Sir Frank Soskice. The Amendment, in page 2, line 6.

The Government have put down an Amendment, Sir William, which entirely covers the point which my hon. Friends and I had in mind. In these circumstances, it would not be our desire to move the Amendment which you have called.

I beg to move, in page 3, line 3, after "Trade" to insert "the Minister of Aviation".

I beg to move, in page 3, line 7, at the end to add:

"and 'document' includes any record or device by means of which material is recorded or stored".

The United States Federal Maritime Commission often asks for information which may nowadays be recorded on tapes rather than in documentary form. For example, there are records of oral conversations which are sometimes asked for, and there is also material which is recorded on computer tapes in connection with accounts. It is, therefore, necessary to ensure that the Bill covers these modern methods of storing information.

I beg to move, in page 3, line 8, after "who" to insert "wilfully".

This is a proposal which the Government would submit to the Committee to deal with the point raised by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Newport (Sir F. Soskice) on Second Reading. Under Clause 1(2, a), persons are under a duty to give notice to the Minister of any requirement or prohibition which has been imposed or which is threatened to be imposed on them pursuant to measures of a foreign authority to which the Minister has already applied the section.

It can be said, I think, with some force, that a man cannot neglect to comply with requirements of which he has no notice, and there is some support for the view that the Amendment is unnecessary. On the other hand, I entirely agree with the right lion, and learned Gentleman that it is better to make sure by inserting the word "wilfully" in this subsection so that it reads:

"wilfully fails to comply with section 1(2)(a)".

It will then be apparent that a person does not commit an offence under Clause 1(2, a). unless he has knowledge of the facts which he ought to disclose and knows that he ought to disclose so we are not under Clause 1(2,a) making it an offence which might be committed by a person who had no knowledge of the facts he was supposed to have reported.

I am grateful to the Government for having proposed this change and I am sure that the Committee will support it. I agree with the right hon. and learned Gentleman that there is an ambiguity about the meaning of the word "neglect", and that conceivably it could be said by somebody charged with an offence that he did not know of the imposition and could not be said to have neglected to have complied with the requirement of the Government. It is, however, desirable to remove any possibility of controversy in the matter. I think that the Amendment amply does this and I hope that the Committee will support it.

I beg to move, in page 1, line 5, to leave out from beginning to "a" in line 9.

I think that it would be convenient if we discussed this Amendment with the Amendments in page 1, lines 5 and 9.

I think that that would be convenient, Sir William.

These are all more or less drafting Amendments and cover the same point which is, quite simply, that the words that we propose to leave out are unnecessary.

The Minister will recollect that my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) is probably the most vigilant Member of the House of Commons in trying to cut out verbosity in Bills. I sometimes think that the draftsmen of Bills are paid according to the number of words they can inject into them, and we are seeking to simplify the Clause without detracting from its meaning.

I understand and am familiar with the intention to cut out words which may not seem to be necessary. I hope later this morning that I shall be able to assist in this process. In this case, I should like to draw attention to the fact that this is a practice which has come in in recent years as a result of requests I understand, by hon. Members that there should be something of this kind in parenthesis to assist them so that they do not have to look up the Statute to see exactly what it is all about.

A secondary point is that it helps those who, later, have to interpret Measures when they become Acts. For that reason, we think that in this case it is for the convenience of the House of Commons and also for those who have to work on the Acts later that this practice, which is now widespread in legislation, including Scottish legislation, should be preserved in the Bill.

That sounds all right, but I cannot remember anyone in the House of Commons asking for this to be done. Does it add anything at all to the meaning of the Statute? I am perfectly sure that it does not. What we are doing is putting a new duty on the river purification board. If anyone has any doubt as to the powers of the board he has only to look at Clause 9, which states that this Statute will be considered as one with the main Act. There is no difficulty there.

If there is any further difficulty, one has only to go to the combined statutes and look up the words "river purification board." All we have here is a baroque adornment of a Statute. There is nothing Gothic, or neo-Gothic, or anything quite so simple, about this. This is a practice which the draftsmen should forget as quickly as possible. I like a Statute to tell us exactly what its meaning is. When we have to read about six lines, when we are already told in the Title what is the purpose of the Bill, I see no reason why these words should be there, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will think again.

There is all this reference to a Statute—only one Section of it—and then we get parenthetical reference to one of the things to which it relates. It is nonsensical and unnecessary, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will think again about it between now and Report. When we come to the Report stage, truncated in our considerations as we are and time for reflection being denied to the Government, I hope that you, Sir William, will be fairly lenient with us if we seek to put forward manuscript Amendments.

Perhaps I should reply to that remark as it is directed to me. The hon. Member will be aware that selection of Amendments on Report does not lie with the Chairman of Ways and Means.

It becomes even more silly, the way we are dealing with legislation. I direct this point to the Minister. It may well be that by the time we finish the Bill, if we finish it today, some enlightenment will come over the Government and they will appreciate that something should, or could, be done, it may well be in relation to this Amendment. I hope that between now and Report, the channels of communication between the Chair and the Government will be so open that the Chair will be more receptive to the acceptance of manuscript Amendments that are essential to properly legislating for the needs of spray irrigation.

I cannot remember anyone asking for the Statute to be cluttered up with references. If the hon. Gentleman goes back far enough, he will find that people are sick of the business of legislation by reference. It does not add anything in clarity to the meaning of Clause 1; it is just an adornment.

No doubt the hon. Gentleman has taken visitors around this place in his time and will know that in the Lobby and the Library we have volumes of the Statutes from the time of Magna Carta on, and that the volume most handled is the one covering 500 years of Statute law. But at present the one volume of law passed by this House in one year is thicker than the volume covering the 500 years from 1200 to 1700. One of the reasons is that we get this verbosity in our legislation which contributes nothing to its understanding.

There is reference later in the Bill to the 1951 Act. There is no need to repeat the reference if it is made in the first Clause. I would repeat what my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) said. I am sure that no Scottish Member, certainly no Scottish Labour Member, made representations to include this kind of verbiage. I should like the Under-Secretary to produce evidence for his statement that there have been representations. Even if there had been, he should not pander to them in this instance. It is his job, and the job of the draftsmen, to produce legible legislation without a single extraneous word which makes no contribution to the meaning.

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will reconsider this matter

I am not sure whether the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) heard my earlier statement. I said that I fully sympathise and wish to help him with his objective of taking out words which may seem unnecessary and that I hope later in these proceedings to be able to join him in doing that. But in this case it is a matter of convenience and general structure. I note that he does not like these words, which he thinks are unnecessary. This is testimony to the tremendous amount of work which I know he does among the Statutes and to the fact that he knows them extremely well.

But other hon. Members who are not necessarily in the House at the moment have let it be known that they like the system of putting words in parentheses and it has become the general practice. Therefore, I ask that where we have it here we should retain it because it serves a useful purpose. We have evidence that it assists persons who later have to interpret these Measures. On reading a new Act they can immediately see in brief what the Measure referred to does.

I understand the position of the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. W. Hamilton) and the hon. Member for Kilmarnock, and I appreciate their extreme diligence, and I know that they do not need these parentheses because they are familiar with the statutes. But that is not necessarily the case with other Members who may have to turn to this legislation, and particularly with members of the public. Therefore, while I entirely understand the position of hon. Members, I do not think it is an im- portant point, and I would ask them to allow these words to stay in the wider interest.

The hon. Gentleman changes his ground so charmingly. First, he told us that this was a practice which had grown up recently. Now he tells us that this is a general practice.

I do not think there is any inconsistency. I said that it was something which had grown up in recent years and that it is now general practice in Bills.

I am seeking to ensure that this innovation of recent years does not become general practice. I do not think that the things that we have done of recent years are right. The hon. Gentleman said that other hon. Members like it. Will he tell me where they are? Are we to legislate for the absent ignoramuses of the Tory Party? There is not a single Scottish Tory back bencher here. Where are the farmers and the land owners? The man this affects most is probably the Prime Minister, with his thousands and thousands of acres in Scotland—in the south and in Lanark.

He is a Trappist monk.

I am surprised about this. I should have thought that this was specially put down for a Friday for the simple reason that we could have "Alexander the Straight" with us so that he could give us an indication of how he feels about the importance of this legislation to the land.

The hon. Gentleman said that this is absolutely essential. Let us look at the words which are absolutely essential—

I did not say that it was absolutely essential. I said that it was a matter of convenience and that it was convenient that these parentheses should stay.

Let us see how essential or convenient it is. The first words of the Bill are:

"An Act to enable river purification boards in Scotland in pursuance of their functions".

That is important.

"to control the abstraction of water for the purpose of spray irrigation; and for purposes connected therewith."

Having said that, we proceed to say:

"For the purpose of assisting them in the performance of the duties laid on them by section 17(1) of the Rivers (Prevention of Pollution) (Scotland) Act 1951 (which relates among other things to the promotion of the cleanliness of rivers and the conservation of water resources) a river purification board may make application to the Secretary of State …".

The only words which refer to the new power we are giving are:

"a river purification board may make application".

If Statutes have to be clear, let us scrub all these inessentials. Is the Under-Secretary really going to tell me that a Member of Parliament has not the sense to turn to Clause 9—or do hon. Members get tired before they get to Clause 9? Clause 9(2) says:

"This Act shall be construed as one with the Rivers (Prevention of Pollution) (Scotland) Act 1951."

The references which are essential are duly made throughout the Bill, but this is not essential.

The Under-Secretary is fairly young in his parliamentary experience. It may be that when he was a Whip he did not pay too much attention to the text and context of statutes and was more concerned about the presence of his colleagues. He was more successful on a Friday than his present colleague is. How many Tory garden fêtes are being opened in Scotland today? Essential business? It was the Government who put this Scottish business down for a Friday. I had to cancel all my arrangements for today, and I should like to know where the Government supporters are. Are we legislating for them because they do not find it convenient to be here when Statutes are considered, and do we, because of that, have to spell it all out like a child's primary reader?

Maybe the first words of the Clause:

"For the purpose of assisting them"

refer to the Tories who are absent.

Maybe. But I am beginning to wonder whether they can read at all. It does not "assist" them. We are empowering them. We are giving them a new duty, not assisting them. If these words were taken out we should salve something and should be given something for our attempt to cleanse the Statute.

I am asking the Under-Secretary to try to treat this seriously. It is not an unimportant matter. These words are not needed here. I can appreciate the soulless joys of a draftsman's existence. Draftsmen must yearn to be innovators, to adorn and put something else in—words such as "anent." That is a lovely one. We have it in the Schedule. I thought of introducing it in one or two other places for the purpose of consistency.

I despair of the hon. Gentleman. He has all the power of the Scottish Office here today. The Secretary of State, whoever he may be, is not present. Nor are the other two Under-Secretaries of State. They have also fled the field. We do not know where the Lord Advocate is. Probably he is consulting his legal adviser, the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire, West (Mr. Hendry). The Solicitor-General for Scotland is not here. Of course, neither of these Law Officers has the right to sit in this Chamber anyway.

11.30 a.m.

The Under-Secretary of State, therefore, has complete control. He is already convinced that these words are not> necessary. Why does not he exercise his power? We will assist him in doing so. In fact, we have taken steps to ensure that he gets the chance. He has not long to go in his present office. Let him make a bold stroke for purity and brevity in Scottish legislation. It is a pity that the hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. MacArthur) does not speak. It is not that he cannot. He makes wonderful speeches in Scotland and we shall get the chance to deal with them before long.

The Under-Secretary of State should treat this matter as one of considerable seriousness. We do not want this practice to go on unchecked. Here is the chance to check it. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will reconsider it, if not now then between now and the Report stage—to use another well-worn cliché. But I gather that the Report stage is to come on a moment after the Committee stage and it may be that the hon. Member will have the chance to present a manuscript Amendment for our consideration then.

I hope that the Under-Secretary of State will respond to the reasonable request of my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross). The hon. Gentleman is the official spokesman for his party today on this very important and revolutionary matter. If he cannot go all the way, my hon. Friend has made a compromise suggestion. It is that, if the hon. Gentleman cannot accept all the Amendments, he might at least accept the Amendment in my name, in page 1, line 5, to leave out from beginning to "in".

Surely the hon. Gentleman is not all so conservative that he refuses to accept even that Amendment. Surely even his revolutionary fervour would be prepared to accept that one. The hon. Gentleman will find, as we go on with this Bill, that it would be wise to accept Amendments rather than reject them in this offhand way. These Amendments are quite reasonable.

The hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) and the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. W. Hamilton) are tempting in their invitations but I cannot be waylaid into accepting because I think that the words as they stand are helpful and convenient and i would not wish to withdraw them from the Bill, despite what the hon. Members have said.

The hon. Member for Kilmarnock spoke about the absence of Scottish hon. Members. I think that hon. Members got the impression on Second Reading that both sides of the House were fairly happy with the Bill. In fairness to my hon. Friends, I point out that it was not until yesterday, when these Amendments appeared, that they had any idea that there would be a lot of discussion of the kind we have just been having. The impression on Second Reading was that the Bill was necessary, short and had no controversial material in it.

The Under-Secretary of State cannot get away with that. He is making his position worse. Has he ever known a Scottish Bill, no matter how uncontroversial, no matter how trivial, get through "on the nod", even on a Friday? He should know my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock better than that. If it was a one-line Bill my hon. Friend would find Amendments to it. My hon. Friend's diligence is such that he can put the draftsmen and the hon. Gentleman in their place.

Nor can the hon. Gentleman justly argue in defence of the dereliction of duty by his hon. Friend. After all, they represent the interests that are being advantaged by the Bill. All the hon. Members who were present for Second Reading were farmers or were defending farming interests. Their first duty is to this House of Commons and to the interests they represent in it. I do not represent farmers predominantly, but mainly coal miners. Nevertheless, I regard it as my duty to be here to improve legislation which will affect the farmers. It ill-becomes the hon. Gentleman to make that kind of speech.

If the hon. Gentleman wants to get this Bill through this Committee today or, indeed, if he wants to get it this Session, he would do better to improve his ways. I do not accept his view that this is non-controversial and, therefore, ought to go through in an hour or two. When four o'clock comes I think that we shall be in the middle of the Bill—if we are lucky.

The Under-Secretary must learn our procedure. On Second Reading we discuss the principles of a Bill. No one has any great objection to its principles. But on Second Reading we do not discuss the text of legislation. If the hon. Gentleman recalls the history of this Measure, he will discover that the principles of the Bill were generally accepted in another place but that in Committee and on Report there was a growing interest. Considerable time was spent there both in Committee and on Report

Order. I wonder whether the time has not come when I should remind the Committee that at the moment we are discussing three specific Amendments.

I am grateful to you, Sir William. We do not want to spend too much of our time on the first three Amendments. There is a considerable number of others to deal with.

I should hate to be misunderstood in any way and I say straight away that I make no complaint about the Amendments having been put down yesterday. I was merely trying to explain that many hon. Members, hon. Members opposite as well as on this side of the Committee, were unaware that the Committee stage of the Bill would develop into a minute consideration of the Bill. I would not have expected the Bill to go through on the nod and I agree that we must have proper discussion; but I was merely trying to explain what had been thought. Yesterday, several of my hon. Friends said that, having seen the Amendments, they wish that they could be here, but that it was too late for them to change their arrangements.

I wished that I could not have been here.

Many hon. Members opposite represent farming interests. I know that the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. W. Hamilton) has a chiefly mining interest. Of course, I understand the reasons why many hon. Members opposite are not here today, but I hope that we can go through the Bill and make progress with it.

I can give the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) my word that I am not briefed to say firmly Yes "or" No to the various Amendments. I am ready to listen to what is said and I will do my best to accept wherever possible what are put forward as improvements to the Bill. However, I think that we should not accept these three Amendments. The hon. Gentleman himself indicated that he thought that they were not all that important, and we believe that they would be inconvenient.

The Amendments do not add anything to the Bill. They clutter it up and are quite unnecessary for its clarification. I represent and live in a farming area and the rivers in that area are very much concerned. They are rivers of history—

"Ye banks and braes o' bonny Doon."

I will not sing the songs of the River Ayr and the River Irvine, but I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we are determined to examine the Bill and to see that the purity and worth of those rivers are properly considered. The hon. Gentleman has got off to a disappointing start. I hope that he mends his ways. He has said that he will listen to us. There is plenty of space in the Chamber. Let him throw away his typed briefs and listen and be persuaded. I am sure that we will then make much greater progress.

The hon. Gentleman knows that this is the most important piece of legislation which the Government have produced for Scotland this Session, apart from the Divorce Bill which we are to discuss at 9.30 p.m. on Tuesday.

I am reluctant to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but surely that is going rather wider than the three Amendments.

I rather feared that I was going somewhat wide. However, I wanted to say that it is an imposition that when we are discussing a Bill of this kind and Amendments of this importance, the House should be so sparsely attended, particularly by Scottish Tory Members.

I beg to move, in page 1, line 11, to leave out "control" and to insert "supervise"

With this Amendment it will be convenient to discuss the similar Amendments to Clauses 1, 2 and 3.

I have been appalled by the terminology of the Bill, coming as it does from a Conservative Government who shrink from the word "control". This is the language of a vicious dictator. I have counted the number of times these horrible words are used—"controls," "licences," rationing of water in Scotland. The words "control" or "control order" are used 13 times in the first three Clauses. No market forces at work here! No freedom of the market in water in Scotland!

My hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock referred to the absence of the Prime Minister from our proceedings. He is one of the biggest landowners in Scotland and should have been here to defend and justify these controls and this licensing by a public body. Apparently, the man in St. Andrew's House, or on the river board, knows best in these matters.

I am proposing the substitution of the words "supervise," "supervision" and "supervision order" That kind of phraseology is more kindly, intimate and warmer than that used in the Bill as it stands. The expressions "control" and "control order" are harsh, cold, distant and bureaucratic words to be used by a Government of this kind, but they are words which, although the Conservatives say that they dislike them so much, are used ad lib in the Bill.

I do not know why the Bill was not drafted in the words I have suggested. I hope that the Under-Secretary will respond in a much more forthcoming way than he did to the previous Amendments. An important principle is involved here. We are discussing the relations between public bodies and one of the most important sections of our community, the farming community, and it is important to get these relationships right.

A good deal of money passes from the pockets of the taxpayers to the pockets of the farmers and it is important that that money should pass with good will on both sides. It is not the way to do it by saying, "You shall be controlled and you must get a licence and if you do not, you will be fined". That is the kind of language which one does not like to see.

After all, the farmers are performing a very important service for the community. They have discovered this kind of irrigation for the improvement of agricultural production and it will therefore benefit the nation. They ought to be treated rather more kindly and with rather more kindly language than the Bill uses. The present language of the Bill sounds so penal and so vindictive, and I am seeking to get rid of this kind of atmosphere. I should like the hon. Gentleman's reaction to our view on this, and I sit down in the hope that he will be in a more persuasive frame of mind than he was a half an hour ago.

I apologise for not being in at the beginning of the Committee stage of the Bill, but, unfortunately, I was engaged in other business.

I have a great deal of sympathy with the point of view expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. W. Hamilton). For many years we have been frightened about the movement of power from local areas to the centre. There must be a balance of power between Whitehall and the local authorities. It appears from the Bill that some centralised body is to have control over these matters. We must examine this proposal very closely indeed before we give anybody this absolute control, with no right of appeal against its decisions.

There is a tendency to give control to powerful bodies who can delegate that control to people who are influenced by them at the expense of the weak. I am worried about giving these powerful interests the right to abstract water and the right to obtain licences, because they may use their power to the detriment of other interests.

I do not want to deny anybody the right to benefit from our water supplies, but I want to ensure that one person does not benefit at the expense of someone else. By retaining the word "control", the powerful interests may well act without considering the interests of other people. I therefore urge the hon. Gentleman seriously to consider this important Amendment. I hope that we can have supervision from the centre to ensure that everybody gets a fair deal, rather than have a control from the centre which may work in the interests of the powerful to the detriment of the weak.

I considered this Amendment very carefully when I saw it on the Notice Paper yesterday. I have listened with interest to the reasons for it put forward by the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. W. Hamilton), but we think that the operations visualised in the Bill are more correctly described as control. The word "control" is included in the Long Title of the Bill, and we think that it would be a misnomer to call it supervision.

I point out to the hon. Member for Fife, West that this is control where control is decided to be necessary. It is not suggested in the Bill that control areas should be set up all over Scotland wherever there are river purification boards. The control areas, and subsequent control under the procedures of the Bill, are to be decided on when conditions such as a possible shortage of water make control necessary. This is not, as the hon. Gentleman tended to suggest, an ideological wish to have control. It is merely a sensible way of bringing in control when it is clear that it is necessary to prevent pollu- tion, or a shortage of water, or other damage to the community as a whole.

In reply to the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence), I point out that the control would not be central because the intention is that the control should be exercised by the river purification boards in the various areas. It is local control.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. W. Hamilton) on his examination of the Bill and on his calculations about the use of the word "control". When I saw my hon. Friend's Amendment, I ringed in red ink the word "control" every time it appeared. By Jove, it does look a bloody Statute !

I sympathise with my hon. Friend, but he has fallen into the trap of not differentiating between words and deeds. Very soon hon. Gentlemen opposite, if they are not already there, will be standing on Tory platforms, hoarse from the hustings in their efforts to renounce control. The Bill reeks of control. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman, junior as he is in his office, has read the Bill. He said that this was not a matter of centralised control. Has he looked at subsection (2)? It says that the Secretary of State—meandering Michael—

"may require the river purification board concerned to make application,"

and that the board

"shall comply with any such requirement."

This is centralised bureaucracy.

The hon. Gentleman says that this is necessary because of possible shortages. But this is what we are continually being told. We are continually being told about wicked Socialist controls, shortages, and rationing, yet the word "control" appears 13 times in the first two pages of the Bill; and when they do not use the word "control", they use the word "licences".

This is ridiculous. Hon. Gentlemen opposite fought the last election on the basis that there would be no more nationalisation in any form. When they became the Government, they discovered that there would be no shipping service to the Orkneys. There were no ships, so we got nationalisation and the Government now build, sell, acquire, and own the ships.

Order. We are discussing the Spray Irrigation (Scotland) Bill and only a series of Amendments to it

My hon. Friend has absorbed some of this Tory propaganda that there is something wrong with the word "control". I was trying to point out that he must differentiate between what they say and what they do when faced with the facts. After eight years of Toryism we had no ships. After 13 years of Toryism we have no water, so we have to control water supplies.

I agree that what the Government propose to do is to control. I am sorry to have to disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West, but I think that the word "control" should remain, but other words should precede it. I want the words "wicked Tory" to precede it. We want it to read "wicked Tory control". I hope that at the appropriate stage we shall be able to move a manuscript Amendment to insert those words. On second thoughts, that might be a Little harsh, so we may limit it to "Tory controls".

12 noon.

We have to be fair and compromising in this matter. What this amounts to is hypocrisy on the part of hon. Members opposite. When they are faced with a situation like this, and they are compelled to take action, they immediately turn their backs on all that they have been saying outside. They act with a reasonable amount of common sense. I do not know why I should support the hon. Member, in view of the attitude that he has displayed on other matters. I remind him that if he, in Moray and Nairn, or the hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. MacArthur), in Perth, opens his mouth during the General Election, and talks about wicked Socialist controls, I will see that his opponent, be he Liberal or Labour, has a copy of this Bill so that the hon. Member can be asked how he justifies this kind of thing, with all his talk about freedom.

This will be a very important Bill for the control of water, but is it not staggering that after 13 years of this Government—after all, we do not have 365 halcyon days a year; we have plenty of rainfall at the right time—

We have had the wettest 13 summers that I remember.

We have wonderful weather in Scotland. It is very healthy weather.

We have some wet weather.

Although my hon. Friend represents a Scottish constituency it is clear that he has not thrown overboard his inherited Welsh prejudices.

There is plenty of water in Wales.

We have the healthiest weather in Scotland. I know that my hon. Friend is an angler. All the rainfall in Scotland falls in the right places.

What the Government have not done is to conserve the water where it is in abundance, so that in time of shortage—which is every summer—it can be used for agricultural purposes. Science has made it possible to develop spray irrigation. Considerable sums of money have been spent on agricultural research and it has produced results which have shown the farmers mat by spray irrigation at the right time and in the right quantity they can considerably improve the yields from their land. It is regrettable that the social purposes of conservation—having the water available at the right time—have not been properly produced by the Government.

There is a shortage of water when we need water. That is why we must have control. The hon. Member is right in saying that we require control. This requirement arises from Tory failures to ensure that we have sufficient water all the year round and can bring it to the right places. If we had left electricity in the state that we have left water we should have been short of that. But we have a grid now. Indeed, we also have a gas grid. The Prime Minister talks about the junk-yard of nationalisation, and he sneers at the fact that water is one of the things that we shall attend to in the next Parliament, when we are the Government. I can assure him that when he talks like that he does not know what he is talking about.

The hon. Gentleman's oratory is of the same type, and probably from the same typewriter, as most of the briefs that we have to listen to from the Government Dispatch Box day in and day out. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will appreciate our concern at the fact that the Tories have had to resort to this kind of thing.

I am sorry to have to disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. W. Hamilton). I do it regretfully, but in the interests of purity and lucidity. The word "control" must stay. I merely express the hope that at a later stage we may move a manuscript Amendment to insert the words "wicked Tory" before "control."

I hope that the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) will send copies of the Bill, when it has become an Act—as I hope it will—to the people of Moray and Nairn. That would do me a great service. Many of my constituents are aware of the water problems of the area, and they will welcome the provisions contained in the Bill.

That brings me to the question of weather in Scotland. In my opinion, we have an excellent climate. There is some difference between the east and the west. In the east there is inclined to be a shortage of rain. As the hon. Member probably knows, in most years there is less rainfall in my area than in the rest of Britain. Therefore, problems arise in connection with water supply, and those who are concerned with spray irrigation will be interested in the Bill.

As the hon. Member said, the modernisation of agriculture—the new technique of irrigating by spray irrigation, with all the new kinds of equipment—is one of the main factors in causing shortage. Therefore, to talk about shortage as being something that we have only just caught up with and in respect of which we are having to impose controls, is not correct.

I would remind the hon. Member of one of the few speeches that he ever made before he came to adorn his present office. In the Scottish Standing Committee, on a Bill called the Flood Prevention (Scotland) Bill, which was the second of these sorts of Bills, he talked about the damage done by flooding in his area. What I have been talking about is the failure of the Government to legislate comprehensively in respect of our water supplies so as to make use of the floods and to conserve the water made available thereby so that it can be used at times and in places where there is a shortage. They cannot say that they never thought about it, because we had two flood prevention Bills—one for the countryside and one for the burghs. Neither has been satisfactory, because the floods that come to the towns usually, by natural processes, start somewhere else.

By this piecemeal and unsatisfactory legislation we are unable to make use of the flood waters. In summer or in spring, when water is required—when all the beneficences of Scotland's natural charm of weather brighten us up after a fairly healthy if not undreary winter—we have a shortage of water. We want the hon. Member to think beyond the Bill, and the word "control" takes us beyond it. We are using the word only because we have to. We are controlling the waters only because we have to—and we have to because of Government failure to conserve.

No wonder that members of the Government party do not call themselves the Conservative Party in Scotland. They are the Unionists. I do not know what they are united in; certainly in the hon. Member's area or even further north, where there are two Tory candidates fighting Caithness and Sutherland, they are not very united. But I see why his hon. Friends are not here. They are ashamed of the Bill.

Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Member, but I feel that he is going further than this small Amendments permits. It simply seeks to leave out one word—"control"— and to insert another word—"supervision".

I appreciate your difficulty, Sir William, in relating my discursive remarks to the Amendment, but this is a vital part of the Bill. I do not know whether my hon. Friend has done an Amendment to the Title.

A manuscript Amendment.

Usually, the Amendment to the Title is the last thing which we discuss. The purpose of the Bill is to control the abstraction of water. I suggest that Unionist Members for Scottish constituencies are affronted that at this stage the Minister asks for legislation to control the waters of Scotland. That is why they are not here. In his Amendment my hon. Friend is trying to do them a service and to save them from themselves in respect of the kind of speeches which they have been making and no doubt are anxious to expand in the coming weeks. But I agree that we should use the word "control".

I gave way to the hon. Member thinking that that was an intervention, but I am glad that he was able to continue. He underlined one of the difficulties. In the North-East, when there is a day or two of hard rain, the rivers come up and there is a flood. If the hon. Member had heard the excellent speech which his right hon. Friend the Member for Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire (Mr. Wood-burn) made on Second Reading, he would recall that his right hon. Friend spoke of the drainage in forestry areas undertaken when the Labour Government were in office. He said that many people, rightly or wrongly, said that the fact that the rivers often rose quickly and violently was a result of what had been done at that time. That was a good example of things which one cannot always foresee and of mistakes which one may unintentionally make. That is another factor which arises. But I am glad that the hon. Member accepts the word "control".

The speeches of my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) do not normally depress me, but his disagreement with the point which I am trying to make is a very disturbing reaction which I did not expect from him. This may appear to be a very small Amendment to substitute one word for another, but it is much more important than that. The Under-Secretary of State justified the use of the word "control" on the ground that it was a purely local control and was only where necessary. Surely the same argument would apply to "supervision"; it would be supervision where necessary and on a local basis.

Supervision implies a certain measure of control but a more enlightened form of control, and this is what I sought to emphasise when I moved the Amendment—that here is benevolent control. Hon. Members are quite right that in the West of Scotland we have a superabundance of water and in the East we have rather short supplies. But surely the way to tackle the problem is not to have local control or supervision but to have a national plan. This is where I move near to my hon. Friend's point of view. This Measure of itself will not solve the Scottish water problems. It is tinkering with them. No measure of local control or local supervision will alleviate the problems; all it will do is to control the amount of water which is used for spray irrigation.

My Amendment is designed to correct the impression that the Government are out to help people to use water sensibly and intelligently and to strike the right atmosphere between the Secretary of State, the river board and the users. This is a serious, not a trivial Amendment; it is an important point which merits much greater consideration than the Minister has given it.

Reading the Bill one would think that in Scotland we were living in the middle of the Arabian Desert, with water control, water rationing, and licences for water. With due deference to my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock, it is no good trying to "kid" tourists about the shocking weather which we have in the West. It adds to the glory of the scenery, but it would be idle to delude and deceive people into thinking that we have a Riviera on the West Coast of Scotland.

But we have.

My hon. Friend is a very loyal representative of Scotland, but he should not deceive poor, innocent Americans and others into thinking that they can bask in the sun for three months of the year in the West of Scotland. This is not so.

The whole point of the Amendment is to give the impression that the problem can be solved by a partnership between the central Government, the river board and the users, in so far as it can be solved in the limited way laid down in the Bill. I hope that the hon. Member will reconsider his decision.

I am sorry to intervene again, but I am not satisfied with the answer. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. W. Hamilton) I think that the word "control" is too strong. Much damage has been done to angling interests in Scotland, although efforts have been made to prevent it. Angling is one of Scotland's assets for tourism. The streams, rivers and lochs provide for those interested in game fishing probably the finest spots in Europe for pursuing that sport.

There is a consistent fall of rain in Scotland in the Highlands, so that the rivers are never too low to be fished. Sometimes they are low, but one can invariably go to the Highlands and get a good day's sport. I advise any Sassenach interested in angling to go to the Highlands of Scotland for a week's fishing. They will find a week's angling which they cannot enjoy anywhere else in Europe, not because of brilliant sunshine and a dry atmosphere but because of the humid conditions and the ample rainfall.

The Bill proposes to give the Secretary of State control of the watershed—not over a single stream but over a whole area in which there are many good angling rivers, including rivers with brown trout. These rivers may be adversely affected if too much water is abstracted for spray irrigation. A salmon river can be destroyed just as easily by abstracting too much water from its upper reaches, where spawning takes place, as by pollution. Angling interests should be fully considered. When rivers have been affected by schemes for using water—not for spray irrigation, but for power generation—fishing interests have often been affected. I am always sorry to see a river's salmon life affected by any scheme.

Sometimes when interests are affected they are well compensated. If fishing areas are destroyed by spray irrigation, it is unfortunate for the ordinary man who likes a day's fishing. I know that it is not his by right. I go to fish in the waters of one of the lochs owned by the Secretary of State for Scotland. I do not poach. I buy a permit. I should be sorry if, through spray irrigation, one of the lochs were emptied or if the water level was so lowered that it was not conducive to the carrying of game fish.

These interests must be considered. That is why I support the Amendment. I am worried about the Secretary of State or the Department having such powers of control that angling interests, which are important to Scotland, are not properly considered. Thousands of anglers go to Scotland for an angling holiday. They are an important element of the tourist industry. If the Amendment cannot be accepted now, I hope that at some stage a provision will be inserted to protect what some people may regard as trivial interests but what are in fact very important interests.

It is a grand thing for an industrial worker in a great city such as Glasgow to be able to get out of the city for a day's fishing. An industrial worker in Glasgow is probably the world's most fortunate industrial worker, in that he can within an hour get from a great industrial city to a countryside where there is no sign of industry but where the rivers teem with fish.

If, because of centralised control granted to a river purification board by the Secretary of State, as a result of spray irrigation water is abstracted from rivers to such an extent that industrial workers cannot for a shilling a day, or 6d. a day—or sometimes for free—enjoy their fishing, I should be very sorry. I know that fishing in the Spey, the Dee and the Don will never be destroyed. I am not thinking of those rivers. I am thinking of streams and rivers in Ayrshire. If it is all right to preserve salmon fishing for the lairds, we should preserve brown trout fishing for the working man. That is why I am worried about centralised control over spray irrigation.

I hope that something will be done in the Measure to ensure that the little man who enjoys his fishing will have his rights preserved, just as the rights of a man who can afford fishing at £30 a week are preserved.

I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. W. Hamilton) has not yet been persuaded. I hate to have now to state the consequences of accepting the Amendment I am surprised that the Under-Secretary did not state them. This is the touchstone of whether the Amendment should be accepted. If the abstraction of water is to be supervised, it presupposes that water will be abstracted, and all that is done is to supervise the operation. We want to ensure that at a particular time there will not be so much water abstracted and in particular cases and at particular times that there will not be any abstraction at all. I suggest that from that point of view only one word can be used, namely, "control".

This is to safeguard the interests of which my hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) spoke. At the moment, we are not dealing with the question of principle. We are dealing only with the question whether "control" or "supervise" is most appropriate for what we want to do. This is an important Amendment. If we accepted "supervise", we should reduce the power that we would be able to give to the river purification boards in respect of their important functions. To that extent, it would be a much less effective Bill. "Control" is absolutely essential. If we introduce "supervise", boards would not be able to do other than supervise the abstraction. This is the one thing which tends to make me resist the Amendment.

When the Tory Party, which speaks so viciously and stupidly about control generally and uses slogans which confound common sense, is faced with a practical situation it must resort to common sense. This is desirable. How the controls are administered is a different matter. I hope we shall come to that question during the course of the day. All these things depend upon the use of an appropriate word to describe the functions we wish to give river purification boards. I am content with "control", although I wish to hang round the neck of the party opposite "wicked Tory" before "control".

I shall not detain the Committee any longer on this point. I am not convinced by the argument of my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross), or by the argument of the Under-Secretary; but, if I were to seek to divide the Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock would be in the embarrassing position of having to go into the Lobby with the Tories, which might lose him his seat. In view of that possibility, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment

I beg to move, in page 1, line 16, to leave out from "State" to end of line 20.

At present, we have five lines in the Bill which I consider to be superfluous verbiage. This is how the subsection reads at present:

"Where the Secretary of State in performance of the duty laid on him by section 1 of the Water (Scotland) Act 1946 or by section 1(1) of the said Act of 1951 (which provisions among other things lay a duty on the Secretary of State to promote the conservation of water and the cleanliness of rivers) is satisfied that in relation to any stream or locality …"

If the Amendment were accepted, the subsection would read as follows:

"Where the Secretary of State is satisfied that in relation to any stream or locality the question of a control order should be considered …"

That would be clear. It is what we want done. We would have got rid of unnecessary words

We are again on the general practice which has grown up of making constant references. It has grown up to such an extent that it occurs in subsection (2) as well as in subsection (1), namely, there is a second reference to a Statute. This is unnecessary. Who will be confused if these words are omitted? I suggest that nobody will be. All we need to do is to make it clear to anybody concerned what powers the Secretary of State will have under the Statute.

We would then get rid of this bit of tautological stupidity:

"in performance of the duty laid on him by section 1 of the Water (Scotland) Act 1946 or by section 1(1) of the said Act of 1951"

Surely the Secretary of State does not need to cite two Acts of Parliament for his existing duties when we are to add to his duties. I suggest that, irrespective of what the Under-Secretary has before him in type, he could say, "Yes, we should leave out those words. There is nothing sacred about these five lines. We will accept this useful, clear and helpful Amendment."

The Under-Secretary has indicated that he has no brief with which to reply on this Amendment, so presumably he will accept it. I am sure that must be the reason that he has not been supplied with a brief. He must have been told, "Do what you like; it does not matter whether these words are in or out." If that is the interpretation, it is a strong condemnation of those who orginally drafted this provision. To take out these words would detract nothing from the meaning of the subsection. In fact, without these words it would be clearer than with them.

I want to ask a question before I make up my mind whether to support the Amendment. If the Amendment were carried it appears that where the Secretary of State was satisfied in relation to a stream or locality he could do what he liked about it—

No. He can do only what the subsection says he can do.

The subsection says:

"Where the Secretary of State … is satisfied that in relation to any stream or locality the question of a control order should be considered, he may require the river purification board concerned to make application under the foregoing subsection for such an order and the board shall comply with any such requirement."

If we cut out these words the Secretary of State would not operate under any particular regulations already established. He would act quite freely and independently of other legislation. He could operate only in the performance of any duty laid on him by a Statute.

If we take these words out he will operate freely in any duty laid upon him. I do not want him to be given powers to do anything unless it is laid down in the Statute. I should like to be certain that Ministers operate under Statutes and regulations and are not given power to operate freely in any way they like. I am quite prepared to be proved wrong in my assumption if it is shown that he would be limited by other provisions. Perhaps the Under-Secretary can explain why these words should remain or, if not, why he supports my hon. Friend in thinking that they should be deleted.

This Amendment seems very similar to the first group of Amendments we have discussed. It seeks to take out references to Statutes and the descriptions following them in brackets. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) pointed out that the Secretary of State has these powers and suggested that because this is well known it is not necessary to put this in the Bill. The hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) brought out the point that it is helpful to be able to see straightaway what are the powers under which the Secretary of State would have this reserve power.

It is a matter of general convenience that this should be mentioned with a brief description. I quite understand both points of view. Probably the hon. Member for Kilmarnock knows this by heart because he is well versed in the matter and would not need to have it spelled out, but members of the public who are not fully acquainted with these statutes might be assisted by this provision. For the reasons I gave when discussing similar Amendments, we suggest that these words should stay in because they are helpful and would be of great convenience to all who will have to operate under the Bill.

I do not weary in well doing. I try to clean up the Statutes. The Under-Secretary said that it was essential to have these words in because the power to act will be related to some other Statute. The power of the Secretary of State to act will be under this Statute.

I have not used the word "essential." I indicated that the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) knows that the powers are there but that other hon. Members will find it greatly convenient for these words to be included.

When the Secretary of State writes a letter to any river purification board requiring it to make application, which Statute does the Under-Secretary think he will cite? He will cite only one Statute. He will cite the Spray Irrigation (Scotland) Act, 1964 because this Measure, for the first time, will give him this power. We find in the Schedule how he must act in relation to the Statute. The words which the Amendment seeks to leave out are purely descriptive, explanatory and quite unnecessary. It does not matter whether I or anyone else knows about this. This provision does not add anything.

When we turn to the Rivers (Prevention of Pollution) (Scotland) Act, 1951 we see that it says:

"It shall be the duty of the Secretary of State to promote the cleanliness of the rivers and other inland waters and the tidal waters of Scotland."

If the Under-Secretary is to proceed on this basis we might as well adjourn because he is not looking at this Bill with an amending eye. I am quite sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Woodside (Mr. Carmichael) if he were concerned about the River Kelvin, or the Clyde, in his constituency, would not approach the Minister of Transport on the subject, but would go to the Secretary of State for Scotland.

Does anyone doubt that we are giving the right hon. Gentleman a new duty here of general supervision of how the river purification boards are acting and that if he sees one of them failing to do something he can suggest that it should consider the matter? These words do not add anything at all to the Clause. The hon. Gentleman should not allow his draftsmen to get away with this sort of thing. There is a splendid opportunity here for them for an exercise in simplicity and if the hon. Gentleman thinks that leaving out these words would confuse the absent hordes of Toryism I do not know whom he thinks he is "kidding". It is certainly not I.

All that these lines do is to confuse. Our statutes should be as clear as possible, and one of the good things about the Scottish Standing Committee and about Scottish Members is that we do not have the obfuscating help of lawyers. We can do without them, and the result is that we have better statutes. The more one puts in a statute the more it tends to confusion and the more grist there is to the legal mill. The hon. Gentleman is the Minister. He is the boss and he should exercise his authority. He should not allow himself to be pushed around by someone who says that these words are sacred. The words do not add to the Statute. They detract from lucidity and, therefore, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will sincerely reconsider the matter.

The Under-Secretary should be more forthcoming than he has been up to now. These are not terribly important Amendments but important principles are attached to them. The hon. Gentleman's attitude to this Amendment and to the earlier one in subsection (1) establishes an undesirable precedent. He is stating in effect that we are legislating so that everybody in Scotland will know which Act to con- sult to make abundantly sure that the Secretary of State is acting within the law.

This is absurd. Does the hon. Gentleman think that the miners in Fife, for instance, if they see the Secretary of State requiring a river board in the Lowlands to apply for a control order to be made will consult the board to find out what powers the right hon. Gentleman has to do that? They do not care a hoot. The people who are likely to be interested in the exercise of the right hon. Gentleman's powers are the people immediately concerned, who will be the farmers seeking to use the water and the river boards seeking to control it, and nobody else.

If these people turn to the Bill, which will then be an Act, they will see that the Secretary of State is acting within the terms of the Bill. I cannot see any valid reason, nor does the hon. Gentleman, why these words should not be omitted. All that the hon. Gentleman says is that he thinks it convenient for some remote, unnamed persons in Scotland who are not conversant with the 1946 and 1951 Acts to have the words in the Bill. The hon. Gentleman presumes too much interest in what the Secretary of State is doing. Not many people care what he is doing, because he will not be there all that long anyhow. The people who will be interested in what he is doing will be the people who are already conversant with the relevant Acts, and to make repeated references to those Acts in the Bill is just verbiage.

If the hon. Gentleman lends himself to this sort of thing, he encourages the very people whom we ought to be discouraging, those who have been putting this kind of nonsense into our legislation.

12.45 p.m.

We find it difficult enough to go through a Bill of this kind without assistance. I do not think that any of us on this side of the Committee has a secretary or research facilities. It is a hard grind to go through the Clauses and it makes matters worse for us if superfluous words are put in the Bill and we have to prepare under our own steam arguments for their deletion and then the hon. Gentleman says that it would be best to have the words in the Bill because they are a bit of a help to people outside.

The hon. Gentleman says that the words are not helpful to my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) because he knows what all this is about, but that others who have not done that homework, like absent Tory Members, will no doubt need help. That the hon. Gentleman should work for them, despite the recommendations of hard-working hon. Members on this side, is a bit thick and we strongly object to it. I hope that he will give a clarion call to his draftsmen and say, "Enough of this nonsense. You are highly paid to do your job to help Parliament and you must do it thoroughly and efficiently and cut out meaningless verbiage which adds nothing to the clarity of a Bill".

We use this opportunity to register our objection and we shall keep repeating our objection until the hon. Gentleman has the courage to see that this really is nonsense and he removes it.

I listened carefully to the views of hon. Members but I must confess that the more I listened and the more I read over and over again the subsection in question the more I thought that in the interest of clarity it is better to leave the words in the Bill. This is a matter of judgment and opinion, but that is my reaction to the debate.

There is certainly substance in what the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) said. The words which would be left out by the Amendment have a limiting effect because they draw a boundary line within which the Secretary of State may require an application for a control order to be made. This is a valid point as well as the question of showing quite palpably under what provisions the Secretary of State would be acting in this respect. I understand the drafting points and I hope later in the debate to indicate that I am always in favour of improving and tightening the language in Bills where we can do so, provided that we do not lose any substance in the process.

In this case, I think that it would be better and would make for greater clarity to leave the words as they are.

I beg to move, in page 2, line 12, at the end to add:

", but does not include any underground stream, or any body of water, whether underground or otherwise, which is not a stream".

On Second Reading, the question of boreholes came up, and, in reply, I said that we would look at the Bill very carefully and that, if we thought that it would help to make it absolutely clear that boreholes and the water which they would normally be expected to extract do not come within the scope of the Bill, we would put down an Amendment accordingly. This is the Amendment.

I am a bit confused. We are defining what a control area is and we say that it means

"all streams and localities to which a control order relates"

It is now proposed to add:

"but does not include any underground stream or any body of water, whether underground or otherwise, which is not a stream".

The last part seems quite unnecessary. If it is not a stream, it is not a stream.

Moreover, I wonder to what extent much of this is already covered by the existing interpretation of "stream". The definition of "stream" in the Rivers (Prevention of Pollution) (Scotland) Act, 1951, is that it includes

"any river, watercourse or inland water (whether natural or artificial) and any tidal waters to which this Act applies, except that it does not include either

(a) any body of water which does not discharge into the stream, or

(b) any sewer vested in a local authority; but any reference to a stream includes a reference to the channel or bed of a stream which is for the time being dry".

I should have expected the first part of this Amendment to be covered by that definition.

I am not quite sure of the actual sense of the Amendment or, indeed, of the desirability of it. We are to leave out underground streams and then we are to leave out underground bodies of water which are not streams. I presume that a stream is flowing water. I am not entirely sure that we are limiting what is done here to the point raised about boreholes.

I should like the hon. Gentleman to consider whether he has opened up possibilities by this strange definition, going beyond the point raised on Second Reading by the hon. Member for South Angus (Sir J. Duncan), who, I should say, has apologised to me for the fact that he is not here today and who, indeed, suggested one or two Amendments to me. I am quite sure that, if he had been here, the hon. Gentleman would have been with us in some of the points which we have raised, and he would certainly have been rather querulous about this Amendment.

It is so confusing that I am prepared to take the hon. Gentleman's word for it—1 have some respect for the draftsmen—but I doubt that it is really necessary. It is certainly not obviously necessary, and it may well be that, by the very confusion added to the existing meaning of "stream" in Section 35 of the 1951 Act, some difficulty of interpretation will be introduced.

One could have a part of a watershed where the water table was very near the surface. This is undesirable, and by irrigation works carried out by river boards, the water table in such circumstances can be lowered. Dykes or ditches are used for this purpose. The water thus drained into the ditches to lower the water table is a body of water not underground, but the ditches are not streams as such; they are really irrigation canals.

As I understand it, such water could not be used for spray irrigation. This is a tricky situation. As everyone knows, the raising or lowering of the water table can very often change the plant life on the land. There are remarkable instances of this in the Fen Country near the Wash, where the water table has fallen, and also in the Lea Valley where the water table has been lowered 12 or 15 ft. The plant life is completely changed. After the lowering of the water table in waterlogged land it might be desirable also to have spray irrigation from the dykes, perhaps to take the water table down lower still and improve the quality of the land further. One sees this sort of thing in the countryside especially in the lower reaches of a river basin.

I hope that I have made myself clear. I am trying to put to the hon. Gentleman a legitimate point, asking him to consider whether the Secretary of State should have powers to make an order that a body of water such as this not constituting a stream should not be used for spray irrigation. Why should not it be? Why should not such water be conveyed under control or supervision to some area where the water table could be raised a bit because the level was too low, or, perhaps, the drainage away of water was too fast?

As I said on Second Reading, I was rather worried to learn that spray irrigation could be used to take water from a small pond or a loch into which the inflow of water was very slow. The altering of the water level can completely change the balance of nature in the loch. Weed may grow and fish life can be coarsened or destroyed. Game fish may disappear and weed can come in to choke the previously existing natural life.

It would be very dangerous to give a licence to people to take water out of mountainside streams because this could have a serious effect on water flows in many directions. I should never consent to that being done. But in the case of an irrigation scheme it might be desirable to convey the bodies of water created in the dykes to other areas where the water table is perhaps 50 per cent. down because of the porous or sandy nature of the soil.

By this Amendment the Secretary of State would not be able to make use of that water. I think that it would be desirable if he had that power.

The hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) referred to the definition of "stream" in the 1951 Act. I confirm, as I indicated on Second Reading, that that definition is effective for the Bill. It is in Section 35, which the hon. Member read out. I assure him that the object of the Amendment is to cover the point which was made on Second Reading about boreholes and underground water.

The key part of the definition in relation to the point that the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) raised is that "stream" does not include any body of water which does not discharge into a stream. For example, if there were a loch which had no outlet it would not come within the terms of the Bill. But any trickle from a body of water caused, perhaps, by dykes which have been put up to hold the water is a stream within the definition in the Bill. I think that that answers the hon. Gentleman's main point.

The hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East was worried about the possibility of water of the kind which I have indicated in a loch or pond which was isolated or underground not being used for spray irrigation. By excluding them from the Bill they can be used legitimately by those who have the right to use that water without coming into the Bill and needing licences for spray irrigation. It is when people propose to take water from streams that they will need to apply for licences. Schemes which would use existing supplies of underground water or other water which was not connected with streams might be useful to agriculture.

The point which the hon. Member made was a good one. I assure him that the Bill will be no obstacle in this matter.

The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that this is a very important Amendment because we are defining the control area and the bodies of water from which there can be abstraction quite freely without licence, control, supervision or anything else. We are, therefore, in this Amendment, giving freedom in the abstraction of water. Hitherto, in the case not only of pollution, but when obtaining information about the abstraction of water, which, as far as I understand, is the only duty which we have laid on the river purification board, we have been able to ask abstractors to provide certain information about how much they are taking out. That has been fairly comprehensive. It applied for the first time to tidal waters, to canals and to not only streams but artificial streams. But it did not include any body of water which does not discharge into a stream—that is, standing water. This would apply to water whether it was on the surface or underground.

The original statute, however, applied, and must have applied, to an underground stream. This is the only point about which I am a little perplexed. Why do we leave out underground streams? In the 1951 Act we left out any body of water which did not discharge into a stream. There was no doubt that an underground stream— that is, water flowing underground—obviously discharged itself somewhere. I should like to know why there is this very much wider application to underground streams. I thought the point which was raised concerned a well, a bore, which was not a stream but which was underground.

It may well be that by widening the matter we shall land ourselves in difficulties. We are preventing the abstraction of water for the purposes of spray irrigation. Spray irrigation is already defined in this subsection. Strangely enough, in the legal definitions, "land" includes water. I should like the lawyers in the Department to consider whether by this amended definition it will be possible to abstract water which cannot be used for spray irrigation but which can be used to fill up a standing pool. We want as far as possible to have standing pools. This is one way of conserving water. We do not mind people filling up pools from streams when there is no shortage, but we do not want them to do that when there is a shortage.

It may be that by these new words the Under-Secretary of State is creating fresh difficulties. I do not want us to get into difficulties over this subsection. That is why I am concerned that the hon. Gentleman has widened the matter beyond what was required by the hon. Member for South Angus (Sir J. Duncan) in his valid point about boreholes.

I hope that the Under-Secretary of State will have another look at this matter. This is only the Committee Stage. We still have the Report and Third Reading stages ahead of us. They will all be taken today. I deplore this failure by the Government to give us time to contemplate what Amendments we should propose between one stage and another. It is all right for members of another place. They get a month between one stage and another—or several weeks, anyway. The landlords have had their say. We are told, "You fellows down there just finish it off ". I am sorry that the Leader of the House is not here, because I should have a few words to say to him about the way that he treats legislation. But it is indicative of the Government's attitude that they treat divorce in the same way just before an election.

I hope that the Under-Secretary of State will have time to obtain some thorough-going advice on this matter. I should be very grateful if he could help us on it.

The hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) has raised an interesting point and one which should certainly be looked into. I have looked into it and there are two aspects of it. First, there is the technical question, of which I spoke on Second Reading, of whether a borehole is likely to tap water which would otherwise be in a stream and, therefore, abstract water from a stream in the way that somebody taking it direct would be able to do. All the technical advice which is available indicates that it is extremely unlikely that boreholes would be able to do that. Even if a borehole were only a few feet or yards from a bank going down underneath a river, the amount of water coming through by seepage would not be enough to be of use in spray irrigation.

The hon. Member raised the question of tapping an underground stream and this is a possibility. That brings me to the second, or legal, aspect. It is an established right at common law for an owner to be able to abstract water from underground sources on his land. He can legally do that. We have no intention in the Bill of trying to alter the law in that respect. We are building on the riparian rights at common law, but we are not seeking to alter the common law right for someone to tap underground sources of water below his land.

Therefore, if someone legitimately abstracts water from a borehole, it would be difficult in practice to prove whether it was from some static water in strata below ground or whether it was an underground stream or a combination of both. I assure the hon. Member, however, that on the technical side, as I said at the beginning, it is most unlikely that a borehole would be able to affect the flow of streams—which is what we are considering under the Bill—and that we certainly are not seeking to alter the common law right covering such boreholes in the Bill because of the possibility or eventuality to which the hon. Member drew attention.

The hon. Member certainly has raised a point which we have had to consider. We are quite satisfied that the definition as drawn in the Amendment, taken with the definition in Section 35 of the 1951 Act, will carry out what I indicated and makes it clear—that is the object—to those concerned that the Bill does not seek to cover boreholes and that it does not introduce complications concerning underground streams which might have an effect on streams.

Because they might have an adverse effect on streams, it is right to introduce safeguards. We are not interfering with anybody's rights; it is wrong for the Under-Secretary to give that impression, even loosely, because what we are doing is to confer rights. The hon. Gentleman knows from what he said on Second Reading that there are very limited rights for anyone to take water from streams, whether underground or otherwise. The rights exist for domestic purposes

That was the riparian right. I mentioned just now, however, the right of somebody to draw water from underground, which I understand is not limited in the same way.

It is limited at common law to the extent of not interfering with other people's rights to take water from a stream. In this respect, we are giving only limited cover to the people who at present take advantage of the position which hitherto nobody has bothered very much about.

We are controlling the abstraction of water by people who have no right to abstract it in quantities to which they have no particular right. If the Under-Secretary thinks that somebody's supply of water is being interfered with, I doubt very much whether it will be found in Scottish law that people can do it quite freely or without having to defend their right to take it as against somebody whose supply is affected by abstraction from an underground stream.

When a stream can be proved to be a stream, it may be found that people do not have the same freedom as the hon. Gentleman seeks to give them. I am not however, a lawyer, although I am interested in these points, and I shall be grateful if the hon. Gentleman will look at the matter from this other point of view.

On the first Amendment, concerning supervision and control, I sought to express concern but was limited in the manner in which I could do so. In the Clause, which is the substance of the Bill, we are concerned at the possibility of various powers of control by the Secretary of State over river boards to affect every stream and every loch in Scotland.

Over a number of years, the water flow over the courses in various parts of rivers could be changed. In the Trossachs, for instance, the River Forth rises from several points and flows through several lochs. Salmon and sea trout leap the Forth and run up the water. They never run up the one tributary, but always run up the other, for the simple reason that there is just that much difference between what they can get over and what they cannot. A little more water comes down the one stream than down the other. There are, therefore, no salmon or sea trout spawning in the one course; they spawn in the other.

It is obvious that if we are to have a series of controlled streams over the whole of Scotland and over a whole area, we must watch carefully the exercise of these controls and the issue of licences which give power to extract water from an area.

The Clause, I understand, differentiates not between stream and stream, but between a body of water which is not a stream and a body of water underground which is a stream. The Clause seems to me to be widely drawn to the extent that the nature of the animal life of a river could be completely changed and, indeed, destroyed.

Anyone who knows anything about rivers and angling knows that a small change in the flow of water in a river over small obstacles over which the salmon and sea trout leap to get up to the redds could stop the fish going up. This could mean serious consequences to the game fish life of the river. This was my concern when the Bill was first printed. I sat in at Second Reading, although I did not speak. I have been worried about this point on Clause 1 and I have been in touch with some of my angling friends. They, too, are worried about it.

We know from years of experience that large, powerful industrial interests are one thing, but the interests of the private angler are another—the angler who is not a riparian owner, who is landless, whether a professional or manual worker. He has no rights. He has to buy a little bit of fishing out of his limited income and we ought not to do anything to limit the fishing which is available to him.

In Scotland now we can get fishing for 5s., some of the finest fishing in Europe. Indeed, one can get wonderful fishing for 1s. a day. There is nowhere in Europe where the sport can be enjoyed so cheaply as in Scotland. I do not want to see it reduced, but increased, because fishing is an excellent way for men and women to spend leisure—there are some excellent women anglers—to enjoy the fresh air and the beauty of our Scottish rivers and lochs. Many of my angler friends and I are worried that the schemes proposed here may, in a few decades, destroy the fish capacity of many of our small streams and small lochs in the West of Scotland. I hope that the Under-Secretary can give an assurance to the angling fraternity of Scotland that in carrying out the Bill, and in using our water for spray irrigation, the Secretary of State will always bear in mind that we must not strip our smaller streams of their capacity to carry game fish.

This is very important to many thousands of people and to the tourist industry in our country. I still believe that the greatest attraction in Scotland is not the weather, but the fishing and the beauty of our mountains and lochs. Even people who are not anglers come to see the salmon leap the Pots of Gartness, on the River Endrich. It is a wonderful spectacle to see the salmon coming up and leaping over the falls. It is a glorious sight, and I should hate to think that the water level could be lowered so that the fish could not get up and we would lose that sight for ever.

Everyone is concerned with preserving animal life. We do not want our children to inherit a country whose natural beauties and plant and animal have been destroyed by all sorts of artificial means. Those natural assets should be preserved. The great industrial exploitation of the nineteenth century destroyed much of the beauty of our country and has left scars. Let us be careful that science and the techniques of today do not do the same thing in the twentieth century. Let us stop this destruction of the natural beauties of our country. I am sure that science and technology today can preserve the amenities and beauty of our countryside and our rivers. There is no need to destroy them.

What worries me is that although many people pay lip service to preservation of natural assets and amenities, when the Treasury comes along to help with a few thousands of pounds it is only to compensate the riparian owner for the loss of his salmon rights, but it is not concerned with the sporting facilities for the humble man with a few shillings. He very often is not considered. He, like the little man all over the place, falls by the wayside. I hope that the Secretary of State's powers will be such that our small streams will not be denuded of the water supplies to sustain the fish life.

We all welcome the general principles behind this Clause. I am sorry that I did not hear the earlier part of the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence), but he is quite right about the need to preserve natural assets like our rivers. I do not think there is a finer or more inspiring sight than to see a clean, sparkling river, as we still can in parts of Scotland.

One of the depressing things about living in or representing an industrial area is this increasing, all pervading pollution of our rivers. We ought to take this opportunity of paying tribute to the river boards for the work they are doing in seeking to obviate this evil if not entirely to eliminate it. One of the dangers which we have to guard against in this Bill is an increase of pollution as a direct consequence of spray irrigation, and of course that is one of the primary purposes of the Clause.

We had a little bit of leg pulling earlier about the need to control. I think that in their saner moments members of the Tory Party recognise that controls have to be exercised by whatever party is in power, exercised to limit the freedom of the individual in order to safeguard the freedom and welfare of the community. That is exactly what is being done in this Clause, and I wish the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends would stop this nonsense about State control, and the danger of control, and implying that the idea of control attaches only to one party in particular, This is obviously not so, and when a country has got natural assets which are being denuded for one reason or another it behoves the Government and the local public bodies by control and other devices to prevent it.

We are here trying to marry what appear to be contradictory concepts. We want an increase in food production, and it has been discovered, apparently, fairly recently, that this method of spray irrigation increases quite considerably the productivity of certain crops. Of course, to that extent we must encourage it, but immediately the problem of river pollution is intensified, and one has to marry the interests of the farmer to the interests of the community and the interests of the amenity value of the rivers. The Bill goes a good long way to marry these apparently contradictory concepts.

I do not believe, however, that the Bill deals adequately with the overall problem of water. My hon. Friend was quite right when he said that when the Labour Party's proposals on the water problem are raised there is, for some unknown reason, a guffaw of laughter. I do not know why that is so. Water is one of the most important, one of the most vital natural assets we have got. What concerns the nation should be controlled by the nation; and the Bill goes a little way to recognising that fact.

I want to ask a question which I do not think was answered on Second Reading. I understand that a precise figure has not been given of the cost of administration. The Schedule provides not for a complicated administrative procedure, but an administrative procedure for publicising, keeping registers, and so on. That must cost money and I ask the hon. Gentleman what is the estimate of the cost of administration.

The hon. Gentleman is getting rather wide of the Clause.

With great respect, Mr. Hynd, I think that Clause 1 provides for the setting up of control areas and gives the Secretary of State power to require boards to set up control areas. I referred, in passing, to the Schedule because it provides the administrative procedure for implementing the ideas in the Clause.

All that I was asking the Under-Secretary was to give a figure or to say whether a figure is available. I was not presuming to enlarge on that. I am asking for information because the information which he gives, or does not give, will be relevant to Amendments which, I hope, subsequently to move. I leave it at that point.

This is the key Clause in the whole operation. On the question of its purpose and the need for it we shall certainly not vote against the Clause.

We have raised certain points on the clarity of the Clause. I can assure you, Mr. Hynd, that these were only a few of the points that we could quite well have raised. There are others. There was one Amendment that the Chair in its discretion did not call: in page 1, line 21, to leave out "the question of". Those words, I suggest, are quite superfluous and could be taken out. In subsection (4) there is the definition of "spray irrigation". I ask the hon. Gentleman to explain exactly what is meant by this definition. It means the irrigation of land, but we already know from the definition in the 1951 Act that land includes water. Could the hon. Gentleman tell us the extent to which there will be an abstraction of water under control for irrigation? It is not an impossibility or an improbability, but it is something which tends to lead to confusion when we convey that definition in other definitions and other actions.

The subsection goes on

"… irrigation of land or plants (including seeds) by means of water or other liquid …"

We are concerned about the abstraction of water, not the abstraction of "other liquid". I presume that the "other liquid" somehow or other gets into the water through some process. It then says

"… from apparatus designed or adapted to eject liquid into the air in the form of jets or spray; …"

We have already stated that it is emerging in whatever form and then we say

"from apparatus designed or adapted to eject liquid into the air in the form of jets or spray".

What on earth are we talking about if the form in which it is ejected does not matter? Then we relate the definition not to the actual thing but to the apparatus and to how it was designed or for what it was adapted. A certain amount of clarification is required in respect of this definition of "spray irrigation".

These matters apart, I think there is no justification for us taking our opposition completely to the point of opposing the Clause. As my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. W. Hamilton), and my hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) said, we are dealing with something that has come to us relatively as a surprise.

I was reading in the British Farmer a short time ago that experiments commenced in 1958 and continued for four years on the spray irrigation of potatoes. It was concluded that an appreciable response is obtained from irrigation, particularly in summers with a low rainfall in May and June. That is the time when the rivers are low and when the river purification board is more concerned about its main problem which is to keep the rivers pure. It is then concerned about the pollution that is caused. This is a matter of concern to those who want to abstract water under their legal rights which are very limited. It is also of concern from the national point of view. When there has been abundance no one has bothered very much about what has been taken out.

It also affects fisheries in rivers. We know that in many of our streams the fishing has been wiped out by pollution. The pollution is directly related to the flow of the stream and the volume of water in it. If there is little or no water there is little or no dilution which is essential to rendering less harmful the obnoxious elements poured into the water. This is the point. It is meant to protect the balance of interests, and we have come to the conclusion that we have to act quickly.

The experiments on potatoes started in 1958 and were concluded in 1962 only two years ago. But we were given the information on Second Reading that in one river in Scotland alone there are eight pumps capable of pumping 15,000 gallons per hour. It was stated that before long there would be 20 pumps along that stream. I think it was the Tyne which flows through East Lothian.

I am sure that the Under-Secretary appreciates that this is not such a small and limited Bill as some think. This is what has happened over a few years. What will happen over 10 years? There may be considerable extraction of water from many rivers in Scotland where there is at the moment no spray irrigation. Considerable expense in equipment is involved. In the recent Measure that we passed dealing with agriculture and horticulture the Government, with customary pre-election generosity, gave horticulture £24 million. That will be invaluable to the horticultural industry at a particular time, and the Government may be subsidising the equipment which will do the damage. This will also make the pollution problem more difficult and spoil the amenities of our rivers.

This comes down to the shortage of water. We are dealing not with the Sahara but with Scotland. The Government neglect our true interests terribly. We discovered the value of water for the creation of power, but the Government put a stop to that. For three years we have had no hydro-electric scheme in Scotland despite our sources of power and energy—the Under-Secretary's constituency is affected by this—and so we are not using the water for that purpose. We have not been able to conserve water, and this means that progressive farmers will not be able to use the benefits of research done in public laboratories and on public and private experimental farms.

In West Scotland we probably produce the best early potatoes in the country. We have not so far resorted to spray irrigation for this purpose. When one realises how acres of early potatoes could be lost through the vagaries of the weather, it is clear that spray irrigation may well become a standard application. We are told that the maintenance of a soil moisture deficit of not more than one inch is considered to be the treatment giving the highest yield of ware potatoes. A study of the economics of the irrigation of early potatoes was completed in 1962, resulting in the recommendation that one inch of water applied at the quarter inch tuber size was economical and worth while. What we want is greater yield. According to other researches the palatability of the potatoes is not affected and in some cases may well be improved.

What we are doing is taking timely action because we appreciate that this practice will spread and will do considerable damage to our rivers. But the lesson in all this is that this is not the right way to deal with the problem. The right way is to ensure that our ample water supplies are conserved and properly distributed for the needs of agriculture. Let us not under-estimate the difficulties which will arise, with which we shall deal when we discuss the Schedule.

We are giving river purification boards power to make application to the Secretary of State, and he will adjudicate if there are objections. But we never know with the present Secretary of State; he does not need objections to stop things. I should like to know on what basis the Secretary of State will exercise his power of interference, which is given to him by subsection (2). The Secretary of State can tell the river purification board to apply for a control order, and it must then do so.

This is probably a justified power. There is a balance of interests on the river purification boards. The Under-Secretary told us about a statement made in the other place to the effect that the Secretary of State, in respect of the possibilities of control orders, would put more agriculturists on the boards. Where there was an imbalance of interests and the agricultural interests wanted a control order, the reserve power of the Secretary of State might be essential. Therefore, I support that part of the Clause.

1.45 p.m.

I regret that we have not cleaned up the Bill as we have gone along. It would have been better and clearer if we had done a real job. We agree with the safeguarding of our rivers, but let us not forget that we are denying to agriculture the benefits of science and research, and that is not a matter for great satisfaction, bearing in mind the amount of water available in Scotland if we conserved it and distributed it at the right time

Both the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) and the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) drew attention to consequences that might occur in some areas if the new technique of spray irrigation spread and a great deal of water was used. They pointed to the pollution and the shortage which could be created. I would point out to the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East that it is not the control areas proposed in Clause 1 which would produce that situation. As the hon. Member for Kilmarnock said, the increase in spray irrigation itself could do that if in those areas there were no means of controlling the situation, such as by this Bill.

I would remind the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East that it is a duty of the river purification boards, the bodies which will have most of the work to do under the Bill, to attend to purification. Their main function will be concerned with measures to keep the rivers pure and, therefore, to protect the interests of anglers. Angling interests are represented on the boards.

The hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. W. Hamilton) spoke of the excellent work of the boards—I join him in what he said—when they are concentrating on the purification of our rivers. He asked me for an estimate. I will simply give him one very approximate figure which may help him. It looks as though three boards might in the near future avail themselves of the provisions of this Measure. This is only an estimate, and I hope the hon. Gentleman will not ask me to be specific at this stage. If there were three, then our rough estimate is that the additional expenditure would be about £4,000 a year. I think that answers the point put by the hon. Member. I will not stray further but I wanted to give some indication in answer to his request.

The hon. Member for Kilmarnock asked about the definition of spray irrigation. The word "liquid "is used to safeguard the position where a farmer might draw off water from a stream, mix it with some other substance and spray what he might call another substance on his crops. The definition makes it clear that, if water is abstracted and then used, perhaps in combination with other substances, in spraying the crops, that will fall within the Bill. I am sure the Committee will agree that this is desirable because such abstraction would have the same effect of drawing off probably large quantities of water.

It would have the same effect of drawing off large quantities. What we are seeking is to prevent abstractions of water, not other liquids.

Perhaps we are at odds about the use of words. I hope that what I have said is clear. It is the intention to cover the case where a substance is being sprayed which includes water which has been abstracted from a stream.

The hon. Member asked about the power under subsection (2). We regard this power as a reserve power for the Secretary of State. It would be used only if the Secretary of State felt that a board was not taking the action it should or in a case where a board itself was in difficulty in making up its mind. It is very much a reserve power and the reasons given by the hon. Member for Kilmarnock for its necessity were valid.

I beg to move, in page 2, line 20, at end to insert:

(2) On the coming into force of a control order no member of a river purification board who has an interest in an application to that board for a licence under section 3(1) of this Act or in an objection lodged under section 3(5) of this Act shall be eligible to sit on that board when it is exercising its licensing function under section 3 of this Act.

Clause 2 deals with the regulation by licence of spray irrigation in the control area. These licences are to be handed out by the local river purification board. These will be valuable rights. If one can get a licence, one will be able to use expensive equipment. Many people have the equipment already and we must ensure fairness in the allocation of licences.

Earlier, I asked whether we should not put in an Amendment asking that each board place before the Secretary of State a scheme on which it would determine and adjudicate between one application and another. Let us not underestimate this. If 20 people apply for licences and only 10 are granted in a particular area, there will be some trouble over who got them and who did not and why. We must be absolutely sure that we are being fair and also that there is the appearance of being fair.

We are already putting on these boards a considerable number of people with an agricultural interest, but people interested in agriculture are also to be found among the representatives of local authorities. The present set-up among the boards is that between three-fifths and two-thirds of the members have to be from local authorities and between two-fifths and one-third are added members appointed by the Secretary of State. One thing we must ensure is that, in the allocation of licences and the decisions on conditions, no one takes part who is himself personally interested. That is why my Amendment is worded as it is.

This is in no sense an implication that the members of the boards are unable to exercise their functions. It arises from the belief that we should not put them into such a position. We do not ask a publican to sit on the licensing bench and decide whether he himself should get a licence.

This situation arises because the Minister of State in another place said that he would, as a matter of policy, put more agriculturists on the boards. This was terribly wrong. It is one thing that he should not have done, because I am perfectly sure that it is our desire to enable these boards to treat fairly all applications. In the circumstances envisaged in the three rivers—and I think that nine rivers have purification boards—however desirable it may be considered for a member of a board himself to get a licence, there will be difficulties in respect of people who do not get licences. That is why we get the buildup in the Schedule to the appeals to the Secretary of State. I notice that there is a Government Amendment later on to strengthen the appeal provisions.

We shall get more and more appeals if it is discovered that people on the board are adjudicating on their own applications or in respect of applications to which they themselves have raised objections. This is not the way we usually conduct our quasi-judicial functions in respect of public boards. In this case, we must not make it far more difficult for the purification boards by laying them open to public criticism if such a situation were to arise, as it conceivably could.

The hon. Member may consider that I have drawn the Amendment fairly widely because I have put in the words "has an interest in". These words can relate not only to an application but to someone who has an interest, such as the land superior. It is equally important from the point of view of allocation or objection. We do not want serving on the boards at that time when it is exercising these functions people who may have axes to grind and who may bring the system into disrepute. We know already that, of many of these organisations where jobs or houses are concerned, people are apt to say, "It is all a carve up. It all depends on who you know." This is, therefore, an important principle.

It is a pity that I cannot give the Under-Secretary of State more time to think about this. If we had been upstairs in Committee, under our normal procedure, I could have asked him to think about it before Report stage. The hon. Gentleman hopes, however, to get the Bill finished in another two hours. He has a hope. But if he acts sensibly it might well be possible.

2.0 p.m.

The hon. Gentleman will appreciate our difficulty. He has denied himself the opportunity to think about these things by this steam-rollering of legislation and by this reluctant rush of the Tories to get something on the Statute Book for Scotland. We are quite willing to continue this discussion on Tuesday night. Let the Government forget the Divorce (Scotland) Bill. This is much more important to Scotland in the long run than a change in the divorce law. However, the hon. Gentleman has a com-partmented mind. He has nothing to do with the Divorce Bill and is very glad not to be concerned with it.

I hope that he will regard this as an Amendment moved with the best of intentions and not because we do not trust anybody. The members of a river purification board will be placed in an impossible position if, because of our failure to include some such provision as this, they find themselves adjudicating on their own applications, or their own objections.

It may be convenient if I simply explain the position at this stage, because there may be a genuine misunderstanding. The Orders made by the Secretary of State under which river purification boards are set up apply to the boards certain of the provisions of the Local Government Act, 1947. Under Section 73 of that Act, a member of a board who has an interest in a case being considered by the board is required to disclose his own interest and to take no further part in the consideration of that case, or to vote upon it. That goes very far to meet what the hon. Gentleman has in mind. A member of a board could not take part in a discussion of his own application, or vote upon it. He would have to disclose his interest if he were objecting to someone else's application and to be dissociated from the discussion.

As I understand the Amendment, it looks as though someone who had an interest in an individual case, that is, who was himself an applicant or an objector, would be ruled out from sitting as a member of the board on any case, including that, if it was concerned with spray irrigation. I am not sure whether that was intended.

It was.

Then I understand it correctly. It is that part which is not acceptable. It would mean that any farmer who himself did spray irrigation and who was a member of the board could not take part in the consideration of any case in which he was involved and also that the board would be without his knowledge and advice on every other case in which he was not interested. The knowledge and experience of the board would be greater and other members of the board would be assisted if one of the agricultural members was someone who himself did spray irrigation. If there were such a member, not only would he have to declare his interest and not take part in cases in which he was concerned, but he would be unable to take part in any case concerning spray irrigation in which he was not personally concerned. That is what the Amendment seeks to provide.

We are thinking in terms of shortages. That is why we have the Bill. In some districts there may be applications for more water than there is water available. Although the agricultural member of the board may have a licence himself, he will be concerned about other licences. A board will have considerable power about laying down conditions as to the amount of water to be extracted. From that point of view, he will have a continuing interest—quite apart from his own personal interest—in the granting of licences to other people and in the conditions to be laid down in periods of shortage.

In fairness and for the appearance of fairness, he should not take part in such considerations. Would the hon. Gentleman think it right for a publican who had a licence to be a member of a licensing committee adjudicating on whether a possible competitor should get a licence? We must remember that by the nature of things, and especially as a result of what was said by the Minister of State and repeated by the Under-Secretary about the intention to include more agriculturists on the boards for this specific purpose, it is more essential than ever that there should be this overall restriction and not just a limited restriction.

I follow the hon. Gentleman's argument, but there is not a direct parallel with licensing in which there is only one interest involved and where a number of people might be competing for a licence for a particular purpose.

As a member of a temperance association, I would be interested in the number of licences as well.

Representatives of various interests will be on these boards. The boards will be specifically composed of people representing bodies or interests. We have followed the line of the present law because that would mean that someone with a direct interest in a case could not take part in its consideration. If we extended the principle advocated by the hon. Gentleman, if there were a member of a board who represented angling interests, if he fished in the river concerned he would no longer be able to take part in the consideration of cases, because he would have a personal interest in the angling in that river. He would be able to fish in other rivers, but not in the one under consideration.

If he were an angler, he personally would not be objecting. The objection would probably come from an angling club.

That illustrates my argument very well. If the farmer had no direct interest, he would then be acting as a representative of the agricultural community. We spoke about this position on Second Reading. For example, if there were two farming representative members on a board, if one happened to be ill, the other could not take part in any of the spray irrigation considerations, so that both representatives of farming would not be able to give the board their knowledge and advice.

After all, the whole problem has arisen because of the new technique in farming. Surely the boards will need the experience, knowledge and advice of members of the farming community when considering spray irrigation. We feel that the Clause as drafted is correct and that no member of the board should be able to consider a case in which he is personally involved, but should not be debarred from considering all other cases of spray irrigation.

I was not clear what the hon. Gentleman meant when he referred to Section 73 of the Local Government (Scotland) Act. Is it not the case that under that Act the Secretary of State has the power of dispensation? If so, would that equally apply in this case, so that the Secretary of State could say, "I have power to allow the vested interest to vote and to take part in the decision being arrived at "?

The hon. Gentleman is right. There is this dispensation in these provisions for declaring an interest and members not taking part, but, although the dispensation is there, I assure the hon. Gentleman that where a member of the Board is a farmer, or is involved directly in a case of this kind, it will not be normal practice for the Secretary of State to give a dispensation. For some exceptional reasons the Secretary of State has this dispensation power which, as the hon. Gentleman knows, is accepted in other spheres of local government.

That is not very satisfactory. It is not sufficient for the hon. Gentleman to say that the Secretary of State will not exercise this power. The fact Is that he has it, and that it may be exercised. Not all Secretaries of State are equally reasonable about these things, and we ought to make it abundantly clear in the Bill that this power of dispensation does not apply here. It might apply in the case of council house tenants, but it ought not to apply in a case like this.

The hon. Gentleman is aware, as we all are, that this practice of spray irrigation will increase, and that therefore the granting of these licences will be of increasing value to those who get them. The danger of nepotism will increase as a result, and we ought to take all the precautions that we can by writing into the Bill the kind of provision which my hon. Friend has in mind.

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will treat this matter seriously. The dispensation which the Secretary of State has under the Local Government Act ought not to apply in this case.

The hon. Gentleman referred to the classical case of tenants of council houses. As he knows, in that case it is not the practice of my right hon. Friend to make dispensations in individual cases.

But he has the power to do so.

I agree. It is more a question whether it is a large number of persons affected, and much wider considerations of that kind. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will realise that this dispensation will not be used in individual cases, which this will be, because, of the membership of a board, which may be anything from 15 to 21, possibly only three will represent agricultural interests. It will therefore be very much a matter of individual cases, and it is unlikely that there will be circumstances in which this dispensation will be given.

I think, therefore, that the hon. Gentleman has the assurance that Section 73 of the Local Government Act will have the effect that he wishes in this matter.

I am disappointed that the hon. Gentleman has not accepted the Amendment. I can see this part of the Bill causing more trouble in river boards and in farming and horticultural areas bordering on these streams than any other part of the Bill.

My hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) put the matter very clearly when he said that we had to remember that this provision would operate in a period of scarcity, and that the members of the river board would be required to make a judgment in the matter. It is unfair to put members of these boards in the position of having to make a decision which would benefit themselves directly, or benefit them negatively by disabling some other farmers in the locality.

It is not fair to base an argument on the provisions of the 1947 Act. In the case of local authorities, there are perhaps a few councillors representing thousands of people. In this case there is a direct confrontation of farming interests on a board deciding whether one man's crops should be better than another's. This is an invidious position in which to put anyone Some of the decisions will cause great animosity and antagonism in the farming community.

I would have been willing to accept the hon. Gentleman's assurance if he had been willing to give us some idea of the basis on which the decisions would be made. I would have been willing to accept it if there was some type of specification, some sort of background understanding, as to who should be given the power to pump water from streams. It is intolerable that people who are directly involved should be asked to make a decision on whether A should be allowed to do something and B should not.

I may be able to help the hon. Gentleman. Section 73 of the 1947 Act says:

"In any case in which the number of members of a local authority disabled by the provisions of this section at any one time would be so great a proportion of the whole as to impede the transaction of any particular item of business …".

I was saying to the hon. Gentleman for Fife, West (Mr. W. Hamilton) that this is a matter of the number of persons affected being large enough in proportion to affect the body as a whole. Where this affects a local authority, and council houses, those concerned could represent a half, or a third, of the total number, but that cannot be so in this case, because under the terms under which the river purification boards are to be set up, perhaps two or three out of the total of 15 or 20 will represent the farming interests.

The possibility that they will all be spray irrigators is something that we have to bear in mind, but if we exclude from the purification boards any farmer in the area who might in future be a spray irrigator, or might at the moment be one, we shall exclude an important section of the farming community. Given that farming representatives are on these boards, it would be a pity to exclude them from considering questions of spray irrigation, which is a farming technique.

I hope that I have helped the hon. Gentleman by saying that this dispensation by the Secretary of State is there, but that it seems virtually impossible that it will be effective in respect of these boards.

I am not at all satisfied with the hon. Gentleman's reply. The hon. Gentleman has implied that the work and opinions of these farmers on the board are more important than the fact that they are individuals.

I did not mean to give that impression. It is their knowledge of farming and the technique of spray irrigation which is important. Other interests concerned with the conservation of water, and the purification of the rivers will be represented on the boards, and will greatly outnumber the farming interests.

I do not want to be intransigent, but it seems that the hon. Gentleman is still concerned that farmers with experience of spray irrigation should be on these boards. I would assume that anyone would conclude that their knowledge in these matters and their authority would mean slightly more than their ability to vote. In the deliberations of the board their words would obviously carry slightly more weight than the words of the others.

It is not that they would have more influence or carry more weight: it is that they would be helpful to the board. When the board was considering these matters the farmers would know the technical answers to some of the questions that cropped up. They would be expected to be able to advise the board, and the board would feel itself deprived of technical advice if farmers were excluded

There is not a farmer on this side of the Committee, and there is nobody at all on the other side. I can assure the hon. Member that we are not unaware of the techniques and effects of spray irrigation. But is the hon. Member going to tell me that within the area covered by a board all the farmers are spray irrigators? If so, he knows that that is nonsense. The only persons who can obtain a licence for spray irrigation are the occupiers of land contiguous to a stream. Many farmers are nowhere near a stream. The way in which spray irrigation works, and its effects, are not mysterious matters. The Minister has been far too suspicious about this. It is essential that the members of the board should not be placed in the invidious position of being judges in their own cases, or of judging other cases which may have some effect on their own.

The more people who obtain licences the greater the likelihood of restriction, and the greater the likelihood that that restriction will lead to the ultimate suspension of licences in areas of shortage. Obviously, it would be to somebody's advantage to oppose other applications if he already had a licence. I do not say that that will happen, but that is what people will say will happen. We ought not to allow people to be put into this position where, inevitably, somebody will be refused a licence. Obviously, if nobody is to be refused we would not need this power. But what will a person say if he is refused a licence and he knows that a person on the board has a licence?

The Government may feel that this is not important, but it will be very important if people apply for licences and do not get them when other people on the board, who are supposed to be adjudicating impartially, have licences. I am surprised that the Government's advisers have not seen the advisability of going beyond the position merely of councillors on a housing committee. This is not a local council; this is not a democratically elected body. The people who are appointed to the boards are not responsible to anybody. They cannot be readily removed, except by the Secretary of State, and then only on the terms of his order in relation to their appointment.

If this question had been debated in the normal way we could have given the hon. Member two or three days, or a week, to think about it. But now he has only two or three minutes. Our whole discussion is truncated. Indeed, the Government have made up their mind what can be accepted, and they are not prepared to be persuaded. This is the worst way of legislating. This is not an unimportant Bill. Although we agree on the principle, we think that its details leave a great deal to be desired.

I beg to move, in page 2, line 23, at the end to add:

"if in possession of a valid licence, and to a fine not exceeding £200 otherwise ".

Subsection (1) of the Clause assumes that a control order has come into force in a control area, that water supplies in that area need to be controlled because they are limited, and that if they are drawn on substantially in an uncontrolled way there will be a danger of pollution of the river or stream. Because of that, licences to extract water from a stream will have to be obtained, and provisions are laid down about the amount of water to be extracted.

If the situation is sufficiently serious to warrant the declaration of a control order and the imposition of a licensing system it must, by inference, be a very serious anti-social action to contravene the attempt by the board to protect the overall interests of the community. The licence fee is not a deterrent, at £5 a year. Although farmers tell us that they find it difficult to make ends meet they should not find any difficulty in paying a £5 fee, more particularly because the extraction of water from the rivers and spray irrigation leads to substantial increases in the production of crops.

Under the terms of the Bill, however, the maximum fine which can be imposed upon a farmer who contravenes a control order and seeks to extract water without paying his £5, or who contravenes the terms of his licence, is £50. That does not seem to me to be sufficient deterrent. I recall that when some of the Mods and Rockers went to Brighton last Whitsun they were fined £75 because of their behaviour. I am not complaining about that. I think that they were justifiable fines. But the conduct which is envisaged in the Clause is much more anti-social than the activities of these young people in Brighton.

The figure which I am suggesting is a maximum of £200, and the effect of the Amendment will be to give the courts greater discretion. Where they feel that the extraction of the water is sufficiently anti-social, they can adjust the figure of the fine accordingly.

In view of the Government's record in failing to maintain the purchasing power of the £, it also behoves us to write into legislation figures which take account of the inflationary tendencies which have been injected into the economy in the last 12 years by the Government. The £ is today worth about one-third less than it was 12 years ago, and if we are writing into legislation figures for this purpose, we ought to take account of these inflationary tendencies.

For all those reasons, it seems desirable that we should err on the high side rather than on what I think is the low side, for the figure in the Bill is only £50.

I wholeheartedly support the Amendment, and I regard this Clause as very important. It proposes to give an inalienable right to certain individuals in what are the natural resources of the country. We are giving people the power to take something which is a common inheritance of everybody. We are giving them the power to use this pure, clean water for their own purposes. We want it to be used, but it is a natural asset for all to use, and we are, therefore, giving a very important right in granting a licence to an individual to appropriate for his individual needs and purposes resources which belong to everybody else.

The water is a natural asset at the disposal of all living in the area—the riparian owners, those who live on the land, those who work the land and the forests, and those who use the rivers. These are the common inheritors of this resource, and by a system of licence, for a modest payment of £5 a year we are giving certain individuals a right to it.

My hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. W. Hamilton) spoke of the extra cost to the farmer. I have no doubt that the N.F.U. will deal with this point. This extra cost of the licence for water will be included in the costs put forward at the Annual Price Review. Through some marginal grant or ploughing grant or other grant, the farmer will recover the cost from the taxpayer, through the Price Review or through the subsidy system.

I therefore do not worry about that extra cost, which I think means nothing in this respect. I do not think that the farmer would recover the fine in this way. If he were fined for contravening the provisions, I doubt whether he could include the fine in his agricultural costs and recover it from the taxpayer.

There may be a number of landowners or farmers who are granted a licence to extract water under control. The degree to which they extract that water may affect other users of water resources. These may not be immediate users; they may be future users. The water which is extracted may be important to other people. When the river board fixes the licences and grants permission for water abstraction under control, all these matters will be taken into consideration.

I am confident that the people who sit on these boards, who will be farmers, other connected with the land, and people who know about irrigation and rainfall, will grant licences for the abstraction of water only to the degree that no one else's interests are damaged by it.

Anyone who contravened the licence provisions might do so over three or four months and could do irreparable damage to some other riparian owner or other section of the community. If someone lowers the water table or takes an action liable to change the fauna of the area, the livelihood of other people may be seriously affected. Sometimes the damage which is done cannot be restored. We know cases in which fertile land has been turned into a desert by a mistaken system of agriculture. I do not suggest for a moment that that would happen here, but we are dealing with a very serious matter.

Let us assume that a farmer is granted a licence to extract 1,000 gallons of water a week for irrigation and, unknown to the licensing authority, takes out 10,000 gallons a week. When there is a drought another farmer in another area discovers that the water on which he is dependent has been used by someone else. That is a very serious offence.

I may, for example, not be a riparian owner, but I may have a farm in the area. Let us assume that through drainage into my land I have some water which is used to water cattle. I may have a couple of ponds and a couple of streams. If someone is given a licence to extract so many thousands of gallons per week for spray irrigation, the river board, before granting the licence, will have considered what effect this rate of extraction will have all over the land, including my farm. If the person with the licence exceeds the licensed amount, he is not creating an extra benefit for himself, but he is denying a benefit to me; he is denying my right to this water.

We are all in agreement with what the hon. Member says, but the Amendment does not affect this issue. The penalty would remain the same for someone who contravenes the licence provisions. The Amendment deals with the person who is not licensed at all.

What I have said applies whether one has a licence or not. The offence is worse if one has a licence than if one has not. If a person is granted a licence and then contravenes its terms, his offence is worse than that of a man who has not applied for a licence.

Five pounds a year is neither here nor there. Some people pay £5 a year for licences and cannot recover it, because they get no subsidies or grants. When burdens are laid on the farming community by the State, ways and means are found, through the Annual Price Review, of recovering the cost. This is part of the set-up of subsidising the farming fraternity. That is not under discussion, but the £5 licence fee is neither here nor there.

I have in mind a small farmer who does not extract any water for an irrigation scheme, and does not want to, because his farm is suitably irrigated. He has a small supply of water. Others, having licences but exceeding them, may take water from the area, thus reducing the small farmer's natural supply. As they have reduced his natural supply, he takes action to recover it. I take it from the Amendment that the small farmer who does that is liable to a fine of £200.

The farmers, if there are any, who have exceeded the amount of water conceded them under their licences are the real criminals. They have caused the trouble. They should be heavily fined for exceeding the right given to them under their licences, because they have denuded the small farmer of his water supply. This is a possible situation. I do not suppose there are many farms left where the water is drawn from wells. I was reared on a farm with no tap supply. We drew our water from a well. The water from the well could easily have been taken by a scheme such as this, through drainage. This is not uncommon. Anyone who watches pictorial representations of what happened in the west of the United States knows that one of the techniques of driving people from their farms was to undermine their water supplies, to dam the rivers, to dig tunnels and to extract the water. This was one of the romantic episodes of building the glorious West. There are possibilities of people with licences and people without licences destroying the water supply of many small farmers.

I hope that the Government will accept the Amendment so that the penalty for an infringement by those holding licences, and even by those not holding licences, if they act on their own without coming to the board or the Secretary of State and reporting a changed situation or requiring action to be taken to protect them, can be made heavy, because they are interfering with an amenity which is the common inheritance of us all. It is not theirs, although they pay £5 a year. They are still enjoying the right to use, not to appropriate for themselves, a natural common amenity.

My hon. Friend is under a misapprehension. He has argued against the Amendment, I fear. The Amendment, as it is drafted, leaves the fine at £50 for an offence by someone in possession of a licence. The £200 would apply, if the Amendment were accepted, to someone who has not a licence.

I thank my hon. Friend. I made that point consciously, because I think that the one offence is as serious as the other.

The hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) has most eloquently spoken of our general feeling that someone who contravenes a licence, and takes too much water and tries to deceive the board, commits a serious offence. The Amendment and the Bill are together in condemning that and proposing a penalty of £50. There is the additional penalty of revocation of licence. That is important in considering the £50. The hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. W. Hamilton) has put forward the case of someone who has not got a valid licence—for our purpose, someone who has not got a licence at all—who is trying to poach water by some sort of smuggling methods because he has not a licence to use. The second part of the penalty does not apply in his case. I entirely sympathise with the hon. Gentleman's reason for tabling the Amendment.

It is virtually impossible for someone to take water in this way either economically or without being discovered. The equipment for spray irrigation is pretty expensive. Even the smallest piece of equipment costs about £1,000. It is obvious. It would be extremely difficult for someone to carry out spray irrigation and incur this kind of expense without being spotted. The risk of someone trying to do this without a licence is small. I must point that out immediately, otherwise the hon. Member for Fife, West will wonder why we have not given more consideration to the point.

Secondly—this is the point which will reassure the hon. Gentleman more than anything else—someone who tried to do this would be open to imprisonment, which is even worse than the fine the hon. Gentleman suggests. A person committing this kind of offence would be open to interdict, which, if granted by the court, could lead to imprisonment for such a breach.

I have shown, I hope, to both hon. Members that there is a penalty which is waiting for anybody who tries to do this, but that it seems extremely improbable that anybody would be so unwise as to buy the equipment and start taking water without a licence and think that he could get away with it. Although I understand the reason why the hon. Gentleman put this point forward—discussion on the point has been useful—I do not think that the Amendment would be a useful addition to the Bill.

This is another example of the difficulty we are in when Report and Third Reading are to follow immediately after Committee stage. The Under-Secretary and my hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) made a powerful case against the man who has a valid licence and then misuses it. Had I heard the Under-Secretary's explanation before I tabled the Amendment, I would certainly have sought to alter the £50. If the Chair is prepared to accept a manuscript Amendment to that effect on Report to alter the £50 in the Bill as it stands, I should be happy about it.

I hope that the hon. Gentleman took the point that someone who contravenes a licence is subject to revocation of the licence. To someone who has bought extensive equipment and embarked upon spray irrigation, that is probably a much worse penalty than the fine.

That may well be. It is an arguable proposition. Precisely because it is an arguable proposition, I should like to take an Amendment on Report. At the moment, unless the Chair is prepared to accept a manuscript Amendment—indeed, Sir William, you said that you were not in a position to rule on this—

As the hon. Member and the Committee are well aware, the matter of Amendments, either manuscript or otherwise, being selected on Report is for Mr. Speaker and not for the Chairman of Ways and Means.

I am obliged, Sir William. This emphasises the difficulty we are in. The Under-Secretary has been very reasonable. I hope that I am not unreasonable about this. I appreciate that revocation might be a sufficient deterrent. On the other hand, it might not be. To put up the amount to £50 would not necessarily increase the deterrent. It would simply give the courts more discretion. A court might think an offence sufficiently serious to impose a fine but not to revoke the licence.

If the figure is too low, as I think it is, the courts could use discretion either to impose what might be thought an insufficient fine or to invoke the much too serious penalty of revoking the licence. If they are given wider discretion the courts may say that a fine of £200 is a serious penalty but not so serious as revocation of a licence and therefore sterilisation of expensive equipment. Because of that, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will reconsider the position between now and Report stage.

I beg to move, in page 2, line 26, after "contiguous", to insert "or reasonably adjacent".

There was a short discussion on this point in Committee in another place. As the Bill stands, a person who can obtain a licence to abstract water for the purpose of spray irrigation is the occupier of land contiguous to a stream. It might be that a farm is only 50 yards or even 20 yards away from a stream. Does the Clause mean that the farmer is thereby excluded from extracting water unless, as the Minister of State implied in another place, he sought an arrangement with the riparian owner to get permission to put a pipeline across that farmer's land?

I cannot see what the position is. I think that a farmer whose land is 20 yards or 30 yards from a river ought to be able to apply for a licence and the river board should be entitled to consider whether it should grant him a licence. He should not be excluded merely because he is not a riparian owner.

I might be able to help the hon. Member, because this question was also discussed on Second Reading in this House. My hon. Friend the Member for South Angus (Sir J. Duncan) raised a similar case of a farmer whose land was separated from a stream as defined in the Bill by a short strip of land. I was able to tell my hon. Friend that such situations are likely to occur very infrequently in areas of Scotland to be affected by these control orders for the extraction of water for spray irrigation.

Secondly, I pointed out that the common law right to abstract water for primary purposes is limited to a riparian owner and "riparian" means "contiguous". We looked into this matter very carefully from the legal point of view. It means that a person whose land is actually washed by the water of a stream is a riparian owner. Therefore, someone who did not actually own the land contiguous to the stream, but whose land was separated by a strip, is not a riparian owner and does not come within the common law right to abstract water. This Bill is not aimed at trying to change that basic law on this point but to build upon it. What I was able to do for my hon. Friend the Member for South Angus and now hope to do for the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. W. Hamilton) is to make perfectly clear that the legal right under common law does not extend to those whose land is cut off by a strip of land from the stream.

The hon. Member may regret this, but it is probably helpful that I should make it clear for anyone who finds himself in this situation. He will then know where he stands and be able to make alternative arrangements. Such people cannot normally expect to be included among those who can take water from a stream for spray irrigation because their land does not actually touch the water.

I am astounded at this situation. I know a case in which many years ago a road was cut alongside two lochs and a river. The side of the road which goes towards the loch is common land and the other side of the road belongs to the Forestry Commission. I take it that because the road was cut by a local authority and the land between the road and the lochs is now common land, the Forestry Commission could not take advantage of this Bill and irrigate its plantations with water from the loch because it is no longer a riparian owner there. If the road had not been cut the Commission would have been a riparian owner there.

There are many places in Scotland where a road has been cut by a loch and the farmer has disposed of land near the loch or near an estuary to a development department wishing to make a road. One sees instances of this all the way from Carlisle along by the Clyde where farmers have had their land separated from the river by a road intervening and they have lost their rights. If we are to have developments in Scotland which open up the Highlands, many farmers wanting to develop strips of land after they have given up land for new roads will lose riparian rights. They will then have little chance of getting a licence for abstraction of water from a river or a loch.

3.0 p.m.

This is an extraordinary situation. I dread to think of the case of a farmer who has a few hundred acres and has on the periphery of his farm a river or loch. At present, he can apply for and obtain a licence because he is a riparian owner, but in four or five years' time, because the Department in Edinburgh decides to construct a new road and the best place to put it is beside the loch, he finds himself deprived of riparian ownership because he is no longer the owner of the land on which the water laps. His farming has been dependent upon irrigation by water from the loch or river, but he is no longer the owner of land contiguous to the water. If this is the new situation, I am surprised that it was not envisaged earlier, especially when one thinks of developments now planned in Scotland. Thousands of farmers may lose riparian ownership in this situation.

If the road is constructed by the local authority is it still to be treated as part of the farm so that the farmer will retain riparian ownership? At Loch Lomond, for instance, the road runs alongside the water in several places. If there is further road construction will Sir Ivar Colquhoun lose his riparian ownership? This may not be an important question for him but it is for the small farmer who may be placed in the same position. A farmer may lose the right because his landlord decides to fence off a 40-yard strip alongside a river because it is being poached.

If this is to be the case, it opens the way to tremendous exploitation. Indeed, there is the possibility of corruption and of all sorts of pressures. There is the possibility of a vicious landowner taking away the land adjacent to the river in order to deny to the farmer the possibility of having the right to extract water.

I am shocked that we should be in a situation where we are making it possible for spray irrigation schemes to be carried out, but only by people who have riparian rights, when, apparently, it will be easy for the landowner or the local authority to deny the farmer those rights. The Under-Secretary's explanation does not satisfy me. My hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. W. Hamilton) is serving the interest of every small farmer in Scotland in putting forward the Amendment. I hope that he will demand a far more satisfactory explanation of the Clause and of why the Amendment is not necessary.

I explained the position briefly for the benefit of the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. W. Hamilton) and it was discussed on Second Reading. This riparian right is of long standing. It is a right in common law which existed long before spray irrigation was thought of. The situation under common law is that if somebody finds that for one reason or another his land is no longer contiguous he has lost the right to draw water for primary use, for man and beast and for domestic purposes. So there is no change in that, though I acknowledge that, with the coming of spray irrigation in areas where it happens to be suitable for agriculture, it has had greater significance.

If a farmer is concerned with a transaction under which a section of his land along the edge of a stream from which he is abstracting or might wish to abstract water is to be sold or taken over in some way, then, provided that he is able to keep a piece which is contiguous with the stream, he will still retain his right. This is something which in the past has always had to be considered. A farmer's legal adviser would inform him that if he sold off a section touching a stream, he would lose the common law right to abstract water therefrom, a right which might or might not be particularly valuable to him. In the future, if he wanted to go in for spray irrigation, it would be likely to be of more value.

The hon. Gentleman spoke of the Development Department. I am sure that the Department would be among the first to recognise that this is an important right and try to do something to protect it. In the making of a road, for instance, a section could be left to the farmer.

How could a section be left alongside a stream or loch if a road was being built? Would a bridge have to be put up?

I am sure that there are ways of doing it. I do not want to go into all the possible permutations and combinations. I hope that it is enough for the hon. Gentleman to realise that the Development Department would be fully aware of this point and of how a farmer could be assisted by being left a section contiguous to a stream. I entirely take the hon. Gentleman's point about it, but I think it far more likely, in fact, that it would be not the Development Department but persons who, unfortunately, did not realise how much was at stake who might be involved in difficulty. I hope, therefore, that the fact that I have twice now, both in this Committee and on Second Reading, clearly stated the legal position at common law, which we are not trying to change in the Bill—we are simply building on it—will mean that, if situations of this kind do arise, there will be less and less likelihood of people dong things in ignorance of the rights involved.

The hon. Gentleman should realise that anomalies would be created by the Amendment. If we brought in a farmer whose land came within 50 yards of a stream, what about a man whose land came within 70 yards, or a man with a great deal of land coming within 100 yards? Hon. Members will accept that it would be very difficult to draw a line and one might create anomalies. As I said before, it is not the Government's intention to alter the common law in this respect. We are simply determining what it is at present and then building on to it by the provisions of the Bill.

I understand the apprehensions which hon. Members have raised, but I hope that, by clearly stating what the legal position now is, I have shown them that, on the whole, it is best for all concerned that we should not try to alter it but should merely understand what the consequences of it are.

This shows the value of discussion in Committee. No one can touch on the question of land, land tenure and rights going with land without appreciating the complexities of the whole subject.

The Under-Secretary of State has failed properly to realise the importance of this matter. It is quite wrong to say that we are not altering the common law by the Bill. We are conferring new rights upon particular people. Water is at present being extracted for spray irrigation, and there is no common law protection for people who are doing it. He is conferring on certain people the right to extract, with impugnity, under licence, but he is conferring it on a limited number of people.

I am one of those strange people who cannot understand how anyone comes to own a mountain or a river. There used to be a song "How Can You Buy Killarney?". That is an Irish instance, but it offends my Scottish pride of race that somebody can own a Scottish river. Riparian ownership is not limited to drawing water for drinking purposes. There is another right, namely, the right of fishing. This is a valuable right, as we discovered when the Hydro-Electric Board wanted to carry out a scheme in the Highlands and Lord Lovat—one of these patriots—was able to extract £100,000 in compensation for the disturbance of his rights.

A landowner can alienate occupation of land and retain ownership of fishing rights. After this Bill is passed there will be nothing to prevent him from alienating occupation and retaining this new right of water abstraction but continuing to own the banks of the river. From the farmer's point of view, it probably does not mean very much until he wants to make use of the Bill and then discovers that he cannot apply for a licence. The right to a licence is limited to the occupier of the contiguous land. There is nothing to prevent owners from selling or leasing their fishing rights or water abstraction rights. They may not do it, but no one else can do it because they do not own the land concerned.

I have read a little of the history of our country, and I have a fair idea of what the people whom the Under-Secretary of State supports have done to it and of what they have extracted from it and about the land to which they have very dubious title. There was a Royal Commission on this matter in, I think, the 1870s. One of the things which it suggested should be done was that people who claimed to have fishing rights should produce their title to them. The evidence was that very few people who exercised fishing rights had any title to them.

Nobody owns a fish or a stream. No offence is committed by fishing in any stream in Scotland. Difficulty arises only when one catches a fish, and then only if it is of a particular type—and not a trout. Then it belongs to the riparian owner. While it is in the stream, it belongs to nobody.

The important thing about this matter is this. Is it right in the interests of agriculture? Is it right that we should give this new protective right only to people who happen to be occupiers, whether they be owner-occupiers or tenant occupiers, of contiguous land?

3.15 p.m.

This matter concerned another place. The word was not always "contiguous". In the original Statute, it was "abutting". Then, there was a feeling that "contiguous" was better. There is no reason why we should not use "adjacent". Of course, it will lead to difficulties; so will "contiguous". It confers a particular benefit on certain people.

I, too, feel strongly about this. We should discuss it for considerably longer than we have time to do today. It is a matter on which we should have time for reflection. The points made by my hon. Friend are extremely relevant. I was interested in what was said about water being taken across a road and whether the local authority will advise people of the rights that they will lose in any sales of land.

The assumption always is that it is the farmer who is interested. If he is only a tenant farmer, he does not sell the ground; it is the landlord. The Under-Secretary will appreciate that we gave landowners considerably greater rights in breaking leases on the death of a tenant farmer. That was done under the 1957 Act, part of which enables landowners to take pieces of land out of a farm.

I remember, during the Kinross and West Perthshire by-election, being approached by an old man who knew that when he died his son would not get the same amount of land on the farm as a result of the beneficent generosity of the Under-Secretary and his friends looking after the interests of landowners. Do not let us forget the powers of landowners.

We are now conferring this right upon landowners to take water so that, if they act within their licence, nobody can take them to court. This is being written in at a later point of the Bill. We are giving a guarantee to which these people have no right. I am not satisfied that we should give this benefit purely to people who happen to have riparian rights.

This was a matter which concerned the hon. Member for South Angus (Sir J. Duncan), who wanted to ensure that where fishing rights had been alienated, the farmer occupying the land, although he might have doubtful title to the contiguous part of the stream, should be able to get a licence to abstract water for spray irrigation. This is a complex matter.

If this is the only way out, let us appreciate what we are doing. We are conferring new rights upon riparian owners or, in this case, upon the riparian occupiers. Only the occupier, I understand, can make application. It is a difficult matter and one to which we should give far more thought than we have been able to do. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. W. Hamilton) for having seen the point and put down the Amendment to enable us to have this discussion.

I should like to make one or two points before we leave the Amendment. I confess that when I put it on the Notice Paper I did not realise its implications. I am always glad to put my foot in a hornets' nest and then hastily withdraw and leave the experts to sort it out.

I understand the point to be that by this new technique in agriculture we are giving an extremely valuable capital asset to a restricted body of people who happen to own land by the side of rivers. I want to put to the Under-Secretary a hypothetical situation, but one which might occur under the Bill. I am not sure whether it can occur and I should like the hon. Gentleman's guidance.

Suppose a farmer wants to use the powers given in this Bill to extract water and he gets his licence, but that, prior to that, he has had discussions with a farmer 50 yards farther away from the river and has said, "I will get a licence and then, having got permission to extract water from the river, I will sell you a certain volume of the water which I am to be allowed to abstract." In other words, for a £5 annual licence fee he is getting a potentially enormous capital asset put into his hands.

This seems to me to be highly undesirable. Are there any provisions in the Bill—I do not think that there are—to prevent a riparian owner from subsequently selling water which he is allowed to abstract under the terms of his licence? Will there be anything written into the licence? I presume that there could be. In the light of what has been said, I think there ought to be written into the terms of the licence a condition that the water to be extracted shall be abstracted only for the land of the person abstracting it.

As my hon. Friend advanced his argument and as the hon. Gentleman opposite has put what I regard as the injustice of the common law as at present it stands, I have come more and more to the view that the land itself ought to be in public ownership. It is absolute nonsense to talk about own- ing or selling a river. The land ought to be owned by us, that is, by the public in general, and the more I hear the hon. Gentleman opposite talking about riparian owners and their exclusive rights the more I am convinced that public ownership is the only solution to the problem.

I should like, first, to clear up a misunderstanding, which, I think, also occurred between myself and the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) on Second Reading, and that was that I said that there has existed for a long time in common law the right for a riparian proprietor to take water for what were described as primary purposes. What I then said was not that we were conferring a new right for spray irrigation, but that it was open to doubt whether taking very large quantities for spray irrigation was within the common law or not. I just wanted to make that clear because the hon. Gentleman was implying, I think, that I said that spray irrigation was definitely not within the common law, but it is open to doubt.

Coming now to the point which the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. W. Hamilton) raised, we would expect the conditions in a licence to make it clear that whether the applicant had to use the water himself or could pass it on to someone else. On the other hand, the Bill is flexible enough for it to be possible for a riparian occupier—the hon. Gentleman asked for a hypothetical answer to a hypothetical case and I am putting it in the same spirit—to apply for a licence on the basis that he is going to pass some of the water to somebody else who is not a riparian.

Whether a river purification board would be prepared to grant a licence on that basis and under what conditions would be a matter for consideration by the board, and there would be a great many circumstances which would enter into that consideration. The point is that the possibility is not ruled out by the Bill. In such a case as the hon. Member mentioned, if a farmer who is a riparian were to get a licence the licence would, I am sure, state as a condition that he must use the water himself, and I do not think that at that stage he could start trading it to somebody else, which is what the hon. Member suggested. I think that I can answer him by saying that that would be included in the conditions.

I beg to move, in page 2, line 30, to leave out "one calendar year" and to insert:

"a maximum of three calendar years subject to the discretion of the board".

This, again, was a point which was raised in another place. To apply for a licence each year would seem to me to be an unnecessary hindrance. I appreciate that there may be reasons for it. Presumably the argument in favour of the yearly application is that with a steady increase in the use of spray irrigation more and more applications would come. Eventually, there would be a saturation point and it would be unfair to give a monopoly of these rights to the group of people who got in first. Nevertheless, I thought that discretion ought to be given to the board whether the licence should be for one, two or three years, according to the wishes of the board and the individual.

It may well be that an individual would wish to apply yearly for a licence; on the other hand, he might prefer to have a licence for three years. If he wants a licence for three years, and the river board has no objection to it, there would be a marginal reduction in administrative costs. I cannot see any objection to that degree of flexibility which is not in the Bill.

As the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. W. Hamilton) says, this is certainly a point for consideration and we have considered it very carefully. He mentioned one important argument about further applicants coming in during the period of three years and that it might have the effect of keeping out people who had a perfectly legitimate reason for applying after the first batch of applicants.

We also think that there may well be changes from year to year in the fluctuations of supply and demand and also in the supply of water. We have come to the conclusion that basing it on a calendar year would be the soundest way and fairest to all concerned, and for that reason we should like to keep to the calendar year.

In view of the hon. Gentleman's statement, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

I beg to move in page 3, line 16, at the end to insert:

(6) In considering an application and any representations against it duly made a river purification board shall have regard to all the circumstances of the particular case, including—

(a) the interests of public health;

(b) the character and flow of the stream specified in the application;

(c) the extent to which that stream is or may in the future be used for industrial purposes or for the purpose of any public undertaking or for fisheries or water supply;

(d) the effect on land drainage or on any canal or inland navigation of any alterations in the flow of the stream;

and shall secure, so far as practicable, the protection of the rights of persons with statutory rights to abstract water from the stream, of riparian owners, and of other owners of lands or salmon fishings.

This is an Amendment of considerable substance. The purification board proceeds now to the question of considering the applications that it has before it. As we have reasonably pointed out, it has not an easy task. There is nothing in the Statute which gives the board criteria for determining exactly why and how it should judge this matter. But there are certain reasonable criteria on which a river purification board should consider its functions, and this one as well.

3.30 p.m.

Therefore, the Amendment tries to lay down some generalised criteria that the river purification board should bear in mind, and it also lays down that it should, so far as is practicable, ensure the protection of existing water rights. It is laid down by the Amendment that:

"In considering an application and any representations against it duly made a river purification board shall have regard to all the circumstances of the particular case, including—

(a) the interests of public health;

(b) the character and flow of the stream specified in the application "—

Those are all basic.

"(c) the extent to which that stream is or may in the future be used for industrial purposes or for the purpose of any public undertaking or for fisheries or water supply;

(d) the effect on land drainage or on any canal or inland navigation of any alterations in the flow of the stream;

and shall secure, so far as practicable, the protection of the rights of persons with statutory rights to abstract water from the stream, of riparian owners, and of other owners of lands or salmon fishings.";

So it is fairly comprehensive, and these things have to be borne in mind.

The Under-Secretary will probably say that it is not necessary and that the board will bear these things in mind. But there is nothing laid down in the Bill which suggests that it should. He may take refuge in the fact that the board will be doing this in the performance of its duties. But it is arguable that all that is laid down is that the board should consider an application for a licence and grant it either conditionally or unconditionally, and that there is nothing in the Clause requiring it to take into account existing interests in the stream. Once the licence has been granted, the spray irrigator can do as he likes irrespective of the conditions in the stream. We shall then be dependent on the board taking action. It is essential that the board should satisfy itself that the giving of the licence will not injure the interests of other people—and there is a considerable number of interests.

It may be that the Government will say that the machinery of control will be brought into operation only in those areas where there is a relative shortage. But during a shortage of water there will be an abundance of spray irrigation, and it is likely to become a problem. We should also remember all the important rights under the Rivers (Prevention of Pollution) (Scotland) Act, 1951, and the establishment of those things. We must bear in mind that these are pre-eminent and should be given first priority. It is only in circumstances where there is an abundance of water and where there are no chances being taken in respect of existing rights that we should confer the new right. It is only fair that that should be done. There are statutory water undertakings taking water from some of the streams and taking water from sources which are dependent on those streams.

When consideration was given to this aspect in another place, there was a tendency to say that this does not apply much in Scotland. But we must bear in mind what is likely to happen over water in Scotland over the next few years. We are making more and more demands on our water resources. An American firm is setting up a new factory just outside my constituency. It will cost the local authority more than £1 million to provide the water that the factory requires, and without that water we should not have any industry.

If we are to rebuild Scotland—I am sure we are; it would take more than 13 years of Tory rule to destroy Scotland and its spirit—it will mean more and more water. It will mean that the abstraction of water for progressive farming will be more desirable, but it will be more difficult until we have taken the necessary steps to ensure that the water is conserved for use at the right time.

I hope that the Under-Secretary of State will not answer on the basis of today's situation. We must look far ahead and bear in mind the importance of this matter. If spray irrigation is to be permitted and so much water abstracted from statutory undertakers, we may find the situation difficult in times of shortage. All these interests will be without remedy once the spray irrigators have their licences, for they will be entirely dependent in time of severe shortage on the purification boards exercising powers under Clause 7.

We must not take this on chance. It is essential to lay down the obligations of these boards when considering applications for licences. Presumably they will start with a general annual review of how many applications they can permit and how much water in aggregate they can allow to be abstracted under particular circumstances. We must lay down the criteria of public health interests, agriculture and the rights of others, including the statutory water undertakers.

The Amendment's intentions are perfectly legitimate and sound. We should spell out for the boards the criteria on which to base their decisions. But all this emphasises the difficulties under which these boards and other public bodies are labouring—the lack of a national plan for the development of Scotland as a whole. Like everyone else, the river purification boards are in ignorance about future development. Yet the areas in which spray irrigation is likely to occur and expand are precisely those areas which need more economic development.

I represent part of the eastern side of the country which is subject to this kind of problem. We need more industrial development there but one of the problems of local authorities is how to satisfy potential industrial developers about the adequacy of water supplies. It therefore behoves us to specify to the boards that, important though agricultural interests are, potential industrial development is at least as important.

There is also an interest, which is not mentioned in the Amendment, which may or may not be important. It is that of boating and sailing and the relationship to tourism.

Order. I am afraid that we get into difficulty if we mention things not in the Amendment.

But no difficulty arises, Sir William. The Amendment refers in paragraph (d) to canal or inland navigation.

In that case the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. W. Hamilton) misled me in leading me to believe that they were not mentioned.

It just shows that you, too, should have read the Amendment, Sir William. I apologise.

Inland navigation is an important consideration and should be spelt out in legislation of this sort.

There is also the increased use of water for purposes other than agricultural and spray irrigation. There are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of houses in Scotland without a water supply. We hope that when we get another Government, in October, those houses will have a water supply installed. This will mean an increasing demand for domestic water. A characteristic of recent years has been that the amount of water consumed per head of the population has increased substantially year by year. This is an important consideration to be borne in mind by all responsible water authorities.

The Under-Secretary will probably argue that this is a relatively minor problem at the moment and of concern to only three or four river boards, but he will probably agree that the problem is likely to increase, so that it behoves river boards to be increasingly concerned about other interests which have at least an equal right to the available water supplies. I hope that he will consider the Amendment in those terms.

I can assure hon. Members that I have studied the Amendment with admiration, because there is no doubt that in paragraphs (a) to (d) the hon. Members who have drafted the Amendment have included extremely important criteria on which boards, dependent on their local circumstances, will have to take their decisions. They have brought out some extremely valuable and important points which the boards will have to consider.

I say at once that the Government agree that these are matters which the boards should consider. All that we are worried about is that we should not include these to the apparent exclusion of other matters which the boards ought to take into account in their varying circumstances in different parts of Scotland. I should also add that we do not like the last three lines of the Amendment after paragraph (d), because we feel that they carry the implication that the object of the control of spray irrigation is to give some priority to the spray irrigator at the expense of other interests in the river. That is not so, and I know that the Opposition do not wish that to be so. However, with that reservation, I agree that the sense of the Amendment is right. These are very important matters and cover a very wide range of criteria which the boards will have to consider.

Nevertheless, I ask hon. Members not to press the Amendment. One of the reasons is that in Section 17 of the 1951 Act the duties of the boards on being set up are not spelled out in detail like this. We believe that it would be inconsistent to have these criteria spelled out like this and appear to be attempting to cover all the points. I congratulate hon. Members on covering so much of the field, but, with the best of intentions, I still think that the Amendment does not cover all the issues which the river boards would have to take into account. Nor would it be wise to try to do so, because it is almost impossible to foresee every circumstance which a board might have to take into account and which might be of varying importance in different areas.

I confirm what the hon. Gentleman said about the importance of the Bill to the areas concerned. I have said before, and I repeat, that we do not expect it to be applicable all over Scotland, because, fortunately, in many parts of Scotland there is an abaundance of water.

I agree with what the hon. Gentleman said about the last three lines of the Amendment. We would not like to give spray irrigation precedence, but the hon. Gentleman's first point was a bad one because we have said:

"shall have regard to all the circumstances of the particular case including …"

We do not wish to secure only this point. These matters are to be considered without affecting the general considerations, but in view of what the hon. Gentleman said, and in the hope that he will accept the next Amendment, I beg to withdrawn this one.

I beg to move, in page 3, line 17, after "board", to insert:

"having regard to their statutory duties and"

With that Amendment it will be possible to discuss the Amendment in line 26.

The Amendment is self-explanatory, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will accept it.

While not accepting that this is absolutely necessary, I am glad to be able to say that we would accept these two Amendments.

I beg to move, in page 3, line 22, at the end to insert:

"the point of abstraction of water".

Again, this spells out one of the points of information which a board should know, and we are glad to accept the Amendment

I beg to move, in page 3, line 28, to leave out from "application" to the end of line 29 and to insert:

"and in the case of refusal of consent the board shall communicate in writing their decision and the reasons therefor to the applicant".

With that Amendment it will be possible to discuss the Amendment in line 28.

I do not think that it is desirable to include the words

"but such consent shall not be unreasonably refused."

But I think that where it is refused, bearing in mind the right of appeal which a person has, the board should give written reasons for its refusal to grant a licence.

We are inclined to agree with the hon. Gentleman that it is not essential to keep these words in the Bill, and of the two Amendments we would be prepared to accept the first one.

I beg to move, in page 3, line 42, after "allow", to insert "with or without conditions".

With that Amendment it will be possible to discuss also the following Amendments in line 43, and the two in line 44

I think that these are also fairly reasonable Amendments. I know that they take a certain power away from the Secretary of State but if we provide all these variations in subsection (9), the Secretary of State does not need to require this consideration in the first instance.

I would have liked to be able to say, after the recent run of acceptances, that I could accept these Amendments, but the fourth Amendment would not allow my right hon. Friend to deal with an appeal as if a licence application had been made to him in the first instance. This would remove what we consider to be a proper degree of flexibility which has been allowed to the Secretary of State on numerous other occasions where similar considerations apply—for example, in the town and country planning code—and for those reasons we would prefer to keep the Bill as it stands.

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

I beg to move, in page 4, line 6, at the end to insert:

(11) Before determining any appeal under this section the Secretary of State shall, if the applicant or the river purification board or any person who under subsection (5) of this section has made representations regarding the application so desire, afford to them an opportunity of appearing before and being heard by a person appointed by the Secretary of State for the purpose.

The Secretary of State already has power to hold a local inquiry relating to an appeal against a river board's decision, but this is within his discretion. The object of the Amendment is to make it clear that he will not determine an appeal without giving all concerned the opportunity of appearing if they so desire. The Amendment is in accord with the spirit of the arrangements generally envisaged for the determination of appeals by the Council on Tribunals.

I beg to move, in page 4, line 8, to leave out from "final" to the end of line 9.

I do not think that the words sought to be left out are necessary. If the Secretary of State comes to a decision he does not need to order a river purification board to act in conformity with it.

In the spirit of meeting the Opposition as far as I can, I am prepared to accept the Amendment.

I beg to move, in page 4, line 12, to leave out "£5"and to insert"£20".

With this Amendment we can take the Amendment in page 4, line 12, after "sum", insert "not less than £10".

Yes, Sir William.

The reason I wanted to extract a figure from the Minister as to the administrative cost was precisely because of this Amendment. The administrative cost ought to be borne by the people who are extracting the water. I see no reason why there should be a charge on public funds in respect of the administrative cost. The hon. Member quoted a figure of £4,000 a year, and it would appear that that sum would not be covered by the payment of an annual fee of £5.

I have, therefore, suggested that the figure should be £20. This is a reasonable proposition. The farmer is getting very good value for money, if all the accounts are true of the increased productivity which arises from the use of this water, which is a national asset.

I should make it clear that the figure that I gave was a net figure. That would be after the estimate of the numbers had come in. None the less, it was a very rough figure. I said it was approximate. The hon. Member will probably agree that the sums involved appear to be small altogether, and we would prefer to stick to the figure of £5 because we think that it is a reasonable figure for the licence.

I am not prepared to accept just the statement that the Government think that the figure is adequate. Is it enough to cover the administrative costs of the scheme? If not, I object to the public being charged for this, which is a very valuable provision for the people who are getting it. If the hon. Member cannot convince me on the point, then I must press the Amendment. I want to see the scheme self-supporting, with no charge on public funds at all. If it is not, then the case for the Amendment stands.

The estimates and calculations must be approximate, but it looks as though the licence fees would not cover all the expenses of administration. On the other hand, I know that the hon. Member is as concerned about the interests of the farmers as he is about the interests of miners and others, and, particularly as they are getting a licence which may not give them nearly as much water as they would like to have without this system, the farmers may feel that the other interests concerned in the river are also getting value from the scheme. They may feel that they ought not to bear the whole of the cost and that the general public, in various sections of the community and various interests, is also deriving benefit from the scheme. If one tries to look at it equitably from that point of view, this seems to be a fair provision.

I beg to move, in page 5, line 12, to leave out "shall be transferred" and to insert "may be transferable".

With this Amendment may be discussed the two Amendments in page 5, line 12.

I move the Amendment, because I do not see why this should be obligatory.

I cannot accept the Amendment. We feel that the licence is tied to the land. The period is only a year and, once the licence has been granted, it is only reasonable that it should be possible to transfer it to somebody coming in without having to go through all the processes of application again.

I beg to move, in page 5, line 19, to leave out "may" and to insert "shall".

With this Amendment the Committee may discuss the Amendment to line 20.

We want to give the Under-Secretary of State a quick opportunity to accept these Amendments.

I am glad to be able to accept the Amendments.

I beg leave to draw attention to the suicide of Brian Harry Thomas at Wakefield Prison. This is a tragic story for Thomas and his family, and it is one from which the Home Office emerges with no credit. At the outset I want to say that my object in raising the matter at this time, for, unfortunately, nothing now can restore Thomas to life, is to urge upon the Home Office, first, that a proper inquiry be made into the matters that resulted in Thomas's death, and, secondly, that proper inquiries be made into the circumstances and the factors that played their part within the prison service so that these things can be remedied in the future and proper regard paid to representations made, particularly by Members of Parliament and others, that care may be shown for those who are put into the custody of the prison service.

I ought to say to the hon. Lady the Joint Under-Secretary immediately that if I do not succeed in getting more satisfactory help from her and her Department than I have had hitherto I intend to raise this matter again on the Consolidated Fund Bill, when I believe that I shall be supported by other right hon. and hon. Members to whom I have spoken about this matter.

The facts relating to Thomas's death are shortly these. On 26th June, 1962, he was sentenced in the Liverpool Crown Court to 10 years' imprisonment for the attempted murder of his wife. Later, that sentence was reduced by the Court of Criminal Appeal to 5 years' imprisonment. On 11th December, 1962, some hundreds of Thomas's workmates and neighbours gave me a petition which I presented to the Home Secretary asking that the Home Secretary look at, very many special circumstances relating to Thomas's case and consider whether it would be possible to make some further remission of his sentence. In a letter which the Home Secretary wrote me in December, 1962, he said that he saw no reason for interfering and that the law must take its course. I was worried about the situation which had been revealed by the petition and by the letters which I had received from Thomas's family.

On 25th January, 1963, I sought and was granted an interview with the hon. Lady's predecessor in office. At that interview I again drew attention to the fact that Thomas's behaviour at the time of his attack upon his wife was so utterly inconsistent with his general behaviour as to give some reason for supposing that his mental state needed examining. The then Under-Secretary agreed that this was a matter which had been brought to his attention and suggested that I could speak to him again some 12 months later and that I should leave the matter in the hands of the Home Office because it was aware of the cause for anxiety about Thomas's unusual behaviour.

I had further discussion with this young man's father and, following an account he gave of this boy's condition when he said that he was then in so depressed a state that his father was afraid he would do himself some injury, I spoke to a psychologist consultant friend of mine who said, without seeing him, that this was the typical behaviour of a manic depressive. This I told to the Under-Secretary who, as the hon. Lady was kind enough to tell me when I saw her, reported the gist of that conversation to the Home Office.

On 4th April, 1963, Brian Thomas hanged himself by his braces in his cell in Wakefield Prison. On 8th April at the inquest on his death it was stated by the coroner, although surprising in the circumstances, that there was insufficient evidence to tell what was the state of this young man's mind. On 9th April Thames's father wrote to me enclosing a letter from a fellow prisoner which stated that this young man's behaviour in prison was such that it was inevitable that he should commit suicide in the way in which he did. He said in particular that he was at that time in debt to protection men, that he was frightened of them, and that he was afraid that his face was going to be cut up. He asked the authorities to protect him but they would not, said the fellow prisoner. He said that some of the hospital people knew the truth and why he died. He told him that he had told the doctor the truth about the things of which he was afraid.

I wrote to the Home Secretary on 10th April and got a reply on 15th May, after considerable correspondence, in which I urged that I should have some information. I learnt from the present Under-Secretary that there was in fact no suggestion that the prison authorities were in any way responsible for the tragedy which had overtaken this young man. She denied that Thomas had asked for protection and that he had shown abnormal depression or threatened to commit suicide. There are these significant facts. As long ago as January, 1963, I had told the Home Office, and the hon. Lady admitted that she knew, that Thomas was a manic depressive with suicidal tendencies. At the time he was admitted to the hospital where he had stayed for a week or so before he died, he had attempted to commit suicide by cutting his wrists.

The hon. Lady told me that he had told the prison hospital staff that he was in debt to other prisoners for tobacco. There was an allegation that he had told them he was afraid and that he wanted to leave the hospital—this was information given by the Home Office—because it was "pay day". I arranged an interview later with the Home Office, having drawn its attention to these factors which seemed unsatisfactory, and eventually, on 29th July, I was given an interview by the Under-Secretary, who was accompanied by the Home Office officer in charge of prisoners.

At that interview, it was admitted that the information I had given to the hon. Lady's predecessor had been passed on, that it was known that tobacco-running was going on in the prisons and that if inquiries were made it would probably be possible to uncover the so-called "tobacco barons". It was admitted that the cuts on Thomas's wrists were some sort of suicide attempt and were so recorded by the hospital authorities, though they did not take them seriously, and when Thomas some days later had recovered from the cuts he was returned to his cell without supervision.

The Joint Under-Secretary then said that she was not disposed to take the matter any further. I asked a Question on 21st November, to which I received an equivocal reply, and on 27th November I wrote again to the Home Office, sending a letter which I had received from Thomas's father which contained what is my submission were very serious allegations. That letter was one which itself enclosed a letter from Thomas which had been written to his father some time before. It was a letter which Thomas had smuggled out of the hospital in which he said to his father that he was in debt to people and that he was concerned about the position in which he found himself and suggested that his father should send sums of money to people whose names and addresses he included in the letter. I sent that letter to the Home Office and enclosed in it Brian Thomas's letter to his father and also the addresses of six people to whom separate sums of money were sent by Thomas's father.

I have no doubt—and I am assured by other to whom I have spoken who have equal and perhaps more experience than I have—that this is almost a classic form of protection racket which is exercised in prison, namely, that if a man is in debt to a fellow-prisoner who is exercising terror over him, the way in which that debt is paid is by money sent by some relative of his outside the prison to a relative of the protectionist outside the prison. I hoped because of this that the Home Office would make a proper inquiry into the prisoners and their relatives to whom these sums of money were sent.

I bore in mind in doing so that the Home Office agreed that it knew that a protection racket was going on in Wakefield Prison and I hoped that by this means it would be able to uncover the names of these so-called protection barons. The only reply I received from the Home Office—and this is what I regard as discreditable—to these serious allegations resulting in the death of this unfortunate and bemused man was the criticism that the letter had been smuggled out of the prison and that Mr. Thomas, who had sent it to me, had connived at the evasion of prison rules. It seems to me extraordinary that the Home Office was concerning itself about that when it had on its hands the death of this young man.

The hon. Lady the Joint Under-Secretary devoted the whole of her answer to ways and means by which Thomas if he had been so really concerned about: the matters mentioned in the letter might have made them known to the Governor of the prison, and this in spite of the fact that these circumstances had resulted in this unhappy man's untimely death.

The matters about which I complain are these. Although, months before, I had given warning of the state of this man's mind, no notice, apparently, was taken. At the inquest, these things, if they were not hidden, were at least, glossed over, for it would have been impossible, if all the facts had been made known about Thomas's mental condition, to have reached the conclusion that there was insufficient evidence to tell his state of mind.

I complain that, in spite of the letters which I wrote, the interviews which I sought and the information I gave, no attempt, apparently, was made by the Home Office to uncover the processes of intimidation within the prison, of which the Home Office declares itself to have been aware. I am concerned and alarmed that no action seems to have been taken, other than this frivolous and trivial letter which the Under-Secretary wrote to me, to follow up the very serious allegations which were made in Thomas's letter which I sent to the Home Office in January of this year.

Although nothing now can restore this unhappy man to life, we are entitled to know—I shall press the case again if I do not get an answer today—that full and proper inquiries are being made to uncover all the circumstances of this man's death, and all the matters which led up to it, and to ensure that the sort of thing which played its part in bringing him to his suicide will not happen again, so far as it lies in the power of the Home Office and its prison officers to prevent it.

I regret that the hon. and learned Member for Warrington (Mr. W. T. Williams) has seen fit to regard my reply to his letters and inquiries as trivial and frivolous. He said that he had sought interviews with the Home Office and had repeatedly pressed this case upon us. He will remember that he sought an interview with me on only one occasion, about 12 months ago, when we had a very full and frank discussion of the whole case. It is true that he wrote, I think, one subsequent letter and raised the case by one subsequent Question in the House.

I would remind the hon. and learned Member that the Home Office has gone very thoroughly and sympathetically into the case. We are by no means concerned to hide anything. Our main endeavour is to ensure that the prison officers are responsible in their duties and that, equally, we play a responsible part in ensuring that we get the full facts of the case.

As the hon. and learned Member said, this was a very tragic case. The events took place more than a year ago, and I am sorry that I must inevitably revive painful memories for this unfortunate prisoner's family and friends, for whom we all have the deepest sympathy.

First, I wish to outline the facts of the case itself, separating, as far as I can, those which are supported by firm evidence from those which are purely conjectural. On 26th June, 1962, Brian Harry Thomas was sentenced at the Crown Court, Liverpool, to 10 years' imprisonment upon a plea of guilty to the charge of wounding his wife with intent to murder her. He appealed against sentence to the Court of Criminal Appeal, which, on 21st July, 1962, allowed the appeal and substituted a sentence of five years.

Thomas had never been in prison before and, following the usual practice in circumstances such as these, he was allocated as a star prisoner to Wakefield and arrived there on 14th November, 1962. I give this account to the House to explain why he was in Wakefield and to show how long elapsed between the final disposal of his appeal and his suicide, which, as we have heard from the hon. and learned Member, took place on 4th April, 1963.

Wakefield is a prison the staff of which have considerable experience in dealing with star prisoners and are used to the special difficulties presented by their first reactions to long terms of imprisonment for a single grave offence. The hon. and learned Member said that he consulted a friend of his who had said that Thomas was a manic depressive, and that we, therefore, knew that this was so. I remind him that this, also, is conjecture and is not supported by any of the facts.

To continue with the story, Thomas's wife decided to institute divorce proceedings against him, and, although the staff at Wakefield knew that this was causing him distress, he appeared to take it in a mature and sensible way. The staff knew of this development and did what was possible to help him.

On 22nd March, 1963, Thomas was admitted into the prison hospital at Wakefield with symptoms of sub-acute appendicitis. His symptoms subsided, but while in hospital he told the staff that he was in debt to other prisoners. He was advised to give further details but refused. He did not ask for protection or for transfer or special segregation. He did make a demonstration on 28th March while in hospital by making a superficial cut on his forearm, but this was not an attempt at suicide. He could have stayed in the prison hospital had he so wished, but, instead, he asked to go back to ordinary location in the prison, and he returned there on 4th April.

On the same day, at 12.40 p.m., he was discovered hanging in his cell. The principal offier had seen him at 10.30. He appeared his normal self.

His landing officer says:

"He appeared to be in a normal frame of mind when I left him".

This is what one of his mates said:

"He was a happy sort of lad and never seemed in trouble of any kind. I talked to Thomas on Thursday morning and he seemed in good spirits. He asked me how I was and I asked the same. The officer then told him to take his bedding upstairs. That is the last time I saw him".

I have given the House excerpts from reports made on the day of Thomas's suicide or the day following, before the hon. and learned Member had drawn public attention to it and before any of the staff had any idea that their conduct might be the subject of criticism.

As the House will be aware, if a prisoner dies in prison the Governor has a duty under the statutory Prison Rules—new Rule 19(2), then Rule 28—to give notice to the coroner having jurisdiction, and this was done in his case. The Governor has also to report the matter to the visiting committee or board of visitors and to the Secretary of State and this was done also. In suicide cases the Governor, chaplain and medical officer are required to submit to the Secretary of State special full reports on the case. The Governor is required, among other particulars, to give dates of interviews during the six months preceding the suicide and this was done in this case.

On 3rd December, 1962, Thomas was seen by the Assistant Governor in change of the induction wing, one of whose special jobs it is to explain to the prisoner what his duties and privileges are, to sort out his difficulties both inside and outside prison, and to give him every possible help to settle down and make the most of his training.

Thomas made no mention of any incident causing him trouble or of any exceptional difficulties. He was seen by the Governor and on application given permission to send out private cash to his father.

From 22nd March to 4th April, the period he was in hospital, he was seen daily by the Governor. He mentioned his tobacco debts, but refused to give any names. The chaplain found him a quiet and well-disciplined man who appeared to be quite stable.

He did not appear to be unduly worried about the prospect of divorce. The petition had been served on him but the case had not been heard. The chaplain had a private interview with him on 11th February about his domestic situation. He was hoping that the welfare officer might make arrangements for his two year old son to visit him.

The medical officer reported on Thomas as a quiet man who appeared stable, of good general health with no morbid symptoms.

His state of mind on reception was cheerful and placid, his general health was good until 22nd March, when he was admitted to hospital with abdominal pains. The doctor does mention that Thomas stated to him that he was in debt and was afraid of attack because of this. Had the doctor at the time had reason to suppose that this fear was well founded he would not have released Thomas from hospital even though Thomas wished it.

I have gone into some detail deliberately. Whether the staff of Wakefield prison fulfilled their duty in this case is to be judged on what they knew or ought reasonably to have known at the time and as the matter then appeared to them, and not on what has been discovered or conjectured since as a result of the exhaustive inquiries that have been made subsequently.

I think that the picture that is revealed at this stage is of a man apparently reconciled to the domestic tragedies—his offence and his wife's petition against him for divorce—that had befallen him, in some but not very serious difficulties over debts in prison, who thought little enough of them to ask to be returned to ordinary location in prison.

To the question, would any prudent and experienced officer of the prison have expected suicide in these circumstances, I think a fair answer is "No". Certainly, it took by surprise those who had most to do with him. The coroner's inquest was held on 8th April and the following verdict was returned:

"Suicide by hanging himself with a belt from his cell window—insufficient evidence being available as to his state of mind at the time."

All the facts known to the prison authorities were at the disposal of the coroner.

On the day after the inquest, 9th April, however, Mr. Thomas, the father of the prisoner, found awaiting him an anonymous letter which he quite properly sent on to the Governor of Wakefield. I will read what it said:

"SIR,

Brian had to do this thing because he was in debt to the protection men. He could not pay them and was going to have his face cut up. There are plenty of people in here who can vouch for the hell he had to suffer in this place. He asked the authorities to protect him but they would not do it. Some of the hospital people know the truth of why he died. He told me that he had told the doctor the truth.

If I tell you my name I will be next to be done up. Please believe me and trust this to be the truth.

Your friend,

CON."

The letter was immediately sent to the coroner. The fact that Thomas was in debt to other prisoners was known to the coroner before he reached his decision. Indeed, the coroner's officer, I am informed, produced a note which he had taken from the cell which appeared to refer to tobacco debts. The coroner commented that there was no evidence to show that the note or its contents had anything whatsoever to do with the suicide.

The hon. and learned Member wrote to my right hon. Friend on 10th April asking for inquiries to be made, including the matter of the anonymous letter. I wrote to him on 10th May after having made exhaustive inquiries. Further correspondence ensued, during the course of which I told the hon. and learned Member that despite a thorough inquiry there was nothing to suggest to the staff that Thomas was intending to commit suicide. At I have said, on 31st July I saw the hon. and learned Member and at the interview we discussed every aspect of the case then known. These matters rested until 21st November, when my right hon. Friend answered a Question by the hon. and learned Member.

The hon. and learned Member again wrote to me on 27th November sending a letter and documents which he had received from the father of the deceased prisoner and asked me to make further inquiries. It appeared that the father had somehow got the idea that his son's death was not suicide and also that the father had discovered documents which seemed to him to suggest that certain named prisoners had been involved with the deceased in tobacco transactions. This was the first time that any names had been mentioned and I had immediate and exhaustive inquiries made to see whether any further light could be thrown on the circumstances leading up to the death of Thomas. There was no evidence whatever to suggest that the death was other than suicide, and the hon. Member did not press this point.

My inquiries about the persons named disclosed that both were friends of Thomas, one of them a close friend. They were both questioned very closely by the prison staff and one of them, a very close friend of Thomas, was not aware that he had any particular worries and was astonished at his death. The other prisoner worked in the same shop. All the financial transactions of these two prisoners, as well as the transactions of Thomas himself, were minutely examined over the relevant period but threw no light on the circumstances leading up to Thomas's death.

There is nothing whatever to support any suggestion that either of these men was involved in any threat to Thomas or attempt to extort money from him. I gave these particulars to the hon. and learned Member when I wrote to him on 18th December, 1963.

The hon. and learned Member passed a copy of my letter to the father, and the father then sent to the hon. and learned Member a letter written to him by his son and smuggled out of prison. In this letter, the deceased asked his father to send a postal order to a prisoner and to send 30s. by postal order to a relative of another prisoner. This smuggled letter, together with the documents which the hon. and learned Member had earlier sent on to me which he had received from Mr. Thomas, suggested fairly strongly that money was being passed unlawfully between Thomas the deceased and the other two prisoners, but there was no evidence that any pressure was being exerted on Thomas.

One point I would emphasize. As the letter was smuggled out, it seems reasonable to conclude that if Thomas had been seriously worried at the time, he would have taken the opportunity to tell his father. I suppose that it was too much to expect the father on receiving this illicit letter to communicate with the Governor, but by concealing this fact he put it out of our power to take any remedial action. Even this new material does not provide evidence to establish a connection between debts and the suicide.

It is a mistake to think that all borrowing and lending is "barony" and supported by bullying. In prison, as outside, it can be, and often is, a friendly affair.

The hon. and learned Member is clearly dissatisfied that the results of the inquiries which I have had made have not produced more precise information about why Thomas took his own life, but I am convinced that no more precise result could have been obtained whatever form the inquiry had taken. The hon. and learned Member is concerned, as I am, to find out whether the prison authorities were negligent in the discharge of their duties. I am satisfied after the most exhaustive inquiries that there is no evidence that there was any negligence.