I beg to move, in page 2, line 3, at the end to insert:

"a real action relating to private immovable property" shall be construed (for the purpose of Article 31) as meaning "an action relating to land or to any right or title to land" and "land" shall be defined as it is defined in section (205)(1)(ix) of the Law of Property Act 1925.

This Amendment seeks to introduce a definition into the Bill and therefore comes in Clause 2, as subsection (2) deals with definitions. The Amendment, however, is referable to Article 31 of the Convention, paragraph 1 of which reads:

"A diplomatic agent shall enjoy immunity from the criminal jurisdiction of the receiving State. He shall also enjoy immunity from its civil and administrative jurisdiction, except in the case of:

(a) a real action relating to private immovable property situated in the territory of the receiving State, unless he holds it on behalf of the sending State for the purposes of the mission …"

In accordance with that Article, a diplomatic agent is liable to an action that is here described as

"… a real action relating to private immovable property …"

and will be able to claim no immunity if proceedings are taken against him which can be described as a real action of that kind.

Taking that phrase as loosely as possible, it would, perhaps, include the most likely type of action between a citizen of this country and a diplomatic agent; for example, when a house or flat is let to a diplomat, action may arise on that for arrears of rent, for breach of covenant relating to sub-letting or assigning without consent, or breach of covenant to carry out repairs or decorations by the tenant, or an action for dilapidations at the end of the lease or, perhaps, an action for possession. Those are very ordinary types of action as between an owner of the property and a diplomatic agent in this country to whom that property is let. A similar type of action might arise on a contract for sale of property to a diplomatic agent; an action, perhaps, upon the contract for sale for specific performance or forfeiture of the deposit if the diplomatic agent did not carry out that contract.

At first sight, one might say that the phrase used in Article 31

"… a real action relating to private immovable property …"

would cover such kinds of action, but I question whether we can interpret "real action" in that general way. It was once a term of art in English law; it was very closely defined with a very definite meaning. So also is "immovable property" closely defined in English law, but that does not raise very much difficulty because it is something that is still known to the law.

A real action is something that is not now known to the law. Indeed, it was known before the Real Property Limitation Act of 1833. Before the passing of that Act three types of action could be brought in our courts—real action, personal action and mixed action—and each had a very definite meaning.

Real action was of four different types, quite clearly defined—actions of right proper, actions in nature of right, actions of entry and actions as to interest in land. These were real actions and nothing else. The real action was clearly defined as covering a certain sphere. Real actions were abolished in 1833 except for three or four minor ones which went by the Common Law Procedure Act, 1852 and the Common Law Procedure Act, 1860.

My query about the use of this phrase in Article 31 is this. If the courts of this country are called upon to interpret what is now a real action, are they to turn back to the law prior to 1833? If we never had a clear definition of "real action" the courts might have been free to interpret it in their own way, but as it has been a term of art in English law, are they to turn back to pre-1833 law if the phrase is brought into question in the courts? I do not think it would be open to our courts to look for a definition in the law of some other country that has signed this treaty. If it were open to our courts to look to the law of other countries to try to define what is meant by this phrase relating to real action in Article 31, then to which country would they turn? The definitions are different in different countries.

My Amendment, therefore, is designed in an effort to introduce some certainty to enable the legal profession to advise its clients what rights they have. At present it will be very difficult for a solicitor to advise his client whether he has got a right of action for arreas of rent against a diplomatic agent. Is that a real action against private immovable property? I do not know. That is surely the most common type of action that might be brought in a case like this.

I have suggested in this Amendment that an easy way of defining this phrase with some certainty is merely to refer to

"an action relating to land …"

Land is clearly defined in the Law of Property Act, 1925 and includes buildings, rights over land and generally all the things which one understands as being concerned with the land. Therefore, I believe that the introduction of this definition into the Bill will produce greater certainty in the operation and administration of the Bill.

I support the plea made by the hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page), and I do so for several reasons.

It is bad enough when one finds flaws or difficulties in the interpretation of certain terms after an Act has been passed. The courts are full of these questions. If everything were made clear, the life of the layman as well as of the lawyer advising the layman would be much simpler. All too frequently the interpretation of words or terms in Acts is so difficult that it takes not only one court but often a considerable number of courts until the matter ultimately reaches the Court of Appeal before one can know what the judges regard as being the correct meaning of the term.

11.15 a.m.

The position is even more complicated when dealing with people from abroad, particularly on the diplomatic level, when one wants to be scrupulously careful to avoid any possibility of a misunderstanding about a term lest it may become embarrassing to the persons concerned in the diplomatic service. It is easy enough to fan up a misunderstanding into a major issue. Our difficulty in this House is always to try to use terms which are comprehensive and at the same time understandable to the average lay person. It is extremely difficult, and I do not think it is understood outside how difficult it is. Many people do not appreciate what a difference an "if" or a "but" or a term like "real estate" can make.

When we are dealing with diplomatic matters we must be clear. Many of us have had experience at various times of having to decide how far diplomatic security applies to an individual who happens to be in the service of another State. Some things are clear, and the hon. Gentleman has referred to clear examples of the kind of thing that crops up from time to time. A person in the diplomatic service may be regarded as being a reliable tenant of property. Suppose he turns out not to be so reliable. Does this term as it is used at present prevent a person who has a legitimate grievance against that diplomatic agent from taking proceedings? Can he evict a person in the diplomatic service from the property if that person does not pay his rent or is otherwise an undesirable tenant? That ought to be made clear. I believe the law at present enables that to be done, but I should like to know whether this Bill will affect a person with a grievance and will prevent him from making a claim to the real property.

It seems to me that we cannot go back before 1833. In the Consolidating Acts Committee on which I have the privilege of serving, this sort of problem arises time after time. We have to decide the correct interpretation of a term in an Act and the members of that Committee frequently have to refer back to previous Acts. This is a case of going back to 1833, over 100 years ago, to see where we are. If this matter should ever come before the Consolidating Acts Committee I am sure the Committee will be hard put to it to come to a decision on this term which we are debating.

I am sure the Minister will agree that it is essential, particularly in this kind of legislation—indeed, in every kind of legislation—to understand it clearly. From time to time we are accused in this House of introducing legislation which is not easily understood. We ought to take every opportunity of avoiding that kind of complaint, which in most cases is unjustifiable. Hon. Members do their very best, according to their experience, to use terms which are understandable and cover the subject. It seems to me that "real" so far as it affects property is not readily understandable, and that to talk about a "real action" as the phrase was used more than 100 years ago will not be very clear. If we are correct in our assumption, and I think we are, that the words need clarifying, I hope the Minister will agree.

It is unfortunate that the Amendment, if it has any substance, was not introduced at an earlier date. It is now late in the Session.

Throughout London there are thousands of diplomats and their staffs who enjoy the privileges attached to their office, and I think it fair to say that in the majority of cases contracts for the hiring, letting and selling of real property are properly honoured. In any country there will always be people who wish to hide behind their diplomatic privilege to achieve some personal benefit. I do not know how often such cases arise.

I was interested in what was said by the hon. Member for Leicester, Northwest (Sir B. Janner). It seems to me that the phrase applies to four categories—where a diplomat has a letting, where he is selling property, where there is a covenant attached to the property, or where the diplomat is asked by the landlord for possession of the property. I wonder what rights the landlord has under this Measure in respect of hiring, letting, selling and possession under the Measure as it stands and under the Measure if the Amendment were accepted.

It would be unfortunate if people gained the impression that a large number of diplomats were hiding behind their privilege. As I said, a small minority are always willing to do this. I know that my hon. Friend will agree that where this sort of case occurs there is some diplomatic pressure which can be applied to the individual, though that does not necessarily mean that the unfortunate person who has been defrauded is in any better position.

There is always another side to this. If one lets to people to whom privileges attach, there is an extra element of risk on the part of the person who does so, and it may well be that he requires some other security. I shall be interested to hear what my hon. Friend has to say, bearing in mind that we are at a very late stage in the proceedings of the House.

I think the House will appreciate, as I do, the anxieties which have prompted my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) to move the Amendment.

His intention, as I understand it, is to relate the term used in the Convention

"a real action relating to private immovable property"

to established terms of English law. In drafting the Bill, there was, broadly speaking, a choice between two alternatives. We could schedule the relevant articles of the Convention to the Bill and invest them with the force of law by one of the Clauses. This is what we have done, and we have included in the Bill only the minimum of technical provisions, such as that in Clause 2(2), to relate the Convention to the particular legal systems of the United Kingdom. The other possibility was to express the relevant provisions of the Convention in terms of English, Scottish and Northern Ireland laws.

Although the Convention was not drawn up in terms of English law, we felt, after very careful consideration, that the language used was language which the courts of the United Kingdom would have no difficulty in understanding and applying. If the United Kingdom is to be able to ratify the Convention, then we must be able to give effect to the provisions of the Convention. Had we adopted the second course, there might have been the danger of giving the force of law to an unnecessarily rigid interpretation of the Convention, whereas the method adopted permits the interpretation of a particular phrase by the courts in the light of practice. Internationally, it will be the Convention which will bind us and not the particular form of words adopted in a United Kingdom Statute.

In coming to this conclusion, we gave particular consideration to the phrase which my hon. Friend wishes to define. We considered that the courts would experience little difficulty in applying this provision. "Immovable property" is a term which our courts have already had to deal with in the field of private international law, and, indeed, it is a term which finds a place in Section 2 of the Wills Act, 1963, without statutory definition. It is thus, not necessary to provide a definition of the term, and, indeed, the definition proposed is not appropriate.

Does not the Wills Act when it uses the phrase "real action" refer to Scottish law and not English law?

If my memory is not at fault, I think it refers to English law. I looked it up last night, and I think I am right. In any event, the definition proposed by my hon. Friend is not appropriate because it relates to a number of other matters such as advowsons. If my hon. Friend looks at Section 209 of the Law of Property Act, 1925, he will see this, and he will also see that the Act is extended to England and Wales only, which is another difficulty, because the Bill must refer to the law of the United Kingdom.

In referring only to "actions" and not to "real actions," the Amendment would result in a serious widening of the exception to the diplomatic agent's immunity as provided in the Convention. It would permit any action relating to land, even, I suggest, an action concerning the barking of the diplomatic agent's dog, whereas the Convention itself refers only to "real actions," which I submit the courts may be expected to interpret as actions where a question of title is involved.

My hon. Friend asked whether the courts in interpreting the words "real action" would have to have reference to foreign legal systems or would have to go back to the pre-1833 law. This is basically a matter for the rules of interpretation, but our view is that the courts will not look back to the technicalities of the old law, back to pre-1833, in interpreting the words "real action", but will accept the term as a general one not tied to the technical terms of any particular law. I believe that the Convention uses the term in its civil law sense and refers to a claim of title, and not in the sense of its pre-1833 meaning in our own law.

Finally, I would remind the House that paragraph 1(a) of Article 31 of the Convention, to which the Amendment relates, provides an exception to the immunity of the diplomatic agent.

11.30 a.m.

In reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham (Dr. Glyn), I point out that Article 31(1,a) has the effect of making an exception. The position is that previously English law had allowed no exceptions to diplomatic immunity. The effect of the Amendment, therefore, would be to increase the exceptions, which we could not do unilaterally under the Convention. I must stress that if the Amendment were adopted, the United Kingdom would not be in a position to ratify the Convention without being in breach of the Convention. for these reasons I must ask the House not to accept the Amendment.

Can my hon. Friend answer a quite simple and definite question? Will the diplomatic agent be immune from an action for arrears of rent? I would refer my hon. Friend to Halsbury's Laws of England, Vol. 1, page 21, in which real actions are defined as:

"In real actions the plaintiff claimed the right to recover lands, tenements and hereditaments."

If the landlord is merely claiming rent, would the diplomatic agent get off scot free?

The answer is that he will be covered. We are in a position where we must accept that the interpretation of "real action" will be left to the courts with reference to actions of title. If we do not do that we are not in a position to ratify the Convention.

What does my hon. Friend mean by saying that the agent would be covered?

There would be an exception under Article 31. Under the interpretation given by my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby the agent would come under that exception. Perhaps I expressed myself badly. The answer is he would be immune.

The point seems to be that if the Amendment were accepted we would be unable to ratify the Agreement. Is that so? That seems to be the crux of the matter.

When studying the Amendment I looked into this with some care and I am quite satisfied that that is the position.

Is not the Under-Secretary of State being a little unreasonable about this? Obviously we should try to obtain as much precision and certainty as we can and we must honour the Convention. But the House has been told by two hon. Members who are both experienced solicitors that they will not know how to advise their clients when they try to apply these words in Article 31. That is not a satisfactory position in which to leave this.

The hon. Gentleman cannot ride off by saying that he thinks that the courts will have no difficulty in deciding what the words mean. He obviously had considerable difficulty himself when asked a simple question as to whether a diplomat can be sued for rent. He conveyed the impression that he had very little idea of the answer to that simple question. I accept that we have to honour the Convention, and if the Amendment defining the meaning of the words in Article 31 goes outside those words or falls short of their import then I agree that we would not be honouring the Convention by adopting it. Surely however, the Minister can see that a point of importance even at this late stage has been raised and can say that he will have another look to see if he can get words which would appear to the Government and to their advisers to reflect the meaning of the words in Article 31.

If the Government were to do that we could hardly be accused of failing to implement the Convention. All we ask the hon. Gentleman is to say that a point of importance has been raised. I do not know what the hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) would say, but I imagine that he would be satisfied if the Government were to undertake to reconsider the matter and do their best to find an adequate definition.

This phrase that the courts will have no difficulty in interpreting language which we use is such a pregnant phrase. Some of us who have served both in this House and in the courts know what it means on occasion. Where language is rather loosely used, the result is two or three days hard discussion in the courts, causing a great deal of trouble to judges and lawyers and a great deal of expense to ordinary people.

Certainly I will look at this again. The position is that the Amendment as now phrased would widen the exceptions and this would put us in difficulty over the ratification of the Convention. It will be extremely difficult but I will look at this again to see if we can find a form of words which would come within the Convention and give greater certainty and precision. I fully understand what right hon. and hon. Gentlemen have said. Our desire is to get the greatest possible precision in any Measure that we pass through this House.

I beg to move, in page 3, line 31, to leave out Clause 7.

In welcoming this Bill, as I believe we all do, one should draw attention to Clause 7 which, in the view of some of us, reveals a situation that is objectionable on two main grounds.

The first is general. The House is being asked to give blanket approval to a Clause which refers to the continuation and perhaps the perpetuation of certain unspecified agreements with a number of unspecified countries. These details about the Clause—I would call them fundamental points—are to be indicated to the House and the country by notice in the Official Gazettes at a time subsequent to the passing of the Bill. I believe that sort of procedure to be quite wrong.

The second objection is that the provisions of Clause 7 are unnecessary because, on reading closely the articles of the Convention, it is clear that sanctions within those Articles are adequate to meet the situation which is ostensibly that which the Government are attempting to meet by Clause 7. If Clause 3 of the Bill is added to these powers—it is already outside the terms of the Convention itself—then ample sanctions are already available without this pernicious Clause 7.

Perhaps the House will permit me to give a short study of the background of the past 15 years against which we must set the need or otherwise for Clause 7. I must confess to having found some difficulty in extracting information referring to salient points of this very important question. Since 1949, 17 East European diplomatic agents, as they will be described in the Convention, have been declared persona non grata. I think that it is common knowledge that perhaps an equivalent number—one does not know how many—have left with a certain degree of haste before revelations in the Press concerning security cases. I could mention the names Rogov, Ivanov and Gregory, whose proper name I do not know, as evidence of leaving the country hastily before the opportunity, if it were to be found necessary, of declaring them persona non grata under the terms of diplomatic custom at the moment and under the provisions of this Convention which we are ratifying. It is interesting in this context to recall that the French, with somewhat similar problems, have declared perhaps three times the number that we have persona non grata in this period.

Further, during these fifteen years, we have had in this country no fewer than 13 convictions and five courts-martial of members of the Armed Forces for treasonable contact with foreign countries with sentences amounting to the extraordinary total of 240 years of imprisonment. This is the background against which we are considering the terms of Clause 7, and I think that it will be agreed that these are at least partly the consequences of a steady and serious abuse of diplomatic immunities during that period and that is a fact that is quite unquestionable in the minds of reasonable men.

On the other side of the medal, over this period there were 200 British diplomatic personnel who had to leave appointments in certain difficult countries earlier than would otherwise be the case. Seventy eight of those leaving have been for reasons of misconduct or unsuitaability. It is here that we see the completely undiplomatic attitude by certain foreign countries to our representatives overseas and types of pressure which it is the purpose of my hon. Friend in introducing Clause 7, to protect our own representatives against.

Of course, in this House we all agree that the maximum of protection must be given to our diplomatic representatives abroad, wherever they may be. I contend, in considering this Clause, that the price we have to pay for that may be in some cases too high. We have the targets—successful targets for attack. We know about Vassall, Houghton and the sad case of the air attaché in Warsaw some years back, and we know of other undoubted successes of the activities of certain organisations in these countries against our own representatives. We have evidence that the security of my hon. Friend's Department through the years has been the cause of certain disquiet in the House of Commons and to the public at large. We have the names of four individuals who, for many years have occupied positions of considerable responsibility within the Foreign Office, and have been found to have been engaged in treasonable activities. We have the admission by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley (Mr. H. Macmillan) in a debate last year that there might well be other cases of this kind.

What action was taken before the introduction of this Bill to guard against this menace to our national security? In 1955, in my hon. Friend's Department his predecessor introduced the Diplomatic Immunities Restriction Bill, which, having been operating for nine years, now forms virtually Clause 3 of the Bill and which it would not be in order for me to refer to now. That action has been taken and I am sure it has been found useful. But in Clause 7 we have something entirely new. We have agreements with four unspecified countries concluded, apparently—we do not know, because we are not told—nine years ago by correspondence between the representatives of Governments which have been binding on this country for at least nine years, unknown to the House of Commons, as far as I am aware, and which are now to be continued and perhaps perpetuated by Clause 7. We are not told which are these countries and perhaps, therefore, I could use that overworked term "Ruritania".

11.45 a.m.

It is a fact, which has been elicited in questions since we discussed this matter in Committee, that 240 representatives of Ruritanian embassies, including wives, have now and will continue to have by the provisions of Clause 7 complete diplomatic immunity of the category which will be given to diplomatic agents in future—to cooks, servants, and chauffeurs—equivalent to that which is given to the ambassadors themselves.

On the other side—and it is here, I am sure, that lies the real reason for the introduction of the Clause—we have a total of 190 of our own personnel in these Ruritanian countries. Who, my hon. Friend hopes, will be similarly safeguarded by being given a very high degree of diplomatic immunity. Perhaps it would be relevant to mention a comparison of numbers, which, I think, is related to Clause 7. There are already about 230 more Ruritanian diplomatic representatives in this country than corresponding British representation in their countries. To sum up my first point, this House is being asked to give blanket approval to the continuation of an unsatisfactory situation. I would suggest that here we have revealed a situation, a "diplomatic" situation, in which this country loses at every point and suffers disadvantage, and this is the nub of the matter.

We are being asked in Clause 7 to sign a blank cheque for the Government. The figures will be filled in after publication in the Gazettes, subsequent to the passing of this Bill, and I believe it to be quite contrary to the general practice of the conduct of such affairs in this country. Which of these four countries, the most important four—I am not talking about the nine, because if I went into that I should be delaying the House unduly—are being given a degree of immunity much higher than that customary in diplomatic practice? In my view, unless we can be told which are these four countries and the nature of the agreements between representatives of the Governments signed about nine years ago, we should not be asked to pass this Bill and we should consider Clause 7 unacceptable without that information.

I come now to my second objection and my other reason why Clause 7 is unnecessary. The Convention, which is accepted on both sides of the House, gives a definition of the lawful means of ascertaining information by diplomatic agents. This definition is in Article 3(1). Surely that implies that if it can be proved that a diplomatic agent is doing these things by unlawful means, it is possible to take certain action against him in this country under the law of this country?

Article 9 of the Convention, which is internationally applied, allows my hon. Friend to declare a diplomat to be persona non grata without giving his reasons for doing so, which is a very strong sanction. I have shown the imbalance of numbers, and Article 11 allows my hon. Friend to redress the imbalance by asking for reciprocity of representation between respective countries.

Article 15 allows for classes of diplomats to be agreed between the parties concerned, which would also enable my hon. Friend to redress some of the imbalance to which I have drawn attention. By Article 12, which refers to premises, if my hon. Friend wished, he would be able to declare separate commercial premises of the Ruritanian mission to be no longer part of the mission, and therefore no longer to have diplomatic immunity.

Quite apart from those provisions of the Convention which I have briefly recapitulated, Clause 3 perpetuates the Diplomatic Immunities Restriction Act, 1955, which gives an extra sanction to my hon. Friend which is quite outside the provisions of the Convention.

If the powers of the Convention and of Clause 3 are properly applied, there is no reason for the extra allowance given by Clause 7, particularly in respect of these four unspecified countries. I believe that it is the policy of certain countries, countries which do not observe the rule of law as we do in this country, to bring pressure to bear on British diplomatic representatives abroad, perhaps with many objects, but certainly with the object of obtaining a reciprocity of diplomatic immunities and privileges in our country for their representatives over and above what is allowed for internationally by the Convention.

It is 1,000 years since we learned in this country that danegeld does not pay, and that pressure of this kind to extract a corresponding advantage at the other end must not be allowed to continue indefinitely. I believe that this principle is at stake in Clause 7, which is why I urge its rejection.

My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Commander Courtney) has a unique experience of the subject covered by the Bill and he speaks with authority. I am very glad to support his Amendment. As has emerged from the discussion of the first Amendment this morning, the Bill lacks the perfection of precision and clarity which usually mark Bills brought forward by my right hon. Friends. I cannot see that acceptance of the Amendment would in any way weaken or change the purpose of the Bill as a whole.

I fully appreciate that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary is genuinely persuaded by his advisers that the inclusion of Clause (7) is necessary to protect and safeguard the interests of our own missions in certain foreign countries, and of course we all fully accept the importance of doing this. But that is not the question. The question is whether this is the proper way to go about it.

As I understand it, the Clause is designed to regularise the private, or should one say comradely, agreements which the Foreign Office has already made with certain unnamed foreign Governments, by which the nationals in the respective missions are granted mutual immunities and protection. These comradely agreements arise not from any special degree of friendship or friendly relations with the other Governments, these unnamed foreign Governments, but rather from our fear that without such agreements the persons and the property and the diplomatic privileges of our own missions in those countries would not be respected.

This seems to me to be an objectionable arrangement, both in principle and in practice. As my hon. and gallant Friend has pointed out, to begin with we do not know who these foreign Governments are or may be. We have not been told the precise terms, nor indeed any terms, of the special agreements or arrangements mentioned in the Clause. We do not know the number of persons in the foreign missions in this country to whom these agreements are to apply, nor whether there will be any reciprocity in numbers. As my hon. and gallant Friend has so ably pointed out, we are being asked to sign a blank cheque.

As to the practical side of the proposals, I do not feel any particular confidence that the terms of these private arrangements will be respected to any greater degree in the future than they have been in the past. Article 22 of the Convention says:

"The premises of the mission shall be inviolable. The agents of the receiving State may not enter them, except with the consent of the head of the mission."

Does the Foreign Office think that the microphones, which from time to time are discovered in the walls of Western embassies in Moscow, just grew there? Or did the head of the mission give his consent to their installation? There has already been the most widespread abuse of these agreements and I dare say that this is still going on. Of course, if my hon. Friend can assure the House that the principle of reciprocity is observed in such case, and that for every clandestine microphone discovered in a British mission in Moscow, or any other capital, there is one in the foreign embassy concerned in London, we might feel a little reassured. But I rather think that the security in foreign missions, particularly Soviet missions, in London may be a little tighter than in British missions abroad—even if such gross breaches of diplomatic privilege would be entertained for a moment by Her Majesty's Government, which I am sure they would not.

What do we get in return for these somewhat doubtful safeguards for our own missions abroad? If the Clause remains in the Bill, we are by Act of Parliament to extend total diplomatic immunity to whole regiments of diplomatic camp followers—domestic servants, chauffeurs, typists, cooks, attachés, the lot. Among these regiments of followers to whom we are proposing to extend this immunity there may be a considerable element of espionage. Under these private arrangements, these comparatively humble members of the camp are to have the same privileges as the ambassador himself. What is more, they are going to have greater immunities and greater privileges than their opposite numbers in the embassies of our best friends in London. What are they going to say about this?

12 noon.

There is, I think, a more serious aspect to it than that. As my hon. and gallant Friend pointed out, over the years these unnamed foreign Governments have pursued a calculated policy of making life as difficult as possible for our own missions, to an intolerable degree in some cases, in order to establish a position in which, as the price of relaxing these abuses, they demand exceptional privileges for their own missions in this country. This is what they have tried to do, and Clause 7 shows that they have succeeded.

As I said earlier, I do not think that this is really the right way to deal with the situation. I shall not go so far as to describe the Clause as appeasement, but the position at which we have arrived is certainly a little reminiscent of the Nazi policy of establishing a position by gross violation of their neighbours' backyards and then obtaining concessions as the price of promising not to go any further. I do not feel confidence in these agreements when we are dealing with people who do not play to the same rules.

I do not understand—and this was pointed out very clearly by my hon. and gallant Friend—why it is thought necessary to put this gloss on the Vienna Convention, which surely provides all the powers and sanctions that are needed to deal with this sort of situation in our missions abroad and to protect and safeguard their interests and their privileges. The Convention provides ample powers of retaliation, and, as my hon. and gallant Friend pointed out, Clause 3 enables Her Majesty's Government to take reciprocal action if the privileges and immunities accorded to a British mission abroad are found to be less than those conferred by the Bill on the foreign mission in this country.

Thus, there are ample sanctions already available, if only Her Majesty's Government can screw up their courage, or should I say the Foreign Office can screw up its courage, to apply them and to make use of them, without these hole and corner agreements about which we know so little, and the extent and application of which are unrevealed.

I appreciate that there may be stronger reasons why these special arrangements are really necessary, and I hope that my hon. Friend will be able to say a little more than has been said so far. If he wants the House to write a blank cheque of this kind on such slender information as we have at the moment he really ought to be a little more forthcoming, and I sincerely hope that he will be.

Her Majesty's Government are in a state of peaceful relations with the Governments concerned, or who I suspect are the Governments concerned, and it seems to me that the normal practices of diplomatic privilege should apply reciprocally in these cases. As I asked before, what are our closest friends and allies going to say if we afford these special privileges to those who are not such firm friends as they are?

Finally, I think that there is quite an important point of principle at issue here, and I hope very much that my hon. Friend will resolve it. It is not right that we should be asked to write this blank cheque without any knowledge of the past agreements, without any knowledge of the circumstances in which these agreements were entered into, and without any knowledge of the countries to which these arrangements should apply. With the best will in the world, I think that this is an occasion when we ought to remind the Foreign Office that it is subject to Parliamentary control, and that Parliament will give it every support, provided that we have the necessary information on which to judge the requirement fairly. I hope that my hon. Friend will be able to give us a good deal more information than we have had so far.

In his most interesting discourse my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Commander Courtney) referred to some of these countries as Ruritania. I have always thought of Ruritania as being romantic and gay. I think that we are in fact dealing with people who are cold, calculating, hard and merciless in their application of espionage under any cloak that they can obtain.

I support my hon. and gallant Friend in his efforts to get the Clause deleted. I believe that it is important to do this, and that it will strengthen the Bill. As my hon. and gallant Friend explained, it is designed to continue these private agreements between the Foreign Office and certain other countries whom we do not know over the granting of special diplomatic immunities. This will rankle severely in the minds of many people when they realise that, welcome as the Bill is, there will be these exceptions. I think that this provision undermines the Bill which we all welcome.

I believe that there is an inherent feeling in this country that the granting of special privileges to anybody is fundamentally wrong. We in this country practise perhaps the finest form of democracy in the world. It has been evolved over the centuries, and we have more or less eliminated privileges which existed in the past. Today we are in the situation where all of us, whether famous and influential, or poor and unknown, or not recognised by anybody in particular, have the same law applied to us as individuals, and as a consequence we do not ask for special favours. We believe that the law should apply to everybody, including foreigners of particular countries, and I therefore think that the Bill, with this Clause, goes against that feeling.

This is not just a case of granting privileges to minor staffs who do not matter in certain embassies. As my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Chelsea (Captain Litchfield) rightly said, in some embassies the chauffeur who drives the ambassador around the city is more highly thought of in his own country than the ambassador, because he may well be the head of espionage in this country. We therefore cannot overlook the cooks, the typists, and the chauffeurs. They all come within the category of people who may be working against us in certain circumstances.

Some time ago I came into contact with the official of a certain Ruritanian embassy in this country. I knew that he mixed freely with leading editors and journalists in Fleet Street and with Members of Parliament, and that he moved about the country very freely indeed. He seemed to have lots of special privileges in his own embassy. Ostensibly he was a diplomat doing an ordinary job of public relations for his country. In fact, he was operating under a false name and under false colours. I suspect that he was probably a far bigger menace than the notorious Ivanov who figured in a notorious case last year, as was mentioned by my hon. and gallant Friend. Indeed, I believe that he was that country's top spy. I am glad that he now appears to have returned to his own country. It shocks and horrifies me to think that that man was immune diplomatically, as were other people of certain other embassies at that time, and under the Bill would again be immune from any form of civil or criminal prosecution.

I do not think that we should be bullied because of the treatment which is sometimes meted out to our staffs in embassies abroad. I think that we have to try some other ideas for getting together with these other countries and making sure that there is this type of understanding which is necessary to the granting of special privileges. As my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Chelsea said, the question really is whether this is the right way to go about it. I would not have thought so, and I hope that my hon. Friend and the Foreign Office will look at this matter again, because there is strong feeling about it. Indeed, there are perhaps other ways of going about it and of achieving what we want to achieve without having this Clause, which gives unfair advantage to a certain number of people some of whom may definitely be working against this country's interests.

It seems to me that the House is in danger of getting a little off the target. I should have thought that the Government would be wise to take powers under the Bill to conclude certain bilateral agreements of a reciprocal nature with other countries. "Reciprocal" is the operative word. I do not think that this is anything to do with friend or foe. Nor do I think that the conclusion of certain bilateral reciprocal agreements would offend other countries represented here which do not have those sorts of agreements with us.

As far as I am aware—and my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will correct me if I am wrong—there is nothing in the Convention which could prevent any signatory concluding a bilateral agreement of a special nature on a reciprocal basis with any other country if, on the whole, it thought that it would be wise for that country to do so. Still less do I think that this has anything to do with espionage. It does not make the catching of people like Vassall or anybody else any easier. It is totally irrelevant and nothing to do with the matter. I do not think that either today or on any other occasion on the Floor of the House can my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State or any other Minister be expected to discuss microphones and espionage and counter-espionage. That is absolutely irrelevant to the Bill.

I do not understand how the omission of Clause 7 would have any effect on security. I think that it is irrelevant to the cases which have been mentioned. I shall be interested in my hon. Friend's reply, but I am bound to say from what little I know about this matter that the Government would be wise to take whatever extra powers they want to conclude certain bilateral agreements of a reciprocal nature with certain other countries.

Both my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Commander Courtney), whom we heard in Committee, and my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Chelsea (Captain Litchfield), whom we have heard today, have great experience in certain fields, and I think that we all respect them for it. During the Committee stage the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Sir C. Mott-Radclyffe) was the operative one. We are here today to discuss not what goes on inside embassies but a very wide Measure concerning diplomatic privilege. Logically we must divorce these two things and put them into separate compartments.

My hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Chiswick (Mr. Dudley Smith) mentioned the question of privilege. I think that we are all cognisant of the fact, whatever our walk of life, that we are expected to obey the law and order of the country. But diplomatic privilege is an entirely different matter. It has been accepted for a long time that if a diplomat in any country is to do his job properly certain immunities and protections are essential for the fulfilment of it. I am not saying that they are not abused, but this is not the point that we are discussing.

The object of the Bill, as has been quite rightly said, is to ratify the Convention, and it is true that by leaving Clause 7 in the Bill we are adding something to it. However, I think that we must admit that if we were to take the Clause out we could still ratify the Convention. But we should look a little more carefully into the Clause with the nine members who are signatories to special agreements to which my right hon. Friend the Minister of State referred in Committee in column 31 on 9th July.

There are two points of substance. First, we have come to solemn agreements on certain points with these countries. If we were not to accept them almost automatically they would have no force of law in this country and, at the same time, we should be in the position of having to negotiate with each of them and of having to write to them saying, "We are sorry, but the agreements which we have made no longer have the force of law."

As my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor said, there are circumstances in which the Government may wish, for various reasons, to extend the provisions of the Bill. I think it quite right that we should give the Government that power, and I have no hesitation in coming down on the Government's side. It would be difficult for us to retract these agreements and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor said, I do not think that it is for us on the Floor of the House to try to extract from my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State information which it is not necessary or desirable to give on the Floor of the House. Questions of security and particular arrangements are best dealt with in the way in which they are dealt with now.

12.15 p.m.

What we have to do—and I do not think that any hon. Member would disagree with this—is to make sure that people who are working in embassies where conditions are difficult are given the maximum support. If Clause 7 does anything to help them, I am perfectly willing to see it passed.

There has been no suggestion, certainly by me, nor I think by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Commander Courtney), that matters of security should be discussed on the Floor of the House. Our request basically is for information on agreements entered into without the knowledge of the House.

I am in sympathy with my hon. and gallant Friend—I hope that I did not misinterpret him—but I feel that these are agreements about which we should not have information. During the Committee stage my right hon. Friend the Minister of State said that he would have to get the sanction of the Governments who had signed these special agreements before he revealed either the Governments or the contents of them.

Is my hon. Friend really suggesting that Departments of State should, by correspondence between representatives of Governments, conclude agreements with foreign countries which we in the House of Commons are not allowed to question and that we should not ask either with whom the agreements have been made or the contents of them? If so, is he not rather abdicating his position as a Member of the House of Commons?

I think that where an exchange of letters on certain matters has taken place, if the Government with which correspondence has been carried on says that it was a confidential document between the two Governments, that document should not be produced without the consent of the reciprocal Government.

rose—

Order. This is a Friday. We must have some finality about the process of sitting down.

I think that the whole House appreciates the sincerity of the anxieties of my hon and gallant Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Commander Courtney) about these matters, but, having listened to him today, on Second Reading and on several occasions in Committee, it seems to me that he is under some misconception about the reason for Clause 7 and its effect. We put the Clause in the Bill in order to give legal effect to the provisions of bilateral arrangements or agreements with certain foreign countries on jurisdictional immunity and Customs franchise. These arrangements exist, and we are not in a position to terminate them unilaterally, even if we wished to do so, which, for good reasons which I hope to give, we do not wish to do.

The Clause does not increase either immunities or privileges, and it struck me that my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Chelsea (Captain Litchfield) was under very great misapprehension here. He talked repeatedly of the extension of privileges and immunities, and as if this was something new. At the time that these arrangements were come to nothing was added. It was a preservation of the position which had formerly been normal and which had been modified by legislation in the case of the greater number of countries with whom we had diplomatic relations. There is nothing new there.

My hon. Friend mentioned legislation, but does he appreciate that Clause 7 was introduced at a later stage whereas this Bill had already been tabled in another place? It would seem, therefore, that it was an afterthought. Will my hon. Friend perhaps agree with me that had the Bill gone through as originally drafted, we should Dot at the moment know even of the existence of the arrangements with these four and nine countries respectively?

I will deal with the difficulty of the arrangements being there when I come to answer the points made about Article 47.

There were two alternatives, and we have used the one which we thought would be most acceptable to the House. I would stress, however, that we are not in a position to terminate the arrangements unilaterally and that there is no increase here of immunities or priviliges. It preserves the existing immunities and privileges which this country is bound to afford under these bilateral agreements.

Before my hon. Friend leaves that point, I do not quite understand what he means when he says that this does not extend immunities, because the wording of Clause 7 is, in fact:

"this Act provides for extending."

This arises out of Article 47 of the Convention, but what I am saying is that what was formerly normal is the basis of the immunity and privilege accorded to the diplomats of four countries by these special arrangements or agreements. It is expected, of course, that the foreign States concerned will continue, reciprocally, to treat the corresponding grades in Her Majesty's diplomatic missions similarly. The basic reason for including in Clause 7(1,a) the reference to arrangements relating to jurisdictional immunity is, quite simply, the national interest. This has been stressed by a number of my hon. Friends and I cannot over-stress it to the House. It is the basic reason for these arrangements or agreements. It requires that all members of the staffs of Her Majesty's diplomatic missions in some four politically sensitive countries should enjoy the maximum protection from malicious persecution and subversion.

This protection is considered essential to our own security. Far from creating a threat to national security, the effect of the provision is thus to strengthen our security. We are not in the habit in this country of using threats of arrest or of other jurisdictional action in order to blackmail and subvert non-diplomatic staffs of foreign missions. Other people, unfortunately, are. We lose nothing, as far as security is concerned, by granting the jurisdictional immunity required by these arrangements, but we gain a great deal in terms of security by obtaining protection for our own staff in the countries concerned.

Most of the cases mentioned by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Harrow, East concerned people of the rank of attaché and above who would have been covered in any event by immunity. As I say, we lose nothing as far as security is concerned and, of course, on the other hand, we gain a great deal in terms of security by obtaining protection for our own staff in these countries. It would be extremely foolish for this country to lower its security guard by sacrificing that protection.

The great value of the bilateral arrangements maintained by Clause 7 (1,a) is that they make it far more difficult for attempts at subversion to remain secret and thus become successful. This is so because no threat of legal action against non-diplomatic personnel covered by these arrangements can ever seem convincing while they exist. There is thus no reason for the person threatened to conceal the attempt to subvert him.

My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Harrow, East referred to Clause 7 (1,b) and the special Customs franchise arrangements. I should like to tell him the justification, which is to be found in the fact that these arrangements constitute solemn undertakings which cannot be annulled by a unilateral act of Her Majesty's Government and without prior negotiations with the foreign States concerned, of which there are some nine. Moreover, their annulment would impose a considerable and continuing financial burden on Her Majesty's Government, who would have to compensate the affected staff for loss of the facilities secured to them by the agreements.

In moving the Amendment, my hon. and gallant Friend referred to Clause 7 as having been put into the Bill in another place. I should like to explain that Article 47 of the Convention, which is not one of the scheduled Articles provides:

"In the application of the provisions of the present Convention, the receiving State shall not discriminate as between States."

The second paragraph of that Article, however—and I think that this meets the point made by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Chelsea—expressly permits us to do what we propose doing under Clause 7 by providing that discrimination shall not be regarded as taking place

"where by custom or agreement States extend to each other more favourable treatment than is required by the provisions of the present Convention."

This paragraph would, strictly, entitle us to enter into further agreements. When Clause 7 was inserted it was considered how we should deal with the matter. We have, however, thought it right only to preserve the existing position and to restrict Clause 7 to agreements and arrangements in force at the coming into force of the Bill. We do not under Clause 7 leave ourselves power to make Orders in Council for further agreements.

A number of hon. Members have asked for the names of the countries concerned with which we have made arrangements covered by the Clause. They will be published as soon as possible. I think the House will appreciate that it would be wrong for us to do so until we have secured the consent of the countries themselves. This consent we are seeking, but we have not yet had replies from all of the countries.

It is important to realise, as I have already indicated, that there is no question of concluding further agreements. Clause 7 would not allow for any new agreements. I put it to the House that this protection is needed for our own missions in certain sensitive countries, that these are valuable arrangements which we should continue, that the fears about security expressed by certain hon. Members are unfounded, that this gives protection to our own missions and that we lose nothing in security for the reasons that I have given. For all these reasons, I ask the House not to accept this Amendment and I hope that my hon. and gallant Friend will be prepared to withdraw it.

I am afraid I must tell my hon. Friend that—in company, I think, with some of my hon. Friends—I remain remarkably unconvinced by the case he put forward for the signing of a blank cheque by this House of Commons. I contest the suggestion that greater protection will be given to our nationals in foreign countries by the provisions of Clause 7 and I still believe them to be superfluous. I have not had my objections in any way removed or satisfied by what my hon. Friend has said, but the Government brought in this Bill in the last days of a Parliament, three years after the signing by British representatives of the Convention which the Bill ratifies. It is necessary and vital that we should pass this Bill and ratify this Convention in this Session if the ordinary processes of international law are to be observed.

For that reason—and for that reason alone and totally unconvinced as I remain about the Tightness of Clause 7—I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

I beg to move, that the Bill be recommitted in respect of Clause 2.

It will be within the recollection of the House that, in the closing stages of the debate on the first Amendment on the Paper in my name, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary gave an undertaking to look at the matter again so far as concerns the content and merit of that Amendment. This Bill originated in another place. Therefore, if we now pass from the consideration of it in this House to Third Reading, there will be no opportunity for my hon. Friend to carry out his undertaking to look at the matter again.

I do not want to obstruct the passage of the Bill, and I must take some blame for raising this point only at this stage. My excuse is that at the time of Second Reading and the Committee stage of the Bill I was overseas on a Commonwealth Parliamentary delegation. I apologise to the House and to my hon. Friend about that. There is still all next week to complete the Bill and for it to receive the Royal Assent before the House rises. It is my submission that the House should make quite sure when an undertaking has been given from the Front Bench that by procedure in this House the Minister is not prevented from carrying out his undertaking. I therefore move this Motion.

The Question is, That the Bill be recommitted in respect of Clause 2. That would be to a Committee of the whole House.

I must protest at my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) moving this Motion at this stage. He knows very well what the result would be should the House accept it.

I appreciate that he was unable to attend on the previous stages, but I put it to him that he might have had an opportunity to make representations about his anxieties on the particular definition point which was embodied in his Amendment. He could have made those representations to me at any time during the last few weeks, but he has not done so. We had no knowledge of his anxieties until his Amendment appeared yesterday on the Notice Paper.

It was earlier than that. I cannot at the moment recollect when it was, but it has been on the Paper for a considerable time.

I suggest that there has been ample opportunity for my hon. Friend to put this to me earlier. Of course I am willing to see if there may yet be a way to bring greater precision into the wording of the Bill. I gave the House reasons why we could not accept the Amendment as it stood, but it is possible to look at this matter. If it is possible to do anything, it can be done when the Bill is sent back to another place, but I think this Motion is most unreasonable at this late stage. My hon. Friend knows what the result would be. I ask the House to resist the Motion.

I am quite certain that the Minister meant it very sincerely when he said that he would reconsider this particular point. We all accept that from him, but I should be grateful if he would indicate—I think he would assist the House in making up its mind on this proposal—how he proposes, should he think on reconsideration that there should be some change made in the text of the Bill, to introduce it, at what stage, and how he would implement his undertaking.

Of course there are procedural difficulties, but the case was put by, I think, my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham (Dr. Alan Glyn) on the last Amendment that we are bound under an international Convention which a great many nations have already ratified. I indicated that there were the greatest difficulties in finding a formula. We would be internationally in default of the Convention. We shall look at the matter, but procedurally there are the greatest difficulties. I am afraid that for the reasons I have given I am convinced that the drafting difficulties are insuperable.

Would the hon. Gentleman please answer the simple question I put to him? Suppose that on consideration he thinks that there is force in the argument which was advanced in support of the Amendment moved by the hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page), and suppose that on reconsideration he thinks a change should be made in the text of the Bill. Having given the undertaking which he has given, by what procedural process does he propose to move in this House or in the other House to introduce the Amendment which he may think is necessary? Will he please answer that simple question?

What I undertook to do was to have a look at it. I fully accept the point made by the right hon. and learned Member for Newport (Sir F. Soskice). When the other Amendment was being considered this was looked at closely. As I have suggested all along, the difficulties are insuperable. The question of process would have to be considered carefully if we came to a conclusion—which I think unlikely—that there was a possibility of making a change.

After consideration, surely all we need to do is to introduce a Diplomatic Privileges (Amendment) Bill?

May I have an answer to my question? Would the Minister be so good, when he has read the piece of paper he has in his hand, to allow the hon. Member for Clapham (Dr. Glyn) to have an answer to his question? Is the Minister now saying that if on consideration he thinks it necessary to amend the text of the present Bill, next week he will introduce a new Measure to amend this Bill? If not, will he please say how he had in mind to implement his undertaking supposing that on reflection he thinks some change is necessary?

The right hon. and learned Gentleman knows very well that the only method of doing this would be by introducing an amending Bill. I am perfectly certain that there is no question of an amending Bill being introduced in this Session, but if it were possible to meet the point it would of course need an amending Bill in the next Session of Parliament. There is no doubt about this. I was asked to look at the matter again, but action on it of course would involve legislation. which necessarily would be next Session.

I wonder whether the Under-Secretary of State could go a little further. At the moment he is only committed to looking at the matter which has been raised by his hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page). The Under-Secretary took another step and said that if amending legislation would be required—or rather, if it were found that amending legislation was required—that would be a matter for the next Parliament. So far as I understand the procedure in this House, it is not competent for one Parliament to pass on its sins of omission or commission to another Parliament. It cannot pledge the actions of another Parliament. Therefore, how is the Under-Secretary to convince the House that he intends to take any action at all? He cannot say that this will be a matter for another Parliament, it is outside the bounds of any power that he has.

It seems to me that the matter boils down to this. The hon. Member for Crosby has made a point which appears to have substance and the Under-Secretary is faced with the position that he, or the Government, have brought forward, in the dying moments of this Parliament, a Bill which, according to the hon. and gallant Member for Harrow, East (Commander Courtney), should have been brought forward months ago.

Years ago.

All right. I did not want to be so extreme, at the deathbed of this Parliament, as the hon. and gallant Gentleman appears to want to be. I was generous in saying months. The hon. and gallant Gentleman says years. I will agree with him. The Government, in the dying moments of this Parliament, are bringing forward a Bill which, in the view of their own supporters, they should have brought forward years ago. Now the Under-Secretary is in a difficulty. He flings himself on the mercy of the House and asks that hon. Members accept something about which no one on either side of the House is convinced at all. The Under-Secretary is in trouble. I suggest that he must give the House a more enlightening answer about what he proposes to do than he has given so far.

I intervene in the interests of the House. I think it appalling that we have no senior Minister present—ah, the Secretary of State for Education and Science has just entered the Chamber. I was saying that our difficulty arises because there is no senior member of the Government present. The Leader of the House is not present, I do not know where he is. We are dealing with important Government business, but at any rate now we have the Secretary of State for Education and Science present.

The Under-Secretary of State's Minister is not present and there is this difficulty. In good faith the Under-Secretary has given an undertaking—I agree that it was given in good faith—and it may be resolved only on further advice. Presumably the Under-Secretary felt convinced by the arguments which he has heard, and I think this a matter which should be reconsidered, unless we have a statement from some responsible member of the Government. The Government have put themselves in this difficulty and they have an obligation to the House. The resolution of that difficulty lies here. If the Under-Secretary thought this ought to be reconsidered, he meant that it should be reconsidered by this Parliament and by this Government. If a senior member of the Government had been present—if the Secretary of State were present to speak—the matter could be resolved. But until we have such a resolution, I do not think that the Under-Secretary can discharge himself. He said, faithfully interpreting the discussion in the House, that this matter ought to be looked at again. It has to be looked at not by him but by the Government and so we should have someone to speak more authoritatively for the Government.

Would the hon. Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey) agree that this is a Bill which we desire to get on the Statute Book and that, surely, the answer is—on the assurance given by my hon. Friend—that we should proceed with the Bill; and if and when it is found that there are difficulties would not it be better in the interests of the House that a Diplomatic Privileges (Amendment) Bill should be introduced? I think, in fairness to my hon. Friend, that that is the undertaking he has given.

I think it would be wrong if the impression got about that my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) was attempting to be awkward or to make things difficult for the Government. He has moved an Amendment which was discussed. My hon. Friend, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs gave an undertaking to consider this and to see what could be done. My hon. Friend the Member for Crosby realises, as he said, the necessity for the Bill to be placed on the Statute Book. He realises that the only way in which both these things can happen is to adopt the course of action which has been suggested, to recommit the Measure in respect of Clause 2, provided that time can be found during next week. I should have thought that was not impossible and that it would let the House out of the difficulty.

I wonder whether my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State would give some consideration to accepting this proposal. It is the only way in which he can get himself out of the situation in which he has landed himself.

I must press my Motion, and I think I am entitled, as the mover of the Motion, to speak again without the leave of the House.

My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State is making very heavy weather of this. There are all the days of next week in which this could be considered. The point at issue is a short one, and I doubt whether the Third Reading is likely to take any length of time.

The hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) said that there are all the days of next week. Saturday is a day of next week. Is he including Saturday?

I stand corrected. There is Monday to Friday, inclusive, of next week, and that seems plenty of time to get the final stages of this Bill dealt with. There is no question of obstructing the Bill or preventing it going through this Session.

The paramount point is that an undertaking was given by my hon. Friend to consider the point which I raised by way of an Amendment. Not only did he give that undertaking in the original debate, but he has repeated it twice on his comments on this Motion. I ask him to consider this matter seriously. If a Minister gives an undertaking, and if by the procedure of the House he is prevented from doing anything about his undertaking, a very serious precedent will be set. I ask my hon. Friend to meet us on this occasion and to say that he will advise the House to accept this Motion and will see that the Bill is brought back during next week for some definite statement to be made about Clause 2. Then it could proceed to its final stages. There will be no delay in getting the Royal Assent. If my hon. Friend does not do so, a very serious precedent will be set.

I clearly remember the right hon. and learned Member for Newport (Sir F. Soskice) asking earlier for my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State to give the undertaking, which he did give, to reconsider the point raised in the Amendment of my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page). It may be for the benefit of the House if the right hon. and learned Gentleman told us what he had in mind. He must at that time have been aware of the procedural difficulty which faces the House and he may be able to help by telling us what he had in mind when he asked for that undertaking regarding how the undertaking could be given which was given by my hon. Friend.

With the permission of the House, perhaps I may speak again. A very obvious way of implementing the undertaking would be to advise the House to accept the Motion, which is now before it, that Clause 2 be recommitted. I should have thought there was no difficulty about that.

I wish to obtain some elucidation from the hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page). Should I put the Question, to fulfil his intention, that the Bill be recommitted to a Standing Committee or to a Committee of the whole House?

To a Committee of the whole House.

The Question is, That the Bill be recommitted to a Committee of the whole House in respect of Clause 2.

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

As the House will be aware from the earlier stages through which this Measure has passed, its principal object is to give effect in the United Kingdom to the provisions of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and to enable that Convention to be ratified.

There is only one general aspect of the Bill to which I want to refer. During its passage a good deal has been heard on the theme of security, and it has been suggested that in certain respects enactment of the Bill might be inimical to the national interest. The reverse is, in fact, the case, and the general effect of the Bill, and in particular of Clause 7, is to strengthen rather than to weaken security. In countries where attempts might be made to subvert the loyalty of Her Majesty's servants by intimidation, the comprehensive immunity preserved for them by that Clause would place them in a far better position to resist such threats than would otherwise be the case.

I recall that during the Second Reading debate my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke) made some remarks suggesting a possible connection between the privileged use of diplomatic bags and the smuggling of prohibited goods, in particular drugs. I should like to make it clear that the evidence does not support the impression that a widespread illicit traffic is being carried on under the cover of diplomatic privilege. The experience of our own authorities lends no colour to the suggestion that foreign diplomatic representatives residing here or passing through this country—whether from Latin America or from any other part of the world—are in any way concerned with such a traffic.

There is one point which I think calls for mention, because the Bill sets out to give effect to those provisions of the Vienna Convention which regulate the levying of Customs duty on diplomats. It concerns arrangements for relieving members of the Diplomatic Corps from Customs duty on their purchases of hydro-carbon oils. Although it is open to diplomats to import petrol and other oils duty free or to obtain them dutyfree from a refinery in this country, this is obviously not very practicable or convenient. Relief has therefore been given in the past by refund from the Customs and Excise revenues of the Customs duty included in the price of petrol and other oils purchased by diplomats from retail sources in this country.

It has been decided that it would be better in the future for these refunds to be borne as a charge on the Votes of the Foreign Office in relation to members of foreign diplomatic missions and of the Commonwealth Relations Office in relation to members of Commonwealth High Commissions. The total cost in a full year is likely to be in the region of £110,000, and Supplementary Estimates will be presented in due course for the amount expected to be required in 1964–65. I emphasise that no new concession is involved and no increased scale of expenditure. The new arrangement will simply involve the transfer to Departmental Votes of charges hitherto defrayed from Customs revenues.

The fact that the Bill has reached its concluding stages in the House without substantial Amendment shows, I believe, that the advantages of the United Kingdom being a party to a Convention which will form a common code of diplomatic practice for States are appreciated on all sides of the House and that there is a general welcome for this significant advance in the technique of diplomatic practice.

The Bill has a practical interest for me because I want to be assured that these diplomatic immunities which are conferred under the Bill will ensure the safety of our own people in other parts of the world.

In the exchange of opinion in the earlier stages, statements were made that under the cover of diplomatic privileges much other work went on. I notice that administrative and technical staff will lose immunity under the Bill from civil jurisdiction with respect to acts performed outside the course of their duty. The specific acts which they might perform outside the course of their duties are not referred to, and one is left to guess what they might be. In the same way, persons in the domestic service of the mission will lose immunity from both civil and criminal jurisdiction with respect to acts performed outside the course of their duties—and, again, their duties are not strictly defined, and what they might do outside their normal duties is left to the imagination.

The Under-Secretary of State has assured us that we want to protect ourselves against subversive acts, and we all agree with that. But I want to feel that our own people are also protected in the execution of their duties when they are serving abroad. I am reminded of that fact because many years ago when on a delegation from the House to a certain part of Europe I was invited in a very roundabout way to meet a gentleman who was in the service of this country and not, I believe, under diplomatic immunity, in a particular part of northeastern Europe. I had a most interesting evening, which extended far into the morning hours. He was attached to our mission abroad as, shall I say, a subversive agent. He was chief of the espionage force at our command in that part of Europe. He led a most interesting and dangerous life.

I like to think that under the Bill that gentleman, or the person who has succeeded him in that part of the world, will be protected, too, or do these people have any protection whatsoever? I asked this officer what would happen if he were captured or fell victim to a bullet. He said that his existence would be immediately denied: no one would have any knowledge of him. When we talk about subversive action in this country, we must remember that subversive action goes on in other countries, too, and that the persons who are carrying it out are people who are associated, perhaps far removed but nevertheless associated, with our diplomatic missions abroad. We are doing exactly the work outside Britain which we condemn when we find that it is carried on against us inside Britain.

I wonder if the Under-Secretary can assure me that people who undertake these dangerous missions on our behalf are protected in any sort of way under the Bill. That gentleman could take me through the streets of the chief town of that country and point to diplomatic agents, shall I call them, engaged in his type of work. He could point to them in almost every other street. He knew them all. They all knew him. I asked him what happens when one does not appear again. Nobody asks any questions.

The hon. and gallant Member for Harrow, East (Commander Courtney) is smiling at that. Perhaps he could tell us even a little more of that side of diplomatic missions than I discovered 17 years ago when I was on a different type of mission from Parliament to a part of Europe which I shall not identify. We must remember that the phrase "diplomatic mission" has a very wide coverage indeed. I am merely asking the Under-Secretary to tell me when he replies how far these men, who are doing a recognised part of Government work abroad and for whom a Vote in the Estimates which amounts to £10 million is passed by Parliament from year to year, are covered. That sum may not have been voted this year; I do not know. Perhaps I should have observed it. Strange to say, it is a Vote about which very little is said in the House. It has increased by 50 per cent. over the last four years.

I leave it to the hon. and gallant Member for Harrow, East to aid me in reaching a conclusion on whether that shows greater activity abroad. At least it shows activity carried on by diplomatic missions with whose future the Bill is concerned. As we are concerned to ensure the safety of our missions, I hope that the Under-Secretary will be able to tell me that those missions, about which we do not talk a great deal but which nevertheless are part and parcel of the work of Parliament, are equally safeguarded under the Bill.

I admire enormously the lively imagination in these many matters of the hon. Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Rankin). I am sorry to have shown that I was amused by some of his remarks. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I do not follow him more closely, except to say that if his surmise is correct and these intricate operations take place somewhere—I understood him to say in north-east Europe—I only wish they were reflected a little better in the visible results.

I assure the hon. and gallant Gentleman that what I said was no tale of imagination. I could name the gentleman I met. I shall do so to the hon. and gallant Gentleman, if he cares.

I thank the hon. Gentleman. I will now continue with my speech. The Bill is a welcome Bill in one great and overriding respect. It is a codification and an incorporation in the law of the country of an international Convention. I have been rather rude today about a great Department of State, but I must now say that I think that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary and his Department should be congratulated on the very close part they played and the very great influence they had on the negotiations three years ago at Vienna.

I think that the House should turn its attention rather more than it has done previously to the broader aspect of diplomacy as it has been brought out by the Convention and by the Bill—diplomacy as applied to modern conditions which go back, perhaps, 300 or 400 years to an age of faith when the world was divided into opposed ideologies. We cannot but think of the Bill and the diplomacy with which it deals except in terms of the cold war., which expression has not been mentioned during the course of the Bill, either in the House or in Standing Committee. Four years ago representatives of a certain party of 81 countries met in an Eastern European capital to declare against us, among others, war—ideological, economic and political war. But it was cold war. It was everything except armed conflict with those countries.

Today my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary has referred to certain countries which have Governments ruled by the party which I am mentioning and which my hon. Friend has called politically sensitive. I like the expression "politically sensitive". It has a direct bearing on what I shall say later. My hon. Friend spoke of our diplomatic representatives in the capitals of those countries being subjected to malicious persecution and subversion. In Committee my hon. Friend said that those countries—I am sure that he would have wished to include them in his generalisation—were not observing the rule of law as we know it.

Therefore, I contend that we should consider the Convention and the Bill as laying down rules for diplomatic practice where the spirit of such diplomatic practice does not in fact exist. On Second Reading my hon. Friend went back perhaps 300 years to the age of faith when he spoke of the Jacobite intrigues and the use of diplomatic bags in those days for Jacobite subversion in this country. As we have heard today, we have good reason to know that that goes on.

I contend that the fundamental objective of diplomacy, which is the furtherance and improvement of friendly relations with foreign countries, is not fostered by certain of the provisions in this Bill. It is, on the other hand, furthered by the Convention as a whole; that is, if everybody plays to the same rules and so long as we play cricket without remaining apparently oblivious to the fact that others are playing baseball. It is this difference in interpretation that we must take cognisance of when considering the Bill.

Diplomacy in its best sense is as Georges Clémenceau put it; it has become too important to be left only to diplomats. That is where this House comes in, in considering the proper application of these diplomatic rules to our relations with the politically sensitive countries, including those unnamed countries with which we have had special arrangements for the last nine years, arrangements which are being continued by Clause 7.

The Government have admitted implicitly that the Convention as it stands is insufficient to guard against the modern situation which arises in connection with misuse of diplomatic procedures. We have in the Bill Clause 3, for example, which makes special measures for retaliation against countries which operate against our diplomats. Then we have Clause 7, which we have already discussed, which perpetuates certain arrangements with certain countries which are among the political sensitive nations to which I have referred. We have those two strong departures from the provisions of the Convention and we have, thereby, an admission that the normal system has failed and that, therefore, we nationally require an alteration of the normal system if we are to continue to safeguard our national interests.

It must be said, in connection with these politically sensitive countries, that the good faith on which fundamentally good diplomatic relations rest does not exist and, as we know to our cost during the past 15 years, the system brings with it national dangers of which we must take account. I cannot help feeling that the Department clings in some ways to a 19th century diplomatic structure, a structure of privilege and behaviour which went out with the Pax Britannica. Those conditions no longer exist, as we all know, and I cannot escape feeling in some way that the Department is trying to retain its own secret world of Walter Mitty. I would apply that to both the Foreign Office and to my hon. Friend. It seems to me that they would like to perpetuate that atmosphere and retain all those ancient privileges and vast establishments which went with orthodox diplomacy as it was known in the 19th century.

I must comment on the fact, when considering the politically sensitive countries, that there is one factor in diplomatic relations which disturbs me. It is the reluctance of the Foreign Office to give any information. I have managed to extract a minimum of information, which I have brought out in the debate. I am concerned with information which touches on diplomatic practice as we experience it in relation to the problem of national security. It is the business of this House fully to investigate this form of activity and I welcome this debate if only because it has brought out many important points and opinions in this sphere.

We have received information about several sad experiences in the last 15 years of dereliction of duty and treasonable activities by highly placed officials, and the Government can be hardly surprised that some of my hon. Friends and, I regret to say, rather few hon. Members opposite, are at this stage questioning certain of the provisions of the Bill. I must admit, in relation to Clause 7, which we have already discussed, that I should like to be assured that we are not being blackmailed to our manifest disadvantage. Are we certain, for example, that it is right that we should pay the danegeld and give special immunities to the 240 cooks, chauffeurs and the rest in these foreign diplomatic missions in our country—missions of these politically sensitive countries—special amenities which would normally be given only to their ambassadors and diplomatic agents in terms of this international Convention?

There is evidence to show that we can often absolve the heads of foreign missions from the activities and abuses of diplomatic privilege which have occurred in this country. It has been shown that secret police organisations frequently operate within these missions but without the knowledge, and certainly not under the control of, the ambassadors themselves. The sooner this House realises the facts of life in this respect the better.

As I said earlier, I welcome the Bill as a whole, although I believe that it is full of holes. I have by no means received complete satisfaction about its provisions, particularly those contained in Clause 7. Nevertheless, I realise that the Goverment must have the Bill, but I should like to know why it has taken so long in coming forward, why it was necessary to amend it in another place by the incorporation of Clause 7 and why it seems to have been rushed through. Can it be that this hurrying process has something to do with the fact that 22 out of the 81 countries have already ratified the Convention, which thereby becomes international law? I believe that it has. Although full of holes, I welcome the Bill and have every intention of supporting its Third Reading.

The debate has taken longer than was anticipated, so I will not delay hon. Members for long. It should be remembered that the Bill is concerned with diplomatic privilege and conduct and not with the question of sabotage and national security. The whole House will agree with the remarks of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Commander Courtney). I might disagree with him on one point; that perhaps his remarks are not relevant to the contents of the Bill.

There are many ways in which our diplomats are placed in situations of extreme difficulty, and we are all aware of things like secret microphones, agents in the form of people who clean or empty the paper baskets and heaven knows what! We are today concerned with extending this privilege to a very small community. I would say that without the privileges given under the Bill no mission could operate successfully, but there are always abuses and I have no doubt that the right course to take in these cases is for my right hon. Friend to use the method of persona non grata. I appreciate that while this may be an effective weapon against abuse it is not an easy one to use because it is reciprocal on both sides, often without there being justification when used against us. Nevertheless, it is about the most effective method at my right hon. Friend's disposal.

The whole question of our relationships with other countries has, to some extent, altered over the years. The 19th century structure of the Diplomatic Corps has gone and today we have other forces and interests at work, in particular commercial interests which inevitably bring together the communities of various countries. Although commercial activities are not provided for in the Bill, I hope that the Government will draw attention to the help that can be given by our missions abroad to our commercial interests. Some countries across the Atlantic are better than we are at this and this is a practical suggestion to come out of our discussion of the Bill. I hope that our genuinely honest commercial activities in overseas countries where we have missions will be assisted by those missions so that the increase of our trade with those countries will become a part of our mission's activities.

I welcome this Bill because it allows us after many years to ratify the Vienna Convention. Many of our diplomats throughout the world work day in and day out in the service of the country in conditions that can only be described as difficulty. They may have very few friends, with the exception of other embassy people, and if there is anything we can do to bring safety and comfort to them we should do it. I hope that this Bill may in some way help them, and that the message may go from this House that we appreciate the work these people are doing daily and realise that, throughout the years, that work has borne considerable fruits.

As many hon. Members have said, this Measure is not "just one of those Bills." It is a very important Bill, and I hope that it will for many years set at rest a great many controversies that arise over the limits of diplomatic privilege. We have heard many distinguished speeches in our proceedings, and I think that the whole House would recognise the importance of the contribution of the hon. and gallant Member for Harrow, East (Commander Courtney). I confess that his concluding judgment left me in a state of slight uncertainty because he said that he welcomed the Bill as a whole but that it was full of holes. I think he meant that in the first case the word should be spelt w-h-o-l-e. If that was his intention, I would certainly agree with him. This morning we had a minor contretemps, a slight ruffling of the waters and a rocking of the boat, but we were glad to survive that.

I would only add a word of thanks to the Minister in charge of the Bill for his great courtesy, and for the great trouble he took throughout our debates in handling what was, after all, a particularly technical legal Measure. I do not think that anybody on either side of the House would complain of any lack of help or of courtesy on his part. He addressed himself to the task very manfully, and on both sides we are grateful to him. We naturally harried him a little—after all, Ministers are for that—but I hope that he will not take it too unkindly. He certainly came up smiling. We should offer him our congratulations, and express our gratitude to him for his conduct of the Bill throughout our deliberations.

With the leave of the House, I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Member for Newport (Sir F. Soskice) for his most kind words. I am grateful to him personally for his great assistance throughout our proceedings on this Measure, and also for his courtesy—especially when harrying, if I may say so.

We are now at the last stage of this very important Bill, and I would say to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Commander Courtney) that he should have remembered, when he strayed on a number of occasions, if I may say so with respect, into a slightly James Bondian world, holding up terrors and dangers to national security, that this is a Bill to codify this very important branch of international law, and deals with the conduct of diplomats. When he accuses me of being out of date and living in the euphoria of the Pax Britannica of the last century, I can assure him that the very fact that we have been able to negotiate this Convention on an international basis in Vienna shows that we are in the spirit of the new world, and trying to establish the basis on which diplomacy can adapt itself to very rapidly changing conditions.

I can assure the hon. Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Rankin) that our very first concern is always for the safety and security of our own missions overseas. That indeed, is the very reason for the inclusion of Clause 7. The hon. Gentleman also referred to unspecified people—also, I think, of a somewhat James Bondian world. I would only remind him that this Bill deals with diplomats and the privileges and immunities of diplomats—

If I understand the Bill correctly, it also takes into account those who are associated with the diplomatic missions, with the exception of two classes.

I would commend the Bill to the hon. Gentleman, and say that it clearly defines the various classes of diplomats; and that those are the people with whom we are concerned today. In order to answer the hon. Gentleman's question I would have to ask further questions as to whom exactly he was referring. I got a general impression of a James Bondian world, while we are dealing with diplomats and the privileges and immunities of diplomats.

The Government commend the Bill to the House with confidence. For the first time in this country's diplomatic history it will be possible to point to the content of this Measure as embodying a complete guide to those concerned with diplomatic privileges and immunities. In the Bill, and nowhere else, will be found the rules and principles to be observed in diplomatic relations between the United Kingdom and other states. As the Vienna Convention looks like being adopted by the majority of countries as the basis of their practice there now is, for the first time in international diplomatic usage, a prospect that all States will, as it were, be speaking the same language in matters of diplomatic procedure. I commend the Bill to the House.

I beg to move, in page 2, line 17, at the end to insert:

(4) The Secretary of State shall give an account of the occasions during the year on which his approval has been given under this section in the annual report prepared in accordance with section 5 of the Education Act, 1944.

I think that we can be hopeful that this Amendment will be accepted, because the principle that the Secretary of State should account for what he does in an Annual Report to Parliament is clearly recognised in the Education Act, 1944. It is also clear that this Amendment is necessary, because Section 5 says that the Minister shall give

"… an account of the exercise and performance of the powers and duties conferred and imposed upon him by this Act …"

The presentation of an Annual Report is already accepted in principle in the Act, and, as this Bill amends the Act, we should make it clear beyond doubt that that report shall also include the action the Minister takes under this Measure.

Section 5 also refers to the Central Advisory Councils for Education, but we should recognise that, by a stratagem, the function of these advisory councils has been drastically changed over the last few years. They are no longer bodies, as it were, reporting generally on the discharge by the right hon. Gentleman of his responsibilities under the Act; they have become bodies dealing ad hoc with particular educational questions as they arise. This makes it particularly important that we should accept this Amendment.

1.30 p.m.

I think there is a good deal to be said for the original intention of the 1944 Act, that we should expect from the advisory councils a current report on the developing shape of education. We no longer get these reports. We have to rely upon the Annual Report, and because of this we should make it clear that, as far as the Bill is concerned, statutory provision should be made for a report to be made available of the action that the right hon. Gentleman takes under the Bill.

The right hon. Gentleman has said—and, of course, we accept his declaration of intention—that under Clause 1 he will allow experimental action. He is also Secretary of State for Science. He has heard me say on many occasions—and I am certain that he agrees—that one must not only have experiments; the results of these experiments must be known where relevant. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will concede that if the use that is to be made of this Bill is to include the provision of experimental bridges across the 11 -plus gulf, it is important that we should have a report of the experiments which take place and, so far as possible, the results of those experiments.

For these reasons, I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will be able to accept this Amendment. I have said before in Standing Committee that I recognise the difficulties of amending the Bill at this stage, but I should have thought this Amendment would have been welcomed, and that, being welcome, it would be far better to ensure that that provision was written into the Bill.

This Amendment would give the Secretary of State an opportunity to do what I think must be done, and that is to produce much more publicity for education generally as well as a great deal more explanation on points that need explaining.

We have a useful precedent coming up in the sense that the Henniker Heaton Report, which the Government accept makes great point of the need for a sustained public relations campaign in the development of day release. This appears in Recommendation 3 on page 30. The Report goes in some detail into the ways in which better public relations can be produced. It suggests, among other things, an Annual Report of the work in the campaign for day release and an Annual Report to the National Advisory Council on Education for Industry and Commerce.

I have been interested for some years in what one might call the public image of local authorities. Some three years ago I carried out a fairly extensive survey of what the publicity and public relations of local authorities looked like. Unfortunately, there has been very little advance in this field since the 1940s, when a small effort was made to improve the public image of local authorities. This is much more important than people tend to think. There was a book exhibition of public guides, at which John Betjeman said that it was extraordinary how public authorities were prepared to spend a lot of money on the print, photographs and covers of their guides and practically nothing on the words.

This Amendment would provide a means by which the Ministry of Education could give a lead by elaborating the successes and the lines of development in this experimental field of secondary reorganisation. I should like to give one or two examples where guidance is needed and where very little is given. The London County Council sets a very good example. I am sure hon. Members will have seen the survey of London's comprehensive schools. It is excellent in content, from the point of view of creating good public relations and allowing people to see what is going on. There are many activities on which the public are not well-informed and which could be developed if the Secretary of State accepted this Amendment, including in his Annual Report a chapter devoted to general publicity about secondary reorganisation on comprehensive lines.

I believe that the annual reports of the Minister have somewhat deteriorated. From time to time there have been attempts to focus on a particular educational theme in the Report, but this is not done every year and sometimes the Annual Reports have been as dull as a company prospectus.

There are particular matters on which advice is needed—for example, the rôle of the parents in supporting their children going from the 11-plus stage to the secondary schools. There are many things which parents do not understand and which cause friction with the children. There is a good deal of doubt and misconception about comprehensive education, not on political grounds at all although often opposition to it is worked up on political grounds.

From a report of this description the Secretary of State for Education could give a great deal of information of what comprehensive education, often in large schools, can offer. London schools often have a registrar to relieve the heads and teachers of most of the clerical work. Although local authorities are conscious of this need, I believe that more publicity on what the comprehensive schools are doing will be extremely useful as a guide to teachers on how to use a clerical service and to local authorities on how to develop it.

There are great things about sixth forms in comprehensive schools—a wide range, a greater proliferation—[Interruption.]—Did the right hon. Gentleman wish to interrupt me?

I was only reflecting that whatever else could be put into the Annual Report by this Amendment, there could be nothing about sixth forms in comprehensive schools.

I thought that the idea of the Bill was to encourage experimentation, and this is one of the experiments which could be developed.

The purpose is to encourage experiments in the age of transfer over a wider range than those permitted in the principal Act—I was not intending to interrupt the hon. Gentleman; I was only reflecting to myself—but clearly that could not be included in this Amendment by any stretch of the imagination.

If sixth forms are not in issue, I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will agree that there is scope in out-of-school activities—a need for resilience of the staff which could be elaborated and could be a guide to local authorities.

My main point is this. Just as I suggest that, on the whole, local authorities, including local education authorities, are deficient: in their public relations aspects, the same applies to the Ministry of Education. The acceptance of this Amendment would lay more emphasis on reports and would be of great assistance to the parents and to the local education authorities.

Whether the right hon. Gentleman accepts this or not, whether or not he is seized of this problem, I am certain that the day will come when the need for good public relations will be recognised. The rising political interest in education has to be settled at the hustings, but I am not talking about that. I am talking about the broad general necessity to see that education receives good publicity and creates good public relations in its own cause. A certain amount of this is technical, and it is on this point that I hope the Ministry of Education will take a greater lead than it has done in the past. The lead of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government in this field is practically non-existent. As I say, between 1946 and 1948 there was a move in this direction. I hope that the Ministry of Education will now use this opportunity for doing what I have suggested.

The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Boyden), with his customary enthusiasm and ingenuity, has managed to range fairly wide on this Amendment. I agree with him about the importance of public relations in further education. Indeed, in the Department we have done a good deal of work on the subject recently, work which we might on some occasion find an opportunity to debate, but I fear that I should not be allowed to describe it in detail on this occasion.

I have no quarrel with the purpose of the Amendment. The desirability of publishing details about approvals given under the Bill to proposals for schools with an unorthodox age range was well argued by the hon. Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey) and his hon. Friend, and we entirely accept that it would be right for the Secretary of State to publish these details. The Annual Report is governed, as the hon. Gentleman said, by Section 5 of the Education Act, 1944. He pointed to the fact that Section 5 makes reference to the central advisory councils, but he will also notice that it is cast in very general terms and simply requires the Report to give an account of the exercise and performance of the Secretary of State's powers and duties under the 1944 Act, and, therefore, also under any subsequent Act which is to be construed with it.

We include in the Annual Report total figures of proposals both for new schools and for closures under Section 13 procedure, and we propose to collect and include similar figures for proposals under this Bill. Therefore, the object of the Amendment is quite acceptable to my right hon. and learned Friend, and he authorises me to give an undertaking that he will publish information about approvals. Indeed, it is clear from Clause 5(4) that he is, in effect, required by it and by Section 5 of the 1944 Act to publish details.

As to the actual Amendment, I suggest that it would be as well that it should not be accepted, because it would be the only occasion when a particular matter was specified to be included in the Annual Report and it might be agreed that this would be an undesirable precedent. The Amendment as drafted is also technically faulty in a way that I probably need not detain the House by describing. In view of the assurance that I have given, I hope that the hon. Member for Sunderland, North will be prepared to withdraw the Amendment.

If I had reason to believe that among the few hon. Members who seem to be on the premises I had more hon. Friends than the Joint Under-Secretary apparently has, I should press this Amendment to a Division, but I do not believe that to be the case. I would press it to a Division, not because of any difference in substance between us, but because I should have thought that, apart from any point about draftsmanship, it would have been better to accept the Amendment.

I congratulate the Joint Under-Secretary on making the one gesture to us on this otherwise thoroughly welcome Bill by saying that there is no quarrel about the purpose of the Amendment. He has said that the purpose is acceptable, although the Amendment is unnecessary, and also that unless the Amendment itself were amended it might not achieve its purpose.

I re-emphasise what has been said. I think that the case for the Amendment is clearly made. This is a field in which we ought to look to the Report for information. There is a great deal of information about development in Anglesey, London, Leicestershire and the areas of other authorities which ought to have been contained in the Report. It is a great pity that we have not had authoritative current statements about the developments in secondary education. I would not for a moment, however, quarrel with the Joint Under-Secretary about the intentions of the right hon. and learned Gentleman. I am sure that we can look forward to these appearing in the subsequent Reports after the Bill becomes law. For these reasons, I do not wish to press the Amendment to a Division. Apart from recognising the realities of the political situation at the moment, I accept the hon. Gentleman's assurance on behalf of his right hon. and learned Friend and beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

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

The Bill introduces two modest reforms. It enables payment of maintenance grants to be made to handicapped children in special schools who are over the normal school leaving age but who have up to now been prevented by an anomaly from receiving these benefits. This is a provision which has been widely welcomed in all parts of the House.

The second effect of the Bill is to enable experiments to be made by local education authorities with schools of an unorthodox age range. Inevitably, the passage of the Bill through the House and Committee has provoked some discussion about the 11 plus, selective schools and secondary organisation. My right hon. and learned Friend has made it clear that he looks upon the Bill as a means of providing more information about the best way to organise secondary education. We on this side do not believe that any one best solution has as yet been revealed to us. We are prepared to encourage sensible variety and sane experiment. My right hon. and learned Friend believes that the wish of the West Riding to experiment with the age of transfer is a reasonable one. We accept that there may be something of general value to be learned from an experiment of this sort.

If I may attempt a graceful compliment across the Floor of the House, I would say that hon. Members opposite in the general welcome that they have given to the Measure have at least implied a less blinkered and dogmatic attitude than usual in these matters. Clearly, as some at least on the other side of the House must realise, there is no point in having an experiment unless one is prepared to learn from it. It has hitherto been the policy of the Labour Party to impose the comprehensive principle upon all local education authorities—that is, to force upon local education authorities the abolition of all selective schools and, despite the Newsom Committee, the abolition of all secondary modern schools in favour of some comprehensive system at a time when there is little or no evidence to go on in relation to some of those systems. That is particularly true, of course, of sixth form colleges and two-tier systems of comprehensive education, which would be the only alternative for most local education authorities if they were forced immediately to do away with all selective schools.

If the Bill is to be of value, an attitude is required from the Government that is a good deal more "science based", to use a currently fashionable bit of jargon, than that. One has to proceed on the basis of evidence and not on the basis of dogma or intuition. It is because we are anxious that the old tripartite dogma should not be replaced by a new one—equally rigid and inadequately tested—that we look forward to valuable experiment under the Bill.

We do not say to local education authorities, "We know what the answer on secondary organisation is. Here it is. You must abide by it. Scrap what you have got and reorganise immediately." If that were our attitude there would be no point in the Bill. If one were confident of knowing all the end answers, one would not embark on further experiment. If one did not believe in the necessity of proving new ideas before insisting upon their universal adoption, one would not bother with experiment at all.

The Bill, then, is consistent with the pragmatic attitude that the Government have adopted towards the very real problems of selection and secondary school organisation. It is not envisaged, as my right hon. and learned Friend has made clear, that any wholesale change in the age of transfer will result from the Bill and certainly it would be wrong to contemplate any such development in advance of the report of the Plowden Committee. But it is generally agreed that useful knowledge may flow from limited experiment as a result of this Measure and I hope that the House will now give the Bill its Third Reading.

I take this last opportunity of saying that we welcome this Bill. Having done so, I must be critical of the present Administration. I think that we can, however, be comforted by the fact that the responsibility of the Administration is likely to be only temporary.

The Bill deals with two separate issues in education. First, it puts right an anomaly. In Standing Committee we sought to place direct responsibility on the Secretary of State for the maintenance allowances for children attending special schools. We did not succeed and so the maintenance allowances will be those which are generally determined. The action taken by the Government during their period of office on this matter presents a thoroughly depressing picture. We therefore have no great confidence that adequate allowances will be paid to children in special schools under this Bill.

A good deal has been said about the Weaver Working Party's Report. I pointed out earlier in this Bill that the Working Party was not set up enthusiastically by the Conservative Government to improve allowances but that the then Minister had made it clear that the total expenditure on maintenance allowances ought not to be increased and could possibly be diminished while still giving adequate help where needed.

There was a good deal of talk—I do not know where it came from—which gave the impression that the Government had once accepted the Weaver Report. On the contrary, they rejected it. In Circular No. 327 the Government said that they would not be justified in accepting the recommendations. It was at the time of one of the economic crises we have had during the Government's term. That is why we have concentrated a good deal of attention on the question of maintenance allowances.

This is an important aspect of education. We have had the report on early school leaving and also the Crowther Report calling attention to the cost to the country of children leaving school too early. We later got an abnegation of responsibility by the Government. They repealed Circular No. 327 and said that under the block grant system this was now a matter for the local authorities. As the Secretary of State pointed out in Standing Committee, when I raised this matter a year ago I was told that over one-third of the local authorities were not even then paying the allowances recommended by the Weaver Working Party. Yet the Weaver Report came out in 1957. Seven years later, and notwithstanding the rise in the cost of living, one-third of the local authorities were not paying the allowances recommended.

This is an appalling position and an abnegation of responsibility by the right hon. and learned Gentleman's Department—an abnegation confirmed in Standing Committee when he said that the figure had now been reduced to 14 local authorities not paying the recommended allowances. But this reduction was not brought about by his Department but, as he said, by a resolution by the Association of Education Committees. This really will not do. We had the same attitude by the Government towards student grants, and it was pressure in this House which finally compelled them to resort to legislation in order to standardise the grants.

I hope that the Government, even at this late stage, will pay serious attention to this. A circular would be helpful but even more helpful would be a realistic recognition of the importance of maintenance allowances and speedy effective action by the Government. I would be out of order if I referred to proposals which have been made and will be discussed at the General Election. Although the right hon. and learned Gentleman turned down our proposal in Standing Committee, I hope that he will pay serious regard to making these allowances adequate. We all welcome the removal of the anomaly by the Bill but we cannot but be disturbed by the fact that the Government have never given sufficient attention to maintenance allowances for children over school-leaving age.

On the second matter dealt with by the Bill, I was also disturbed by what the Joint Under-Secretary of State said just now when talking about experiments. He referred to the West Riding Education Authority. But that authority does not propose to experiment. It has made up its mind. It has decided to reorganise secondary education on comprehensive lines. Is the Secretary of State in favour of that or against it?

What is an entirely different problem—the Joint Under-Secretary seemed to confuse the two—is to decide upon the most effective means of implementing the reorganisation of secondary education on comprehensive lines. Of course, the West Riding, like other authorities, will review the result of its action, just as Leicestershire is reviewing the action it took. But what is not in doubt is the decision to reorganise on comprehensive lines. It has been taken by an overwhelming majority of the education authorities up and down Great Britain.

Such a reorganisation was opposed by the right hon. and learned Gentleman's predecessors and therefore we did not get any reference to it in the Annual Reports or in information from the Department. Everyone knows of that opposition. But nevertheless there has been a revolution against Curzon Street on this. It is significant that it was Her Majesty's Chief Inspector who conceded defeat at Folkestone. He is more closely in touch with what has been happening in schools and among education authorities.

This certainly is a vindication of the division of responsibility politically between Whitehall and the local education authorities. I thoroughly support that division and those who have any doubt about it should review the development of the reorganisation of secondary education over the past few years. Let us recognise—the hon. Member avoided it just now but I would recommend him to read the recent publication of the Bow Group of the Conservative Party—that secondary education must be reorganised on comprehensive lines.

I am wholeheartedly with the right hon. and learned gentleman that this does not mean uniformity. It is no good recognising the division of responsibility in education if one is calling for uniformity. It is no good not acknowledging that the circumstances in different education authorities' areas are different. This is not a question of imposing uniformity but of recognising that there is an urgent need to reorganise secondary education on comprehensive lines. It seems to me that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is doing himself a grave injustice. I have pointed out before that he can claim no credit for the Leicestershire experiment because he cowardly stood on one side and said, "I have not been asked about it; it is something beyond my cognisance", although I have pointed out frequently that the education Act in fact has been contravened.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman faces the dilemma that he says that the tripartite system has broken down. In fact, he emphasises this by saying, "I have known this for seven years", but he did not say that seven years ago.

I could easily quote from my former tenure of office that I had said precisely that.

Why did not the right hon. and learned Gentleman tell that to Leicestershire? Why did he not say, "I sympathise with Leicestershire because I believe that the tripartite system has broken down"? That is just what he did not do. What he did was specifically to state that the local authority did not need to seek his approval, and that in fact it had neither sought nor received it. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman had said clearly that the tripartite system had broken down, we might have had a very different development in secondary education over the last seven years. I cannot place personal responsibility beyond that on the right hon. and learned Gentleman's shoulders because he was such a short time at the Department.

I think that the right hon. and learned Gentleman recognises now that the tripartite system has broken down. The tripartite system, for all practical purposes, is the bi-partite system, the division of secondary education between grammar and secondary schools. This is what the right hon. and learned Gentleman says has broken down. If it has broken down, is the right hon. and learned Gentleman going to say, "I am going to look at the broken down system and not accept any responsibility, and merely observe that it has broken down"? That seems to be the position, and it is fortunate that the initiative has been taken by the education authorities and that they are tackling the problem. It is a very serious reflection on Conservative Ministers of Education that they have known for seven years that the system has broken down, have tendered no advice about it, and the right hon. and learned Gentleman has now gone little further than the White Paper of 1958.

He throws one or two red herrings about the voluntary schools, but the voluntary schools came forward and said to the right hon. and learned Gentleman, "We want to take advantage of this Bill". That is why it was amended in another place. Again, what a reflection on the right hon. and learned Gentleman that he is not only completely out of touch with feeling in the local education committees but is out of touch with the voluntary bodies, the denominational schools, because they have said, "We are interested in the Bill; we want to experiment, too. We recognise that there has to be reorganisation of secondary education: why did not you think of us"? This was the cardinal point which came out of this overlooking of the denominational schools. "Why are you so prejudiced against experiments", that is really what they are saying, "as to assume that we would not wish to take part".

This is very important because the right hon. and learned Gentleman, when he addressed the Association of Education Committees that called the denominational schools on aid as a fact which might make more difficult the provision of reorganisation on comprehensive lines. I ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman, at this very late stage, to recognise now the consequences and the great embarrassment on his shoulders by the actions of successive Conservative Ministers of Education and not only to accept this Bill as a matter of experiment, but to appreciate that the authorities are not experimenting in the reorganisation of secondary education on comprehensive lines but only on the means of implementing reorganisation. West Riding needs no experiment but to be convinced of the need of that reorganisation. It was prepared to go ahead regardless of the Bill.

We know that the Government were faced with a dilemma. The right hon. and learned Gentleman knows quite well that this revolt against Curzon Street had reached such proportions that it had to be recognised. I hope that he will not try to contain it by talking about experiments. The principle has to be conceded and then there will be experiments, as there always have been in British education, to make effective the changes in secondary education.

I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will not try to contain this change which is taking place in secondary education but will welcome it and give constructive help to authorities to do what he must know, regardless of the back benchers behind him, will be effected in the next few years.

I was amused at the Parliamentary Secretary trying to make out that the Labour Party was a kind of bogey-man with comprehensive education. I hope this will not be the tactics of the Conservative Party in the election, because it must damage the cause of secondary education and I would have thought that a great amount of development of comprehensive education is quite outside the field of politics and entirely within the field of education.

If we look at the L.C.C.'s record in comprehensive schools over the last few years we find there all the virtues that can be argued for any other secondary scheme. The L.C.C. offers a wide range of parental choice of schools; there is a very wide range of courses in the school to give "pupils choice". We get these schools making every attempt to meet all the needs that can be met, and what I think is quite remarkable is that the voluntary bodies, having been a little apprehensive in earlier days, are now entering into the same kind of activities as the L.C.C. and are setting up their own comprehensive schools.

I hope that this matter will be considered on education grounds and not with an unnecessary intrusion of politics into it.

This brings me to a point which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Dr. King) and myself when the Bill was discussed on Second Reading. I hope that the Secretary of State will not approve any new schools under Clause 1 which are not developments of a purely educational nature. The case the A.E.C. advances on altering the age structure to encourage more men teachers would be quite disastrous. We want more men teachers but we can only get them by facing the problems squarely and not by considering purely administrative conveniences in this Bill. In the same way there could be a danger of patchwork secondary education growing up which might make it very difficult for parents moving around the country to get satisfactory continuing education for their children. I hope that Clause 1 will be used entirely for education reasons.

Some of the things which have not been said so far about secondary reorganisation and for which the Bill gives an opportunity are the sort of things where handicapped and backward children could be given much greater scope in a comprehensive system. Once again the London County Council has set a magnificent example in the way in which in some of its comprehensive schools it has been able to develop the capacities and talents of backward children in the same way as developing the capacities of the fliers. Everybody would agree that even where a grammar school has not been absorbed into the comprehensive school in London, where much of the grammar school element has been lacking, the fliers have had their opportunity and in the parallel way so have the backward children.

In some L.C.C. comprehensive schools there are special departments for the backward child which have stressed the social development of the child and where the results have been obvious in the presentation of the work, the personal appearance of the pupils and the atmosphere of the classes. There have been some remarkable examples of where backward children have suddenly developed and developed extremely well with their academic subjects while others have shown great capacity for leadership in the school in sport and in social activities. This is borne out by the experiment at Wolsingham in County Durham where one or two boys who in the ordinary way would have been almost cast on one side in the ordinary selective system have done remarkably well in showing leadership in that comprehensive school.

I want to concentrate on the Clause relating to extending grants to handicapped children from the age of 15 or 16. I was most disturbed by the way in which my suggestion for dealing with yet another anomaly has been disposed of. The Clause removes an anomaly but leaves another. I have still not had the letter from the Minister of Health which I was promised by the Secretary of State. I do not know whether this means that he denies that the anomaly exists. Perhaps we could be told something about this. It seems ridiculous that because of departmental bureaucracy, or Parliamentary bureaucracy, or some other form of bureaucracy, an anomaly which everybody would want to put right, even though it affects only a small number, has not been rectified with the opportunity which the Bill gave.

The general attitude of the Secretary of State to this question when we discussed grants in Standing Committee was extremely cavalier. He dismissed my suggestion as almost frivolous and yet produced almost nothing himself to give a better system of grants. He fell back on the sort of attitude which we have had time and again from his Department, that the initiative for correcting under-Weaver rates and for preventing other anomalies lay with the public or back bench Members of Parliament. He said:

"My Department will be interested to received any information about local authorities which pay less than what I have described as the Weaver rates, because I would make it my business to initiate informal discussions which might well help to remove that difficulty."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 1st July, 1964; Vol. 697, c. 1487.]

It is up to the Department of Education to find out what is going on and not rely on the odd criticism which comes forward. Since the general grant was introduced and the notion of "policing the rates" was stopped, there should have been a new investigation, or at least a sample checking of local authorities, with a view to getting the situation correct. It is not much use merely getting rid of one anomaly without looking at the whole subject of grants.

I may be ruled out of order if I go too far on this subject. I will not say more now, except that, having removed one anomaly, it is up to the Department to investigate the whole position, because, although we approve this particular remedy, it sets up another set of anomalies. For example, when we were discussing the cost of maintenance of handicapped children, the right hon. Gentleman was very brutal—although I do not think that he meant it this way—when he said that the costs of handicapped children varied very much and the costs for a child with an iron on its leg wearing out clothes would be more than for a bed-ridden child who would naturally not wear out clothes. That sounds as though he was saying that the costs for a bed-ridden child were very slight and I am sure that he did not intend it in that way. It is obvious that the costs of giving a child in that situation something approaching a normal life are out of all proportion to the wearing-out of clothes. The same sort of consideration applies throughout the range of handicapped children.

To put this anomaly right is not enough and we need to consider the whole range of handicapped children to see what is required in the way of grant to give them as satisfactory an education as is possible.

I welcome the Bill in that rather tepid way. It is a great pity that not all the anomalies were put right and that the opportunity was not taken to remedy the wide disparity between local authorities as to the variety and amount of grant.

I do not wish to detain the House more than a few minutes on what is really an uncontroversial Measure. I greatly sympathise with the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Boyden) in his plea that these educational experiments should be pursued on educational grounds and should not be made entirely exercises in party politics. However, I thought that that plea, with which I agree, came slightly oddly after the speech of his hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey) from the Opposition Front Bench, whose whole delivery was an exercise in party politics.

There are differences between the parties, but they can be exaggerated and usually are. The fact to which hon. Members opposite cannot easily reconcile themselves is the degree, greater than they do, to which we believe in retaining education as a function of local government and the way they desire, to a degree greater than we do, the interposition of central authority. If his claim that under Conservative Ministers the Ministry had abdicated its functions—I think that this phrase was abnegated its functions—does not mean that, I do not know what he was trying to convey.

Parliament has recently discussed the raising of the school-leaving age. This will affect secondary education. The decision was taken centrally, but I agree that its implementation is a matter for the local education authorities. The problem has been placed on their shoulders by that decision. What I am saying equally emphatically is that the reorganisation which follows consequent on that and other developments in secondary education is a matter on which the right hon. and learned Gentleman should be able to advise and assist the local education authorities.

Of course I recognise, as both parties do, that there is a function for central Government and a function for local authorities in all these matters, but the hon. Gentleman must reconcile himself to the fact that the difference between us does not rest in our abdicating our functions and in his asserting them, but in the fact that there is a difference in degree between us, he tending to emphasise the function of central authority and we tending to emphasise the degree to which local authorities should enjoy their freedom. I was about to point this out in relation to the speech that he has just made. As we see it, the question whether, the extent to which, and the maner in which, if at all, reorganisation should take place in any particular county or county borough is primarily a matter for the local authority.

The Minister has functions, of course. We spoke about that on Second Reading. The hon. Lady the Member for Flint, East (Mrs. White) spoke from the Front Bench opposite and put questions to me as to how I was going to exercise these functions. I told her, and oddly enough—I have no doubt that it was a case of second sight on her part—within 10 days I found myself exercising those functions in relation to her own constituency, I think with her approval, but at any rate without any criticism from her.

I have never shown myself at all reluctant to exercise functions, but they are supervisory functions. They are not functions which, in our view at any rate, impose on the central Government the obligation to do what the hon. Gentleman again and again in his speech demanded that we should, namely, in effect to insist that local authorities should reorganise their secondary education on comprehensive lines.

That is a nostrum which he has tried to sell to the House as a universal panacea. We have always recognised that it plays some part in secondary education, but we do not think that it is a universal panacea. When he asks for reorganisaton, we simply do not believe that it is in the interests of every local authority, whether it wishes to or not, to destroy the grammar schools in its area. That is precisely what is involved in a total reorganisation on comprehensive lines. We think that that is an evil if it is imposed uniformly and dogmatically all over the country.

I would not be in order if I were to develop this, but the difference between us does not lie in the fact that we are prejudiced against either reorganisation or comprehensiveness. It resides in the fact that we give a wider range of offices to local authorities and do not interfere when they exercise them.

The same is true on the philosophy of maintenance allowances. The Act, by Section 81, puts the responsibility on local authorities and makes it discretionary. The whole burden of the two speeches to which we have listened from the benches opposite is really a demand that by administrative action I should take away from the local authorities the discretion which Parliament gave them by the Act, and impose my own set of regulations over the entire field so as to ensure that they all do the same thing.

I am not prepared to admit that either for handicapped children or for normal children this would necessarily be an advantage, because if I were to tell them what maintenance allowances they were to give in every case, it would mean that the generous ones came down and the ungenerous ones came up.

Surely the right hon. and learned Gentleman could lay down the minima? This is the simplest thing of the lot.

Experience shows that if that is done, over a period of years they become standards and not minima.

Parliament gave a discretion to local authorities under the Act. If the hon. Gentleman thinks that Parliament should take it away, he must legislate, but he is not justified in complaining that a Minister is abdicating his functions when he does the very thing which Parliament has told Ministers to do.

Of course I have supervisory functions in relation to this matter, and, as he has raised it, I can tell him categorically that I propose to examine the question after the Recess—when no doubt either I or some other Conservative Minister will be in firm possession of this office—and I will see whether a greater degree of uniformity is desirable.

During the Committee stage I told the hon. Gentleman that my purpose in applying the Weaver Committee's Report to the extent that we did—because I do not accept that we rejected it—was precisely to secure a degree of uniformity. As I explained in Committee, events overtook us in the shape of the general grant, and a different philosophy became general Government policy. I shall certainly look at the matter again after the Recess to see whether a greater degree of uniformity is desirable in England and Wales, and if it is I shall try to secure it.

But I shall try to secure it by the method of informal discussions rather than by regulations and I shall still allow to local authorities a certain degree of better knowledge than I possess of what local communities wish to have in respect of maintenance allowances. I shall not take away their discretion, nor seek to impose uniformity, but if a greater degree of uniformity is required I shall seek to achieve it.

What is the right hon. and learned Gentleman's view about adequacy. This is a matter about which the Government have views, and they should be made known. There has been general criticism of the maintenance allowances being inadequate. There have been many reports inviting the Minister to express an opinion. If he does, he should take steps to implement it.

I think that the hon. Gentleman is tempting me to transcend the bounds of order. The Bill which we are discussing on Third Reading is a Bill to bring a greater degree of uniformity to a limited class of a limited class of pupils over a limited period of time, namely, those handicapped children who are in special schools for one extra year so that they can be brought into line with those in general schools, or with those who are not handicapped.

I do not think that I should be in order—and if I were I would not think this a suitable opportunity—to embark on a general discussion of what is meant by adequacy in relation to maintenance allowances. All that I am saying is that if and in so far as the hon. Gentleman will be in any way assuaged in his criticism that a greater degree of uniformity is required, it is my intention after the Recess to review this matter myself and to see whether a greater degree of uniformity is required.

I embarked on this disquisition—and I hope that I have not detained the House unduly—because of the plea—with which I agree—of the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland that these matters should be discussed on educational grounds, and because I thought that the hon. Member for Sunderland, North, who was perfectly entitled to point to the differences between the two parties, had failed to put his finger on the place where the difference existed, namely, that—for reasons which they think adequate—they on the whole tend to emphasise the rôle of central Government, while we on the whole tend to emphasise the importance of the rôle of local government in this matter.

Having said that, I think we can say that the Bill has got through with a remarkable degree of unanimity, and I hope that the House will now be prepared to give it its Third Reading.

To some of us, this is a provision which requires a certain amount of amplification and explanation. It covers a very wide field of history, and we are entitled to know something more about the Acts which are being repealed in the Schedule. I do not wish to traverse the very large list of Acts contained in the Schedule. I will content myself by asking for an explanation of a few of them.

The first is the American Colonies Act, 1766.

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but I must make it clear what is in order. The hon. Gentleman is not in order in asking for particulars of what is in the Acts being repealed. All that the Bill does is to repeal certain Acts. The hon. Gentleman cannot ask for an explanation of what is in the Act.

Do I understand you to rule, Sir Robert, that I am not entitled to ask why these Acts are being repealed?

Generally. But I do not think that the hon. Gentleman can go into detail on all the Acts being repealed.

That is far from my intention, Sir Robert. I want to know why the American Colonies Act, 1766, is being repealed. This Act was passed at a time when there were certain differences between ourselves and the United States, and when this country regarded George Washington in rather the same way as Americans regard Dr. Castro today. I should like to know the implications of the repeal of this Act. I should like to know why the Liberated Africans Act, 1853, and the Slave Trade Act, 1876, are being repealed.

I do not want the details and ramifications of why the various consolidated Acts and appropriation Acts are being repealed.

I turn to that part of the Schedule dealing with ecclesiastical enactments. May we have a short explanation as to why the Queen Anne's Bounty Act, 1714, is being repealed?

May I ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor-General one very simple question? Why were not these Acts repealed long ago?

This part of the Bill, as the Committee will appreciate, revises the Statute law by repealing obsolete, spent, unnecessary or superseded enactments. The Bill comes before the Committee pursuant to the Third Report of the Joint Committee of this House and of another place. At the start of a Session it is proposed that there should be a joint committee to consider spent, obsolete or superseded enactments so that the Statute law can be revised and that there can be the consolidation of enactments under the Consolidation of Enactments (Procedure) Act, 1949, which was passed by the Labour Government after the War.

That Joint Committee has been established under the chairmanship of a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary and on it sit a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, an expert in Scottish law, and Members of this House, such as my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East (Mr. Doughty) and the hon. Member for Leicester, North-West (Sir B. Janner). The Committee examines the Bill and the proposals set out. The Committee proposed, and this House accepted on Second Reading, that the Acts and Measures specified in columns 1 and 2 of the Schedule should be repealed because they are obsolete, spent or unnecessary. Clause 1 of the Bill does that.

The American Colonies Act—if I am in order to refer to it at all—was an Act which voided resolutions in the colonies and plantations in North America denying the authority of Parliament. That is of no effect in the United States and is superseded as regards Canada by the North America Act, 1867, and it is appropriate that it should be repealed. The Slave Trade Act, 1876, which now relates only to the enforcement of certain provisions in the Indian penal code as in force in 1936, is obsolete, and it was therefore one of the enactments which it was recommended should be repealed.

I can only say in reply to the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes), in order to stay within the bounds of order, that these Measures have been examined by the Joint Committee of the two Houses and that Clause 1 puts into effect its recommendation that these Acts should be repealed.

In answer to the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison), this is the third Report of its kind in this Parliament. This is a process which I am sure he and every hon. Member will encourage. It should be continually carried out so that the Statute law can be brought up to date.

By leave, may I ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman whether he remembers that for many years there stood outside the entrance to the Estate Duty Office in the Strand two large notice boards, each of which said, so appropriately, "Dead Slow"? Is not the machinery set up to deal with this kind of thing functioning rather slowly? I should not have thought that the nature of the Acts which my hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) mentioned called for a very long and detailed examination. It is nearly a hundred years since the British North America Act was passed, and the Boston Tea Party was long before that.

It is unlikely, of course, that right hon. and hon. Members opposite will be charged with the duty, but, upon whomever it lies, ought we not as a House to see that this kind of machinery functions a little more rapidly? It seems a trifle absurd. I quite realise that this has to be done as a technical task by a Committee of the House and with people with expert knowledge to assist it, and I make no great complaint about it as far as it goes. I see that this is the third or fourth Report. It is obvious from the nature of this Schedule that there is a good deal more to be looked at yet. We shall have to consider this in a moment. One does not wish to divide the House against it, but I feel that it is not greatly to the credit of Parliament as an institution that we cannot clear this kind of obsolete junk out of the way in less than a hundred years or so.

The hon. and learned Gentleman is extravagant in his language as in his hopes. It is quite clear that if it is anyone's task to deal with more of these Measures it will be my right hon. Friends who will be doing it. Most of these Acts referred to are modern Acts, for instance the Appropriation Act, 1948, the Consolidation Acts of 1951 and 1952, and the whole of the third page deals with a whole series of Acts which were dealt with in the 1950's. The same with page 4. On page 5 we deal with Acts of the 1960's.

We obviously have to set up these Committees. They have a great deal to do and it is appropriate, when they are sitting, for them to be given a whole mass of legislation which has been spent or superseded and which has to be dealt with. This is a constant task. It owes—I will give a little credit to the hon. and learned Gentleman—a little to the initiative of the first Labour Government who started it, but it has been carried on with energy continuously in the past few years.

I have one question to put to the hon. and learned Gentleman. He did not deal with the question about the Queen Anne's Bounty. Could he give some indication why this Act has been repealed?

The Sections to the Queen Anne's Bounty Act are repealed because those, too, are spent. The hon. Gentleman might get some assistance if he looks at the Appendix to the Select Committee's Report which sets out each particular Act and details relating thereto.