time immemorial should not cause any unnecessary suffering to the animal. The object of the Bill is to restrict the number and type of operations that may be performed without anaesthetics on animals. To people outside it will probably come rather as a shock that animals can be operated on without anaesthetics, but there are anomalies and loopholes in the 1954 Act, and Clause 1 seeks to close some of the more obvious and undesirable ones.

The Explanatory Memorandum states

"By virtue of section 1 of the Protection of Animals (Anaesthetics) Act 1954 if any operation which involves interference with the sensitive tissues or the bone structure of an animal is performed without the use of an anaesthetic so administered as to prevent any pain during the operation, it is to be deemed for the purposes of the Protection of Animals Act 1911, and the Protection of Animals (Scotland) Act 1912, to be performed without due care and humanity, thus rendering the person performing it guilty of an offence of cruelty, and liable on summary conviction to penalties."

Certain excepted operations are mentioned in Schedule 1 of the 1954 Act. We are therefore faced with a group or category of operations which, if this Bill is not passed, can still be performed without an anaesthetic. That is entirely inhuman and quite out of touch with modern thought about cruelty to animals.

The operations that are at present excepted include the castration of dogs and cats before they reach the age of three months and six months, respectively, and the following farm animals: horse, 12 months; ass or mule, 12 months; bull, 12 months; sheep, 12 months; goat, 3 months, and pig, 7 months. As my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Down, South (Captain Orr) has said, people now realise that animals suffer at a very much earlier age than was originally thought.

It might not at first be thought that the use of the rubber ring would cause a great deal of pain and suffering, but this is not so. Theoretically, by painlessly restricting the blood supply one can get rid of a particular tumour, but the pain resulting from restriction of blood by the rubber ring is immense. One is artificially and slowly killing a very tender tissue in what can be an extremely painful manner. That is a most undesirable form of castration, and I am glad that this Bill makes it an offence.

Subsection (4) of Clause 1 makes crystal clear, what is ambiguous in the Act, that the castration of male animals, the dehorning of cattle, the disbudding of calves and the docking of lambs' tails in the way described cannot be regarded as minor operations. One might say that any of those operations in the human would be regarded as quite major.

Subsection (5) extends the definition of "cattle" to include bulls, cows, bullocks, heifers, calves, steers or oxen. In this way we increase the number of offences, and make a very useful addition to the Act by closing the door to some of the more undesirable practices.

1.30 p.m.

I hope that many of the farming and veterinary community will welcome the change as being a step in the right direction in the performance of necessary operations for good farming and the carrying on of normal husbandry. At the same time, we must emphasise that although they must be carried out it is up to those concerned to ensure that they are carried out in the most humane and reasonable way. As my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Down, South said, we have to strike a reasonable balance. Even if an anaesthetic is used there is a certain amount of pain after the operation, but the matters mentioned in Clause 1 are necessary. It is our duty to ensure that these operations are carried out humanely and with the smallest amount of suffering that is "animally" possible. I hope that the Committee and the House will receive with appropriate acclamation a Bill the substance of which is contained in this Clause.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food

(Mr. James Scott-Hopkins)

It might be to the convenience of the Committee if I intervened now, since, as my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham (Dr. Glyn) has mentioned, this Clause contains the operative part of the Bill. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham (Mr. Burden) on bringing the Bill forward from another place and on expounding the Clause so ably and clearly. I am certain that the Clause will command the general support of the Committee.

As the Committee knows very well, we are a nation of animal lovers and so we all want to enlarge the protection which we and the law can give to the animals under our care. The 1954 Act gave a great deal of protection to animals, but there have been changes since then, and not only in techniques but also in the outlook on cruelty generally. I am sure that the Committee welcomes this change, because it shows that as a nation we are advancing probably quicker than most other civilised people.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and other hon. Members pointed out, the 1954 Act needs strengthening and bringing up to date in some respects. This is the purpose of the Bill. A great deal of study of the existing Act has been undertaken, particularly by a committee of the British Veterinary Association. I am also glad to agree with my hon. Friend that the provisions of the Bill are supported by the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons and by the societies for animal welfare and that full consultations have also taken place with farming interests.

I was glad that my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Down, South mentioned that farmers in general want to improve methods of humane treatment of animals. I re-emphasise that no farmer wants to inflict unnecessary cruelty. The aim of farmers is to keep their stock in the best possible condition so that they will thrive to the best advantage of the animals and of course of the farmer. Any unnecessary cruelty caused to animals can do nothing but stop this process. It is the last thing that the farming community wants, because, dialing daily with animals, farmers have an extremely humane outlook towards those which are in their care.

It has been pointed out that the Amendment to the 1954 Act made by Clause 1(2) of the Bill means that the castration of dogs and cats can be carried out only under an anaesthetic. Another point which has been mentioned in the debate is the anxiety which some people may have about what might happen to a young horse whilst being anaesthetised. It was pointed out that great advances have been made and that as a result of the development of tranquillisers and anaesthetics it may no longer be necessary to use physical methods of restriction and that the whole operation can now he carried out in complete safety. I have castrated many young pigs in my time. It is a simple operation within the period of the first two months laid down in the Clause. If it is done after the two months it is right that an anaesthetic should be administered.

Another point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham in his excellent speech concerned hill farmers and their anxieties about the castration of lambs and the use of rings. He rightly pointed out that rubber rings should not be used beyond the age limit laid down in this amending Clause, but if for some reason it is difficult for hill farmers to do this they have still open to them other methods of castration up to three months after the birth of the lamb. Therefore I do not think that the Clause imposes an insuperable burden on hill farmers.

As I have said, this is the main Clause of the Bill. I welcome it and I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham has brought it forward. I emphasise again that the British Veterinary Association supports it. It feels extremely strongly about the use of rubber rings for castration and about the other matters which are the subjects of provisions in the Clause. I hope that the Committee will agree that this is a useful Bill in amending the 1954 Act. I hope that the Committee will allow the Clause a fair wind now and that later, on Third Reading, the House will also give it its blessing.

I was surprised to find that the first Act was passed as recently as 1954 and that we now have an amending Bill. We must pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham (Mr. Burden) for having brought the Bill forward from another place. It is the experience throughout the world that farmers want to do everything that is essential for the safety of their animals and to ensure that they are caused the least possible amount of suffering.

My hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary indicated that the Bill has the support of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons and of the farming community. A Bill which can receive such massive support outside will certainly receive the full approval of this House. People with vast experience of what pain is and how it can be prevented are combining with the practical farmer in the field in support of the Bill.

Will there be a subsidy for farmers for anaesthetics? I am not in a position to quantify, but presumably a farmer will have to buy in large quantities. I should also like some information about what has been happening abroad. Is American legislation, for example, a little more robust than ours, or do we lead the world?

We lead the world.

My hon. Friend has made a helpful interjection. Perhaps he will clarify. If we do lead the world then that is a great advance. I know that Australia and New Zealand have very high standards.

It is unfortunate that my hon. Friend was not present two weeks ago when we discussed the danger of the extinction of certain rare animals. My right hon. Friend the Minister of State for Education and Science has indicated that he will introduce a Bill to restrict considerably the importation of certain of the world's wild animals and it is his intention to get in touch with Parliaments overseas and animal welfare organisations in order to try and stop the point of sale for these wild animals, many of which are caught in conditions of extreme cruelty and are in great danger of extinction. That is an illustration of the advanced thinking about animal welfare in this country.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for what he has said. The force of this Bill, then, will provide a precedent that other countries can follow. The value of insisting on certain standards is that others might follow.

Has medicine evaluated what degree of pain can be expected at any particular moment of this process? I know that figures have been given—12 months for sheep, three months for goats, seven months for pigs, etc.—but are we able to evaluate very accurately when pain will be sustained or is it simply an estimate? With all the new techniques available, including the use of tranquillisers, one would think it possible to by-pass some of the difficulties we have in mind. I do not think, however, that they will take us all the way.

This is an invaluable Bill. It is an improvement on the 1954 Act. Possibly in years to come further amendment will be made. The Bill provides a lead to other nations which will certainly be followed. It sets out standards that farmers and others will be persuaded to follow. This is a most useful Measure and is something that the House can do with great distinction. I commend this Clause to the House and again congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham (Mr. Burden)

Question put and agreed to.

Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 2—(Short Title, Citation, Extent And Commencement)

Question proposed, That the Clause stand part of the Bill.

The Bill will come into operation at the end of two months after it has been passed. Is this an arbitrary date or is it based on some calculations of an abstruse kind as to whether, for example, it is necessary for people to stock up with anaesthetics?

I repeat the point which I made, perhaps improperly and out of order, on Clause 1. The fact that the Bill will not extend to Northern Ireland should not be taken as indicating that we are in any way less civilised and humane there. Our farmers are amongst the most humane and civilised beings in the world, and I am certain that what happens here will be noted there and taken into account.

The period of two months is reckoned to provide sufficient time for the farmers and other interested parties to be informed of the provisions of the Bill and how it will affect them.

1.45 p.m.

I agree with what my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Down, South (Captain Orr) has said. There is a practical point which I want to raise, and I do not expect my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham (Mr. Burden) to answer off the cuff because it is a rather wide subject. Will the Bill mean a very large expansion in the amount of anaesthetics required? Will the commercial trade be able to absorb it?

I also imagine that the Bill will apply to Scotland, since subsection (1) provides for the citing of the Protection of Animals (Scotland) Acts, 1912 to 1964. I hope that the Bill may eventually be extended to Northern Ireland.

Is my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham satisfied with the period of two months? Will the pharmaceutical trade be able not only to have sufficient stocks in hand but have them available to farmers in the various areas within that time?

The quantities to be used are of a minimal amount in these operations. As far as I am aware there is no difficulty about the level of supplies being available. The two months' period brings us to the autumn, which is the right time of year for the farming community. I welcome what has been said about Northern Ireland. I am sure that they will follow our proceedings over there with great care and will not be backward in coming forward to do the same thing.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Bill reported, without Amendment.

1.50 p.m.

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

Only when one has, as a Member of the House, taken particular interest in animal welfare does one become really conscious of the amount of time given here to matters concerning animals. A great deal of this time, of course, is on Fridays. As my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Down, South (Captain Orr) suggested, an impression might be created in the mind of those who pay particular attention to what occurs in the House on Fridays that we devote a good deal more thought to animals than to children. Of course, so much of our legislation affecting the welfare of children comes in Government time, and Fridays give almost the only opportunity which private Members can take to press the cause of animals. The two causes are, to a great extent, synonymous. If a people has great care and understanding for animals, children do not in any way suffer as a result.

This is the second Bill to come before the House today dealing with the welfare of animals. I was a Member of the Standing Committee which considered the Riding Establishments Bill. I had no opportunity on its Third Reading, because I was thinking about my own business, to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, South (Sir. J. Lucas). I wish now to add my congratulations to him for the work which he did in getting the Riding Establishments Bill through the House. I make no apology whatever for hoping that this Bill, too, will have its Third Reading today.

It has been a great privilege to take over the piloting of the Bill from another place, where it was introduced by Lord Dowding. I have merely followed Lord Dowding in the efforts which I have made to ensure that his Bill passes through the stages which our legislation has to follow. I think that Dowding is, perhaps, less well known outside the House of Commons for his love of animals than for the very great service which he rendered to Britain and the free world daring the dark days of the Battle of Britain, at which time, may I say, although he was known as Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding, he was also very affectionately, but not to his face, know as "Stuffy" Dowding. Many of us who are associated with him in Parliament know of the passionate interest which he has always taken in the welfare of animals, and hon. Members on both sides will, I know, join me in congratulating him on the satisfactory progress of this very important Measure which he introduced in another place.

This is, of course, an amending Bill. It amends the Protection of Animals (Anaesthetics) Act, 1954, which followed the Animals (Anaesthetics) Act, 1919. The 1919 Act contained a Schedule listing the operations in which sometimes general and sometimes either general or local anaesthetics had to be used. The British Veterinary Association considered that, because new operations and new techniques of anaesthesia were constantly being devised, it was impracticable to schedule for any length of time all the various surgical operations for which anaesthetics were required. Accordingly, the Association sponsored the Protection of Animals (Anaesthetics) Bill, in 1953. This Bill was introduced in another place by Lord Stamp and received its Second Reading on 27th October of that year, but, unfortunately, it lapsed at the end of the Session. In 1954, a new Bill was introduced in this House by Lady Davidson, and this Bill became the Protection of Animals (Anaesthetics) Act, 1954 which is the subject of amending legislation today.

The 1954 Act replaced the 1919 Act and, instead of listing operations which must be performed under anaesthetic, it provided that all operations on animals—except those listed for exemption in the First Schedule—which interfered with sensitive tissue or bone structure should be carried out under anaesthetic. This was the central intention in that Act.

In reply to a Question by the hon. Lady the Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle) on 2nd July, 1962, the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food said that he was in touch with the veterinary profession on the subject of the possible Amendment of the 1954 Act. I am very sorry that the hon. Lady could not be with us today, and I am sure that she will be interested to know that the Bill has made such good progress.

Soon after this promise by the Minister, an ad hoc committee of the British Veterinary Association reviewed the 1954 Act and recommended certain alterations. It recommended that the castration of the male dog, cat, horse, ass or mule should always be carried out under anaesthetic, that the castration of the bull, male sheep, goat or pig should always be carried out under anaesthetic if the animal was more than two months old, that the dehorning of cattle by any method in which actual physical severance of the horn occurs should be done under anaesthetic, and that the disbudding of calves by actual cautery or incision should be carried out under anaesthetic. The Association recommended also that the rubber ring method for the castration of male animals or for the docking of lambs' tails should be permitted only if applied during the first week of the animal's life.

A petition was presented to Mr. Speaker in July last asking for amendments to the 1954 Act. Later that month, in another place, in reply to a question by Lord Dowding, the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture said that it was intended to introduce legislation to amend the Act.

I was greatly pleased by the remarks made about the part I have played in this matter, a very minor part, I admit, compared with that of Lord Dowding, but I feel that the House should realise how singularly self-effacing the Ministry has been in its help in bringing the Bill forward. It would have been quite impossible to have brought it forward without the wholehearted support and approval of the Ministry, and this is the right and proper place in which to express thanks and to pay a tribute to my right hon. Friend the Minister, the Parliamentary Secretary and the back-room boys at the Ministry of Agriculture, who have done a great deal to make possible this practical expression of the intention which they announced in the House and in another place.

It is true that not all the proposals made by the British Veterinary Association have been agreed, but it has been possible to go a long way towards what they asked. Cats, dogs, horses, asses and mules may be castrated only if anaesthetised in accordance with the Association's proposals. The Association recommended that a bull or male sheep should not be castrated without anaesthetic after the age of two months. It was not found possible to go all the way with the Association in this respect for reasons which we explained when debating the Question, That the Clause stand part of the Bill.

My hon. Friend is well-known as experienced in this subject. Could he say which group of animals is most used for experiments of this kind?

It is not a question of experiments. It is a question of practical farming. These are suggestions which have been made by veterinary and other authorities; they point out that carrying out these operations without an anaesthetic beyond these ages is likely to bring unnecessary suffering to the animals. In this country we must try to accept the bounty which is given to us—

Order. I would prefer the hon. Member to address me rather than to turn his back on me.

I am sorry, Sir. Robert.

We should take from them with the least suffering the bounty which has been given to us by animals.

In respect of the bull and male sheep it was not possible to go all the way with the Association because of certain difficulties with the farming industry, but a compromise was reached and the age has been reduced from 12 months to three months. I think that the House will agree that this is a considerable and necessary improvement. In respect of goats and pigs it was found possible to go all the way with the recommendations made by the British Veterinary Association. For goats and pigs it will be illegal to castrate without an anaesthetic after the age of two months. This is a considerable improvement; under the old Act it was seven months for pigs and three months for goats.

The Bill also makes it illegal to dehorn cattle by any method until actual physical severance occurs unless the animal is under the influence of an anaesthetic. I make the important point that this operation has customarily been carried out by a veterinary surgeon, and it is probable that its performance without an anaesthetic constitutes an offence at present, but the Bill makes it unequivocally clear that after its passing it will be an offence to carry out this operation unless the animal is anaesthetised. This, again, is in accordance with a recommendation of the British Veterinary Association. The Bill will make illegal the disbudding of calves except by actual cautery or incision other than by chemical cauterisation applied within the first week of life. This exception is against the advice of the British Veterinary Association but restricting its use to the animal's first week of life is a very great advance.

I want to say a few words about the use of the rubber ring, on the use of which the Bill places very close restrictions. It has been stated that the ring can cause considerable pain and that if it is allowed to remain on too long it can cause not only suffering to the animal but danger to health and to life through setting up gangrene. I hope that this restriction on its use to a very early age will mean that before long its use will cease altogether. After all, there will be no need for its use, because if it cannot be fixed in an early stage of life, facilities remain for castrating the animal without anaesthetic up to the age of three months.

I was particularly pleased when my hon. Friend the Member for King's Lynn (Mr. Bullard) informed me that he was in favour of the Bill. Hon. Members on both sides of the House know that my hon. Friend the Member for King's Lynn is a practical farmer. He has informed me that he has himself carried out this operation on a considerable number of animals and that he is convinced that this legislation is not only desirable but necessary. It may well be that, like most farmers, he has some small points on which we might be at issue on the question of age, but, generally, he has stated his complete acceptance of the intention of the Bill, and it is only the fact that he is otherwise engaged in a manner which has made it impossible for him to be here that has prevented him from attending today to give us his experience as a practical farmer.

I know that the Bill will bring and has brought considerable satisfaction to members of the veterinary profession. It has brought approval from the farming community, although perhaps it would be better to say that it has been greeted by the farming community with a modified rapture. But there has been the complete and absolute acclamation of the animal welfare societies.

In some quarters the farming industry in this country is under a bit of a cloud. Much of this is completely unjustified. I know that intensive methods of farming have thrown a strain on the association between some members of the farming community and some of the people who have the welfare of animals at heart. We have to reach, as in this Clause, a balance on these matters and to accept that with the shrinkage in farming land which is taking place in this country and the tremendous growth in population which is continuing throughout the world, the human race must use the land which it has in the most productive way possible.

It is wrong to imagine that the farming community in general is not greatly concerned at the welfare of animals. Certainly, the Bill and the other Bills which recently have passed through the House show clearly that in representing and sometimes leading public opinion, this House has very much in mind the welfare of animals and will ensure that whatever may be the needs of the farming community and the maintenance of adequate supplies of food, unnecessary cruelty to animals will not be tolerated in either intensive farming or any other methods. I am happy that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has recently announced his intention to establish a high-level committee to consider the welfare of animals which are used in intensive farming to ensure that they do not suffer unnecessary cruelty.

I thank my hon. Friends for the support which they have given me in presenting the Bill. I conclude, as I began, by saying how grateful we are to Lord Dowding for introducing the Bill in another place and giving us the opportunity of discussing it and speeding it on its way to the Statute Book.

2.12 p.m.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham (Mr. Burden), in so ably moving the Third Reading of the Bill, properly congratulated Lord Dowding on introducing it in another place. My hon. Friend, however, re- ferred to his own part in the matter as being a minor one. In doing so, he was guilty of the same imprecision of language which the Bill seeks to remove from the 1954 Act. Any hon. Member of this House who takes up a Private Member's Bill plays no minor part. It requires a considerable amount of time, research and study in its preparation and if the Committee stage is protracted it necessitates giving up probably the whole of a number of Fridays to pilot the Bill through this House. That is time which an hon. Member might otherwise spend profitably in his constituency or elsewhere. Consequently, when we congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham upon reaching this stage of the Bill and for the work he has done on it, this is no empty congratulation and we all mean it sincerely.

I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has had to leave us, because I was hoping through him to congratulate his Department also. We are, however, delighted to see that my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department is present. That is not entirely inappropriate, since in Northern Ireland it is curious that legislation of this nature is handled by our Ministry of Home Affairs and not by our Ministry of Agriculture.

Why is that?

I am not entirely sure that if I were to go into the intricacies of that question at this stage of the Bill, you would not rule me out of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, even if reluctantly.

I must tell the hon. Member that that would be so.

I must, therefore, decline my hon. Friend's invitation. No doubt, an opportunity will arise on another occasion to go into that interesting constitutional question.

We are delighted that my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department is present at this stage of the Bill. Having listened to the debate, my hon. Friend will have observed the remarkable degree of unanimity upon it. Throughout the Committee stage, not one voice was raised in opposition. I hope that this will be taken as indicating that the House of Commons is deeply concerned, and rightly so, about the way in which the nation treats its animals.

It is a mark of civilised man that he has regard not only for his fellow human beings who may be helpless, but also for the animals for which he is responsible, and that while he thinks it perfectly right and proper to use them for assisting his work, for providing him with food and for other reasons, he understands it as a mark of civilisation that in using them in those ways he should treat them with humanity and fairness.

Those of us who have followed the recent law reports in The Times will have been deeply appalled and disturbed by a case which described the performance of operations of castration upon human beings at Auschwitz during the terrible days of the war. The conscience of the whole of civilised man is, naturally, appalled by this terrible story. At the same time, it is right that while we view with horror and absolute revulsion the possibility of the performance of any such operation upon human beings without anaesthetic, we should view with equal revulsion the possibility—except in cases where it is absolutely necessary and unavoidable that it should be done—of similar operations being performed upon animals without anaesthetic.

I hope that the Bill will not be the end of the story and that the ultimate result of the way in which all civilised people in this community are thinking will be that we see the day when no operation of any kind is performed upon animals without anaesthetic. I hope that the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, the animal welfare societies, the British Veterinary Association and all the rest—

Order. The hon. Member must not pursue what is not in the Bill. On Third Reading, we can discuss only what is in the Bill.

I am obliged, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I did not intend to discuss what was not in the Bill. I was trying to suggest that one effect of the Bill, if it gets upon the Statute Book, may be to stimulate persons in respon- sible organisations and in the Ministry to continue their research into this problem.

For example, I hope that not quite as many years will elapse between the amendment of the 1954 Act, which is what today's Bill does, and the next amendment of the law which may be required. I hope that research will continue into questions of the level of pain, and so on, in animals and the proper methods of dealing with them, so that even the exceptions which are scheduled in the Bill may ultimately be swept away also. I hope that practical and workable methods of doing this will be found.

I was interested in the Committee debate, which, I think, you heard in another capacity, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, East (Mr. Skeet) ask a question, to which I think he did not have an answer, whether or not there would be in future any subsidy for giving anaesthetics. I think his implication was that as a result of this Bill more anaesthetics would be used, and he wanted to know whether or not there would be any consideration of assisting members of the farming community if it were to be found that a great weight of expense was put upon them as a result of this legislation. That was a proper question, and some time, perhaps today, some representative of the Government will give us an answer. It may be that in future legislation along these lines we may find it necessary to help.

This is an important milestone in our protection of animals legislation generally. Everybody concerned with its promotion ought to be congratulated most heartily. It will do away with a considerable amount of suffering which, it has become more and more apparent with the years, is being caused. It will explicitly do away with certain operations which were held to be possible as minor operations. It will be a useful piece of legislation and I hope that the House will give it a Third Reading with the same unanimity as was apparent during its interesting Committee stage.

2.22 p.m.

I join in welcoming this Bill. I apologise to the House for not being present earlier owing to an outside engagement which took rather longer than I had anticipated.

Sometimes we are criticised as being too much of an animal loving nation, particularly when compared with nations on the Continent, but I am of the opinion that it is a sign of our humanity, and I think it is very important indeed that we should always be conscious of animal welfare. It surely is a fact that there is a great deal of concern that perhaps even today there is too much cruelty to domestic and to farm animals. Judging by one's correspondence as a Member of this House—and I suppose that my case is not untypical—one would imagine that this matter occupies a foremost place in the minds of many constituents. Over the course of a year I get as many letters about animal welfare and cruelty to animals as I do about controversial Measures like that about resale price maintenance.

Therefore, I think it is very important indeed that Members should have an interest in animal welfare, and should see that, whichever Ministry is involved, Ministers are always made aware of the developments taking place. We should make sure that Measures of the past, or amending Measures brought forward, are working and are seen to work. One of the best ways of proceeding in this matter is to see that publicity is given to the efforts which are made to eliminate cruelty to animals and to see that there is accountability for what goes on. I am sure that my hon. Friends the Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department and the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture will be aware of this point.

I am sure we all support the efforts which have been made in this direction by Lord Dowding in another place and my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham (Mr. Burden) whose very assiduous efforts over the years on behalf of animal welfare are well known. He has had the support of hon. Members on both sides of the House, and he deserves it. I welcome this Bill as, I am sure, do the great majority of the people of this nation.

2.24 p.m.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham (Mr. Burden) was very modest when he said that he had contributed little, it is so much harder to pilot someone else's Bill through another place or this place than to start afresh with a Bill of one's own and pilot it through. I think, therefore, that my hon. Friend deserves double congratulations on that score.

He mentioned that the mass of legislation passed as Private Members' Bills concerned animals as distinct from humans. I would remind him, however, that all the adoption laws have been passed during private Members' time. Animal welfare has been given great attention on the last few Fridays, that of wild animals, of animals in riding establishments, and now this Bill. I think it is a great tribute to my hon. Friends that they have put these very humane Bills through this House.

I should be prepared to say to my hon. Friends, and indeed to the veterinary profession, who sat on the ad hoc committee looking into various aspects of the matter, including what my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Down, South (Captain Orr) described as the "level of pain" and the threshold of pain. It is a great tribute to the committee that most of its recommendations have been adopted in this Bill. It is also a tribute to the farming community, which accepted in principle the suggestions and recommendations which were put forward. This Bill is a balance of what is reasonable and what is possible. I would pay particular tribute to those concerned for being able to achieve that balance, and to have got into the Bill most of the recommendations—admittedly, not all—which were put forward by the ad hoc committee.

The result of this Bill will be to reduce a great deal of the unnecessary suffering which has been caused in the past through carrying out operations specified in the Bill. I do not think it is a weakness that we have brought forward this Bill. I think it is a strength, in that we have the courage to admit—and as my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary had in admitting—that there were loopholes and errors in the original legislation. As I said at an earlier stage, no Bill can be comprehensive. It is only as a result of the working of the Act that it has been proved that certainly these operations ought to have been included in the original Measure. Now through this legislation as proposed by Lord Dowding and my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham we shall be able to close those loopholes. The Bill is another step in the direction which shows this country as the leader in Europe—and in fact in the world—in the humane treatment of its animals, whether they be used for pleasure or whether they be used in the normal process of animal husbandry.

There is one phrase which is used which leads me on to a related topic which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham, and that is whether or not this does include that particular aspect of husbandry to which our attention has been drawn recently, that is to say, broiler farming, to which a great deal of publicity—some right, some wrong—has lately been directed. This surely rely is something to be looked into because it is of concern to all those in the broiler industry and all those interested in intensive animal feeding. If I read the Bill correctly, nothing in this Bill affects that aspect of farming and animal husbandry, and even though we should like to see something in that direction we are not yet certain what is to be introduced. I am not sure whether certain other aspects of animal care, concerning many experiments which go on, are covered by these words.

The Bill itself, although it reduces the number of certain physiological or anatomical operations, does not cover other experiments about which many people are extremely worried. Over 4 million a year of these experiments are carried out, of which upon 5,000 are done by Government Departments.

I agree that this matter gives great concern to people. The Bill will have no effect on it. However, at the moment a committee is looking into experimentation on animals with a view to making recommendations and, we hope, to reducing the number of experiments considerably.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I was coming on to that point. I hope that the committee will be able to deal with this matter.

There is a point here which comes within the compass of the Bill. One of the things that we have to deal with—I am grateful that my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department is present—is the method of enforcement. I am not entirely clear about this, and the matter should be made clear before we give the Bill a Third Reading. Who is to enforce it? Is it the Ministry of Agriculture or will it be the Home Office inspectors? This is a matter to which attention might be directed. I am sorry to raise this point with my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary, but I am satisfied that she has the answer.

This raises a matter of considerable importance. Great criticism has been levelled against the Home Office because of the insufficient number of inspectors in this field. If it is that we have to rely on the same inspectors who are responsible for ensuring that experiments on animals are carried out in a proper and fitting manner, there will be great difficulty. It is said—my hon. Friend may agree with me partially—that there has been criticism about the method of enforcement in respect of institutions where experiments on animals are carried out, because there are insufficient inspectors. I should be very sorry if this excellent Bill were to fail because there were insufficient inspectors. I imagine, however, that the inspections carried out under it—this is essentially an animal matter rather than a Home Office matter—will be carried out by inspectors from the Ministry of Agriculture, though I think it is difficult to divorce one from the other, both Departments being concerned with the enforcement of humane treatment of animals. I hope that my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary will be able to clear up the point.

I reiterate that there has been considerable worry over the experiments carried out on live animals and over whether there are sufficient inspectors and whether sufficient attention has been paid to the conditions under which they operate. I hope that my hon. Friend will be able to assure us that we are in a position to enforce the requirements listed in the Bill in the proper manner.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and other hon. Members have dealt with the great benefits which will accrue to the animals as a result of the modifications to the 1954 Act which are introduced by the Bill. I join my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Down, South in saying that we are going a long way to eliminate unnecessary pain in animal husbandry. I trust that the farming community will realise that we are the leaders of the world in the treatment of animals for both domestic and other uses, and I hope that they will co-operate fully in recognising that the elimination of pain in animals, classified as in the Bill, will be to the benefit of all concerned and to civilisation in general.

2.35 p.m.

I am very glad to have the opportunity to intervene, although I am not directly responsible in this matter. The responsibility lies with the Ministry of Agriculture. However, in the Home Office we have an overall regard, as it were, for the protection of animals. Therefore, this is a particular pleasure for me, and I hope that the House will regard my presence as an assurance of the interest taken in this matter by the Home Office.

Before I deal with the subject matter of the Bill, I should like to express the regret of my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food that he has had to leave the Chamber. He has a most important engagement elsewhere; otherwise he would have stayed until the conclusion of the debate.

The purpose of the Bill has been amply explained by my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham (Mr. Burden). It is to prevent suffering in animals. This is close to the hearts of all of us. I speak here as a farmer in my own right and also as a representative of a famous farming constituency. It is a matter of great happiness to all of us that the farming community as a whole has given the Bill the support it has, because it must be pointed out that the Bill adds to some of its many difficulties and problems. However, as I said, this is a matter close to the hearts of all. The 1954 Act was a great step forward. Viscountess Davidson played a very great and important part in it, and it is probably suitable that another woman should again add support to this important Measure.

The Government, as I hope has been made clear, fully support the Bill and are gratified that my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham has been able to obtain the support which he has both in the House and outside. As I have said, as Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department I have a general interest in and responsibility for preventing unnecessary cruelty to animals, and I should like to congratulate all those who have made the Bill possible.

My hon. Friend the Member for Clapham (Dr. Alan Glyn) asked a specific question about the enforcement of the Bill. The enforcement is related in this respect to the Protection of Animals Act, 1911, and it is carried out, as he probably realises, by local authority inspectors and has nothing directly to do with inspection done by the Home Office inspectors of experiments without anæthetics. I hope that clears up the point.

I hope that my presence here and my interest in the Bill assures hon. Members of our determination that the Bill shall be a reality.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. This is a point which might have arisen if she had not been kind enough to clear it up, because there has been criticism about the number of inspectors to deal with experiments on live animals. If, as she says, it is to be done by the local authorities, it is clear to me—I am sure she will agree with this—that there will be adequate supervision and inspection to carry out the provisions of the Bill.

I am sure that my hon. Friend can be reassured on that point.

It is some years since the original Act was passed, and much has happened since then, but there has been a growing public consciousness of the need to treat our animals with all possible decency. There has been at the same time an important growth in our knowledge of the effects of pain on animal development, which, again, is of great importance to the farming community.

We recognise that no normal person deliberately inflicts pain on creatures under his control, but I think it is possible—this is something that we have all seen and understood in the past—that people have not perhaps realised how very painful some of these very necessary operations are which are carried out on animals. Nor do I think that the great tributes that the Bill has received in this House will be lost on the community outside. Not only the farming community is interested in this matter. It is of interest to all those people who have a genuine love of animals and genuine determination that our civilisation shall be expressed in these practical terms. I give the Bill my warmest support.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill read the Third time and passed, without Amendment.

Cigarettes (Health Hazards) Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

2.40 p.m.

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

In moving the Second Reading of the Bill, I should like once again to point out that it is an extremely small Measure, concerned with a very narrow point. It seeks to contribute in a small way to solving an extremely difficult problem. At the outset, I plead with hon. Members to approach the Bill entirely dispassionately, although I realise that it will be extremely difficult for them to do so. Whether or not they like it, most hon. Members have a positive attitude to smoking. There is a great deal of feeling among smokers that it is wrong, and because of this they feel a little guilty, and feel that they must defend their action. As for nonsmokers, they often have a feeling of self-righteousness. They feel that it is a good thing not to smoke and that they are strong-willed in refusing to smoke. Again, on their part their is apt to be a prejudiced attitude on the subject.

I therefore ask hon. Members to put away the inherent prejudices that exist in most of us and to try to approach the subject in the context of the health hazard that smoking constitutes. I approach the subject purely from the point of view of seeking ways and means by which our National Health Service can prevent rather than cure illness. I do not raise the subject because I am anti-smoking. I do not like being anti-anything. Usually the "antis" have very little effect on any of the major changes in our lives.

I am faced with the fact that this is an enormous problem. We have had a number of medical and scientific reports which make us well aware that cigarete smoking is a major contributory factor to illnesses which, in certain parts of the anatomy, cause considerable distress and pain and an enormous number of deaths. It is because I am trying to be constructive that I have restricted the Bill to so narrow a point. I realise that if I move very far I shall be in the realm of controversy, and I am seeking to be non-controversial. That is why I hope that the House will give the Bill a Second Reading and go on to debate it in its further stages.

I am not a kill-joy. The last thing that I want to do is to prevent people having pleasure if smoking gives them pleasure. I am not seeking to restrict anybody's freedom of action. If people choose to smoke it is their responsibility—although to some extent it is also the responsibility of everybody. I do not want to prohibit smoking, but I want people, especially teen-agers who are just contracting the habit, to be able to go into it with their eyes open, well aware of what they are risking.

When I sought the leave of the House to introduce the Bill, I made it clear that I was not trying to persuade hon. Members or any of the more mature sections of our population to change their habits, although recent statistical and medical research shows that the extent to which they do cut down cigarette smoking reduces their chances of death from lung cancer and bronchitis.

Inevitably, the problem from the health point of view is focussed on lung cancer. The House will recall that on Monday of this week the Parliamentary Secretary gave us the latest breakdown of figures, which shows that a total of 27,000-plus deaths per annum are now caused directly by lung cancer, of which medical and scientific opinion believes that cigarette smoking contributes the major part. I do not know how I can get this fact over to people who are anxious not to believe it.

This is a very important matter. Does the hon. Member consider that the writing on a packet of cigarettes will be read by a teen-ager? Does not he think that the teenager will simply open the packet and take out a cigarette without reading the instructions?

I am grateful to the hon. Member for that intervention but I shall deal with that point in due course, I want to refer to it in that part of my contribution which I consider to be most suitable, rather than at this stage, which I believe to be a little premature.

I was trying to deal with the gravity of the problem, and the ways in which we could bring it home to the people. I have tried to do this before in the House, and I have found it very difficult. One can juggle with figures and say that there are so many of this and so many of that, but when one finishes nobody is very much the wiser.

I am sure that after the Whitsun holiday there will be huge newspaper headlines concerning the number of deaths caused on the roads during the three-day holiday period. On present-day figures, as given by the Parliamentary Secretary, it is clear that during the same three-day period 220 people will die of lung cancer. If that figure were headlined in the newspapers nobody would ignore it. Everybody would feel that something would have to be done about the problem, just as they do when they read headlines about the unfortunate number of road deaths, which are inevitable when we suddenly have a much greater percentage of cars on the road during holiday periods.

But it is not merely lung cancer to which the smoking habit contributes. As I have said before, last year we lost 31 million production days because of bronchitis. That is six times the number of days lost because of strikes. We lost another 30 million days due to heart and circulation diseases. Only last week we heard of another 18 million days lost through mental stress diseases. These are problems which the community cannot ignore, and if smoking makes a contribution to chonic bronchitis we must try to take preventive action.

Every winter, at some stage or other my hospital gets what we call a red warning. Beds have to be cleared when the weather is excessively cold and there is a possibility of fog, because we know that many chronic chest illnesses will have to be catered for. Every bed that is occupied must be paid for by the taxpayer, as must every consultant who is appointed. The whole ramification of the Health Service which deals with the problem illustrates the responsibility of the community. Ultimately this House is responsible.

When Richard Doll, the expert in this line of country—who wrote his report in 1950, and is now on the Medical Research Council—says that he is quite certain that the total number of deaths from chronic bronchitis last year which may be attributed to smoking amounted to 15,000, we feel that we have a responsibility to do something about it.

I support the hon. Gentleman's argument. Would he not agree that it is much easier to get people who have chronic bronchitis to give up smoking when they realise that they are seriously affected than it is with the smoker who goes merrily along thinking that it can never happen to him and who then dies from lung cancer when he is 45 or 50?

The hon. Gentleman has put his finger on the point. I believe that the hon. Member for Willesden, East (Mr. Skeet) followed me in a visit to a chronic bronchitic ward where we saw people at the tail end of their lives who were literally gasping for every breath. There is no difficulty about persuading these people, but for them it is too late. One would have liked to have got those people when they first contracted the habit.

Another factor which constantly reminds those of us who are concerned with health about this subject is the number of friends and hon. Members who suddenly pass away from coronory thrombosis. The increasing incidence of coronory thrombosis in recent years has caused much concern in the medical profession and the National Health Service. I am not a medical man and I can only quote Richard Doll of the Medical Research Council who states that of the total number of coronaory thrombosis deaths, he estimates that 10,000 would have been prevented had the people concerned not been smokers. We are dealing with a large order of preventive medicine in which it is possible to do something.

We come up against the internal problem of our own prejudices and our own reluctance to face up to the problems involved. I cannot stress too much that this is not a question of good and bad. We must get away from thinking that this is a moral or immoral matter. It is purely a matter of the contribution to good or bad health. This is not something in which to take pride or feel holy about if one does not do it, or guilty about if one does. It must be regarded far more as a matter of health. We recently had the estimate that of all the children at present at school, 250,000 will die of lung cancer because of the contracting of the habit of smoking, which many take up from the ages of 11 and 12 onwards.

When we are seeking in our defence to get rid of our guilty feelings, or to persuade ourselves that this is not our responsibility, we put up a number of alternative courses. Air pollution contributes to and causes lung cancer. Excessive diesel fumes contribute to and cause lung cancer. There are many things in industry and elsewhere which contribute to and cause lung cancer. We have sought to have clean air legislation and industrial medicine to clean un the factories; but the fact that there are other contributory causes does not mean that we should not try to do anything about the cause about which we know something and about which we can do something effective.

I remind hon. Members that in the year before last the Minister of Health reported that in Jersey, where cigarette smoking is rather high because it is much cheaper there than it is here and where there is an absence of air pollution from industry or diesel fumes, the death rate from lung cancer was higher than elsewhere in Western Europe. I am not trying to excuse or condemn. All I am asking is that we should not ride away on our excuse of other causes. We should try to tackle those things as well, and if hon. Members bring forward proposals to stop those other loopholes, I shall be the first to support them.

There is another excuse. It is said that there are other things which cause trouble; drink, for instance. Of course one is against excessive alcoholism and one does all one can legally and by persuasion to stop it. But because people die of alcoholism is no reason why we should say that we can ignore smoking and that it does not matter what we do with something equally bad. Let us tackle all these things in their right place. As the father of two children I am reminded that when I have tried to tell one that something wrong has been done, the answer has been, "Yes, that is true, but yesterday the other did something wrong, and therefore I must be excused today". This argument about smoking and lung cancer comes into that category. It is said that some action must be taken to prevent the growth of the smoking habit, but as there are other things we cannot do anything about, let us sit back and wait for something else to happen!

The hon. Member is advancing his case with great moderation and skill and I am sorry to interrupt him. He was talking about alcohol. Would he think it reasonable, for example, to insist that underneath where it says on the label of a bottle of Guinness "Guinness is good for you", it should be said "Guinness is not good for you"?

The hon. and gallant Member comes from Ireland and I would be reluctant to say anything about Guinness, especially as the firm happens to be in my constituency. However, I believe that any labelling should be for information rather than advertising, and in that respect I go further than just Guinness and include any product. If there are hazards, if it is said that with a normal constitution a man with a blood pressure of so and so would find that 15 Guinnesses put him under the table, I like to hope that something like that will be done. I am not going as far as that, because I am concerned only with this very narrow Bill about this very wide subject.

On Monday, the Parliamentary Secretary reminded the House that there were four times as many deaths from lung cancer as from road accidents. It would be a false argument to say to the Minister of Transport that because of those figures there was no need for him to campaign for road safety, no necessity to put up signs saying that there was danger on the road, no necessity for the hoardings saying, "If you drink, don't drive and if you drive, don't drink". Of course, we want his position to be strengthened and if we could bring forward more Private Members' Bills to strengthen it, we would do so. But that does not alter the fact that we have this responsibility towards the health of the people.

The Bill is very small. It has only three Clauses, of which the third is purely technical. The first makes it obligatory for notices to be printed on cigarette packets. I am not seeking to be very dogmatic about these notices. Those of us who have served on Standing Committees have spent tedious hours discussing whether this or that would be acceptable. When we have discussed hire purchase, we have discussed in what form the wording should be printed and the size of the type.

I do not want to get into an argument of that kind. I am concerned that these things should be judged on the grounds of health and that the notice should simply receive the approval of the Ministry of Health. If the Ministry of Health is satisfied with a notice in very small type, so small that it can hardly be seen, I will be satisfied, for I am content to leave the responsibility entirely to the Ministry. I am certain that it is well aware of these problems and quite capable of reaching some kind of solution.

Clause 2 gives the penalty, which is quite a steep one. I did this because I felt that this Clause was never likely to be used. I said, when I sought leave to introduce the Bill, that I thought there would not be a great deal of resistance from the manufacturers. I am afraid that I was over-optimistic. Shortly afterwards—but not at all connected with the introduction of the Bill—I had a very enjoyable luncheon with the Imperial Tobacco Company, which wanted to discuss the matter further and thought that perhaps it could be done better on an informal occasion. It was an extremely enjoyable luncheon. The company put its point of view and I put mine. I was a little disappointed. I thought that because I was suggesting a reasonable thing the company would have no resistance, but I am afraid that the chairman informed me that in fact it would not exactly welcome it, although he did not say that the company would be prepared to disobey any Order, at least it was in opposition.

I wonder whether the company offered the hon. Gentleman a large supply of cigarettes for a couple of years in case it might hasten the disease in his own case.

I will let that point go. I intimated when I sought the leave of the House to introduce this Bill that I thought that one manufacturer was considering it. Indeed, one manufacturer was, but I am afraid the consideration has gone no further. I had hoped that by the time the Bill got to Second Reading I would be able, with a flourish of trumpets, to say that company X was prepared to take some action. But, of course, company X is in competition with companies Y and Z, and company X, at this stage, at any rate, is not prepared to go much further. I hope that I did not mislead the House because I was quite genuine in knowing that the matter was under discussion; but in spite of the fact that the horse went to the water I am afraid that on this occasion it has not decided to drink.

There is no great onerous cost concerning this. Cigarette packets have to be printed, and I think that the cost of changing the design would be negligible if it were decided that there should be on the back of each packet some little notice which said that there were certain hazards attached to smoking. Even if there were some small cost, in the light of the fact that the total expenditure on cigarette advertising is estimated to be nudging £11 million a year, just a little shade on the other side might not be weighting the scales too strongly in favour of health.

I take up the point made by the hon. Member for Willesden, East (Mr. Skeet) when he interrupted me earlier. No hon. Member thinks that the teenager will go into a shop, buy a packet of cigarettes, read the warning, go back to the shopkeeper and say, "Please can I have my money back—I want jelly babies instead." This Bill will have a negligible amount of immediate effect. Why, then, have it? This is where I most earnestly ask the House to let this Bill go forward. Somewhere, somehow, we have to bring it home that this is a vital and serious problem.

Although this is only a small Measure, it is a measure of the apex of government in this House, the final word of authority, that the House of Commons wishes to draw the attention of young people to these hazards. It will show that we have taken this matter seriously, that we are not just shrugging it off and saying, "Well, there are diesel fumes from which I might die; I might be run over when I go out. I might as well die of lung cancer because I have got to die of something at some time." We are showing that as a community we have a responsibility in trying to prevent illness when it is preventable, and a responsibility in trying to preserve the limited amount of finance that we can afford on health and in making sure that it is spent on things that are not preventable and not spent on things for which we think we can have some form of prevention.

All that this Bill is doing is what the Minister of Transport does when seeking to reduce the number of road deaths. He puts notices up to say that there is a dangerous bend, or that the road narrows, or that there is some point at which people should pay special attention. If they do not pay attention that, so far as this Bill is concerned, is nothing to do with us. We shall have done our duty in saving that there is a health hazard, that this is what the health hazard comprises, that if one contracts the habit of smoking one will have a job to break it, and that the ultimate consequences may be disastrous to one and costly to the nation.

3.5 p.m.

I must apologise to the hon. Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt) because I did not hear the first part of his speech. I was held up by a traffic census which the Minister of Transport instituted, and therefore I missed the hon. Gentleman's opening remarks. However, from what I heard, I thought that he stated his case with great reason and great moderation, but at the end I came to the conclusion that he did not really think that his Bill was the right way of implementing the kind of ambition that he has.

I promise my hon. Friends that I shall not speak for very long, but I have a continuing and abiding interest in this subject. About seven years ago I occupied the post now occupied by my hon. Friend the Member for Essex, South-East (Mr. Braine) and it fell to my lot to make the first announcement that was ever made about lung cancer and smoking. I was in the fortunate position of having been a non-smoker for about nine years before that announcement, and I found that it stood me in very good stead on that occasion.

Although I am a non-smoker, and my wife is also a non-smoker, and I have managed to bring up two daughters to be non-smokers—partly by bribery I am afraid—and I have married off one of my daughters to a non-smoker, on the occasion to which I have just referred I was very struck indeed by the responsibility which the tobacco companies showed. If anyone doubts that, I ask him to contrast the behaviour of the tobacco manufacturers in America when a similar announcement was made there.

My right hon. Friend has achieved something remarkable in persuading so many people not to smoke. Has he some form of restriction or some rather ingenious inducement by which he achieved that success?

In the case of my two daughters it was straight bribery. I told them that if they reached the age of 21 without smoking I would give them a present. They fell for it though I never actually said what the present was going to be. I got away with it, and I recommend that method to those of my hon. Friends who are parents, and, indeed, to hon. Gentlemen opposite too.

I think that we have to approach the whole problem very circumspectly. I should like to see smoking generally abandoned. I hope that in the course of time excessive smoking, or indeed, smoking itself, will become an unpopular social habit, just as excessive drinking is now as compared with the second half of the 18th century. That will, of course, take time, and for all we know before then some antidote may have been discovered which will ensure that lung cancer is no longer caused by smoking.

I am always very fearful of any violent change, and I think that we have to be very careful about the methods which we adopt, and indeed the propaganda which we adopt, so as not to frighten people too much. The Ministry of Health puts out some excellent propaganda. Much good work is done in schools, and more credit to the teachers who can get the story over, and they can get it over better if they are nonsmokers themselves. That is the right way to do it. We must try to change the habit gradually, and not try to make us a nation of neurotics, which is what would happen if people gave up smoking overnight. No one need regret giving up smoking. By doing so he becomes richer, though probably fatter, and has the pleasure of watching his colleagues contribute more to taxation than he does. But let us do it carefully and gradually, and, above all, do not let us get hysterical about it.

The hon. Gentleman proposes one particular method, and I take it seriously, although I do not think that he is advocating it as anything more than a peg on which to hang admirable propaganda. I can see that the immediate effect will be that no one will take this seriously, and nothing is more serious than propaganda not being taken seriously. It merely recoils on the cause which it is advocating. I hope that we shall all lend our support to anything which the Ministry can do in the way of further education. I hope that we shall all do our best to persuade those members of the younger generation over whom we have any influence not to smoke, but I hope that we shall not adopt methods which in my view are calculated in the long run to do more harm than good.

I agree with the right hon. Member about the admirable propaganda which is being carried out, and that we should endeavour to educate people. Is he aware that we spent £32,000 last year on those methods, compared with £11½ million which was spent on persuading people to smoke? Is not it more than just a peg on which to hang an argument? Is not it important that we should try to do something positive as well?

I think it only fair to answer that point. One is overwhelmed by a mass of tobacco advertising. It has no effect on me and so it is hard for me to judge. But if one analyses that advertising—and we must be fair to the tobacco manufacturers; they must be just as anxious to make money out of something else if they could—they are advocating, not smoking, but their own brand of cigarette as opposed to another brand. I do not believe that propaganda, in itself, makes an enormous number of people smoke. The counter-propaganda is infinitely more effective.

3.11 p.m.

I should like to congratulate the hon. Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt) on the moderate way in which he introduced the Bill and the reasonable attitude which he has adopted to the whole question of smoking. I should like to make clear—I think that the hon. Member would agree with me—that most of what has been said this afternoon refers to smoking in general. This Bill deals with cigarette smoking only. I take it that no one would maintain that pipe smoking or cigar smoking is attended by any hazard at all.

I endorse what the hon. Member has said. I should almost be prepared to bring in a Bill designed to encourage people to smoke pipes and cigars rather than cigarettes.

I think it a good thing to make that point clear. No one has tried to condemn pipe smoking or cigar smoking. Most of us would agree that my right hon. Friend the Member for Woodford (Sir. W. Churchill) is a good example of the lack of danger attending cigar smoking. I do not know whether my right hon. Friend still smokes cigars, but it is not many years ago when he did.

I have the same point of view on this matter as my right hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Sir. J. Vaughan-Morgan). If we are to try to discourage smoking, it is much better that we should try to do so by persuasion rather than compulsion. I am a non-smoker, except for an occasional cigar, and have been for nine years. Most of my family are nonsmokers. I do not try to impose any ban on them smoking, but I did use the kind of bribery referred to by my right hon. Friend the Member for Reigate.

I should like to see more effort made to persuade tobacco manufacturers before we consider exercising compulsion. So far as I know, the tobacco manufacturers have been quite reasonable about television advertising. They agreed to discontinue any advertising of cigarettes on television until just before the 9 o'clock news and I think I am right in saying that they have agreed to abandon completely in all forms of advertising certain advertising themes which the I.T.A. persuaded them to abandon in connection with television advertising. I think that they have given £250,000 towards more research into the effect of smoking.

Would not my hon. Friend agree that television advertising for cigarettes is still subtle and effective?

Yes, I agree that it may be, and if any other methods, again short of compulsion, can be brought about to persuade them to modify it in any way, I should be only too happy. However, I am all for persuasion rather than compulsion. I do not believe in legislating against advertising if we can help it. I am sure that the business world knows how to run advertising. There is the health question here, but, all the same, I would much prefer to see a greater effort made to persuade them before we start compulsion.

I endorse what the hon. Gentleman said about the possibility of lung cancer being caused by diesel or petrol fumes. I know that research is going on into that matter at the present time, and no doubt, in the long run, something will come out of it. I am not altogether satisfied at the moment that cigarette smoking is the most potent cause of lung cancer. It may be that petrol or diesel fumes may be found to be more serious causes. However, we must accept the decision of the Royal College of Physicians that cigarette smoking is the major cause.

My hon. Friend has mentioned diesel fumes. There is very little evidence to show that there is any connection between lung cancer and diesel fumes. I accept that there is a link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer but not between lung cancer and diesel fumes.

I note what my hon. Friend says and if it can be proved that diesel fumes are or are not a cause, all to the good. Perhaps I should stress petrol fumes rather than diesel fumes. They are, I think, likely to be a greater hazard than diesel fumes because of the much larger quantity of petrol used. It may be that they will be found to be a greater curse in this respect.

I do not wish to detain the House any longer, but I hope that we shall try much more persuasion in discouraging cigarette smoking before we resort to compulsion.

May I point out that this is precisely what the Bill is about? It is persuasion. We are not forcing anybody not to smoke. The fact that a warning is printed on packets of cigarettes will mean that people will read it, but if they still decide to go on smoking after reading the warning that is their decision.

I prefer persuasion rather than legislation. After all, the Bill makes it illegal to sell packets of cigarettes without the warning being printed on them.

My hon. Friend has laid stress on persuasion. If, in fact, we were to compel manufacturers under this Bill to print the warning, is it not likely that they might retract on some of the voluntary agreements which they have made about restricting advertising on television?

That is quite possible.

3.19 p.m.

I find myself in full disagreement with the hon. Member for Wembley, South (Sir. R. Russell). He followed in the dubious footsteps of his right hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Sir. J. Vaughan-Morgan), dubious in the sense that he was putting forward dubious arguments to the effect that it was better to achieve the desired result in the Bill by persuasion rather than by compulsion.

It strikes me as being completely unreasonable to expect cigarette manufacturers to do voluntarily anything which is likely to reduce the sale of cigarettes. They would be in breach of faith to their shareholders if they followed that policy. It is their job to sell cigarettes, and the more they can sell the happier they are and the more contented are their shareholders. That is the blunt fact that we must face.

They have already agreed to stop certain forms of advertising.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned some of the people concerned. He will not forget the workers as well as the shareholders, I hope.

All kinds of people have a financial interest in the habit of cigarette smoking, and it cannot be challenged that those with the biggest financial interest are the tobacco companies. Hon. Members opposite point to one or two minor reforms or improvements that have been achieved—as they think, as the result of persuasion; as I think, as a result of the strong effect on public opinion of medical research into the relationship between smoking and lung cancer.

I remember raising this matter years ago in the House, and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Reigate, who then occupied an important position in the Ministry of Health, reproved me, and seemed to be very indignant with me, for trying, in my own humble way, to warn the public of a definite connection between smoking and lung cancer. Years, later, after research, the Royal College issued a statement that not even the most obtuse person could possibly challenge.

The vast amount spent on tobacco advertising has been mentioned. The right hon. Member for Reigate says, "They are not advertising the advantages of smoking, or of tobacco; they are advertising their own particular brand which they want people to buy." I can only say that if he finds it possible to make such a distinction he is free to do so—

The answer to that point is that I do not smoke, so I am able to resist the advertising.

In the opinion of some people, that fact would be an added reason for not accepting the right hon. Gentleman's views on the subject.

There is undoubtedly strong medical evidence that smoking—and cigarette smoking in particular—is a cause of lung cancer. I will not put it any higher than that, but it is enough to present a problem about which we should be carefully thinking all the time. It was revealed in this House just the other day that deaths from lung cancer are higher that ever before, and are now running at about 30,000 a year. That terrible state of affairs cannot just be brushed to one side.

The hon. Member for Wembley, South quoted the case of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Woodford (Sir. W. Churchill), who has been smoking for the last 70 years or so, but he must remember that the right hon. Member for Woodford is such an exceptional person that it would be most unwise to try to generalise from what one might call a unique specimen of that kind—

My right hon. Friend the Member for Woodford (Sir. W. Churchill) smokes cigars.

If there is anything in that argument it is that if people want to smoke they should be encouraged to smoke cigars rather than cigarettes, but even after 13 years of Conservative rule the society in which we live is not so affluent as to enable everyone who wants to smoke to smoke cigars in preference to cigarettes.

We have to come back to the argument of my hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt), who is trying to make a contribution to tackling this problem. It is not a problem that can be played about with by talking about the times during which cigarettes are advertised on television. Nor is the argument in favour of the Bill destroyed by pointing out that the tobacco manufacturers have contributed £250,000 for research. But for the report of the Royal College of Physicians and the public interest taken in the matter I do not believe that the tobacco manufacturers would have made a contribution of that kind for this form of research.

All the things which hon. Members opposite have put forward as reasons for leasing the tobacco manufacturers alone work the other way round. All these concessions have been forced out of them. It is no use trying to pretend that they were voluntary, magnanimous concessions on the part of cigarette manufacturers who, out of their own good will, have eagerly come forward to make these various adjustments which hon. Members opposite advance as reasons why the Bill should not be accepted. I hope that the presence of an unusually large number of Conservative Members does not betoken a desire on their part to talk the Bill out or to raise frivolous objections. I hope that some of them at least have come here this afternoon, no doubt at considerable inconvenience to themselves, to say a few words in support of the Bill.

They can still talk it out.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede), with his long experience of Parliamentary procedure, has pointed out, it is still possible for them to talk it out, but I hope that they will not be quite so stony hearted as that. I hope that they will show a better appreciation of the reality of the problem and will not talk out a really good attempt to enable everybody to know and to be reminded when they smoke a cigarette that they are incurring a risk. That is all that the Bill seeks to do. It will not deter people who want to smoke. It will not add to the cost of cigarette manufacture, because a certain amount of printing has to be done on the packet anyhow and a few more words of warning will not add to the expense of production. I hope therefore that the Bill will obtain if not a unanimous Second Reading at least one which by a free vote of the House will enable it to proceed further on its way to the Statute Book.

3.29 p.m.

The hon. Member for Brixton (Mr. Lipton) spoke of talking out the Bill. I thought at one stage in his speech that he himself was trying to do that, because I do not think that he added anything in his remarks to what was said by the hon. Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt) who spoke with great charm and lucidity though he failed to conquer my doubts about the Bill.

As the hon. Member for Willesden, West said, the problem which the Bill raises is a vital and serious one, but I am not persuaded that this approach is helpful. I agree most strongly with my right hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Sir. J. Vaughan-Morgan) when he says that he is for persuasion and not for coercion. I do not dispute for a moment what the hon. Member for Willesden, West has said about lung cancer and the other diseases of which cigarette smoking has been pronounced by the Royal College of Physicians to be a major cause. I accept that, but as a layman I have a certain scepticism as to the complete and utter finality of medical judgments.

The hon. Member for Brixton commented on the unusual number of Conservative Members present for this debate. I do not think that it is an unusual number. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman is here so seldom on Fridays that he does not know what is the normal number of Conservative Members.

I am here because I want to support the Bill.

Then I hope that my hon. Friend is fortunate in catching your eye, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, and has an opportunity to support the Bill, as is his right.

The hon. Member for Willesden, West says that he is not anti-smoking. Nor am although I doubt whether there is any known type of tobacco used or capable of being produced which could ever be "as pure as a mountain stream". I am a non-smoker, but I have been a smoker. I was fortunate enough to grow out of the habit at an early age. The point I want to make is that it was precisely when people were preaching at me most about the dangers of smoking and the effect it would have on my health—I was told as a schoolboy and as a scout and by my parents that it would stunt my growth—that I wanted to smoke more.

From the Garden of Eden down to our present fallen world, what is forbidden or fulminated or legislated against is what is most attractive even though—and perhaps because—it is dangerous. There is a perversity in humankind which often achieves results opposite to those desired by well-meaning reformers who have put forward measures such as this.

I beg leave to doubt whether young people forming the habit of smoking cigarettes are likely to be influenced in the least by a formula placed upon a cigarette packet. I doubt whether smokers in general will be deterred by a form of words. Familiarity speedily breeds contempt. I have consulted some moderate and some heavy smokers. They have told me that they never read any of the words on cigarette packets—and there is often a considerable number of words on them. It would, therefore, be quite inappropriate to legislate in this way.

In the past, statesmen and rulers have tried much more drastic measures. Louis XIII of France forbade tobacco smoking unless ordered by a physician. The Greek Church forbade the use of tobacco in any form. Czar Michael I of Russia decreed that the first offence of smoking would be punished by flogging and the second by execution. At different times in the history of Turkey, Persia and India the death penalty has been awarded, or at least prescribed, for smoking.

In our own country, I believe that both King James I and King Charles I were anti-smokers. They could not stand the smell of tobacco. In 1614 the Star Chamber imposed a tax on tobacco. Five years later the Privy Council forbade the planting of tobacco in England. By the time of William III, the domestic industry had been finally discouraged and has never since revived. But such drastic attempts to force people not to smoke and the successful suppression of tobacco produced in this country has had no effect whatever on the habit of smoking, which has continued and increased.

I believe that the spirit of this Measure is Socialistic in the worst sense of the word. I do not know where we should go from here—whether every pub would have a notice about the dangers of alcohol, whether every betting shop a notice about the dangers of gambling. The hon. Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt) said that highway authorities put up notices about dangerous bends, but it is absolutely impossible for public authorities to place notices everywhere warning against the possible dangers in every form of human activity.

I am much obliged to my hon. Friend for giving way. I am following his argument closely, as I have followed the arguments throughout the debate so far, and it has been most interesting in many ways. Although I agree with much of what my hon. Friend is saying, I hope that he will not seek in any way to minimise the danger of cigarette smoking. These dangers are there. Only today, we have received a Report on Health Education from a Joint Committee of the Central and Scottish Health Services Councils which makes clear that on the basis of the available statistical evidence certain diseases appear to be of increasing importance as a cause of death. These included heart disease, lung cancer and bronchitis. The Report says,

"Research provides a number of pointers bearing on these diseases, but little by way of generally accepted facts. Their aetiology, as with so many other diseases, is not simple; there is probably a multiplicity of causes. The pointers which have emerged so far indicate that obesity, insufficient exercise and cigarette smoking contribute to the problem of arterio-sclerotic heart disease, that smoking and atmospheric pollution increase greatly the risk of contracting lung cancer and may cause or at least markedly aggravate chronic bronchitis."

I hope that my hon. Friend will not ignore the fact that there are dangers and that there is great need for education in this matter.

I am much obliged to my hon. Friend and Essex neighbour the Parliamentary Secretary for that intervention. I do not wish to minimise the dangers of smoking. My hon. Friend's intervention reminds me that I wanted to pay tribute to what Her Majesty's Government have done. I fully commend the campaign which the Government launched to explain the dangers of smoking to the public and particularly to young people. I commend, also, what local health and education authorities have done under the encouragement of Her Majesty's Government. I understand that 1 million posters have been distributed on the subject, that films have been produced and that other media of publicity are being used.

Although the London County Council is moribund, I wish to salute this great authority which is about to die, and in particular I commend its move to stop smoking in cinemas.

Compulsion.

I want to make my view clear to the hon. Gentleman. I consider that it is proper that smoking should be curtailed in theatres and cinemas. It is done in France. I consider that these things are in some ways better ordered in France. The curtailment of smoking in theatres and cinemas is, in my view, justified because of the acute discomfort which can be caused to people in the close quarters of a theatre or cinema. People who happen to be non-smokers or, perhaps, who suffer from certain maladies or disabilities can be put in acute discomfort by someone sitting next to them and smoking. Self-restraint here should be regarded as a matter of good manners and consideration for others.

I notice that London Transport has recently put on more "No-Smoking" carriages on the Underground. This is a good move. In Paris, if one travels on the Underground, one must not smoke at all whether on the station or in a train.

We should draw a distinction between what is proposed in the Bill, namely, interference by the Government in individual liberty of choice and the prevention of the abuse of liberty by smokers who do not care for the comfort of non-smokers.

This is precisely what I am not trying to do. I do not want to interfere with anyone's freedom of choice. I myself have used all the hon. Gentleman's arguments. The kind of strictures and prohibitions to which he refers are not in the Bill and I do not want them to be. It is precisely because I am seeking to do what, I think, the hon. Gentleman wants that I am not suggesting forcing anyone not to smoke. All I am suggesting is that there should be a clear understanding of what people are doing when they smoke—no more than that.

I consider that the Bill is an unwarranted and unnecessary interference in the business activities of the tobacco manufacturers, with whom I have no connection whatever, and I think that the proposal would be utterly ineffective and would not achieve the result which the hon. Member seeks to achieve.

I conclude because I want to allow other hon. Members, particularly my hon. Friends who take a different view from that which I have put before the House, the opportunity to take part in the debate. I hope that as standards of living rise and as standards of culture rise in this country, it should be possible to keep smoking within narrower bounds, for reasons of good neighbourliness and social decency as well as the health of individuals.

I agree very much with my right hon. Friend the Member for Reigate, who speaks as a former Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health and who was concerned with the first public pronouncement on the dangers of lung cancer, that it is not a matter primarily for the State, for legislation and for the House. It is a matter of example—example from those who are able to give an example, from Beatles to bishops, from pugilists to politicans, who occupy the public eye or appear on the television screen.

I think that my right hon. Friend the Member for Reigate was correct when he doubted whether the hon. Member for Willesden, West thought that this was the right approach to the problem, and I am confirmed in my opinion that he does not by the lack of interest shown in the Bill by its sponsors. I know that the hon. Member for Brixton (Mr. Lipton) came into the Chamber somewhat belatedly, but he added nothing whatever to our enlightenment. The Liberal sponsor, the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock), is not present. None of the other sponsors is present. I believe that they view the Bill as a piece of publicity. Perhaps there is no harm in that, but I think that it is both little in length and too little to be worthy of a Second Reading.

3.42 p.m.

I shall be brief. My main purpose in rising is to encourage the Parliamentary Secretary to give us the Government's view on the Measure—unless he regards his last intervention as a definitive contribution to the debate.

I am surprised at the reaction which this very modest Measure of my hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt) has provoked on the Conservative benches. It is almost necessary to remind the House that he is not advocating flogging or execution for smoking. The hon. Member for Chigwell (Mr. Biggs-Davison) in his historic researches might have mislead the House into thinking that that was my hon. Friend's purpose. As my hon. Friend said repeatedly, this is purely a Bill to enable people to know what they are doing or to help them to know what they are doing. The right hon. Member for Reigate (Sir J. Vaughan-Morgan) said that we do not want violent change, but to put a message on a cigarette package that there are health hazards attached to smoking is not a violent change.

rose—

I will not give way, because there are many hon. Members who wish to talk this Bill out, and I want to give them the opportunity to do so, if that is what they wish.

The right hon. Gentleman said that we do not want to frighten people too much. Will it frighten people to have a message on a packet of cigarettes that there are health hazards? What we are trying to do is what I imagine all in the House would accept: surely we should discourage young people from contracting this habit. I thought that the House was at one in that. A certain amount has been attempted by publicity, and it has not been very successful so far. The Parliamentary Secretary quoted from the Cohen Report which was published today and I should like to quote briefly from another section of that Report which spoke of an inquiry carried out in Dunfermline during a recent local campaign aimed mainly at adults and said:

"Despite publicity which had been thought to be intensive most adults still believed, quite mistakenly, that the risk of being killed in a road accident was much greater than the risk of dying from lung cancer, and very few accepted that cigarette smoking was the main cause of lung cancer."

That is a quotation from paragraph 83, on page 22 of the Report. On the same page, there are indications that an antismoking campaign which was run in Edinburgh in 1939 had little success either.

It is in the face of this signal lack of success on the part of the Ministry that my hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, West is making a new attempt to contribute towards the campaign. It is something which at least is worth trying and I hope very much that the Joint Parliamentary Secretary will give it a fair wind from his Department.

3.47 p.m.

As I have been asked to say a word or two, I will do so. The whole House agrees that the subject of smoking and its effects upon health is one of enormous importance. I do not, however, wish to make a lengthy speech, especially as I should like other hon. Members to have an opportunity of expressing their views.

I am surprised that the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. Robinson) stated that the modest proposal contained in the Bill would make a substantial contribution to the task in hand when he dismissed so lightly all the efforts that the Government and the local health authorities have been making, over a period of time. The Bill deals with only one small aspect of the problem.

While I have a lot of sympathy with the hon. Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt) who advanced his case with great moderation and sincerity—we are on exactly the same side in this regard—nevertheless, I do not think that his Bill helps us very much. The hon. Member quoted the case of the teenager who, having read the warning words on a cigarette packet, went back to the shopkeeper, requested his money back and asked for jelly babies instead. Even jelly babies taken in excess, particularly by young people, have an ill effect upon dental health. Indeed, it might be fair to ask whether the best way of dealing with a problem of this kind is to put a notice upon not only packets of cigarettes, but bottles of liquor of various kinds and other products which in certain cases, if taken to excess, are bound to lead to ill health.

I am not asking the House to reject the hon. Member's Bill. He has served a useful purpose today in focussing attention once more upon the dangers caused to health by cigarette smoking. There is no doubt of the causal connection between cigarette smoking and lung cancer, bronchitis and other diseases. I refute entirely, however, what the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. K. Robinson) has just said. A great deal has been done and the Government are currently considering what further steps should be taken in the light of various Reports which we have at hand, including the most interesting Report, published today, on Health Education from a Joint Committee of the Central and Scottish Health Services Councils which was set up by the Ministers' advisory body in 1959.

I leave the matter there. This is not the occasion to argue what should be done in this sphere. I hope that we will have another opportunity for that purpose. I do not, however, think that the precise Measure that is being advocated today would make much of a contribution to a solution of the problem.

3.50 p.m.

I am sorry that the hon. Member for Brixton (Mr. Lipton) seems to be departing. I am delighted to have brought him back, because he suggested that some of my hon. Friends and I were here for the purpose of talking out this Bill. I tell him quite bluntly that that is not so. Most of my hon. Friends have been here all day, unlike himself who arrived in the last minute. Many of us—

Four of them.

—have been here for the purpose of taking part in a debate on a very important and interesting Measure before. The fact that the interesting and moderately couched speech of the hon. Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt) in introducing the Bill has induced some of us to stay and to listen and to take part in this debate is quite by the way.

I had not intended to speak on this matter at all, and would not had it not been for the fact that I found the subject much more interesting than I had expected. I am sorry to be deflected, but one of my hon. Friends has just pointed out that he Bill does not apply to Northern Ireland. It is true that it does not. We see in Clause 3 that it does not extend to Northern Ireland. I had intended later in what I was going to say to ask the hon. Member for Willesden, West—perhaps he would care to deal with the matter now by way of intervention—whether he had any particular intention to exclude Northern Ireland from the Bill's operation, and whether it means, for example, that cigarette manufacturers in Northern Ireland would not necessarily have to put on this description, or whether it is a matter of constitutional propriety in order to allow the Government of Northern Ireland to legislate themselves if they so wish.

I thank the hon. and gallant Member. He is quite right on that second point. It is purely a matter of constitutinal propriety. It is, as he said, a contribution to the problem rather than a solution of it, and we felt that Northern Ireland would naturally wish to reach its own solution.

I am very much obliged to the hon. Member. That clears up something which had been puzzling me a little during the debate.

The hon. Member has rightly said that this is a narrow and limited Measure. What he is seeking to do is to make it illegal to sell packets of cigarettes which are not clearly marked with a warning of the health hazards. I have a profound sympathy with the general object that young people should be discouraged from starting to smoke. Unlike so many who have spoken, I am a heavy smoker. I always regret the fact that I ever started smoking. I am afraid that some of my family smoke as well. I have six grandchildren. None of them smokes, but that is purely because of the fact that they are under 5 years of age.

I was saying that, seriously, I think all of us in the House would agree that young people ought to be discouraged from starting smoking if possible, and I think parents have a duty, and anyone who has responsibility for public health has a duty, in pointing out that there are dangers in commencing cigarette smoking.

Honestly, however, with all due respect to the hon. Member for Willesden, West, this is not the way to do it. My hon. Friend the Member for Chigwell (Mr. Biggs-Davison) gave a devastating answer to this and pointed out how ridiculous it is. We are faced with the proposition that anything being sold which would in any way be a danger if taken to excess ought to be so marked.

The Bill is confined to cigarettes.

Admittedly, the hon. Gentleman confines it to cigarettes.

Perhaps the hon. and gallant Gentleman will accept it from me that it is not necessary to smoke to excess to suffer from cancer. Both the Surgeon-General's Report and the Report of the Royal College of Surgeons show that even if one does not smoke to excess one can still contract cancer-through smoking.

Is the hon. Gentleman seriously telling me that if someone who has never smoked before smokes one cigarette he is incurring some danger in so doing? I should have thought that a ludicrous proposition. I am perfectly certain that what we are dealing with is the taking of something in excess. Whether "excess" means 5 a day, 10 a day or 20 a day is a question, but it is, in fact, a matter of taking something to excess.

My hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary mentioned dental caries and the alarming reports by the dental profession about the harmful effects upon children's teeth of eating an excessive amount of sweets. Whether one sweet is excessive, or two sweets, or more, is a question but, undoubtedly, if one takes the dental profession seriously, as one must, one must be absolutely convinced that the overeating of sweets in this affluent society by children is doing enormous harm to their teeth. The dental profession is strikingly firm in warning us about it.

Is the hon. Gentleman really telling us that if one follows the principle underlying the Bill one must ensure that every packet of sweets contains a warning against the dangers of eating sweets to excess, that every sweet that may be eaten will carry the danger of dental decay? That is the logic of his argument.

Dental caries is not fatal.

Very well, if dental caries is not fatal, let us take coronary thrombosis. One of the greatest causes of coronary thrombosis is not cigarette smoking but obesity and over-eating. Many physicians have argued that coronary thrombosis is due to a high level of cholesterol in the blood stream and that this is caused by excessive eating of fat. Would the hon. Gentleman seriously say that every pound of butter and lard sold must bear on its packet some prohibition or some warning that the taking of too much fat will increase the level of cholesterol in the blood stream and cause danger of obesity and, consequently, danger of death from coronary thrombosis?

I honestly believe that the Bill is misconceived. Its object is perfectly right and proper, but I am certain that it would be wrong for the House of Commons to come to a conclusion about it on a day when many more hon. Members have not had an opportunity to examine it and discuss it. It is not the narrow, simple Bill which the hon. Member suggested it might be—

It being Four o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.

Debate to be resumed upon Friday next.

New Towns (No 2) Bill

Read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Standing Committee pursuant to Standing Order No. 40 (Committal of Bills)

Road Safety Bill

Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Second Reading [28th February].

Question again proposed.

Object.

Debate further adjourned till Friday, 26th June.

Stamp Exemptions Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday, 26th June.

Motor Vehicles Driving Establishments Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday, 5th June.

Sale Of Houses And Land (Legal Costs) Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday, 5th June.

Public Service Vehicles (Travel Concessions) Act 1955 (Amendment) Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday, 5th June.

Agricultural Nuisances Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday, 5th June.

Town And Country Planning (Land Values) Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday, 5th June.

Highways (Straying Animals) Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday, 5th June.

Gas And Electricity (Resale) Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday, 5th June.

Footwear Materials Marking Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday, 5th June.

House Buyers Protection Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday, 5th June.

Travel Agencies (Registration) Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday, 5th June.

Eviction From Rented Dwellings Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday, 5th June.

Redundant Workers (Severance Pay) Bill

Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Second Reading [14th February].

Object.

Debate further adjourned till Friday, 5th June.

Planning Decisions, Brentford And Chiswick

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

4.3 p.m.

I am grateful for the opportunity of raising the subject of recent planning decisions made against residents' wishes in my constituency of Brentford and Chiswick. I want to make it clear from the outset that I do not intend this speech to be a personal attack on my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, for whom I have the highest regard. I feel, however, that it is necessary to underline this matter to the House owing to two recent planning decisions which I consider have been made very much against the interests of two large groups of my constituents.

My contention is that the decisions were taken without due regard to the sound representations made by my con- stituents in both cases. In view of the evidence and the very strong pleas that I put forward on their behalf, I felt certain that the Ministry would come down on their side. The result of these experiences has been to cause me to face the prospect of having to put forward future pleas on behalf of my constituents with a certain amount of apprehension.

The two cases are completely separate, although there is an interlinking theme. The first concerns the use of residential land in Popes Lane, Ealing, for electricity board purposes. Popes Lane is in two constituencies. The south side is in my constituency of Brentford and Chiswick, but the north side is in the division of my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, South (Mr. Batsford).

At the present time the Central Electricity Generating Board and the Southern Electricity Board have a building on the North side of the road. It is not an unpleasant building. It rather resembles a school, or an assembly hall. However, the Board has other ideas about it and has applied to convert the area into a large storage site. Furthermore, it wants to knock down six perfectly good houses, semi-detached but in very sound condition, which it owns and which are adjacent to the present storage depôt.

My constituents, who live on the other side of the road, not unnaturally objected very strongly to this application and in due course it was referred to my right hon. Friend, who ordered a public inquiry. After the public inquiry, the inspector's report, much to everyone's surprise, was in favour of the six houses being pulled down. This was particularly surprising at a time of acute housing shortage in this area. The inspector gave it as his opinion that the application should be granted. The height of the proposed new depôt had been modified during the negotiations and the inspector said in his report

"that the present proposal would inevitably detract somewhat from the enjoyment of nearby dwellings."

He said that it was in the public interest that the electricity depôt should be centrally located.

It is my firm contention that, with a little more effort and good will on the part of the Electricity Board, an equally suitable alternative site could have been found in another part of Ealing. It was all too easy for the Board, which owned the land, to take it over for use as a storage depôt. Surprisingly, the Minister upheld his inspector's decision even though the proposal involved a departure from the provisions of the area development plan, as well as the loss of the residential accommodation. The site of the six houses when pulled down will be used for car parking and for the added storage of materials such as cable. That is likely to be very unsightly, even though it is proposed as a gesture to erect a screen wall and plant trees along the frontage.

My constituents consider that the Minister's decision means that their properties—and practically all are owner-occupied—will be reduced in value, and I subscribe to that view myself. The new electricity site will be ugly, noisy and wholly out of keeping with the character of the district. Another minor point is that, as a result of electricity operations, television reception in the area is almost sure to be interfered with. This is not an isolated complaint from one or two affected householders. A petition of more than 50 signatures was submitted to the Minister and many people came to see me personally. Alas, the petition had no effect.

I turn now to the second case forming the subject of this debate. This concerns the appeal under the Town and Country Planning Act, 1962, of Auto Marine Services, (London) Limited against the decision of the Brentford and Chiswick Council to refuse planning permission to a change of use of one room at Strand Shipyard, Grove Park Road, Chiswick, to a non-residential proprietary club. Grove Park Road, Chiswick, is also a pleasant residential district. It lies beside a part of the Thames which is well known to many Londoners, just outside the famous Strand on the Green. Residents not unnaturally objected very strongly to the introduction of what they considered to be purely and simply a drinking club. The fact that this decision was made is no reflection whatever on the owners of the shipyard, who are perfectly reputable people, but it is obvious that such an introduction is not desired by the local residents whoever the sponsors may be.

This club is undoubtedly intended for the customers of the boatyard at that addresses and also for general Thames boating enthusiasts. But others may form part of the membership and have no connection with boating. I understand that the club will have a maximum membership of some 300, and the vast majority will come from outside the area of my constituency. It is not a club which will be generally used by residents. My hon. Friend was quite wrong when he implied in reply to a recent Question that quite a number of local residents wanted this club. All my inquiries showed that they were all very much against it. It is not as though there were not any facilities for alcoholic consumption in the area. There are two or three famous public houses literally only a stone's throw away from this area at Strand on the Green, so that there are plenty of opportunities for people who wish to take liquid refreshment.

Although at least 160 local residents objected to this proposal and although they were backed to the full by the borough council and their Member of Parliament, the inspector who conducted the inquiry which was arranged came down on the side of the club's sponsors. The Minister approved of his decision, but at least he imposed the three-year time limit, to see how things work out, to use his own words.

My experience is that once such an establishment is in being it is often very hard to get a change back again. While one hopes that this club will be properly conducted, even so one can imagine that there will still be a certain amount of nuisance caused to the local residents.

The inspector said in this report that the club membership's effect on the parking situation locally, and the amenities enjoyed by the residents generally, were likely to be "only slight". My constituents considered this to be the classic under-statement of the year. It is hardly likely to be endorsed by anyone who has been unfortunate enough to live cheek by jowl with a drinking club, who remembers late-night, noisy scenes, and who recalls the revving up of engines, the slamming of car doors, and the boisterous merriment which often proceeds from people coming out of such a club.

More important still, in my view, is the fact that this area is very badly off for parking facilities. Strand on the Green is one of London's natural beauty spots and has many visitors, especially during the summer months. Like so many other suburban areas, it has too many cars parked there already. The problem is a serious one, which I and several other people locally have discussed, argued and campaigned about for a long time before this matter came to the fore. There are no real off-street parking facilities available at the present time in this area, and I should have thought that a club with a membership of some 300 is bound to add substantially to this difficulty.

In addition, there is a very dangerous bend not many yards away from this club and this would present a number of serious traffic hazards if cars were allowed to park there. It is my submission that in both these cases, which I have mentioned quite briefly, the Ministerial decisions which have been made were very much against the wishes and interests of the majority of the residents in Brentford and Chiswick, who are directly affected.

Having made his decisions, I cannot very well expect my right hon. Friend, or my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, to alter these decisions at this stage. That would be an unprecedented step, and it would shock me almost as much as the original decisions on these two cases shocked me. But I would be failing in my duty to those of my constituents who are affected if I did not express to the House my deep disappointment of what has actually happened, and say that apparently very scant notice indeed was taken of the very clear and very well-merited objections raised by the local residents.

I should like to express the hope that the Ministry will in future try to do what it can to help preserve the character and amenities of what is still an attractive London suburban area, and not allow expediency to override substantial local objections. I am sure that the Ministry did what it thought was right but it has caused deep offence to a large number of local people and I do not think that it has encouraged the area to retain some of its famous characteristics.

4.13 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government

(Mr. F. V. Corfield)

I should like to preface my remarks to my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Chiswick (Mr. Dudley Smith) by saying that I am sure he will appreciate that in planning control, perhaps even more obviously than in any other Government activity, one cannot please all the people all the time. I would go so far as to say that, so far as the cases go which come before my right hon. Friend on appeal, a great majority of them are such that, whatever decision is taken, some body of people—I say body because obviously the appellant will be disappointed on refusal—or collection of people, apart from him, will almost certainly be offended.

By the nature of things the offended are more vociferous than those who are content, and that they should have an opportunity of voicing their discontent is a basic safeguard to our democratic society. I hope, however, that my hon. Friend will agree that if we are to have planning control at all, it can work only if there is some public realisation of the issues involved, and at least a recognition that the planning decision which is quite obviously wrong, or even quite obviously right, in the sense that the great majority of people would accept the decision, is, at any rate in cases which come on appeal, an exception rather than a rule.

Just as my hon. Friend is glad to have this opportunity to voice the views of his constituents, I welcome the opportunity to try to explain some of the issues, some of the problems and policies, and how we attempt to apply them. I say attempt because, even the wisdom of Solomon would be strained at times to reach a decision which would please all my hon. Friends.

I think that perhaps the first basic point which I should like to make is that the basis of planning control can only be the prevention of development where it is in the public interest to prevent it. Although a number of private interests obviously add up to a public interest—and it is not always easy to draw the line—we cannot operate a planning control system on the basis of neighbours having a veto simply because of a purely personal private interest.

Having said that, let me turn to the two cases in which my hon. Friend is interested. First, the Strand Shipyard site. I would remind my hon. Friend that apart from the planning aspects of this, a justice's licence is required, and was in fact granted, despite objections, in June, 1963. The police did not object to the licence. At the time of the inquiry there were, I think, 71 prospective members of the club, of whom 53 owned boats on the river.

I appreciate that a number of people who will use this club may well not come from the immediate area, but I suggest to my hon. Friend that if one happens to have the good fortune to live on a strip of the river, one cannot expect to keep the exclusive enjoyment of the river—and it is the river that brings these people in their boats—to the immediate neighbourhood.

My hon. Friend said that I was wrong in saying that there was no support for this. I did not say in my Answer that the supporters were necessarily residents. I have not checked whether they were or not, but there were a number of people who took the opposite view to that taken by my hon. Friend and by his constituents.

As regards the inquiry, the Brentford and Chiswick Borough Council, on behalf of the Middlesex County Council, refused permission on the ground of lack of parking facilities and loss of amenity caused by the increased noise and traffic. The inspector, who, after all, inspected the site, heard the evidence, and saw the witnesses, came to the conclusion that a club was an appropriate use of the appeal premises, and thought that its effect on the parking situation and the amenities enjoyed by local residents was likely to be only slight and that the amenities enjoyed by the more seriously affected occupants of Nos. 74 and 78, Grove Park Road could be adequately protected by imposing conditions. My hon. Friend has had a copy of the decision letter, in which it is made clear that conditions will be imposed, that a side window will have to be blocked up, an impervious screen provided, and proper provision made for parking in the forecourt.

I do not think that I am giving away any secrets in saying that when the case came to me, before making my recommendation to my right hon. Friend I was doubtful whether one could really be sure that this club would not have a deleterious effect on parking conditions and that this really would be impossible to judge until the club had had a few years in operation. I accordingly suggested to my right hon. Friend that it would be right to put a time limit on this, for the precise reasons which my hon. Friend had put forward, to make it clear that if this turned out to be a damaging development from the point of view of amenities there would be an opportunity to review it.

That fact must produce a very much stronger incentive on the part of the proprietor to see that it does not create a nuisance, and there is the further safeguard that the justices' licence has to be renewed annually. There is an opportunity for my hon. Friend's constituents to resist the continuance of that licence if it should turn out that this club is either not contributing to the amenities or is producing so much traffic that the parking situation becomes seriously inconvenienced. I suggest to my hon. Friend that far from my right hon. Friend and myself ignoring the views of the residents, we were very anxious to ensure that if there should be difficulties there would be an opportunity for another decision to be taken in the light of the difficulties after the club had been in operation. I suggest that was the right thing to do and that it shows we paid very great regard to the representations made at the inquiry by the constituents of my hon. Friend.

I turn now to the second case which is the proposal of the Electricity Board for 130–140 Popes Lane, Ealing. The history of this is that the Southern Electricity Board has used this as a service depôt for Ealing, Acton, Brentford and Chiswick. Because of the increase in the demand for electricity in this area—I am sure my hon. Friend will not deny that a proper supply of electricity is as important to his constituents as any other—the Southern Electricity Board agreed to let the Central Electricity Generating Board build a transformer station with additional switchgear on part of this site. The building originally proposed would have been 71 feet high and planning permission was refused for that because the height was unacceptable in a residential area. This again underlines that the planning authority was very conscious of the need to subscribe to the interests of the local residents.

The building built eventually was only 43 feet high and, to hold the same amount of equipment, it covered a considerably larger area. As a result, not sufficient land was left for the depôt which was regarded by the Southern Electricity Board as essential for the service they could give to the people in the area covering the constituency of my hon. Friend and neighbouring, constituencies.

In this case, unlike the previous case, the application of the Electricity Board was supported by both the local authorities, that is, the Ealing Borough Council in whose area the site is, and by the Middlesex County Council as the local planning authority. It was referred to the Brentford and Chiswick Council because, as was described by my hon. Friend, this site is on the border between that borough and the Borough of Ealing.

At the inquiry the inspector concluded that although as my hon. Friend has said the proposal must inevitably detract in some ways from the amenities of the adjoining dwellings, physically the site formed an intrusion in the rectangular area otherwise entirely devoted to electricity purposes. The inspector felt that it was in the public interest that a depot of this kind should be centrally located and easily accessible to all parts of the district and he recommended that permission be granted.

As soon as this came up to Ministerial level we took the view that a decision involving the demolition of houses, or planning application involving the demolition of houses, could not be lightly taken in this day and age. Accordingly a further letter was sent after the inquiry—which is an unusual procedure—to the Electricity Board to make sure that it had really exhausted its search for an alternative site.

The reply came back with quite detailed comments on all the alternative sites suggested at the inquiry and discussion. It became quite clear that the Electricity Board had made a very careful search for an alternative site and had given very careful consideration to the possibility of splitting the depôt from the other services on this site. It also went on to say that it was part of the civil defence measures that the emergency headquarters for the district were set up in the basement of the switch house, that there were obvious advantages in having them next to the depôt and sub-station, and that it was intended to integrate the offices on the site. There were a number of other technical difficulties and to divorce the one from the other would involve very considerable public expenditure.

I think that the thing to emphasise is that the issues here were the effect on the housing needs and the effect on amenities of this development and the provision of a proper and efficient supply of electricity to the people in the area, including my hon. Friend's constituents. I would admit that this is a difficult problem particularly where the demolition of houses is involved. If it had not been for the demolition of houses, I do not think there would have been any real question that the needs of the Electricity Board in this case would probably have overridden the amenity objections in view of the fact that it was only an extension, and, according to the inspector, a logical extension, on the site already established.

Finally, I would remind my hon. Friend that under the planning Acts as they stand today no planning permission is required to demolish houses. Even if we had refused planning permission we could not have prevented the Electricity Board from demolishing the houses for some other purpose for which planning permission would not be required or could more easily be obtained. The only way that one can control the demolition of houses is by a building preservation order which is normally only used for houses of some architectural or historic merit.

I would conclude by emphasising to my hon. Friend that, of course, the fact that this planning application involved demolition of houses gave us very serious thought, and we would not even then have approved the application had we not been quite satisfied that in the public interest, the wider interest of the immediate amenity of those living very close, it was essential that the Electricity Board should efficiently be able to discharge its task of providing a satisfactory electricity service.

Therefore, I really must refuse my hon. Friend's suggestion that either of these planning decisions are good examples of the proper considerations having been flouted by my right hon. Friend in reaching his decision. I have looked at them again and again, and I remain more than ever convinced that these were the right decisions in the public interest, though not necessarily, of course, in the immediate interests of the people surrounding the area. This is something which I think we have to realise, that the main issue that faces us is to balance the public interest of a wider nature against the narrower public interest, and in these particular cases I am quite certain that we reached the right decision.

Question put, and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes past Four o'clock.

Volume 694: debated on Friday 8 May 1964

House Of Commons

Prayers

Orders Of The Day

Riding Establishments Bill

Clause 1—(Licensing Of Riding Establishments)

Clause 2—(Inspection Of Riding Establishments)

Clause 3—(Offences)

Clause 5—(Power Of Local Authorities To Prosecution)

Clause 6—(Interpretation)

Universities And College Estates Bill

Pharmacy Bill

Protection Of Animals (Anaesthetics Bill) Lords

Clause 1—(Enlargement Of Classes Of Operations In Which Anaesthetics Must Be Used)

Clause 2—(Short Title, Citation, Extent And Commencement)

Cigarettes (Health Hazards) Bill

New Towns (No 2) Bill

Road Safety Bill

Stamp Exemptions Bill

Motor Vehicles Driving Establishments Bill

Sale Of Houses And Land (Legal Costs) Bill

Public Service Vehicles (Travel Concessions) Act 1955 (Amendment) Bill

Agricultural Nuisances Bill

Town And Country Planning (Land Values) Bill

Highways (Straying Animals) Bill

Gas And Electricity (Resale) Bill

Footwear Materials Marking Bill

House Buyers Protection Bill

Travel Agencies (Registration) Bill

Eviction From Rented Dwellings Bill

Redundant Workers (Severance Pay) Bill

Planning Decisions, Brentford And Chiswick