I beg to move Amendment No. 1, in page 1, line 12, to leave out subsection (2).

I think that it will be for the convenience of the Committee if, with this Amendment, we take Amendment No. 2, in page 1, line 14, leave out "a Minister of State or".

If I may say so, Dr. King, I think that that would be a wise decision.

This subsection enables the salaries mentioned in Schedule I to be reduced in the case of certain Ministers, and those Ministers are listed. They are, a Minister of State, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and the holders of the offices of Lord President of the Council, Lord Privy Seal, Chancellor of the Duchy or Paymaster-General

"… when not a Member of the Cabinet."

We are discussing the Bill in a somewhat different political situation from that which prevailed until last night, and think that we shall find, during the course of our discussion, that the absence from the debate of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Liberal Party—and, indeed, of any member of the Liberal Party in this House—will be extremely inconvenient to the Committee.

I say that because, quite obviously, a new departure is made by this subsection. In the past, the House of Commons has always specified exactly what the salary of each Minister shall be whether he has a seat in Parliament or a seat in the Cabinet or not. But, as I have pointed out, a new departure is being made by the subsection, and the only person who can give the reasons for that departure is the Prime Minister himself, and it would have been courteous to the House if the right hon. Gentleman himself had explained those reasons to the House.

The right hon. Gentleman has left the explanation, apparently, to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who cannot be expected to know the Prime Minister's mind in this matter—unless it be the fact that the hon. Gentleman is the one Mem- ber of the Government who knows the Prime Minister's mind. Of course, the Committee in its turn, in its unfailing courtesy would, I am sure, gladly agree that the Chairman should report Progress so that the Prime Minister could attend to give that explanation.

It is rather interesting, and perhaps a little strange, that when deciding upon which Ministers should have their salaries reduced below the maximum stated in the Schedule, the name of the Foreign Secretary was not included. It is a fact that he has not been able to give quite the whole of his time to the affairs of State. Some of it has been spent in losing the Leyton by-election.

By contrast—I come specifically to the question of Ministers of State—the Minister of State, Foreign Affairs, has had to answer for the Government's policy on foreign affairs in this House throughout this Parliament. If ever a Minister of State deserved the maximum salary stated in the Schedule, it is he. We have a very strange inversion of what has gone on in the past. We are entitled to an explanation from the Government of what their proposals are for dealing with this strangely inverted position.

I do not propose to spend a lot of time on the first Amendment, because, having raised the issue which arises upon it, the next thing to which the Committee is entitled is an explanation from the Government which we can examine and discuss. I hope I have made the point clear that we want to know the mind of the Government on the question of reducing salaries below the maximum of certain officers of State. I come to the broad question of Ministers of State. They do not enjoy the full glow of the limelight to which Ministers are accustomed. Neither do they work hard in the shadows as sometimes Parliamentary Secretaries and Under-Secretaries do.

Ministers of State are sort of twilight creatures. In the present Government, however, we find that some Ministers of State are given a considerably elevated position and greater responsibility than Ministers of State have been given in the past. I have mentioned one example, the Minister of State, Foreign Office. Then we have the case of the noble Lord whose name I find difficult to pronounce because I am not Cornish, Lord Caradon—[An HON. MEMBER: "Caliban?"] I must have failed, for I did not realise that that was the pronunciation.

It is clear that some Ministers of State are given greater responsibility than was customary in the past. That is why, in the First Schedule, we find that the maximum salary of a Minister of State can be £8,500. We are entitled to know which Ministers of State are to be paid the maximum and if there are to be Ministers of State and other Ministers of State.

Another important matter is that their salaries can go up one weekend and can come down the next.

That also is a matter to which we are perhaps entitled to an explanation. It makes complicated the various grades of status of Ministers if, leaving out the Prime Minister, of course, some Ministers of Cabinet rank are to be paid £8,500 and some are to be paid less than that amount because they remain twilight creatures. Coming down to Parliamentary Secretaries and Under-Secretaries, who are to have £3,750, that does not seem the right differential. They should have at least half the salaries of Ministers because they sometimes do twice as much work.

11.15 a.m.

It may be that I shall have to ask the indulgence of the Committee for permission to speak again, this being Committee stage, after having heard the Government's explanation. We would have the greatest saving of time if we could have that explanation soon. Then we could see what is in the mind of the Government, for we shall never know, unless the Prime Minister comes here to tell us, exactly what is in his mind. As to the Leader of the Liberal Party, the Government have to face the fact that with a majority of three, which is now their overall majority, they have not a workable majority, whereas, when they have a majority of 21 thanks to the Liberals, they have a working majority. Therefore, henceforth the Liberals will be keeping the Government in power.

It is a disgraceful thing that the Liberal Party gives such partial attention—partial perhaps in both senses of the word—to its Parliamentary duties and that the Leader of the Liberal Party is not here and only belatedly has an hon. Member of the Liberal Party come in to sit at the far end of the bench.

Two hon. Members.

rose—

On a point of order, Dr. King. Am I permitted to move that the Chairman do report Progress and ask leave to sit again?

After the speech of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) it is quite impossible for the Committee to make up its mind on this important issue, which is a constitutional issue. The Prime Minister abrogates to himself these powers. He has a difficult team to lead and has to distribute awards where he wants them distributed. He can say to a Minister who threatens him, "I will reduce your salary, or I will raise it if you are a good boy."

It would be a very grave constitutional precedent if we were to allow this to go through without having a statement from the Prime Minister on what he is trying to do under the Bill. It is an affront to Parliament if we are to he expected to continue our discussions this morning without having the Prime Minister present to give an explanation.

I beg to move that the Chairman do report Progress and ask leave to sit again.

I am not prepared to accept that Motion.

I am sure the Committee has enjoyed the witty speech of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton). The climate of opinion has changed. That automatically changes the mood of the House of Commons. Many who formerly took a passing interest in this Bill now have a deeper interest in it.

You, Dr. King, have agreed that we may discuss these two Amendments together, so I shall move from the general matters raised by my right hon. and learned Friend to call the attention of the Chief Secretary to the Treasury to the second Amendment. That Amendment would strike out the words "Minister of State", but would leave intact "Chief Secretary to the Treasury". It is a little unfortunate that the Financial Secretary to the Treasury seems in this operation to have been down-graded. The Chief Secretary has occupied a position on the Treasury Bench for a longer period than has the Financial Secretary.

When the position of Chief Secretary to the Treasury was created by the then Prime Minister, Mr. Harold Macmillan, the occupant was a Cabinet Minister. His duties were related to keeping the pressing demands of Departments off the back of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. His existence in those circumstances was justified. It seems to me that by retaining the office but changing the duties of the Minister concerned the right hon. Gentleman is playing the part in Government once played by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury. Therefore, before the discussion on the Clause ends we should have some enlightenment from the Government as to what is the exact rôle of the Chief Secretary.

The First Schedule, containing an omnibus number of single payments of £8,500 a year to a large number of Ministers, is quite wrong. It confers upon the Prime Minister a patronage. This is an operation which Walpole would have enjoyed. One of the sad things as the years pass is seeing the growing patronage directly in possession of the Prime Minister. This is a negation of Parliament itself. In the end it cannot lead to good government. It must lead to the negation of good government—bad government. On that pleading, my right hon. and learned Friend was right to complain that this rather fluid flexible pattern putting, if you like, a Minister of State who may for a period of time be discharging nebulous duties on level terms with the Chancellor of the Exchequer at £8,500 a year, is wrong.

I repeat what I said on Second Reading. One of the most deplorable things about this Administration is the elaboration of posts. There are so many Ministers of State. There are now four Ministers of State in one Department where formerly there were three. There are three Ministers of State in another Department where formerly there were two. This process goes on and on. If it is allowed to continue, we may reach the time when a new Parliament will be elected and all the Members will be members of the Government and the Prime Minister's duty will be to nominate those who are to serve as private Members.

This is the beginning of a most dangerous operation. I should like to see the position regularised. I would much rather that the vain boasts made by the Prime Minister during the election campaign, that he would streamline the Government had resulted not in a greater number of cooks—[An HON. MEMBER: "Crooks?"]

On a point of order. Dr. King, there are two questions I wish to ask you. The first is whether all these references to the number of Departments are relevant to the Amendment. The second is whether the use of the word "crooks" is in order.

If I may take the second point first, I did not hear the word "crooks". My attention was otherwise directed. If the word was used, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will withdraw it.

I used the word "cooks".

The hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Sir R. Cary) used the word "cooks". His hon. Friend on the Front Bench below the Gangway altered that to "crooks". I wonder whether that is an intervention which is acceptable.

Further to that point of order. My hon. Friend below the Gangway has made the remark and he was rather surprised that he had misheard what my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Sir R. Cary) had said. There is no doubt that my hon. Friend the Member for Withington did not say "crooks".

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman is attempting to associate himself with the word which I have asked should be withdrawn. I hope that, if an hon. Member did use the word "crooks", and if it was not the hon. Member who was speaking but was some other hon. Member, he will withdraw it.

I think that there is some misunderstanding here. I am slightly deaf in my right ear, because of troubles during the war. I made a mistake. I thought that my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Sir R. Cary) used the word which you deplore, Dr. King. I was so surprised that I mentioned it immediately, because it seemed to be so appropriate to what he was saying.

On the other hand, if I misheard my hon. Friend and used the word which the Chair deplores in mishearing my hon. Friend, I withdraw the word which I misheard my hon. Friend say.

The withdrawal is quite complete and the original complaint against the, hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Sir R. Cary) certainly does not exist.

I had in mind such an old saying that I need hardly elaborate. I used the single word "cooks" having in mind the expression, "Too many cooks spoil the broth". I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Will am Yates)—

Order. I did not deal with the first point of order raised by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. The debate so far has been quite germane to the Amendment and in order.

It is on the First Schedule that my complaint rests, stipulating salaries of £8,500 a year spread over a vast number of Ministers and Departments, with the decision to alter the figure resting solely with the Prime Minister. I was going on to say, as I said on Second Reading, that I would have much preferred a more streamlined operation consisting of Ministers and Deputy Ministers, on the basis that the Parliamentary Secretary is a rather unsatisfactory position, in any case. Ministers who assist the main Minister, the Secretary of State, could, as Deputy Ministers, discharge that function without the elaboration of titles or descriptions now applying to people on the Treasury Bench.

I said at the time that I would like the two simple straight payments, namely, £12,000 for a Minister of the Crown and £6,000 for a Deputy Minister. I bitterly regret that Parliamentary life and the structure of Government should be complicated by the type of Schedules which are attached to the Bill.

I have listened very carefully to the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) and to the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Sir R. Cary). Before coming to the Amendments, may I make it absolutely clear that the Bill deals merely with the fixing of salaries? The number of Departments was dealt with in another Bill which passed through Parliament and was fully debated at the time. There is no power in the Bill to alter that structure. All we are doing here is following on the Report which was made as to what the level of salaries should be, the Prime Minister's statement as to the extent to which that Report had been accepted, namely, half the increases proposed in the Report, and the Second Reading of the Bill which went through without a Division, giving general support to that attitude.

How far was that right exercised?

There were three different rates of salary given to Ministers of State—£3,750, £4,500 and £5,000. So far as I am aware, speaking offhand, I do not think the figure of £5,000 was exceeded, and it is on that figure of £5,000 that the new figure is based in accordance with the formula for dealing with the increases recommended in the Lawrence Report. However, it is right to say that this flexibility did exist. It has served a useful purpose, and it continues to do so.

I fully understand the attitude of the House this morning. I accept it. Had I been sitting in the place to which I had become accustomed for a number of years—and I am sure that it will be a long time before I have the pleasure of returning to it—I would have felt equally entitled to make speeches which are more useful to the House, being more full of go and determination than the present Opposition have lately shown.

Nevertheless, I hope that hon. Members will realise that this is a new piece of legislation. We do not want to trouble the House with legislation too often. Legislation has to provide for quite a long-term situation. Therefore, this flexibility which applies to all Governments should be continued and, as hon. Members opposite know, the previous limit of £5,000 was introduced under the Ministers of the Crown Act, 1964. Therefore so far as Ministers of State are concerned, there is no change in the flexibility, and I think that the Committee will agree, once it has given the matter a little more serious consideration, that it is right that that flexibility should be continued. I certainly agree with regard to other offices which have been referred to. That flexibility was not there before, but it is right that it should be there.

For example, reference has been made to the office of Chief Secretary. I hope hon. Members will not mind my referring to it as an office. It does not matter who happens to occupy the office for the time being. Under the previous Administration there was no salary attaching to the office of Chief Secretary and therefore anybody holding that office who had to be remunerated had to have another office to go with it. It was, in fact, the office of Paymaster-General to which the salary was attached. Therefore, one had the unreal situation in which duties were carried out for no remuneration and a sinecure was paid for. We add the two together and we get a given amount of duties and a given amount of remuneration. There is no need to continue that state of affairs. It was merely an expedient which had to be adopted. It was not thought worth while introducing legislation to deal with it, but now that we are having new legislation we think it is right to put the matter in order.

I have been asked about the responsibilities of my office, but the hon. Gentleman has made a mistake in assuming that there is any change in the responsibilities and duties attaching to the office of Chief Secretary. I am now talking about duties and responsibilities. I hope, therefore, that the Committee will feel that it is right that the flexibility which was useful before should be continued. The House has already accepted the fact that a £5,000 limit should be imposed, with the exercise of this discretion, and it would be in the interests of all of us that this flexibility should be continued.

I should like to be quite clear about this. Is the hon. Gentleman saying that the duties of a Minister outside the Cabinet are exactly the same as if he were a member of the Cabinet? Is not the hon. Gentleman doing the work of the Financial Secretary to the Treasury?

I am trying to be helpful to the hon. Gentleman so long as you will allow this discussion to continue, Dr. King. My pleasure is to help hon. Members on both sides of the Committee, whether or not the matter is directly relevant to the Amendment under discussion. As the hon. Gentleman has asked me this question, may I repeat that I carefully used the word "responsibilities". I thought the question that he asked related to responsibilities and duties. Whether one is a member of the Cabinet or not has nothing to do with responsibilities. It is not for me to say precisely what any predecessor of mine in this important office had to do from time to time.

I have not found the remarks of the Chief Secretary very helpful. I do not intend to be provoked by him on the subject of the duties of the Opposition, how effective we are, and so on. With regard to the rôle of the Chief Secretary and Paymaster-General, I was responsible at the time and I thought that it was a good thing that the Chief Secretary should also hold the office of Paymaster-General because he had the control of expenditure.

I do not agree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton), who referred to the Minister of State as a "twilight creature". He was Minister of State for some time and he was certainly not a twilight creature. There has been a tremendous inflation. I was "the" Minister of State as recently as 1951. Since then more and more have arrived. Here we are on a point of principle. I raised the question on the Second Reading of what was then called the Machinery of Government Bill. We also raised it on the Second Reading of this Bill.

Whatever may have been the form in the past, I think that it is completely unsatisfactory that it should be within the discretion of the Prime Minister of the day to attach a rate of salary to an individual. It ought to be attached to the office, and I think that the principle under which £3,000 was paid to the Minister of State and £5,000 to the Minister in charge of the Department, whether in the Cabinet or not, is right. That should be the principle today. I do not like the idea of the sliding scale, or of the Prime Minister being able to vary the amount at his discretion. I do not believe that it was exercised before. In any case, I think it is undesirable and there is no defence of it.

Because this is a point of principle, I wish to test the view of the Committee on it and I shall ask my hon. Friends to divide.

So that there is no reason for conflict on the facts, may I read out the different levels of salary payable to Ministers of State under the right hon. and learned Gentleman's Administration? The figures are £3,750, £4,500 and £5,000.

So far as I remember, I do not think that when I was a Minister there was ever any variation at all. I believe that in my time as a Minister the position was quite clear—the £3,000 level or the £5,000 level. Whatever has happened in the past, it is a matter of principle and it is right that we should test the opinion of the Committee about it.

I do not wish to detain the Committee, but I should like to say that one is grateful for the explanation. The Chief Secretary has told me several things that I did not know when I was a Minister of State.

However, I must say that the hon. Gentleman's defence of the provisions of the Bill is most unsatisfactory. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Wirral (Mr. Selwyn Lloyd) has pointed out, when we are embarking on an exercise of the kind that we are embarking upon we ought to try to get the thing right, even though we were satisfied in the past. Surely it is a sound principle that it should be Parliament and not the Prime Minister who controls these matters.

As there seems to be no intention whatever of the Government acceding to that view, I shall not withdraw the Amendment. I had been prepared to withdraw it if the Government had said that they would consider the matter further. I hope that the Committee will support me.

I think that another word ought to be said about the absence of the Prime Minister. I am well aware that it is part of the small change of Parliamentary persiflage to demand, "Where is the Minister? Why is he not here?" and so on. I am also aware that a Prime Minister is, rather more than other Ministers, entitled to suppose that the House of Commons will take it for granted that he has many other things to do. But this is a rather special case.

I have not yet understood whether it is known how often the power now asked for for varying the salaries of Minister of State was exercised or in what circumstances. I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for the Wirral (Mr. Selwyn Lloyd) that it should not happen in future even if it has been happening in the past. All we have been assured of is that it has been useful in the past. We ought to know how and when and in what circumstances it was used before we can attach any importance to so vague a precedent.

There is a second reason why there is a rather special justification to expect the presence of the Prime Minister here today. This is that when the earlier Measure, the Ministers of the Crown Act, which changed its name—it was called the Machinery of Government Bill in this House—went through it will be well remembered that the need for a particular number of Ministers, and particularly the need for and the nature of Ministers of State, was defended by almost if not quite all the speakers from the other side, including the Law Officers, very specifically and plainly upon the assertion that it must be what the Prime Minister wants, that the number and nature of Ministers and particularly of Ministers of State was to be entirely on the ipse dixit of the Prime Minister. That was going further than had ever been gone before in that direction, and it was that which landed us with the number of Ministers and of Ministers of State that we have now and with the indefinition, if there is such a word, of Minister of State.

The whole thing is a request for additional powers or an increased strengthening of existing powers for the Prime Minister himself as such. In these circumstances it seems to me that although my hon. and right hon. Friends were perfectly entitled to speak as they did, amusingly and without that solemnity and seriousness with which matters of principle are very often treated, yet the absence of the Prime Minister on this occasion is more than a matter for persiflage and would in itself be quite a sufficient reason for a token vote in favour of the Amendment.

I should like to call the attention of the Committee to the paucity of hon. Members of the Tory Party here today. Over 30 per cent. of the Liberal Party are here and,

I hope that the hon. Member will link his defence of the Liberal Party with the Amendment which we are discussing.

I beg to move Amendment No. 18, in page 2, line 24, to leave out paragraph (a).

I think that it will be for the convenience of the Committee to take the Amendment No. 4 at the same time, that is to say, in line 28, to leave out paragraph (c).

I am much obliged, Dr. King.

First, I should like to say how delighted I am to watch the first workings of the new coalition. Undoubtedly, we are now seeing a political realignment which, I trust, will be for the benefit of the country. Incidentally, I disagree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton), who commented on the absence of the Liberal Party at the beginning of this debate. I thought that it was modesty on the part of Liberal Members, because they, forecasting the coalition which was about to take place, probably expected to get one or two of the offices which are so constantly being offered.

Order. This extraneous topic was brought into the debate on the previous Amendment. If the hon. Gentleman will now speak to his Amendment, I shall be grateful.

I shall do my best, Dr. King.

In moving the Amendment to remove the Opposition Chief Whip from the list of those about to be remunerated, I must say that I bear no ill will to the Opposition Chief Whip, for whom I have the greatest respect and affection. Indeed, I am emboldened to propose the Amendment only because I realise that it will be just a short time before it will have the effect of depriving an hon. Member opposite of remuneration which, in my view, is wholly undeserved.

There is no office known to the constitution as Opposition Chief Whip, and it is quite unjustified that one such should be created. The idea of remuneration for office arose simply from the fact that whoever held a Government office had officially to give up all outside remuneration of any kind, and he was, therefore, given moderately good remuneration in this House. This reason still applies. The Opposition Chief Whip, on the other hand, is not debarred from obtaining outside remuneration. He may be too busy to do so, but there is no official bar to his doing it, and an Opposition Chief Whip is perfectly entitled to obtain outside remuneration in other ways. Therefore, there is no need for the State to remunerate him. Moreover, as I have said, our own Chief Whip will not for very long be deprived of salary.

En passant, I am waiting with some interest to know what disease will be attributed to the man who has beaten the Foreign Secretary for the second time. I wonder whether a medical dictionary has been provided to the Prime Minister for this occasion and for similar future occasions when Conservative Members are returned to the House.

The second Amendment refers to the Opposition Chief Whip in the other place. If there is no justification for the Opposition Chief Whip receiving a salary in the Commons, there is far less for this occurring in another place. After all, the Opposition Chief Whip in the other place has nothing to do. His Peers are independent types and, in fact, the duties of the Opposition Chief Whip in the other place are very nearly nonexistent. They almost amount to circulating a document daily telling noble Lords what the business of the House is. Therefore, as I say, if there is little justification for the remuneration of the Opposition Chief Whip here, there is far less for doing the same in another place.

A little later, I hope to refer to another body of persons who are to receive wholly undeserved remuneration under this Bill, that is, the Assistant Whips—again, an office unknown to the Constitution.

This creation of vast numbers of offices has already been mentioned on the previous Amendment. I think that it was the Chief Secretary to the Treasury who offered as one excuse for lumping all this stuff together that the Government did not want to waste too much of the time of the House with legislation. Of course, they do not. As they have all these people in office, they cannot man Standing Committees properly, and, if they have to take all legislation on the Floor of the House, they cannot get it through. Naturally, therefore, they do not want to trouble the House with legislation. But the fault there lies with the Government. As my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Sir R. Cary) said, only the late Sir Robert Walpole could really have enjoyed this spectacle of the proliferation of offices. The amount of patronage is staggering, and, in my view, it is an unedifying spectacle to see so many trotters getting into the public trough. It is time for the House of Commons to make a protest against this business of bribing practically everyone to support a peculiarly bad Administration.

12 noon.

I do not think that we shall yet suffer the humiliation, of office being offered to hon. Members on these benches to keep them quiet, but already nearly half the party opposite are in office of one kind and another, and paid office at that, and I do not doubt that this will be extended by degrees as the Government situation gets more and more difficult. It is for that reason that we wish to be careful about what we are doing now. One of my hon. Friends said that he hoped that the Chief Secretary knew what was in the Prime Minister's mind about this. I am sure he does. What is in the Prime Minister's mind is as clear as daylight. What the right hon. Gentleman wants is a good, subservient, disciplined Reichstag which will do what it is told from time to time. That is what we shall get.

It could be argued that paying the Opposition Chief Whip to try to wreck proceedings from time to time is a step in favour of the independence of the House, and that might be true. On the other hand, it is a wholly unconstitutional step, and it is creating an office which is unnecessary and undesirable. Frankly, I do not approve of paying the Leader of the Opposition. It seems pure nonsense to pay somebody merely to stop government going on. It is the plain duty of all good citizens to endeavour to check legislation, and it should be a pleasure to do it for very little. I have never approved of paying the Leader of the Opposition, and I approve still less of paying the Chief Whip of the Opposition. The office of Leader of the Opposition was not recognised by the constitution at the time, and I think that the whole idea of paying him was genuinely wrong. However, I suppose it is now too late to reverse it. At least, we can refrain from extending these malpractices.

If we are to pay the Opposition Chief Whip, where in the end shall we stop? Why not pay those immediately junior to him who correspond to the Officers of the Household on the Government side? Why should we not remunerate the whole shadow Cabinet, who presumably have opposite functions to those on the Government side? All of this seems to be a step forward on a very dangerous and slippery path, and I hope that the Government will be able to check it here. Although in a year or two they will need this remuneration in both Houses for some faithful followers, I hope they will be able to exorcise these two particular offices from the Bill.

There was something in the speech by the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. Wise) that appeals to me. I do not know whether that will persuade him to withdraw the Amendment or not, but I think that his arguments might be carried a little further. I look upon the Opposition Chief Whip as a natural political enemy. Indeed, I am not sure that I do not regard all Whips as in that category, although I realise that they have their functions to perform.

The hon. Member drew attention to a point which should be taken into consideration. He said that there is nothing to prevent the Opposition Chief Whip taking directorships. If the Opposition Chief Whip follows the precedent that has been set by the ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer we may have the curious situation of the holder of that office operating in the Dunlop Rubber Company, on the banking front, on the insurance front and, who knows, next week on the whisky and beer front. He would be able legitimately to argue that he was only following the precedent set by other distinguished members of the Opposition Front Bench.

There is one difference. The Opposition Chief Whip is not remunerated, because he holds no office under the constitution. The Government Chief Whip holds an office, and he is therefore quite rightly paid, and I take no exception to that. But I cannot see any reason whatever why the Opposition Chief Whip should not hold directorships. He is not in a position to influence Government policy.

I appreciate that, but the most important point made by the hon. Member was that the Opposition Chief Whip could follow the example of nearly all the array of ex-Ministers who have obtained very lucrative appointments in the City. If the Opposition Chief Whip reads the speech by the hon. Gentleman, it will be an incitement. The Opposition Chief Whip may say to himself "The ex-Minister of Defence has gone to a company which has contracts with the Ministry that he previously held". There is also the ex-Foreign Secretary. There are many others who are joining boards and obtaining very large sums of money—though I do not know exactly what efficiency they bring to those organisations.

I do not know whether it is within the constitutional possibilities that it might be said to the Opposition Chief Whip that it is absolutely essential that he does not follow the example of those who have given him such a distinguished lead. There is a lot to be said against ex-Ministers going from positions of responsibility and becoming directors of boards in which their specialist knowledge is put at the disposal of private interests. If that were the only point in the Amendment, I should look upon it rather temptingly.

The hon. Member referred to the Leader of the Opposition. The Leader of the Opposition is one of the largest and wealthiest landowners in Scotland with his 69,000 acres and more, and it is wrong to give him an extra salary—maybe on the grounds of efficiency, though there is doubt about that. Surely there would not be discussions in the councils of the Conservative Party as to the successor if there were 100 per cent. approval that the present Leader of the Opposition—

Order. The hon. Gentleman is going a little wide of the Amendment. We are discussing whether the Chief Opposition Whip in this House and the Chief Opposition Whip in another place shall be paid.

I appreciate that. I was only using that as an illustration, but perhaps I followed it too far.

I follow the hon. Gentleman's argument. Does he think it in order that the Prime Minister, when he resigned from the office of the President of the Board of Trade some years ago, should immediately have become consultant to a timber firm?

I am not responsible for everything that everyone on the Front Bench does. I am not consulted on these occasions. I think, however, that that timber firm will have received very useful and valuable advice from my right hon. Friend.

However, if the hon. Member for Rugby is arguing that the Opposition Chief Whip is not giving value for his money at the present time, there is a case for it. I understand that the Opposition Chief Whip has the job of bringing in people to vote against the Government. In the last Division he managed to get only 35 sheep into the pen. If the Opposition Chief Whip were being paid by results I would be justified, if I were in order, in moving a reduction of his salary already.

What is the performance of the Opposition Chief Whip since the election? We had understood that this was to be an Opposition that would make things very difficult for the Government. I have been surprised. I thought that we would scrape through by majorities of two or three. I looked with some anxiety at which side of the table the Government Whip was standing when the figures were reported. But, in fact, we have had tremendous majorities in the context of the present political situation.

Here, therefore, is an Opposition Chief Whip who is clearly not getting paid by result. I hope that the hon. Member for Rugby will press the Amendment to a Division so that we can see exactly to what extent the Opposition Chief Whip is successful this time.

I hope that it will not be necessary for the Amendment to be pressed to a Division. I hope very much that the Government will accept it. The Government should be concerned with saving public money and this is one way in which they can do it. Another way, of course, would be to stop forthwith the salary of the Foreign Secretary. I hope that that will be done; but I want to address myself strictly to the Amendment.

The Amendment should be accepted by the Government both on the ground of public economy and on constitutional grounds. The ground of public economy is obvious and I want to say something about the constitutional aspect. I am very glad, Dr. King, that you saw fit to call me after the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) because he and I at least hold in common the fact that neither of us has always been in full harmony with the views held by our respective Whips. Indeed, in the last Parliament, I was for more than a year without the benefit of the Whip. The view that the hon. Member and I take of Whips in general is that they are more or less necessary evils.

This does not, however, stop the Whips from being very charming people and I yield to no one in my admiration, affection and regard for the present holder of the appointment of Opposition Chief Whip. But now that Parliamentary salaries have been raised to a reasonable level, to put it mildly, surely it is quite unnecessary to remunerate the Opposition Chief Whip.

On constitutional grounds, I think it regrettable that any Opposition Whip should be placed in the pay of the State. There is too great a tendency—certainly there is too great an appearance of it—for Parliament to become a cosy colloquy between the two Front Benches. For that reason, I warmly support the Amendment and I hope that the Government, on grounds both of constitutional propriety and public economy, will accept it.

I want to take up the remarks made by the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes). We are always getting arguments about remuneration of hon. Members and whether the Opposition Chief Whip should be remunerated by the State or at liberty to accept office outside the public service. The hon. Member made the usual "cracks" about my right hon. Friend the Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling) because of the wonderful directorships my right hon. Friend has recently been given. I know that my right hon. Friend will serve these companies well and bring great renown to them.

I can understand the jealousy on the Government benches on this matter. No one is likely to offer the present Chancellor of the Exchequer any employment at all when he leaves office. By the time he has destroyed the country's economy, which I confidently expect him to do in the next six months, no one will want him, even on the Government side.

I object to contentious Measures of this type being discussed on a Friday. I have been a frequent attender of the House of Commons on a Friday and the less Government business done on that day the better pleased I am. It is quite wrong that a Bill of this nature, with extremely contentious Clauses, should be discussed on a Friday, and when there are only 140 hon. Members present. I hope that, if the Committee stage is not concluded today, we shall not see it discussed again on a Friday, but on an earlier day in the week.

The proposal to pay the Opposition Chief Whip has not been recommended by any outside body. No doubt hon. Members have studied the Lawrence Report with care. It contained no recommendation about remuneration of the Opposition Chief Whip, of the Leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords or of the Opposition Chief Whip in another place. The question was held by Sir Geoffrey Lawrence to be outside his terms of reference. He mentioned the argument for and against the proposal, but did not make any recommendations.

I hope that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury will tell us whether there have been discussions between the Government and the Opposition on this and any attempt to find agreement regarding remuneration of the Opposition Chief Whip. It is absolutely wrong that this sort of proposal should be made unless there is complete agreement about it between both sides.

This sort of policy has been followed before. During the post-war Labour Government, there were allegations of "gerrymandering" with constituencies. I think that the late Lord Dalton was mixed up in criticism that certain constituencies were being created which gave bias to the Government of the day and damaged the chances of the Opposition winning the subsequent General Election. For example, the university seats were ruled out. However, I shall not follow that line too far, otherwise I shall get out of order. But I quote it as an example of the great damage that can be caused to public life and to Parliament if there is no agreement between the Government and the Opposition on these matters.

I hope that the Chief Secretary will at least say that the matter will be considered and that further stages of the Bill will take place on a day other than Friday so that a greater number of hon. Members are present. If he will give an undertaking of that nature it might be possible to defer a final decision on this Amendment. It is important that an attempt should be made to secure agreement and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will undertake that it will be made.

The hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) has done us a service by making clear precisely what is the basis of the Clause. He related the suggested arrangements to the present position, and it is clear that the Bill and the Ministers of the Crown Act—originally the Machinery of Government Bill—have been designed to deal with the situation as it now is. The hon. Gentleman said that he thought that it was rather strange that the present Leader of the Opposition should be paid a salary when he thought that there was no material need for it.

However, the Government are endeavouring to make long-term constitutional arrangements to deal with what is essentially a temporary situation. The Ministers of the Crown Act was designed to allow the employment of a large number of Ministers in a situation in which the Government required the support of all its supporters. The Amendment dealing with variable salaries for certain members of the Government was also clearly designed to introduce some patronage and to emphasise the seniority of some members of the Government.

The payment of a salary to the Opposition Chief Whip is also designed as a temporary expedient. We know that the Government are acutely dependent on the co-operation of the Opposition for getting through their legislation. I do not in any sense mean that the Government are trying to buy over the Opposition by paying the Chief Whip a salary, for that would be ludicrous, but, certainly, the Opposition Chief Whip will have to spend more time in the normal channels of communication between the two sides of the House because of the Government's small majority. The Government have clearly thought it right that, if there is to be this emphasis on channels of communication and far more discussion than usual on the business coming before Parliament, that should be paid for and those services recognised.

But, here again, this is being done because of a temporary situation and it is very dangerous that we should make provisions which will last a long time but which are meant to deal with a situation which is only temporary. The Government will accept that on Second Reading we gave the Bill a fair trial, as we did the Ministers of the Crown Act on Second Reading. We accepted that it would be unfair to deprive the Government, which had been elected by the people, of the tools which they wanted to do the job, but we bitterly resented the fact that these arrangements would last for a long time although the situation was temporary.

However, we are now faced with an entirely new situation and we have the right bitterly to resent the fact that we are having these provisions pushed on to us when, in a very short time, we may be the Government and have to work these proposals in new circumstances. No one can deny that it is more than likely that we will have another General Election in a very short time and, as things are looking, it is more than likely that the Conservative Party will soon be in power again.

For that reason, we have to disregard the facilities and co-operation which we were prepared to give the Government when they wanted these tools to do the job which they wanted to do. It is completely ridiculous that we should now be asked to make these arrangements which will be with us for a very long time, but which are to meet an extremely temporary situation. For that reason, I hope that the Amendment will be accepted.

I hope that the Chief Secretary will accept the suggestion of my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Sir Rolf Dudley Williams) and will undertake to think about this matter again between now and Report. The increased remuneration of Members has rather altered the position. I do not want to enter this argument, but I would be lacking in my duty if I did not remind the Committee of what my right hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Sir M. Redmayne) said during the Committee stage of another Measure:

"… the payment of the Opposition Chief Whip is relevant to what I am saying. I admit that my opposite number in the last Parliament thoroughly deserved it".

I think that we would all feel that, if it was a question of personal deserts, the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House certainly deserved it.

"I suspect that I would have done in this Parliament and I am sure that my successor would have done, also. I am still not sure, however, that it is other than what my right hon. Friend the Member for Carlton (Sir K. Pickthorn) described as an absurdity, because one just does not know where to stop."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th December, 1964; Vol. 703, c. 1777.]

My right hon. Friend formed the view—and no one is better qualified to express a view on this subect—that this was not a very desirable thing to do. That being the feeling of the Opposition of the day, it is a matter on which the Government might have further thoughts.

I always respond to a request to give a matter further thought and I could hold out some hopes of a revision of attitude if it were not for the fact that we have already given the matter considerable thought and that the arguments put forward have been the very arguments particularly considered. Had any hon. or right hon. Gentleman put forward any new argument, that would have been full justification for reserving final judgment, but I am sorry to say that I see no reason for that at this stage.

The cautious attitude which the right hon. and learned Member for Wirral (Mr. Selwyn Lloyd) now applies to the Amendment was not reflected in any of the speeches on Second Reading, not even his own. I thought that the attitude of my right hon. Friend the Lord President of the Council on Second Reading commended itself to the whole House at the time, and it was more in keeping with the 700th anniversary of Parliament than some parts of the speech of the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. Wise). I regard this as a Parliamentary and not a party matter. I regard it as an important question when one considers how to get Parliament, one of our most precious institutions, to function as near perfectly and as economically in time as possible—usefully and economically.

On Second Reading, my right hon. Friend said that while this was not part of the Lawrence Committee's recommendation—it could not be, because it was outside the Committee's terms of reference, although it referred to all the arguments in favour of what the Government are now doing, which is near as a committee can go without going outside its remit—he said:

"This is not part of the Lawrence recommendations, but I have always held the view that Opposition Leaders and Chief Whips in both Houses render a great service to Parliament as well as to their parties. They provide a direct service to Parliament."

My right hon. Friend went on to describe the very long time—from half-past nine until the House rose every day—during which certainly the Government Chief Whip, but also the Opposition Chief Whip, had to perform duties and he added:

"It is perhaps ironical, but it is nevertheless right, that those of us who, like my right hon. Friend in another place—the noble Lord—and myself, did work without a salary for all those years, should now recommend a salary for our successors although they are members of another party."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 18th December, 1964; Vol. 704, c. 733.]

That is the sort of spirit which ought to imbue this discussion, not the kind of spirit which the hon. Member for Rugby attempted to introduce when he referred to the Reichstag and to patronage. With deference to the hon. Member, how the allegation of Reichstag or patronage can be justified, when the Government of the day are proposing that the chief executive officer of the Opposition, the most important part of the machine for bringing down the Government, should be paid, passes my imagination.

It occurred to us that it might conceivably be thought to embarrass the Opposition Chief Whip in the most minor degree if he thought that his salary was being paid by a Parliament in which he was not a member of the majority side, and that the Government of the day, therefore, through the exercise of their majority in the House of Commons, could increase or reduce the salary of the Opposition Chief Whip if they were annoyed or—as was the case today, having regard to the number of Opposition Members voting against the Government in the Division—gratified with him. To avoid that we are specially providing that Parliament shall not vote the salary of the Opposition Chief Whip, but that it should be a charge on the Consolidated Fund. So there is nothing that the Government can do to vent their spite on the Opposition Chief Whip.

There is no question of spite. We know that Parliament has to function. We know that it is a vital and important institution, and we want it to function well. We want the Opposition to function well. We cannot call upon a man to devote the whole of his working hours to an institution, day after day, and deny him a reasonable livelihood. It is for that reason that we say that we need the best qualified man on the Opposition side, as well as the best man on the Government side, to fill the position of Chief Whip. To achieve that we want to avoid putting anyone into a situation in which there is a conflict between what he wants to do and what he can do—between serving this Parliament efficiently and earning an adequate livelihood to support his wife and family.

There is no reason why the Amendment should be pressed; indeed, as the hon. Member for Rugby said, I hope that the question will not be put to the vote. There are good reasons for its not being voted upon. I do not want to argue upon the basis of the number of Members who happen to be here at any particular time. I do not regard this as a contentious matter. The hon. Member for Exeter (Sir Rolf Dudley Williams), who has sent me a courteous note of apology because he is not able to be here to listen to my speech, suggested that this Bill should not be taken on a Friday. This is not a party matter; it is a Parliamentary matter, and I hope that the right hon. and learned Member for Wirral will accept it in that way.

The right hon. and learned Member showed in his previous attitude that he was not affected by party loyalty in the slightest. He took the whole of his 35 right hon. and hon. Friends into the Lobby against the implementation of a principle that had been decided upon and agreed during the time that he was a member of the Cabinet. Notwithstanding that he was a member of the Government who considered and approved of that principle, he opposed it today and took all his 35 supporters into the Lobby with him. That is the sort of spirit that we commend, and I hope that we shall continue in the same spirit. This is not a party issue; it is a Parliamentary issue.

12.30 p.m.

In all the circumstances, I hope that the hon. Member for Rugby will agree to withdraw his Amendment. The point made about economy was well made. It falls on sympathetic ears. Nobody could be more conscious of the need for economy than a person who holds the office of Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Secondly, I entirely agree with the hon. Member for Rugby—and I believe that the right hon. and learned Gentleman took the same view—that if we go as far as paying a salary to the Opposition Chief Whip, it is essential to know where to stop. I agree that that is always the difficulty. As a representative of the Treasury I can say that this point is always in our mind. If we agree to a certain request there is a tendency to regard it as a precedent, and we then have to consider whether we should not agree to a similar request just next door. In those circumstances, I want to make it clear—and I am grateful for having the opportunity to do so—that this is as far as the Government think the House should go.

On more than one occasion the hon. Gentleman has used the word "request". There has been no request for this.

I would not have referred to the Friday point or the "minority of 35" point, which have been raised by several speakers, if they had not been remarked upon by the Chief Secretary. It is not for spokesmen of the Opposition to say what is a party issue, and it is not for a Government, who depend upon a majority of three, to put it forward. The obverse of the principle that a majority of one is enough is that if there is a minority it does not matter how small it is; it is enough.

That brings me to the Friday point. Hon. and right hon. Gentlemen should face the realities of the life we lead here. Everybody knows that unless the occasion is of very great importance we cannot get many hon. Members here on a Friday. That is why Governments should be more careful than this one has been so far not to take too much important business on Fridays. Whether or not we agree that the Amendment is business of permanent and constitutional importance, that the Bill as a whole is cannot be debated.

I entirely agree with the implication of the argument advanced by the Chief Secretary. There are only two arguments on political questions; one is the argument of the "thin end of the wedge" and the other is the argument about the "ladder of progress". When the Leader of the Opposition was first paid there were all sorts of asseverations that we need not worry about the thin end of the wedge, and that the wedge would not go any further. Now the wedge is going a little further, and we are being asked to agree to it by somebody, incidentally, who took it upon himself to say what is and what is not a party issue, and to tell us that this is what is called a question of Parliament. I thought for a moment that he was going to quote from Simon de Montfort to that effect, but he had evidently lost that reference.

This is a Parliamentary matter, in a sense which not all Parliamentary business is, and we might remember—I have not looked this up, but I am sure that somebody will correct me if I am wrong—that the suggestion for the payment of the Leader of the Opposition came from the then Prime Minister. Was there any consultation of the Opposition before this Danaian gift was pressed upon them by the decision of the Government? We ought to know the answer to that On the face of it there is a sort of absurdity about the payment of the Leader of the Opposition. The title itself was originally a joke. It describes the holder of an office which is not part of the Constitution, and there is something slightly but plainly absurd about paying him. It seems to increase the absurdity a great deal if we go on to pay his Chief Whip, and I hope that the Committee will refuse to do so.

I cannot fully respond to what the right hon. Member for Carlton (Sir K. Pickthorn) has asked me, because I cannot state the full extent of any discussions that might have taken place. The right hon. and learned Member for Wirral (Mr. Selwyn Lloyd) may be able to supplement my information, but as far as I am concerned no discussions took place relating to the salaries that we are now considering. Even if they did, the Government are responsible for what is done. All I am saying is that the arrangement which was understood to have been arrived at in the last Parliament was that regard would be had to the conclusions of the Lawrence Committee.

That Committee did not recommend precisely what we are now proposing. It could not so recommend. But it did draw our attention to the argument in favour of what we are now proposing. The Government accept responsibility for what they are proposing to the Committee. They take the view that it is right and proper, and that, in order that Parliament should function thoroughly well, these two salaries should be paid. I hope that this view will commend itself to the Committee.

May I ask the hon. Gentleman, in view of what he has just said, whether he would have thought it right and proper for Mr. Baldwin to enforce payment upon Mr. Attlee without having consulted the Opposition?

I do not find that arising directly out of this Amendment.

I beg to move Amendment No. 5, in page 4, line 37, after "Fund", to insert "in that year".

This is purely a clarifying Amendment to make it clear that the contributions have not to be made in each year in respect of a longer period that that year alone. As it was originally drafted, it might have been slightly less clear. I hope that the Committee will accept that this Amendment improves the Clause arid makes it absolutely free from dubiety.

I beg to move Amendment No. 6, in page 5, line 36, to leave out from "shall" to end of line 38 and to insert:

"not be payable in respect of any period during which he is again a Member of the House of Commons or is a candidate for election thereto; and for the purposes of this subsection a person who ceases to be a Member in consequence of the dissolution of Parliament shall be treated as a candidate for election unless and until he gives notice In writing to the Trustees that he is not seeking re-election".

This Amendment rises out of the fact that everybody ceases to be a Member of Parliament at a dissolution. Under subsection (1) of the Clause as it was previously drafted, any Member, aged 65 or over, who had his 10 years of reckonable service, on dissolution would automatically be entitled to an immediate pension, regardless of whether he was proposing to stand For re-election or not. He ceases to be a Member of Parliament, and if all the payments and conditions had been satisfied his pension would automatically have been due and, also automatically, the trustees of this new pension fund would have had to start paying out a pension.

He would not, however, necessarily have retired—if I may use the word in a way in which I am sure all hon. Members will understand it. He would have suffered temporary defeat, which is not unknown in the annals of candidates seeking election to Parliament. He would have suffered a temporary defeat in a particular election and it would have been in his mind to seek re- election again and in no sense to retire from the House. He would not wish to receive his pension in the sense that it was a retirement pension, and the words used in the Clause do not, of course, refer to retirement but to somebody who ceases to be a Member. Therefore, it would be a quite unnecessary burden at every dissolution to start paying all Members who had satisfied the conditions—most of whom would be standing for re-election and most of whom, presumably, would be winning their seats again—the pension which they could then claim.

The proposal of the Amendment, therefore, is merely to prevent that from happening and to suspend payment for the time being. It is provided in the Amendment, as can be seen, that "unless and until he gives notice in writing to the trustees that he is not seeking re-election" he cannot claim his pension. There is only one way of deciding whether a Member of Parliament has, in fact, retired, and that is for the ex-Member of Parliament to say so. When he has said so, having satisfied the conditions, he will be entitled to receive and will receive his pension. To pay him before he said that he had retired would place a ridiculous burden on the fund. Therefore, I hope that the Amendment will be accepted.

I do not want to be difficult. I think that this is a fair point, but is the hon. Gentleman quite certain that this Amendment will achieve the purpose which he wants? As I understand it, reading the Amendment, it would mean that one deducts from reckonable service the period that someone is a candidate for Parliament. If a Member has established his ten years, excluding from it the period when he is a candidate for Parliament, I should have thought, on the wording of this Amendment, that he is entitled to be paid a pension even if still a candidate.

In other words, the Amendment refers to reckonable service, not to when the pension should be paid. I think, though I have not considered the matter very fully, that, taking the words as they stand, this Amendment does not achieve the purpose which the hon. Gentleman wants it to achieve.

We should pursue this a little further. I can see awkward cases which might possibly arise from time to time. For instance, take the hypothetical case of a Member of this House, aged 65, let us say, who lost his seat at an election, but who was a Member of the Government party and who was appointed Foreign Secretary. He would, at this stage, presumably not draw his pension, because he would be drawing Government pay. Then he has to seek a seat in the House and that is another election and he loses that election. That circumstance can happen. It happened, indeed, just last night.

First of all, he is told by the Prime Minister that he is not wanted as Foreign Secretary any more and, in a fit of despondency, he throws in his hand and gives notice that he does not wish to seek re-election. He then draws his pension. After a few months, his ambitions return and he wishes to seek re-election.

The question I ask the Chief Secretary is this: from what moment, if he is selected as a candidate by his party, would his pension cease to be payable if there is a by-election or a General Election in which he is involved? Presumably, he would then cease to draw a pension and he would be a candidate. We take it he is defeated again. He may or may not give notice that he does not wish to seek re-election, but he may seek re-election even for the fourth time.

This is not a hypothetical case. This has happened before in the history of Parliament. Sir Arthur Griffiths Boscawen was Minister of Agriculture in the 1920s and sought re-election no fewer than four times. I can imagine this happening again, an ambitious ex-Foreign Secretary trying to get in over and over again, though the fortunes of his party are declining. He might find it very difficult to get back at a by-election. There are all sorts of points, of course, which one could pursue further. One might ask what happens to his tax assessment under P.A.Y.E. I think that this is an important point, because there might be hon. Members who are defeated and will try to get back again after a few months.

I should like to know exactly what the procedure will be about his drawing his pension and then having it stopped. Is it plain that he ceases to draw his pension if he becomes a candidate again?

I hope that I shall have permission to refer to later Clauses so that I can explain fully what the hon. Member for Twickenham (Mr. Gresham Cooke) has asked. This Clause does not deal with the complicated and entirely imaginary situation to which the hon. Member referred, but it would save discussion later if I answered the question now.

May I deal, first, with the question asked by the right hon. and learned Member for Wirral (Mr. Selwyn Lloyd). I think that the position is clear. The Clause as originally drafted referred to the suspension of the pension

"during any period during which he is again a Member of the House of Commons".

That did not deal with the period of an election, and in order to avoid the burden being put on the trustees to which I previously referred, this has been varied by the Amendment to state that the pension shall not be payable

"in respect of any period during which he is again a Member of the House of Commons or"

—this is more particularly of interest here—

"is a candidate for election thereto …"

The purpose is that a person who ceases to be a Member in consequence of the dissolution of Parliament shall be treated as a candidate unless he gives notice in writing to the trustees that he is not seeking re-election. He is, therefore, treated as a candidate whether he is standing in that General Election, supposing there has been a dissolution, or not. It may be in the Member's mind not to stand in that election for a personal reason or party reason. He may wish to postpone standing until the next General Election, or to seek a by-election in a different constituency. There may be a variety of reasons. But in his mind that ex-Member has clearly not retired from public service in the sense of being a Member of Parliament.

There is, therefore, only one criterion—and that is to say to the ex-Member, "You are entitled to a pension in respect of the other conditions. Will you please tell us whether you have retired?" If he says that he has retired, then he will get the pension. If he says that he has not retired, then the pension will not be paid.

To avoid putting the same question to every hon. Member who seeks re-election during the course of a General Election, a Member is assumed not to have retired until he says so. That seems to me very sensible. It saves time and it is, I am sure, consonant with the general feeling of all Members.

There is no difficulty about the question asked by the hon. Member for Twickenham. A Member can retire, can come back to the House again, and go back again to another job, and can come back again. All those points are provided for, whether he goes in the meantime to another job which is pensionable or not. All arrangements are provided for in the subsequent Clauses. Indeed, he can leave the House, take his money, go to another job, take a pension there, and bring his money back to the House from the other job as a transfer of pension, so that it is all adequately provided for and is only a question of arithmetic. In principle there is no complication.

At what date does he cease to draw his pension if he seeks re-election? Is it nomination day, when he hands in his papers, or is it when the Writ for the election is issued?

It is nomination day.

May I pursue the drafting point which I raised? The phrase I have in mind is

"shall not be payable in respect of any period …"

In the original subsection the wording was,

"A pension … shall continue for the life of the person to whom it is payable but shall be suspended during any period during which he is again a Member …"

Instead, we have this rather curious phrase, "in respect of a period". It seems to me rather odd drafting, particularly when the Clause deals with reckonable service, and I thought that it was rather ambiguous.

I will undertake to look into the matter and consider whether there is any doubt about it. As at present advised, I feel that the Amendment serves the purpose to which I have referred.

As I said on Second Reading, I am not entirely happy about the arbitrary 10-year period. In discussion with a number of hon. Members on both sides of the Committee I asked whether they felt that there was a case for a pension for the man who served a period of two normal Parliaments. This could be a seven-year period or an eight-year period. I have a feeling that it is only because of a certain diffidence that it may affect them that some senior hon. Members have not questioned the 10-year period.

As it is unlikely to affect me for some time, I should like to ask the Chief Secretary whether he thinks there is a case for reconsidering the 10-year period and perhaps, on Third Reading, proposing a seven-year period.

I cannot hold out any hope to my hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell), much as I should like to do so, of a reconsideration of this issue—not on any ground that we are unwilling to reconsider anything but because this matter has been fully considered and reconsidered and, as was explained on Second Reading, the underlying principle is that we regard the Lawrence Committee's Report virtually as an arbitration award.

If we depart from that in any major way, we shall get into the most frightful difficulties. What the Lawrence Committee recommended was not a series of separate recommendations but a group of recommendations which hung together. If we depart from any one of them, we shall get into great difficulty and we shall cause unbalance. If we changed the 10-year period there would be completely different actuarial calculations. The figures are also in the Bill, and have received unanimous approval on Second Reading, both for contributions and for payments, and they would be completely out of balance if that change were made.

I repeat what I said on Second Reading—that there is no possibility under the Bill of any hon. Member with longer than 10 years' service being any worse off in respect of his pension expectations than he would have been if the Bill had not been introduced. There is no power in the Bill to make any such Member's expectations in the slightest degree worse. Indeed, it is thought that in most cases they will be considerably better.

The Bill sets up a new fund. The House already has a fund, as my hon. Friend knows, as he served on the fund with great distinction. It is not the purpose of the Bill or the Committee today to make any representations or any indications of any kind as to how the trustees of the other fund should regard their responsibilities in the light of the new circumstances. I can assure my hon. Friend that there is no question of any hon. Member being any worse off as a result of this Clause. The period of 10 years is part of a general recommendation. Coincidentally, it is the same period as exists in the Members' Fund, as the House knows.

I therefore hope that my hon. Friend feels satisfied that this matter has been given the most careful consideration. It is a fundamental part of the Lawrence Committee's recommendation. I hope that he will agree that the Clause should now be added to the Bill.

I am glad that the Chief Secretary made those remarks in answer to his hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell). It would be fatal at this stage to bring an ill-balance between the Members' Fund, which is the first of our funds, where the period is 10 years. On that, we have a discretionary power, but not down to seven years. I think that the contributory pensions' scheme and the Members' Fund will be run in parallel, and that it will transpire that the trustees of the Members' Fund become also the trustees for the operation of this Measure. To introduce any ill-balance between the two schemes would be a retrograde step.

1.0 p.m.

I hope that the hon. Member for West Lothian accepts that point. I fully agree with what the Chief Secretary said.

Mr. Diamond.

It is courteous of you to call me, Mr. Grant-Ferris, but I am not moving this.

I beg to move Amend-No. 8, in page 10, line 42, to leave out subsection (4) and to insert:

(4) Where any sums are paid by the Trustees under subsection (1) above in respect of any person, any contributions previously paid under section 5 of this Act by deduction from his salary shall be treated for the purpose of calculating reckonable service under section 7(5) of this Act, and for the purposes of section 11 of this Act, as not having been paid.

(5) Where any sums are received by the Trustees in respect of any person under subsection (3) above—

(a) he shall be treated as having such period of reckonable service as the Trustees may determine, being the period certified by, or calculated in accordance with tables prepared by, the Government Actuary as appropriate in relation to the sums so received;

(b) for the purposes of section 11 of this Act, the sums so received by the Trustees, so far as in the opinion of the Trustees they represent his own contributions, shall be treated as if they were contributions to the Fund paid, at the same times as the first-mentioned contributions, by deduction from his salary under section 5 of this Act.

The Amendment is related to the new Clause 11, which will be discussed shortly. It is difficult for me to describe the Amendment fully without reference to that Clause. However, it provides specifically that, for the purpose of that Clause, the hon. Members own contributions included in a transfer value should be treated as contributions to the Members' scheme and as having been paid at a time when they were in fact paid by the person concerned.

This is a somewhat technical matter but it was thought best to insert the Amendment to clarify the situation and to coincide more particularly with the new Clause. Perhaps the Committee will agree that a fuller discussion may take place when the new Clause is discussed in detail.

I beg to move Amendment No. 9, in page 11, line 12, at the beginning to insert:

(1) Any sums payable by the Trustees under this Part of this Act to or to the personal representatives of a person who has died may be paid, on production of probate, confirmation or letters of administration granted in respect of his estate by any court in the United Kingdom, to the person to whom the probate, confirmation or letters of administration were granted, or as directed by that person.

This, too, is a rather technical Amendment. Its purpose is to enable any sums clue to the estate of a deceased Northern Ireland or Scottish Member to be paid without resealing of probate. Lawyers will appreciate the purpose of this. The rules are not identical in the countries concerned, and we think that this is a perfectly safe provision. We would not wish to go too far in this matter, but we think this a reasonable extension.

I beg to move Amendment No. 10, in line 19, to leave out first "to" and to insert "in respect of".

This is a purely drafting Amendment. Probate is not granted to an estate but in respect of one. It is for that reason that we wish to insert the Amendment.

I beg to move Amendment No. 11, in line 36, to leave out "legal".

This, too, is a purely drafting Amendment. I am advised that there is no such thing as an illegal personal representative and, therefore, the word is somewhat otiose.

In stating that I have a few remarks to make about this Clause I hope that my comments will be tolerated, since they might equally well have been made when we were discussing earlier Clauses. My main point concerns subsection (4) of this Clause, which states:

"The amount by which any rate is altered under this section shall not exceed one fifth of the rate in force immediately before the passing of the Resolution or making of the order altering the rate.

That subsection would seem to put a sort of completeness on the various features of the Bill and would appear to look like, above all, a guarantee against personal suffering from inflation on the part of Ministers and hon. Members. I suppose that similar sentiments could be expressed about Clause 7.

My experience of people outside the House of Commons is that many of them are inclined to make impolite jokes about increases in hon. Members' pay. However, my impression is that far more of them are seriously disquieted by what we are now doing; in other words, by the pensionable part of the matter.

Consider just what we are doing. We are, first, putting up our salaries by a quite unique procedure, a procedure which, I make bold to say, nobody quite understands. I recall that a former Prime Minister once promised me in answer to a supplementary question that I would have the matter fully explained to me. I cannot blame him for not having given that explanation because I did not return to the subject. Had I done so I am sure that the explanation would have been provided.

Thus we are taking the first step, which most people accept—despite the few slightly impolite jokes that are made about us. Now, however, we take the second step and go a stage further. We now say that anybody who gets a reasonably safe seat and who can reasonably count on being re-elected twice—that is, and sitting for 10 years—is guaranteed that upon that happening—and we must accept that Parliamentary salaries will continue to go up if the value of the £ continues to go down—his pension will go up. We are doing this by an understandable and simple procedure, not at all the sort of procedure one must normally face when attempting to obtain additional expenditure from the Exchequer. It is a procedure which, naturally, hon. Members are tempted to facilitate—a procedure which will ensure that hon. Members' pensions will be continually going up.

We would be wise—despite this Clause, which comes after a number of other important Clauses—to do all we can to induce the Government to keep inflation down to 20 per cent. per annum, for it will be difficult under the Bill to keep our pensions precisely up in value in relation to the falls in the value of the £ if inflation is not halted.

I mention these facts at this point in our deliberations because the Clause we are discussing seems to make these matters stand out. It appears to make the factors involved in the earlier Clauses, which might otherwise not receive any objection, stand out in focus and we should be conscious of the fact that considerable numbers of the public consider that the first duty of the House of Commons is to prevent inflation.

When we pass an elaborate Bill on top of considerably increasing our salaries—a Bill which more or less guarantees hon. Members and ex-hon. Members this sort of pension; guarantees it as far as is humanly possible, certainly more so than ever before—we must ensure that we do everything in our power to reduce inflation, although I have no doubt that inflation will go on at least as fast as it has gone on since 1915.

I am most grateful to the hon. Member for Carlton (Sir K. Pickthorn) for raising a point that should be clarified; and if that impression gets abroad, as he fears it might, it is right that it should be stopped at the very start. The situation is not quite as he imagined it to be, and I am therefore grateful to him for giving me this opportunity to explain it.

I start by saying that Parliament is supreme, and if Parliament at any time—at any time—decided to introduce fresh legislation that would be a matter for Parliament. All one is deciding here is what flexibility shall be introduced into the Bill without new legislation; not without coming to the House, but without new legislation. What is provided in the Bill is, of course, absolutely essential. It is that if the fund gets out of balance it must be put back into balance. The Actuary will report whether or not it is in balance and, if it is not, it must be put back into balance.

It is not the point of inflation at all, if I may explain to the hon. Gentleman—

The hon. Gentleman means that Clause 15 is not the inflation point?

No part of the Bill is the inflation point—nor is the subsection to which he referred part of the inflation point.

Care has been taken to see, especially as we have fixed contributions and fixed benefits, that as far as can be foreseen this fund should remain in balance on these fixed monetary receipts and payments being made, but that depends on a calculation that everyone in the House recognises is not an easy one. It depends on how many Members stay as Members, and for how long, how often they cease to be Members of Parliament, and do not find their way back again and do not, therefore, complete ten years of reckon-able service.

On past experience, it appears to be the case that, on average, each Member serves for about 15 years. There is, therefore, a pretty reliable average to go on, but that pattern might change quite considerably. One does not know—it is conceivable that it could. If that pattern changed—and this has nothing at all to do with inflation—the fund would become out of balance. We may get a situation in which there are many contributions and very few benefits because everyone serves for nine years and nobody for ten. Or we may get an imbalance the other way, in which everyone serves for 45 years and draws the maximum pension. This is just to illustrate the sort of circumstance for which the Clause provides.

It is essential to provide within the legislation for reasonable flexibility to maintain the balance of the fund. However, one does not want to provide for unreasonable flexibility. If the fund were so completely out of balance—that is, say, to 50 per cent. out of balance—it is clear that the matter should come before Parliament fully again, and Parliament should decide what kind of structural revision was necessary. For that reason, the limit to which this fund can be altered and kept in balance without fresh legislation is the limit of 20 per cent. to which the hon. Member has referred. That can be done by a process of affirmative Resolution, but it is not necessary to have new legislation for it.

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will feel that there is no anxiety on the ground of inflation. The Clause is not designed to deal with that. It is merely that, as we have fixed monetary amounts, we are making certain assumptions about the continuation of membership. One has to make reasonable adjustments for that, but if the adjustments become unreasonably large it is right for Parliament to look at the matter all over again. As I say, I am grateful to the lion. Gentleman for having raised this matter, and I hope that I have satisfied him with my explanation.

I beg to move Amendment No. 12, in page 12, line 24, to leave out "to" and to insert "and".

The effect of this Amendment would be that in applying the provisions relating to Members' pensions to the widow, widower or children of a Prime Minister we would leave out Clause 9, which deals with pensions for certain widowers. The effect of that Clause is that if a woman Member of Parliament dies and has a husband who, by reason of incapability, owing to age or bodily or mental infirmity, of earning his own living, is dependent upon her, then her widower husband gets a pension. Therefore, when we apply that provision, as it is applied by Clause 16, to a Prime Minister, the position that is envisaged is that of our having a woman Prime Minister with a husband who is incapable of earning his own living by reason of age or bodily or mental infirmity, and is therefore wholly or mainly dependent on her.

I wish to make it abundantly clear, first, that I do not think that the Government are wrong in envisaging the possibility of our having a woman Prime Minister. Neither do I think the Government are wrong in making the assumption in the drafting of the Bill that that woman Prime Minister might have a husband wholly or mainly dependent on her because of his incapability as defined by the Bill. What I do suggest is that this is a new departure in the provision made by the State for the protection of individuals against hardship. If it is not a new departure, we should be told of other women servants of the State whose widowers would get help of this kind.

If it is right for a provision of this kind to be made, and if it is a new departure in protecting the dependants of the servants of the State against hardship of the kind mentioned, I should have thought that it was the sort of new departure that should start in the lower ranges of those in the service of the State and work upwards; and that it is not the sort of departure that should be made applicable to the widower of a Prime Minister only, leaving the others to tag along eventually, in the course of time.

The effect of this Amendment, therefore, would be to leave out the Prime Minister in respect of this provision, for the reasons I have given. I think that it is a movement that should start low down and move upwards, rather than letting the most important servant of the State—if we leave out the Sovereign herself—be the sole beneficiary, as far as I know, of this provision. I hope I have explained the matter sufficiently for the Chief Secretary to enable the Committee to receive an explanation of the position. It certainly is one which should be looked at.

In formally supporting what has been said by my right hon. and learned Friend, I find it a rather exciting prospect that there could be a woman Prime Minister. If without being out of order I may refer to another situation, I remind the Committee that we had a brilliantly successful woman Lord Mayor in Manchester, Dame Mary Kingsmill Jones. We should like to see such a situation repeated at No. 10 Downing Street.

Although I may have an opinion about this Clause and the Amendment, as it is a pension matter and I am a trustee of the Member's Fund, it would be wrong for me to express a personal opinion.

I am most grateful to the right hon. and learned Member for explaining his Amendment. I did not understand its purpose but I was delighted to hear him say—and I share his view—that the Amendment was not moved in any way in an anti-feminist attitude. We have a very distinguished Commonwealth woman Prime Minister. So far as we know, we shall continue to see that lady in that office. It is not for me, however, to make comments on elections in other countries, but provisions of this kind should be thought about.

The immediate answer to the question posed by the right hon. and learned Member is that this is quite standard procedure the whole way through the Civil Service and was introduced as early as the 1949 Superannuation Act. It is absolutely standard. Once we accept the principle which the right hon. and learned Gentleman enunciated very clearly (a) that we might have a woman Prime Minister, and (b), that the husband may because of illness or some other situation on becoming a widower not be in a position to maintain children who are dependent as defined, we have a situation in which we need the subsection which the Amendment seeks to remove. In those circumstances, I hope he will accept that this is absolutely standard and has moved up right from the bottom. We think of the possibility of a woman Prime Minister and should certainly incorporate this provision. I hope that the right hon. and learned Member will feel that this is a satisfactory explanation in reply to his question.

I accept the explanation and am most grateful for it. The hon. Gentleman has enlightened me on a matter I did not know about. In view of what he has said, I have no hesitation in asking leave to withdraw the Amendment. I think the hon. Gentleman expected me to be anti-feminist on this question. I am sure he is glad to be disappointed in that respect. No spokes- men from this side of the Committee would be anti-feminist, for we have far more potential women Prime Ministers than any other party. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

There is a rather important drafting point which I should be grateful if the Chief Secretary could consider. It might not be fair to ask for an immediate answer at the moment, but, if he will say that he will consider it that will ease the minds of my hon. Friends and myself.

In subsection (2) we find that the dependants of a Prime Minister are to get the benefit of Clauses 8, 9 and 10, and paragraph (b) says:

"for the purpose of calculating the annual amount of any pension under the said provisions, the pension to which the Prime Minister was or would have been entitled shall be treated as reduced by one-third."

Several of my hon. Friends, when considering the Bill, shared with me the view that we need to make abundantly clear that here we are referring, not to the pension which the Prime Minister would get as such and which is mentioned in subsection (1) of this Clause, but to the pension which he will never get if he gets a Prime Minister's pension—the pension which the Prime Minister would be entitled to receive as a Member of Parliament if he had not become eligible for the Prime Minister's pension.

indicated dissent.

The Chief Secretary shakes his head. That means that this Clause needs clarification. If the explanation is not the one I have given I should think the wording is not plain. We need to have it made abundantly clear which pension is to be reduced by one-third and exactly what the effect of paragraph (b) is.

I am again grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for drawing attention to this matter. If as a distinguished lawyer he says that there is lack of clarity, I must certainly accept that. I can speak with authority as to what is intended, but not with the same authority as can the right hon. and learned Gentleman as to the drafting of a Clause.

What is intended here is the Prime Minister's pension as such, the reduction in the pension attaching to the office of Prime Minister. As soon as a Member becomes a Prime Minister he loses all rights to his Member's pension. The rest of the Bill provides for that. As soon the Member becomes Prime Minister, the contributions are refunded and he is treated as if he had ceased to be a Member so far as his pension rights as an ordinary back-bench Member are concerned. Upon becoming the Prime Minister he automatically becomes entitled on the first day—nay, the first hour—to a full Prime Minister's pension.

The Prime Minister's pension is not related, as is a back-bench pension, to a period of service; it is related to the office. As soon as he becomes Prime Minister he becomes eligible in certain circumstances to his pension, namely, when he retires. I do not put it higher than that because I do not attempt to match my draftsmanship with that of the right hon. and learned Member, but I suspect that it will be confirmed that, inasmuch as by the time a Member becomes a Prime Minister he has ceased to have any entitlement whatever to his pension as a back-bench Member, then this reference to

"or would have been entitled"

could refer only to his pension as a Prime Minister.

I repeat that what is intended is clear and I hope that I have made it clear to the right hon. and learned Member. What he has asked me to do is to see that the drafting makes that intention absolutely clear and leaves no doubt as to the interpretation I have given. He asked me to take steps between now and a subsequent stage of the Bill to see that the drafting complies with that interpretation. I give him that assurance without hesitation.

I am grateful for the assurance. In view of what has been said, it obviously must be given and the drafting must be reconsidered. With great respect to the Chief Secretary, I do not see how his explanation can be right, because I think that the whole of the discussion is qualified by the words

"On the death of a person who ceases to be Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury after the commencement of this Act".

Therefore, I would have assumed that nothing in subsection (2) could refer to the Prime Minister's own pension. It can refer only to the pension payable to his dependants under Clauses 8 to 10. However, it is abundantly plain that the point needs reconsidering. I certainly would not press the Chief Secretary for further explanation. I am glad that he has undertaken to look at the point again.

May I ask the Chief Secretary on a point of clarification whether it is not true that the Prime Minister is the only Member of the House who, on becoming Prime Minister, automatically ceases to be a subscribing member of the contributory pension fund and the Members' pension fund?

He is one of two exceptions, the other being Mr. Speaker.

I have two points to raise. The first concerns subsection (1), which contains a very strange provision. The Prime Minister's pension is to be subject to increases under the Pensions (Increase) Acts. These increases will be made, not by Parliament, although, as we shall see later, a method of Parliamentary control—by negative Resolution—is laid down, but by the Treasury making Regulations. What I find strange about it is this. Instead of there being a straight increase of pension under the Pensions (Increase) Acts, it shall be

"subject to such modifications, adaptations and exceptions as may be specified in the regulations".

In other words, there is complete flexibility. There may be some justification for having complete flexibility; but, since in the past the pension has been £2,000 a year and since it is to be a fixed sum of £4,000 a year under the Bill, one would have thought that to introduce flexibility at the same time as the Pensions (Increase) Acts is being applied is a rather strange way of doing this.

One must point the contrast between that and Members' pensions, which are dealt with in Clause 7. Clause 7 contains no provision for increases under the Pensions (Increase) Acts or in any other way. I think that Clause 7 is right, but it gives rise to doubts as to whether we are right in saying in Clause 17 that, instead of the Prime Minister's pension being fixed by Parliament, as our own pension will be, there should be this flexibility. It raises a doubt, and we are entitled to an explanation.

My second point arises on subsection (2), whereby the Treasury Regulations to which I have referred are to be subject to negative Resolution. We should compare that with the provision in Clause 6 (5), under which the exercise of the power of the Treasury to increase or reduce the annual amount of the initial deficiency contribution made by the Exchequer to the pension fund is made subject to affirmative Resolution. Surely one is as important as the other. I should be glad to hear some justification for putting in the procedure by way of negative Resolution in Clause 17. If we are given no satisfactory explanation of this today, we shall feel bound to table an Amendment on Report to cover the point.

Again I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman. These points must be made clear. I think I shall have no difficulty in satisfying him that the Clause is in order. First, may I make the simple point that we are not talking about an increase of the £4,000 for a new holder of the office. We are talking merely of increases in the pensions payable to existing past Prime Ministers. It has been represented to us—we share these views completely—that Prime Ministers, who have of necessity been held down to their £2,000 pension, should no longer be so held down. This is a very small pension. It is hardly appropriate to the dignity of the office. Following on the recommendations of the Lawrence Report, the Prime Minister's pension has been increased, in accordance with the formula, not to £6,000 but to £4,000.

This for the first time makes it possible to apply the Pensions (Increase) procedure, because a past Prime Minister can now say, which he never could say before, "If a new holder of the office retires he now gets £4,000." Up to this point of time the answer would always have been, "I am sorry, but we cannot increase this pension under this procedure", because if a present holder of the office of Prime Minister retired he would continue to get £2,000, the same as all previous holders. So the nearly automatic machinery of raising past pensions now can have effect for the first time because of the raising of the pension from £2,000 to £4,000. I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman takes my point that this refers to past holders of the office.

Once one brings into play these provisions of the Pensions (Increase) Act, one then has to come to Parliament to give effect to them. One comes to Parliament to give effect to them by the machinery set out in the Act, which seems to be appropriate machinery and which is the customary machinery always laid down in Pensions (Increase) Acts. The machinery is standard. The precedents are galore. All we are doing novel here is increasing the pension of any holder of the office of Prime Minister as from the date mentioned to £4,000, thereby making it possible for any previous holder to have an increase in pension which approximately might be of the order of £750 a year, according to the effect of those provisions at the present time. I hope that nobody will feel that this is an excessive amount. I do not think that it is at all excessive. It is automatic machinery. It is not lacking in dignity. It is not embarrassing, because it is more or less automatic. It does not require new legislation each time. I hope that the Committee will feel that it is an appropriate way of dealing with a matter which was long overdue to be dealt with.

Speaking for myself and, I am sure, for my hon. Friends, I am completely satisfied with the explanation that has been given. In fact, I think I ought to apologise to the Chief Secretary for having overlooked the effect of the words in the last line and a half of subsection (1). The point that he has made is obviously valid and I am grateful to him for his explanation.

I think that in the circumstances, not only on account of precedent but on merits, the negative Resolution is right and, as the hon. Gentleman has pointed out, there is a clear distinction between that and the earlier case in Clause 6 where we had the affirmative Resolution procedure.

I beg to move Amendment No. 13, in page 13, line 25, after "1957", to insert:

"the offices of Chairman and Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means".

It is always a little difficult, when a thoroughly technical Amendment comes up, for a Front Bench speaker to decide whether to explain the technicalities in their full and boring details, or whether to make at first a short explanation to hon. Members in the belief, and the hope, that if that satisfies them, it will be sufficient; but if any hon. Member wishes to pursue the technicalities to their ultimate and deadly dull limits, I am always happy to serve the Committee. Therefore, I think I may deal with the matter shortly in the first stage and offer a more lengthy, detailed and utterly boring explanation if required to do so later.

This Amendment is merely for the purpose of making it certain that the holders of the offices in question shall, like all other Members of Parliament, be at no advantage for tax purposes as compared with an ordinary member of the public. Nobody would wish that a Member of Parliament should have an advantage in relation to pension rights which is not enjoyed by an ordinary member of the public so far as the implications for tax are concerned. Therefore, steps are taken in the Bill to make that position so, particularly as applying to a Minister.

Having made that position so, it is necessary to include these two particular offices, which would have been included in the first place had it not been for the simple fact that the salaries paid are not paid by Parliament in the ordinary way and are not voted by Parliament in the ordinary way but are paid by a separate commission of which, properly and fortunately, hon Members have no opportunity of signifying their approval or disapproval.

As this is purely a tax matter, I hope that I may have the co-operation of hon. Members in saving them from a long and boring explanation.

After that beautifully lucid explanation, may I say that the Chief Secretary might have gone one step further and told us whether we shall have to pay Income Tax or not.

This is a very important Clause because it specifies the dates when the Bill is to come into force. As to Part II of the Bill, which relates to the Members' pensions scheme, and Clauses 18 and 19 which refer to annuity premiums, which we have just been discussing, and to the application of provisions to Northern Ireland, we find that the Bill is to come into operation on 16th October, the first day after the last General Election, the day when the results were announced. The remuneration provisions are not to come into force until 1st April, 1965.

There is, therefore, a degree of retrospection about the application of the Members' pensions scheme. It means, for example, that Lord Sorensen, the former Member for Leyton, will have the benefit of the pensions scheme, and those of us who served with Lord Sorensen in the House and know of the long and valuable service that he gave will raise no objection to that. But it should be realised that while we may be in favour of some of our own number passing a Bill which for our own benefit will be retrospective, when it comes to tax concessions or any kind of concession made by the State at the expense of the taxpayer, retrospection is very much frowned upon.

Yet here we are doing it to help some of our own number and I think that an explanation is required. I have mentioned just one example of the effect and I have stated arguments about it. We are entitled to have the full effect explained.

Now I take the converse position which arises on Ministerial salaries. Under subsection (3,b) of the Clause, increased Ministerial salaries will not be brought into operation until 1st April—All Fools' Day. There may be a good reason for that. There is an obvious reason of convience in preparing Income Tax returns and handling them, but this is a matter which essentially engages the attention and responsibility of the Prime Minister. It may be that the Chief Secretary has had a word with him on this matter and has decided that although Ministers are overdue for an increase in salary, and although the Bill gives them just that, for some mystical reason it should not happen until All Fools' Day. We are entitled to be told the reason.

I am in a little difficulty. I thought the right hon. and learned Gentleman was raising a serious point to begin with.

It is a serious point.

I still think that it is a serious point and I will not be misled by reference in a less serious vein.

There are two dates, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman said. If I may, I congratulate him on having done his homework with the assiduity which he applies to all tasks which confront him. One part of the Bill comes into effect on the earlier date and one on the later date to which he referred. As he quite rightly said, the Members' salary increases came into force on 16th October, 1964, and the Members' pensions scheme goes with Members' pay. Indeed, that was the effect of the Ways and Means Resolution which we passed at an earlier stage. I do not think that he is raising any fundamental objection to that. His own leader at the time supported that position when the Prime Minister made a statement to the House on 16th November last year.

The hon. Gentleman is quite right and I am not raising an objection. What I say is that because it is retrospective the Committee is entitled to be told the full effect and incidence of restrospection.

As to the philosophy or theology of retrospection, the right hon. and learned Gentleman knows that his party claims, and has said many times, that where there is a retrospective benefit this does not offend any legal principle. Where retrospectively one is prejudicing a citizen, it might be held to do so. This is a benefit and, therefore, should not offend against the frequently expressed philosophy of the right hon. and learned Gentleman's own side.

The full effect is to say that all Members entitled to a Member's salary would receive it from 16th October last and therefore, this would apply to the allowance of £1,250 paid to a Minister. The new ministerial salaries, however, do not apply until 1st April because the Government take the view, and the Prime Minister made it quite clear at the time, that although there was great need and urgency and indeed an undertaking to deal with Members' salaries immediately, there was no such need, or urgency to the same extent, to put right the position of Ministers. Therefore, for that reason we have two dates. I think that that answers the right hon. and learned Gentleman's point.

I beg to move, That the Clause he read a Second time.

Whenever a Clause has to be fairly substantially amended it makes it much easier for hon. Members, instead of putting down a series of Amendments, if one takes out the old Clause completely and substitutes a new Clause, not because there are many Amendments or because they are substantial in effect but in order that hon. Members, looking at the new Clause, can read it as a whole. I hope therefore that the Committee will approve the method which the Government have adopted to make the position with regard to Clause 11 perfectly clear.

The new Clause provides for the return of contributions to a Member or ex-Member if he becomes Prime Minister, Speaker, or Lord Chancellor. It provides the detailed way in which one shall calculate the repayment and the interest. It also deals with a method of calculating the transfer value received by the trustees in respect of a new Member who has been contributing to another pension fund. If the Member in question subsequently becomes entitled to the return of contributions, the amount refunded ought to include his own contributions to that other pension fund.

Without going too much into the technicalities, the principle involved here, and throughout the Bill, is that one makes it perfectly easy for an individual to move in and out of Parliament, and in and out of jobs where there are pensions, without destroying in any sense the continuity of his pension rights. The way that is done is by arranging that at the time when he leaves one pensionable job and comes to Parliament he takes the right with him and a transfer payment is made. Therefore, when the time comes to draw a Parliamentary pension he is in the same position as if he had been in Parliament during the whole time, or throughout that period had been in pensionable employment notwithstanding that it was not in Parliament.

We would not want a Member to be embarrassed by going to a particular job and losing his pension rights. We would not want a Member to be discouraged from attempting to come to the House because he might lose pension rights which were available to him in the commercial job or industrial undertaking in which he was employed. We therefore provide for it in this way so that without any difficulty at all full pensions rights are preserved. I hope that this will be what the Committee would require. Any details which the Committee may want I can, of course, give if necessary.

I should like to ask the Chief Secretary why it is that a Member who wishes to reclaim his contributions under subsection (1,b) of the new Clause has to wait five years before doing so after he has ceased to be a Member of the House. This is in a case where he has not served the 10 years which would entitle him to a pension under the Bill. The subsection also provides that he has to give notice to the trustees requesting that refund should be made. I should have thought that this would have been more or less automatic, because there would be no purpose in leaving his contributions in the fund, when one considers that if he comes back to the House later and if he has reclaimed them he can have put back into the fund the contributions which he has reclaimed and he is deemed to have had service for that earlier period in the House. I can therefore visualise circumstances in which a Member has ceased to be in the House after a period of less than 10 years where he would want to reclaim his contributions, and I do not see why he should have to wait five years before doing so.

I should also like to ask about the interest rate applicable to these contributions, as mentioned in subsection (6). I should have thought that the 3 per cent. per annum applied to these contributions is a very low rate when one looks back on the market rate of interest over the last few years. In effect, what it amounts to is that a Member who has not qualified for pension and reclaims contributions has lent money to the fund at a rate lower than the market rate. In view of the unprecedented heights to which interest rates have soared during the period of office of this Government, I should have thought that a variable interest rate applicable to these contributions would have been more appropriate. Perhaps it could be tied to the Bank Rate or to the Public Works Loan Board rate. The fact is that a person could invest this money much more advantageously elsewhere than at the 3 per cent. he will receive from the fund if he reclaims his contributions.

It might be convenient if I followed in the debate the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) with whom I agree on the questions which he has asked.

There is another point which affects a good many hon. Members potentially. It affects especially those who are self-employed, professional men who will not go back to pensionable employment, to use the Chief Secretary's phrase, if they lose their seats for a time. Naturally, I think of members of my own profession but I think that it applies to all professional men, because they have to rely on their own private pension schemes to which we all contribute in one way or another for our old age. But this is not pensionable employment. It may be that the Government have considered their position and have decided that it is too difficult technically to deal with it. If that is so, I should like to know the reason why it is not possible to deal with it.

On the other hand, it may be that their position has not been considered by the Government, in which case I would ask the Chief Secretary if he would kindly do so. It is very important, because many Members on both sides of the House would be affected in that way.

May I deal with the easier question first, the question of the 3 per cent.? The hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) appreciates that these are long-term rates, and long-term rates do not vary with the market rate or Bank Rate to anything like the same extent. They tend to be fairly firm. One has to make a calculation over a long period, and this is the figure which the Government actuary thought right.

The hon. Gentleman will appreciate also that income such as interest coming into the fund is, as provided by the Bill, tax-free. I was speaking, therefore, about a tax-free rate of interest.

One has to pay the tax if one withdraws contributions paid into it, just as in any other pension scheme, does one not?

I do not quite follow that intervention. As regards taxability, payments going into the fund are a full deduction for tax purposes from the tax liability of the hon. Member who makes them, so that he has full tax allowance on making his payments into the fund. Then, following his payments into the fund, any accretions by virtue of income received such as dividends on the investments of the fund are free of tax. So the whole build-up of the fund is tax-free and it is right, therefore, that when payments come out of the fund by way of pension, they shall be taxed.

I do not think that the hon. Gentleman quite understood the point which I was making. If an hon. Member who has left the House withdraws his contributions before he has reached 65 years of age, he will have to pay back to the Exchequer the tax which he saved on those contributions when he made them in the first place.

If, for example, he takes those contributions with him in the form of a transfer payment to a new pensionable employment, having his rights continued in that new employment, what the hon. Gentleman says is not so, and I think that he appreciates that.

We are talking only about the rate of interest. The rate of interest has to take account of the whole variety and generality of circumstances in which the rate of interest applies. The best answer I can give is that this is the rate which has been worked out by the Government actuary, having regard to the scheme as a whole. I think that the hon. Gentleman will find that it is a very common interest rate in all these schemes. My impression is of having seen this figure more than any other in all schemes of this kind making similar provision. It is the most likely long-term rate having regard to all the transactions which will affect the rate, including the effect of taxation.

I was asked, also, the rather more difficult question about the five-year period. I can only say here that this is a recommendation of the Lawrence Committee. It seems a reasonable recommendation. I go this far with the hon. Gentleman and the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) in saying that it is possible to have two views about it. However, the Lawrence Committee, no doubt, came to its conclusion broadly on the basis that one needs a certain amount of time to make up one's mind about whether one wants one's contributions back, whether one might return to the House again, and all the other questions, and there is something to be said for a period of this kind. It is the Committee's recommendation. The Government have accepted the view throughout that, if one is setting up a scheme based on a full and detailed report by an outside committee, one is in the most reliable logical position if one goes the whole way as regards the principles and structure of the scheme, and this is part of it. On the whole, I think that it is a wise provision.

I beg to move Amendment No. 14, in page 16, to leave out lines 3 to 12 and to insert:

Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State

3,750

This is an improvement which the Government think ought to be added to the Bill, but it does not arise out of the Bill as originally presented. The effect is to remove a number of names and to take merely one generic title, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State. By removing the various offices listed underneath, Home Office, Foreign Office, and so on, we produce flexibility. I say at once that we are on a slightly new point here, dealing with flexibility, but it is a wise point and I hope to satisfy the Committe that it is one which both sides should approve.

The present position is that, once a new Department is to be set up and the head of that Department is to be a Secretary of State, no difficulty arises and the Bill does not impinge upon that situation, but if one wants to have, as one obviously would, a Parliamentary Under-Secretary to go with the Secretary of State, there are certain limitations. The Parliamentary Under-Secretaries of State can be only those named for the purposes of salary or increase in salary. If, therefore, the Amendment be accepted, one will add flexibility and remove an anomaly. One removes the anomaly that, within the limitations approved by the House, one is free to appoint Secretaries of State but one is not free to appoint Parliamentary Under-Secretaries of State to go with those Secretaries of State.

It seems to me that this is a situation which the House would not have wanted. Either the House should say that Secretaries of State should not be appointed without much greater difficulty or should be named and be only those in offices prescribed in the Bill, or it should say, having approved legislation under which there is reasonable flexibility, that one can have a certain number more and it is right that a Secretary of State should be assisted by a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State. The Amendment would have that simple effect, and I hope that the Committee will feel that it affords a reasonable improvement in the machinery of Government.

This harmless-looking Amendment, which is almost like a drafting Amendment and which has been presented partly as an improvement in drafting, has considerable implications. It goes back to a Bill which we were discussing earlier this Session, dealing with how the Government should be composed. It goes back to the whole question of the number of placemen there should be on the Government side.

Of course, the main argument is against having a Government too large, but I should have thought that, within the total, there was no difficulty about having some flexibility, and to that extent I am prepared not to make difficulties for the hon. Gentleman on this Amendment. Nevertheless, the House should realise that, at least from the point of view of payment of salaries, it would enable any number of Parliamentary Under-Secretaries of State to be paid.

indicated dissent.

If that is not so, perhaps we may have the explanation straight away.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman is fully seized of the point. He will recognise that I tried to make clear that this is nothing like a pure drafting Amendment and I tried to explain that it had its implications. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is quite right when he says that, if there is any major objection, it is an objection not to this Amendment but to an earlier Bill. But the earlier Bill provided for a maximum number of Secretaries of State, and the Amendment does nothing to increase the number of Under-Secretaries of State. It means merely that one can have Under- Secretaries of State to go with the Secretaries of State provided for in that Bill, that is, limited in number but flexible in terms of the offices and responsibilities which they have.

I recognise that the number of Secretaries of State laid down in the other Bill is limited, but is the number of Joint Parliamentary Under-Secretaries of State which any Secretary of State can have also limited?

indicated assent.

The hon. Gentleman nods, so I take it that it is. Therefore, we are clear about that.

I now come to a point which, in any event, had the Amendment not been tabled, I had intended to raise later. I think that this is the right moment to raise it. In moving the first Amendment this morning I mentioned the question of differentials. The Amendment says that the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State shall be paid £3,750. But that is well under half the £8,500 which a Minister is to get. In the days when I first became a Parliamentary Secretary the salary for that post was only £1,500, and that was the salary also for a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State. The Minister had £5,000.

Later, the salaries of the junior Ministers were increased by £1,000, bringing them to £2,500 and, therefore, the differential was not so bad because the junior Minister got 50 per cent. of what the Minister was getting. But we have slipped back again, and, in my opinion, the differentials are now wrong once more. I would ask the Chief Secretary whether before Report—I must point out that I speak only for myself and not for any of my hon. Friends—

Has not the right hon. and learned Gentleman got his arithmetic wrong? To that salary one has to add the £1,250 of the Parliamentary salary. If one adds £1,250 to £3,750 one gets a salary of £5,000, which is more than half of what the Minister will get, which is £8,500 plus £1,250.

The hon. Gentleman is presumably talking about the position which will prevail in future and not the position at present. In either event, I should have thought that the right thing to do was to compare the Ministerial salaries, bearing in mind what was said by the Lawrence Committee about hon. Members having to have approximately enough to cover their necessary expenses whether they are Ministers or not in addition to such salaries as they may receive as Ministers or such further remuneration as Members of Parliament. Surely the right figures to compare are the £3,750 and the £8,500. Those are what I invite the Committee and the Government to compare.

I do not wish to make too much of this because, as I said, I speak only for myself. I may speak for some of my hon. Friends, but perhaps I do not speak for all of them. Speaking for myself, I should be grateful if the Chief Secretary would consider these differentials once more before Report, because if we are to attract the right men to undertake the important work of junior Ministers we must ensure they are fairly treated. It is a fact—it has been within the knowledge of Prime Ministers of all parties in the years since the war—that some excellent people have had to decline offer of appointment as Parliamentary Secretaries and Under-Secretaries of State simply because the salary was far, far too low.

Unfortunately, we are dealing with an inflationary situation in even having the Bill before us, but as we are dealing with that situation we might, while we are about it, try to get the matter right and not allow mistakes of the past to be repeated. Speaking for myself, I think this is an important matter, and I hope that the Chief Secretary will be so good as to consider it.

I am very conscious of the point which the right hon. and learned Gentleman has raised. Just so that we may eliminate any misunderstanding about the relevant facts, I take it that he is telling me that, whereas the situation was that a Parliamentary Secretary got £2,500 and a senior Minister £5,000, it is now proposed that a Parliamentary Secretary should get £3,750 and a senior Minister £8,500, and that the mathematical relationship has altered.

Yes.

I take the point immediately. I will first explain why this has happened, and then give the right hon. and learned Gentleman an undertaking to look at the matter again. But if my first explanation is a satisfactory one, it will follow from that that the likelihood of a different conclusion coming out of a further review is somewhat small.

I agree with the right hon. and learned Gentleman completely that the £1,250 ought to be removed from the calculations on both sides, because this amount is not paid to a Minister but is paid in respect of the function of a Member of Parliament. A Minister carries that function in respect of his constituency, and the sum is largely to cover the expenses that he incurs as a constituency Member, and it applies, therefore, whether he is a senior or a junior Minister. Therefore, the comparison which was twice—£5,000 to £2,500—is now more than twice.

The way that that has arisen is simple. The Lawrence Committee recommended £5,000 for a Parliamentary Secretary and £12,000 for a senior Minister. The reason why the differential has gone up lies in the Lawrence Committee's recommendations and not in the Government's conclusions. The Lawrence Committee recommended that what was in the ratio of 2:1 should now go up in the ratio of 12:5—instead of 10:5, now 2⅖1. It felt that this was necessary.

The Government took the view that those recommendations had a great deal to support them but that in the circumstances it was not necessary to do more than take one-half of the increases. I was very much concerned with the figures at the time and, therefore, I know precisely the kind of thinking that went on, and it was precisely to maintain the point which the right hon. and learned Gentleman has made that we decided to take half the increases instead of the absolute amount.

Therefore, if we take the same proportion of a low salary, we are left for the answer with a figure which in absolute terms is still, I recognise, not high in absolute terms. I do not think that anybody will criticise what the Government have done in comparative terms. We have taken one-half of the increases over the whole scale. In absolute terms it means that those at the bottom of the scale still remain very much at the bottom of the scale.

Even as a Treasury Minister I do not deny that it is possible to hold the view that £3,750 is, for these responsibilities and compared with what is available outside for people of comparable ability, much too low. I do not say that these are my views. I say that I do not deny that it is possible for someone to hold those views. I promise the right hon. and learned Gentleman to look at the matter again. I myself think it is far more important, notwithstanding the elements which I have recognised, when one has what is virtually an arbitration award to say "We accept this".

I know what the right hon. and learned Gentleman will say, that we have not accepted it, that we have halved the increases—

So the whole basis is wrong.

I understand this very well, but I assure the right hon. and learned Gentleman that full consideration has been given to it. The right hon. and learned Gentleman says that we have not accepted it fully, but have accepted only half the increases to keep the proportions right. He says that those at the bottom of the scale are still very much there in absolute terms. But if we are to depart from the arbitration award in relation to those at the bottom of the scale and to increase the award, then, by the same logic, one must increase the whole way through the scale otherwise one is departing from the principle. This is no different from the kind of argument that must go on in an enormous number of union negotiations every week.

I think, therefore, that, although there is something to be said for the fact that, in absolute terms, £3,750 is a low figure, nevertheless, in present circumstances, it is right to abide by the view of the Lawrence Committee and keep the relativities which it recommended.

The Committee will be thankful to know that this is possibly my last intervention today and in making it may I say how much I appreciate the patience and courtesy of the Chief Secretary, who has been on the Front Bench continuously since five minutes past eleven and has had no refreshment at all. I think that the Prime Minister ought to acknowledge that the Chief Secretary has done some of his work for him here today.

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman is to look again at this important question of the salary of a Parliamentary Secretary. I hope that when he does so he will approach the matter somewhat differently from the way in which he expressed himself just now. I do not think that it is quite fair to place such a burden upon the Lawrence Committee in this matter, because it recommended that the salary should be £5,000—and in doing so, incidentally, ensured that the purchasing power of the salary should be reasonable. The hon. Gentleman will find that the purchasing power of £3,750 today is less than that of £1,500 when that figure was first introduced as the salary of a Parliamentary Secretary. There is another factor. Parliamentary Secretaries are, generally speaking, younger men with more children still to be educated than senior Ministers have. There is an important point in that.

This is not a matter that can be resolved by nicely balanced, extremely logical arguments about fractional or percentage increases or proportions, using the Lawrence Committee's original figures as the basis for them. This has to be justified on final outcome and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will ensure that, in his further consideration, the final outcome will be that the Parliamentary Secretaries and Under-Secretaries of State will receive a realistically adequate salary which is not worse in differential when compared with the salaries Ministers are getting.

In calling the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Sir R. Cary) to speak, I should say that perhaps I have been too indulgent in allowing discussion about the rate of salaries on this Amendment. It has nothing to do with the Amendment really and I have allowed it in the hope that it will avoid discussion on the Schedule as a whole. If the hon. Member for Withington wishes to pursue this, I will allow his contribution, but after that I cannot allow more.

I was interested in what the Chief Secretary had to say because I had hoped that, in the streamlining of the Government, there would be two levels of salary, Ministers being at £12,000 and Parliamentary Secretaries at £6,000. Now we are to have this complicated scale, but the Chief Secretary is to look at this again between now and the Report stage. He pointed out that a Minister will receive £8,500 while a Parliamentary Secretary will receive £3,750. The contrast between the two is great, but I do not resent that so much as I resent the same figure of £8,500 being given to a Minister of State.

This means that a Minister of State in charge, for instance, of disarmament is being taken on a level with the Home Secretary or the Secretary of State for Defence, senior cabinet posts. There should be greater equality between Ministers of State and Parliamentary Secretaries, and this should tend to be in favour of the Parliamentary Secretaries.

I beg to move Amendimmt No. 16, in page 17, line 46, after "Trustee", to insert:

"any fee payable to the Comptroller and Auditor General".

I always feel sympathetic to fees paid to Comptrollers and Auditors General, or to any other kind of auditor. This Amendment enables the trustees to have power to pay a fee if it is charged. The Bill does not at present contain that power. It was a slight omission and I hope that the Committee will agree that such power should be included.

I beg to move Amendment No. 17, in page 17, line 46, to leave out third "and" and to insert "or".

As a result of this Amendment, the trustees would be free to adopt either of the two normal methods of superannuating staff—by paying the pensions themselves or by making contributions to an insurance company so that the pensions were paid by that company. At present, the freedom to do this is not included in the Bill and the Government believe that this Amendment is preferable.

The Question is, That I do report the Bill, as amended, to the House.

On a point of order, Mr. Hynd. I assume that this does not mean that it is intended to take the Report stage straight away. Many matters are to be considered by the Government, according to the Chief Secretary. Perhaps I have mistaken the Question before the Committee.

Perhaps, Mr. Hynd, I may be forgiven if I answer both parts of the right hon. and learned Gentleman's question—that part concerning the rules of order as well as the substantive part. It would not be in order to take the Report stage now, because we have amended the Bill; and certainly it would not be the Government's intention, having agreed to look again at certain aspects, to go ahead with the Report stage now.

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

The purpose of the Clause is to try to remove the concern, uncertainty and dissatisfaction which now surround the charges made by airport authorities to air transport operators. I do not support the extravagant allegations which have been made against airport operators by air transport operators. If one is running a business, one always wants to get one's own supplies and services for nothing, or as near to nothing as possible, in order to advantage one's own financial position. I have no doubt that there is a good deal of exaggeration about excessive charging by airport operators. It is because of this uncertainty and the almost incredible complexity of the make-up of airport charges and the immense difficulty of making effective comparisons of one country's airports and another that I suggest that we should have a committee to which complaints could be referred.

This is essential because we are here dealing with monopoly situations. Whatever one may say about the exaggerated nature of the complaints by airline operators, nevertheless they have to "take it or leave it" in their use of aerodromes. As Parliament has found on other occasions, it is therefore highly desirable to provide some recourse to aggrieved persons to establish that the charges are satisfactory and reasonable.

I do not support the view of some of my hon. Friends that airline operators should be represented on the Airports Authority. That would be wholly undesirable by every canon of good business organisation. I feel that my suggestion would resolve some of the uncertainty and would give airline operators at least the satisfaction of knowing that their complaints had been satisfactorily investigated.

In Committee, I suggested a somewhat more elaborate system of examination, a rates tribunal. I recognised at the time that it might be an excessively elaborate organisation to deal with complaints which might be somewhat limited. I accepted the Ministerial objections to what I then proposed, and because of those objections I have suggested this reference to a committee in any case in which a complaint had been received by the Minister.

I am aware that the Parliamentary Secretary will say that when a complaint is received, the Minister will consider it impartially and that he has at his disposal the resources of his Ministry to determine the relevant factors. While that is true, the Minister is inescapably associated with the Authority in the conduct of its business. He can give it general directions. The Authority is not independent of the Minister and he is not really independent of it. It is therefore wholly undesirable that the Minister should decide the issue by his own investigation and judgment in these contentious circumstances.

I have suggested that the Chairman of the Air Traffic Licensing Board should be given the responsibility of nominating the committee, because his is a board which, in the short time of its existence and with an exceedingly difficult remit, has gained the confidence of the entire industry. Most operators knowing the knowledge and experience of the Board would be happy to have an objection heard by this committee, because they would know that in other circumstances the Board had done an admirable job.

I recognise that even with my proposal the Minister will have the final right to decide whether to accept the committee's recommendations, but I suggest that, because of the complexity and nature of the charges and uncertainty and discontent which have been caused, it would be highly desirable to set up this small piece of machinery.

I thank the hon. Member for Cheadle (Mr. Shepherd) for the reasonable way in which he has moved his new Clause. I am especially glad that he has not followed some of the extravagant phrases used on another occasion about fees charged, especially at Heathrow. However, I ask the House to resist the new Clause.

Within the resources of the Ministry there are many experts well qualified to advise the Minister about charges which should be applied at the airports for which the new British Airports Authority is to be responsible. The House will appreciate that it would be an unwarranted interference with the operation of the Authority if this procedure were established for the Authority's airports and not applied to other airports.

Under this proposed procedure, it would be possible for any airline to object not only to increased charges which might be applied but to existing charges as taken over by the Authority when it is established. This could lead to a very cumbersome procedure which would upset the Authority's operations right at the commencement of its work.

The House would agree that it would be unwise to interfere to any great extent with the commercial operations of the Authority by establishing procedures of the sort proposed. I therefore ask the House to reject the new Clause.

I beg to move, in page 1, line 7, to leave out "British".

I hasten to say that this is not a campaign of anti-nationalism. It is a genuine endeavour, which I hope will meet with a better fate than my earlier one, to give the Authority a title more in keeping with its responsibilities. As some hon. Members know, in Committee there was a good deal of discussion about the inappropriateness of the existing title. There were some suggestions with which I could not agree, but I find myself without any great affection for the title "British Airports Authority". I object to it because it is not really a true reflection of the scope and activities of this Authority.

If the Parliamentary Secretary had had to go through the procedure of submitting this name either to the Registrar of Companies or the Registrar of Business Names he would not have got it through. He would have been told that it was pretentious and grandiose, and that it had various other objections, which these two men properly take into account in respect of persons who try to give to businesses titles which do not reflect their true scope. In the same way as ordinary business concerns are regulated by the Registrar of Companies and Registrar of Business Names to prevent their using misleading titles, so this misleading title should not be permitted.

My proposal is simply to call this Authority the Airports Authority. This does not make the pretence that the Authority covers the whole of Britain. It has none of the objections which can be taken to the use of the title "British Airports Authority", which is an entirely misleading title in view of the fact that the Authority will be responsible for only a tiny fraction of the number of airports in this country.

Therefore, although putting Amendments to the hon. Member is a somewhat unrewarding task, judging by my past experience, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will carefully consider not only the appropriateness of the change that I seek to make, but also the feelings of towns like Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham, and will be good enough on this occasion to accept this small Amendment, which I am sure will not bring down the Government, precarious as its position is at present.

I must again ask the House to reject the Amendment put forward by the hon. Member for Cheadle (Mr. Shepherd)—not because I do not appreciate some of his arguments but because, as he will be aware, we had a long discussion in Committee on the appropriateness of the title, and I undertook to consider any proposals made for another name which would not give rise to the objections made to the title "British Airports Authority." No suitable name has been proposed. However, it is now crystal-clear that the British Airports Authority is not designed to take over all our airports. Municipal airports will remain outside its responsibility.

I appreciate that the hon. Member is trying to find a better name, but the title "Airports Authority", as opposed to "British Airports Authority", is open to even greater objection, as it is even more embracing than "British Airports Authority". Some of our friends overseas could well object to it because of possible misunderstandings that might arise in international conferences if the Authority were referred to in the discussions there.

Another objection to the proposed new name is that its initials will give rise to confusion with another well known organisation operating under the short title of A.A. For these reasons, and bearing in mind the fact that we have valuable precedents, in British Overseas Airways Corporation and British European Airways, for the use of the word "British", I ask the House to reject the Amendment; in fact, I would prefer the hon. Member to ask leave to withdraw it.

I am not at all sure that the Parliamentary Secretary has been very forthcoming or helpful, despite the friendly noises which he made to my hon. Friend. In fact, my recollection is that after our previous discussion the hon. Member said that he would consider any proposals which were made to him. My impression is that he undertook to consider whether he could find a better name for the Authority. That is rather a different kettle of fish. If he is interpreting the undertaking he gave merely as an opportunity to sit back and see whether anybody produces a better name to him, he is not properly carrying out the terms of his undertaking. His undertaking suggested that he would do a little brain work himself, and would exhort his advisers to do likewise. This does not seem to have produced anything effective.

I agree with the Minister about the difficulties which may be caused over the initials of my hon. Friend's proposed title, but I wonder whether the Minister wants the Authority to go through life with the initials B.A.A., as in "Baa-baa Black Sheep". It does not seem desirable. We know that almost every title which has been suggested so far has been misleading. We endeavoured to see that the implication of the word "International" got into the title, because it is intended to be an international airport authority.

One argument advanced against this was that the Authority, as it is certainly empowered to do, might wish to take over other airports which are not necessarily international. So long as it is not an all-embracing airports authority, however, the present title is unquestionably misleading. Before the Bill goes to another place I hope that the hon. Gentleman will do a little work on it, to see if he cannot do better. The present situation is not satisfactory, and we may as well get the thing right instead of allowing it to go through wrongly.

We always pay some attention to what the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maude) says on this subject, even though he is still plying his apprentice hand at it. We welcome his appearance on the Opposition Front Bench. But the hon. Member forgot some things in his argument, and one or two of the things he said rather disturbed me.

Surely an airport must have some relation to its location. In that sense it is a British airport. Its function may be international, but I cannot see that its international function is completely divorced from its national function. We must preserve that function, and I shall always hope to do as I am doing now, namely, travel to London Airport although I come only from Renfrew. I would not like the word "English", but I would never object to the retention of "British".

A fear is created in my mind by the attitude of the Opposition. We have British European Airways. We started with that title, and we retained it, even though many other British airways besides B.E.A. are carrying out flights to Europe. We do not suggest that there should be any alteration in the designation of British European Airways because of that. If the hon. Member's suggestion were accepted I would also fear for the future of B.O.A.C. We all want to retain that Corporation's present designation, even though there are independents who are also doing overseas flying. For those reasons, in my view, this is an adequate descriptive title and I hope that my hon. Friend will retain it.

Naturally, I am disappointed by the reply of the hon. Gentleman. I would not for one moment accept the view of the hon. Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Rankin) that because one accepts the need for the word "British" in the flag carrier, the word "British" is equally essential for attaching to the name of the Airports Authority. As I have now to dash to my constituency and have no further time to discuss this matter with the Parliamentary Secretary, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

I beg to move, in page 2, line 25, to leave out "due".

Confusion about the use of this word arose during the Committee stage discussion and in view of that confusion I undertook to propose this Amendment.

I shall not detain the House on this matter except, very briefly, to thank the hon. Gentleman for having met us on this point.

I beg to move, in page 2, line 27, at the end to insert:

(3) With the exception of Heathrow the Authority shall not deny landing and other facilities at airports under its control to any category of fixed-wing aircraft, subject always to the ability of such aircraft to communicate on the appropriate frequencies and to comply with the requirements of Air Traffic Control.

This point, also, was discussed in Committee and did not receive a very favourable reception from the Parliamentary Secretary. I hope that after my hon. Friend's two Amendments the third time may be a little luckier in my case.

This Amendment is a plea for the small man, for the small aircraft, for the individualist, for the private business, club or charter aircraft which is increasingly—but, I regret to say, far less so than in many other countries—finding its way into the sky of this country. These men and these aircraft are individualists and, as such, I believe, in my short experience, they have the sympathy of right hon. and hon. Members in this House.

I would ask, therefore, that, as I have taken steps to rephrase my Amendment in accordance with certain of the observations of the Parliamentary Secretary in Committee, he may look at this Amendment with slightly more sympathy than he did the previous one.

In my view, the aviation dice are loaded against the small aircraft operator at present. There are clear reasons for that, though not all, I believe, are good ones. I hope to try to adduce a case for a removal and a denial by the Minister of any intention to discriminate against such aircraft or an intention to allow the Airports Authority which is the subject of this Bill to discriminate against such categories of aircraft.

The Minister made his position clear in Committee when he said that he rejected a previous Amendment on this subject because the effect would be to prevent de authority from discriminating against small aircraft in the use of its facilities. To adopt that attitude at the outset of the operation of an extremely important new organisation is, to my mind, obstructive, old-fashioned, and ill-conceived.

Speaking as a sailor, I think that I can draw the maritime analogy that nobody in his senses would attempt to deny the use of the Port of London to a motor cruiser properly equipped, properly able to navigate, with a proper master's certificate and with a master in charge to bring his ship safely into harbour. But such discrimination is already exercised in the case of aircraft against individuals and their aircraft who are equally well equipped, if that analogy is a good one, as I believe it is. For this kind of thing there are perfectly clear reasons, some good and some not so good. There are pressures on the Minister—

I was not quite clear about one part of the hon. and gallant Member's argument. Do I follow him correctly in suggesting that he is making a comparison between air movements and sea movements?

The hon. Member is correct. Where individuals are travelling in an unfamiliar medium, whether it be water or air, certain similar basic principles apply. Certain rules of conduct are obligatory, certain rules of safety have to be observed, and certain qualifications have to be acquired by the pilots or the masters of craft, in the air or in the sea, accordingly. It is to that extent that I ventured to draw this analogy.

As I was saying, the Minister is under pressure here and the pressure seems to me to be composed of three parts. There is what I would call the "earth-borne" pressure of individuals who are always inclined, when it comes to aviation matters—particularly those affecting the small man, who is not effectively geared to speak for himself—to say, "Better not; better discriminate; better say, 'no'; better perhaps to increase the limitations or the qualifications required in order to prevent a certain course of action." This is the rather negative attitude of what my friends in the Royal Air Force would call the chair-borne element, but which I would prefer to describe as the earth-borne element of this pressure exerted on the Minister.

Secondly, I believe that much of the pressure stems from the airport authorities themselves, and this affects municipal airports, if I may mention them without being out of order, whose primary concern is to acquire revenue to operate a satisfactory airport on good, sound commercial lines. It is to be hoped that somebody will put the case of such municipal airports as they eventually find their way into the British Airports Authority. They, of course, are motivated by the desire to restrict flying to the most experienced. They have a laudable attitude towards the safety factor, but they wish to brush aside any aerial activities which may affect their normal commercial working and their peace of mind.

3.0 p.m.

Thirdly, I regret to have to say it, but there are certain airlines which exert this type of pressure because they believe, rightly or wrongly, that they are discommoded—and in some cases it is true that expenses accrue to airlines because their planes have to wait in stacks over certain airports where non-commercial aircraft, having arrived before them, have precedence in the stack.

This was mentioned by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Rankin) in Committee although, with great respect to him, I hope that he will make no more of those ludicrous misstatements of fact of which he was guilty on that occasion, when he spoke of coming from Renfrew in an aircraft and being forced to go through the London control zone to get to Gatwick, which is quite incorrect.

I think that the example of Cardiff is relevant here. I have it on excellent authority that in its efforts to persuade the airport authorities to apply permanent I.F.R.—instrument flight rules—and to impose certain limitations at Cardiff Airport, if it so much as sights a small private or business aircraft a certain airline is inclined to describe it as "a near miss", with the consequent safety factors involved.

The small man looks to the Minister to protect his interests, and I hope that as a result of the discussion in Committee the Minister will offer him protection in his reply today. I have mentioned this tendency to try to impose permanent I.F.R. at airports. I am glad that it was successfully resisted at Gatwick. For the information of hon. Members, it is a very simple means by which an authority can deprive the use of an airport to a very large category of aircraft.

There is, I think, an exaggeration of the density of aircraft which is often used as a reason for such restrictive measures. May I remind the Minister of his own figures in this respect, taken from the aircraft census carried out so admirably over the last few years? I quote the figures for July, 1963, and they may surprise some hon. Members. At the peak period in the afternoon of an average Monday to Friday there are fewer than 200 aircraft at any one time in the skies over Great Britain. That is a remarkably small number. The peak figure rose in July, 1963, to just under 300 at 2.30 on a Saturday afternoon, the number being swelled by light aircraft taking the air about that time, by gliders and by the towing aircraft for those gliders, not to speak of the sort of aircraft which take up my hon. Friend the Member for Farnham (Sir G. Nicholson) and drop him by parachute from 10,000 feet.

Nevertheless, bearing in mind what was said in Committee, the terms of the Amendment specifically except Heathrow Airport from its provisions. As the Minister rightly said, London is the nexus of air routes and the focus of a great deal of international air traffic. Therefore, although it is an exception to a general rule for which I shall always fight, I feel that there is a case, at least for the time being, for excepting Heathrow from the provisions of the Amendment.

In the Amendment there is provision for the exclusion from the airports under the Authority of all those categories of light aircraft which the Minister has in mind when he is considering the problems of safety and interference with the operations of airlines. There is left a very wide range of aircraft which I think should be covered by the Amendment. In many cases these are up to full airliner standards in their communications. I have myself flown an aircraft with full two-and-a-half equipment, which, as hon. Members know, means full duplicated V.H.F. communication, duplicated V.O.R., A.D.F., instrument landing and marker beacon. One can fly any small aircraft these days with the same facilities as in a modern airliner, and it is this fact which the Minister has taken into account in his excellent new proposals for the establishment of an I.M.C. rating half-way between a private pilot's licence and an instrument rating, which requires a great deal of time, money and experience—halfway between amateur status and full pilot, for which he is wisely making provision. This should not be excluded from the smaller aircraft at the airports under his control.

There are, of course, difficulties. There are, for example, the approach rules at airports under the Authority. Those rules for, say, a VC10, are quite different from those required for a Beagle 206. Even if Heathrow were open to light aircraft, which it is not, there would be great difficulties involved in sending small aircraft right round the big airliner pattern.

Why cannot the Minister use his influence with, perhaps, Heathrow so that there is a holding pattern over, say, Staines Reservoir for light aircraft? Such a holding pattern could be for aircraft at 1,000 ft. There are already many light aircraft flying over Heathrow at 1,000 ft., controlled by that admirable body of men who man the control equipment. A holding pattern of that type would allow the controller to pick down light aircraft between the arrival of the larger ones, just as the Germans and French do. Why cannot we follow suit?

We have many foreign precedents for the line of action contained in the Amendment. I believe that the Minister, if he describes himself as a progressive Minister—a member of this progressive Government, with their modernistic ideas we have heard so much about during the last 100 days—will look at this matter with greater sympathy than he has previously. I urge him to give it his serious attention.

The hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Harrow, East (Commander Courtney) came right into the debate in the full fighting style for which we admire him. He raised the issue of air space and the further stacking of aircraft in waiting areas. I will not develop the argument of whether or not the air space above our airports is sufficiently or insufficiently used at present.

Many distinguished persons in aviation consider that it is insufficiently used and have provided statistics to show that that is so. However, other persons, equally well informed about the density of the air space above our heads, have different views. Nevertheless, I will not discuss that question.

The hon. and gallant Gentleman seems to have had second thoughts about his Amendment and is now offering us something deprived of Heathrow. I accept that, but I could not possibly accept his comparison between travel by air and by sea. If a ship suddenly gets into difficulties with another ship they can both stop. An aircraft, on the other hand, cannot stop, and that is the fundamental difference between the two forms of travel which must constantly be borne in mind. I am sure that hon. Members recall cases of aircraft flying over this country colliding in mid-air.

The hon. Member may be interested to learn that I was travelling in a ship which was involved in a collision with another ship, and we certainly could not stop. In the air we have a blessed third dimension which enables one to escape in such circumstances.

Again, the hon. and gallant Gentleman is unique in having been in an air collision—

indicated dissent.

I am sorry—I thought that he was referring to that.

No, it was in His Majesty's ships.

I do not dispute that—I have said so—but an air collision is an entirely different business.

I think that in Committee both sides visualised the extension and expansion of Heathrow Airport to take in other airports, and it is these that the hon. and gallant Member would delimit from Heathrow. However, I know of one airport now functioning which I use regularly and which, with the expansion of passenger traffic now proceeding, might well become an international airport at some time soon, perhaps, in Scotland. The hon. and gallant Gentleman would bring that airport within the ambit of his Amendment, despite the fact that the people responsible for the control and use of the airport—the officials and this Scottish Airports Committee—decided not to allow private or club flying within its area. Acceptance of this Amendment would mean that those in control of that airport would be forced to a decision without having any opportunity of criticising it or dissenting from it at any point.

I think that the hon. and gallant Member completely misunderstood what I said about Gatwick Airport during the Committee stage of the Bill. I suggested that if we wanted, as I am sure we all do, to be helpful to the business fliers and to others, those fliers might well find it useful to go to Gatwick. I made it clear, however, that the official information was that it was not possible for those of us situated in the north of the country to fly from there to Gatwick in foggy weather—such as was pertaining at that time and from which I had just emerged—because to get to Gatwick one has the difficulty that it is in the London control area.

The hon. and gallant Gentleman shakes his head at that statement, but that was the official explanation given to me on that morning, as I related to the Committee.

Gatwick is in the London control area. Therefore, when fog descends on Heathrow Airport, Gatwick may be clear of fog, but is cut off from use because it is in the control area that is fogbound, and, therefore, cannot be used. As a consequence, those of us who need to cannot just go from Renfrew, which is without fog, to Gatwick, when it is without fog, because, in between, there is the control area to which Gatwick belongs, and which may be, and at that particular time was, fogbound—

I must apologise to the hon. Member for again interrupting him, but I think that he should look up his homework. He talked in Committee about the London circuit, and now he is talking about the London control area. I think that there is some misunderstanding, and that he refers to the London control zone and the Gatwick control zone—

I do not want to intervene in this exchange, but I think, perhaps, that the merits of the Amendment are not dependent on an understanding or misunderstanding in the Committee.

We may discuss that matter again on another occasion. I have made a brief contribution because I intended, if necessary, to correct what I thought was a wrong impression formed by the hon. and gallant Member of what I said about Gatwick.

The House will have recognised the sincerity with which the hon. and gallant Member for Harrow, East (Commander Courtney) proposed the Amendment. I go with him a long way in the desire that small and executive fliers should have the facilities of the Ministry available to help them as much as possible. However, in this small island, with its congested air space, it is not possible to provide them with as many facilities as they would like to have. I congratulate the hon. and gallant Member on learning a little about the problem since the Committee stage of the Bill. He now specifically excludes Heathrow and appreciates the objections we detailed in Committee to the proposal he then made that small planes should have unlimited right to fly in at Heathrow.

The objections we raised in Committee in regard to Heathrow must also apply at certain times to the other airports for which the Authority will be responsible. At Prestwick, Gatwick, and eventually Stansted, if that airport is developed, there will be scheduled routes using the airports. If this Amendment were accepted it could mean that the Authority would be unable to discriminate against a small flier in preference, say, to a VC10 flying into Gatwick on some scheduled route. To avoid any misunderstanding on that score, I must ask the House to reject the proposed Amendment.

I wish to correct the hon. and gallant Member on the point he raised about harbours. It is incorrect to suggest that there is no control over shipping. Under Section 20 of the Harbours Act, 1964, a control of movement order may be made

"designating areas, routes or channels…"

of harbours which

"ships or ships of a particular class or description, are to use, or to refrain from using for movement or anchoring in at all times, at specified times or in specified circumstances."

The Harbours Act allows control over certain types of ships. We must allow the Airports Authority to use this discretion in discriminating against small aircraft although I emphasise that under Clause 2 the Bill lays a duty on the Authority to encourage air transport at all times and this will apply to the private and execuitve flier.

I had not thought that I had such a good advocate as the hon. Gentleman himself. I happened to be a member of the Committee which considered the Harbours Act. My Amendment is an exact parallel of certain provisions of that Act which discriminate only against various vessels in the control zone, in the Thames Estuary and under the Medway Ports Authority, provided that they have not the communications necessary to bring them under radar control. That is an exact parallel of this situation.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for producing this analogy so admirably.

When we discussed this question before I had occasion to suggest to the Parliamentary Secretary that in his attitude towards the private and business flyer he was at his most discouraging and unhelpful, which those who sat in the Committee recognised is a high degree of discouragement and unhelpfulness. I do not think that beyond a slightly cursory bow in the direction of private flying he has been very much more helpful today.

We should like an assurance that the Authority will at least try to do something more for the private and business flyer in the future than has been done in the past. It is easy to say that it is all very difficult. The risk is that it will become very much more so in the future. The rate at which the volume of civil air traffic is increasing means that our airports and our air space will be much more crowded in the future and this overcrowding will increase at an unexpectedly rapid rate. Some airports can be expanded, though with difficulty. Air space cannot be expanded. The difficulties of the private flyer will become greater, because I suspect that the natural tendency will be for him to be the small man who gets squeezed out of the pattern always.

The whole business of private and club flying is one of the sources from which young men will be trained and recruited for civil and even military flying in future. This is not unimportant. It will be a matter of some importance to the British light aircraft manufacturing industry that there should be proper facilities in this country for small aircraft flying. I therefore hope that the hon. Gentleman will ensure that the Authority, so far from taking the easy way out and letting small aircraft go to the wall, will make a real effort to make things easier for them in the future rather than more difficult.

I, too, am not at all satisfied with the Parliamentary Secretary's reply. I am grateful to him for undertaking to give it further consideration. I shall be pursuing this matter. In view of what the hon. Gentleman said, and of the general opinion of the House, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

I beg to move, in page 2, line 45, to leave out from "shall" to "for" in line 2 on page 3, and to insert "provide".

Would it be convenient to the House, Mr. Speaker, to take with this Amendment the Amendment in page 3, line 8?

Yes, if that meets with the approval of the House.

I am sorry that the hon. Member for Cheadle (Mr. Shepherd) has had to leave for his constituency, because the Amendment has been tabled to meet some of the points that he raised in Committee. In proposing an Amendment there the hon. Gentleman made some suggestions about the consultation which should be arranged by the Authority. Then, we could not accept his specific proposals, but I undertook to look at the wording of the Clause and to consider tabling an Amendment to it.

The Amendment arises as a result of that consideration. It is an improvement of the original wording, as it imposes an express obligation on the Authority to provide adequate facilities for consultation and it will allow the Minister to give specific directions to the Authority regarding the way it is to discharge its obligation under the subsection.

It is not expected that the Minister will have to use the powers under this subsection, but if he feels that the Authority is not providing for the sort of consultative facilities that the Committee and the House have had in mind in discussing the Bill he can intervene and give directions. He could, for instance, at some time in the future give directions that the Authority allows the representation of an organisation representing the interests of consumers of the Authority's airports or, indeed, of the travellers in aircraft using those airports.

I believe the Amendment to be an improvement, and I ask the House to accept it.

It is a rare and a great pleasure to be able to welcome the fact that the Parliamentary Secretary has moved an Amendment of some substance to meet the views expressed on this side of the House. I believe that this represents a considerable concession to the views expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mr. Shepherd) who, as the Parliamentary Secretary knows, is extremely sorry that he has had to leave for his constituency.

We are grateful to the Parliamentary Secretary for making what we believe to be an improvement. We think that this will work better than the original proposal in the Bill.

I have studied with great interest the proposed change. A little more consultation is permitted in so far as the second Amendment provides for "adequate facilities for consultation" and there is the possibility of making arrangements to meet changing circumstances.

However, I feel that while the consultation provided may well be more than adequate for the kind of problems which users may face and which local authorities may have to face from time to time, this consultation may not be adequate for replacing the control which is exercised on the economic efficiency of airports by Parliamentary interest through the medium of Question Time.

The proposals are inadequate for this purpose for the following reasons. I have already mentioned the Parliamentary interests. We tend to underestimate the spur to efficiency which Parliamentary interests can provide. If there is a prospect of some small or minor matter being raised in this House, it is certainly a great spur to the efficiency and the economic operation of an organisation such as we are discussing.

The second matter that we have to take into account is the fact that the Airports Authority is in a unique position, being a monopoly enterprise with the ability to pass on the costs of any inefficiency which may arise. The other fact which is also relevant is that the chief user of the airports is a public enterprise which is not subject to the normal disciplines of a free enterprise economy.

The other point which we ought to take into account is the ever-increasing use which people make of air facilities, the multiplicity and growing number of airline operators and also, so far as local authorities are concerned, the ever-increasing pressure of building use and the increased incidence of multi-storey development.

In these circumstances, we have to provide not only adequate consultation in respect of difficulties which may arise in the operation of an airport but also some system which can be alternative to the kind of disciplines which are imposed by Parliamentary interest and by the publicity which inefficiency can cause.

For those reasons, I feel that although this Amendment is certainly an advance, it does not provide an answer to the new situation.

I beg to move, in page 3, line 8, at the end to insert:

(8) The Authority shall have power to require special guarantees from any company whose aircraft use the airports under the Authority's control, where the Authority have reasonable cause to believe that the company's administrative or financial resources are insufficient to provide proper services for their customers.

Most of the Bill is very properly concerned with the efficient operation of airports in relation to aircraft and airline operators, but the end-product of all this is travel, and the misfortunes of travellers on the ground can cause embarrassment to airport authorities. It can cause expense and can hold up the efficiency of the normal working of normal and competent firms. It is therefore a reasonable proposition that in the Bill the Airports Authority should have spelled out an authority to take certain precautions about firms with a bad reputation for their efficiency or reliability.

I was moved in the first place to table the Amendment by the unfortunate experience of some of my constituents who shortly before Christmas fell into the hands of a company which is able, believe it or not, to call itself United States Airways, which sounds pretty convincing when someone is trying to organise a party of people to take a charter flight to the West Indies. It sounds as though it ought to be all right, but in fact it is a company with an office in Luxembourg. It could not possibly have registered that title in most countries, least of all in the United States. It seems to be owned by one man with very little resources who has one office in London and one telephone perhaps to hire another aircraft if he is fortunate enough to get sufficient customers.

As a result of his operations 50 West Indians paid £100 each but they were stranded at Gatwick Airport two days before Christmas and on nine successive days were told that the aircraft was not serviceable today but would be tomorrow. Finally, when one lady broke down and cried and said that it was no good going now because her father who was on his death-bed had died, that was interpreted by some small creature concerned with the operation as a formal termination of the contract and a cancellation of the flight on the part of the customer and, according to some small type, she forfeited three-quarters of the fare she had paid.

I will not go into further details. I think that this Captain Pickett has achieved some small publicity and this might be something for a policeman or for the civil courts, but this is indicative of the type of problem which may face airports in the future. We cannot have the normal efficiency of airports embarrassed by stranded travellers at peak periods. This is a disadvantage to airport authorities, but there is another important consideration from a wider point of view to which we must be alert in an age when holiday travel by air in charter parties and others has become the normal way of life for people who get holidays with pay and want to arrange to go in a quick and unusual way to some freshly discovered holiday in some part of the world or want, as these people did, to go home for Christmas. We should be alert to see that they should be able to rely on the advertisements and the undertakings.

This, as I have said before in another context, is an element of consumer risk where the consumer is most vulnerable. Any article one buys one can take back next week, but one cannot take back a holiday. The Airports Authority should be given these powers not because I want to encumber it with activities which it might be argued should be looked after by other organisations but because this is the quickest and most reliable and efficient method of dealing with the sort of situation which I have described. One side-effect of the story concerns the Jamaican Government, who require a guarantee from charter operators who bring people home on return trips that they will take them away again at the end of their holiday. There has to be an insurance. This insurance was taken out by—

Would the hon. Gentleman care to ask his hon. Friend on the Front Bench whether this is really a matter for the Airport Transport Licensing Board rather than the Authority?

I am on my last few sentences. If I have strayed into a field which is already covered, I apologise for taking up the time of the House. I was citing an example. Some people try to find guarantees in these circumstances in another way. As I was saying, the Jamaican Government require a bond of insurance, but they could not foresee that the resources of Captain Pickett were so inadequate that his cheque would "bounce" and that this safeguard would not operate anyway.

There is little difficulty now because, as the result of most energetic activity by competent lawyers who spared no pains in searching out affidavits from New York and so on, a judgment has been obtained and it looks as though it is possible to seize that decrepit aircraft. But, here again, some false information was given to the sheriff of the county about the location of the aircraft, whereas the airport authorities know very well that it is at Gatwick Airport now. In spite of the intervention of the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Hastings), I consider that it would still be easier, quicker, and more effective to give the Authority itself power to take quick action of the kind I suggest.

My hon. Friend the Member for Paddington, North (Mr. Parkin) has raised a very serious case, and I appreciate the attention which he has devoted to it, but I must advise him and the House that the procedure he proposes to prevent that sort of experience in the future is not required. As the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Hastings) pointed out, the Air Transport Licensing Board already has considerable powers in this connection, and we believe those powers to be sufficient.

On the particular case which my hon. Friend raised, perhaps I should say that United States Airways Incorporated, which is the name of this particular airline, sought permission for a charter flight from Gatwick to Jamaica, but, before the Ministry would allow the flight to take place, it sought a satisfactory certificate of competence from the United States Federal Aeronautics Administration in Europe. As a result of that request, the F.A.A. carried out an inspection of the aircraft, and the need for a certain amount of work on the aircraft was established. This caused delay in the flight.

We have now advised United States Airways Incorporated that no further permissions will be given for the exercise of traffic rights in the United Kingdom until the Ministry is assured by the United States authorities that the company is fully certificated, so I believe that we have full protection against the activities of this particular company. I advise the House that it would be superfluous to have this Amendment written into the Bill, and, indeed, it would be quite cumbersome for the Authority to be forced to take this responsibility.

Can my hon. Friend tell me what help he can give to my constituents in getting their money back or getting alternative means of redress?

I should want to look at that.

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

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

In putting the Bill through this stage, we are helping to launch a new public corporation, a measure which has been applauded by all who use the airports. We believe that the British Airports Authority will be able to do a very fine job indeed in improving the facilities and services at the airports for which it is responsible and improving the tremendous scope that air transport will have in the next few years.

We have had a considerable amount of debate in the House and in Committee about the detailed provisions of the Bill, and I do not want to go over all that ground again. But I want to make two points clear. First, there is no question of the Authority taking over all the airports in the United Kingdom. We recognise the valuable work that is done by many municipal airports, and it is not the intention that the Authority should take over the administration of those airports except by agreement.

The second point is in regard, in particular, to points made during the Report stage by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Edward M. Taylor). The Bill does not remove the ministerial responsibility for directions to the Authority. There will still be accountability to the Minister, and, therefore, an opportunity, as there already exists in regard to B.E.A. and B.O.A.C., for hon. Members to raise questions of a general character with regard to the Authority. So a great deal of parliamentary control will continue to exist when the Authority is set up.

There will also be the opportunity, under the amended Clause that we agreed to on Report, and under Clause 14, which was unamended, for the Minister to give directions to the Authority specifically in regard to the consultative machinery and the question of the abatement of noise at the airports for which the Authority is responsible. Therefore, on these important points there will be a direct and specific responsibility on the Minister which he can fulfil by directions to the Authority.

We believe that the Authority will be called upon to undertake a very important task in a developing industry, and we wish it well in that task.

We were glad to hear what the hon. Gentleman has had to say, particularly his assurances over municipal airports and the assurance that he was able to give my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Edward M. Taylor).

I do not wish to make any particular of general criticism of the Bill, which the Opposition welcome, but I want to touch briefly on two points. The first is an important aspect of our debates, particularly in Committee, which I feel has not yet been adequately thrashed out, and it is, indeed, a subject which formed the basis for the new Clause moved earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mr. Shepherd). I refer to the, in our submission, high landing charges imposed by the Ministry on airlines at Heathrow Airport.

The hon. Gentleman will recall that in Committee I quoted certain figures which I had every reason to believe were accurate. While, admittedly, traffic to London has increased over recent years, I held that there was a case for regarding the London increase as disproportionate in comparison with the increase which has taken place at comparable airports in Europe. I said that there was a risk at least that the importance of Heathrow as an air gateway to Europe might be diminishing. There are various reasons for this, if I am right—and I certainly hold to the arguments I advanced in Committee—quite apart from the landing charges, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman would agree. But it is our submission that the high fees are a contributory matter and an important one.

When the hon. Gentleman replied he expressed strong disagreement with our arguments. Indeed, he even scorned them and quoted certain figures which were, perhaps, somewhat selective to show that the increase had been perfectly adequate and that our fears were groundless. At the time, the matter attracted a certain amount of attention in the Press. An article in The Times broadly supported our case and there was also a report in the Daily Telegraph, quoting officials of American airlines in this country. An official of T.W.A. was reported to have said that our argument was nonsense and that there was no question of his company reducing services. I understand that this was in reply to a direct question as to whether or not it intended to reduce its services; and I expect that the reporter, quite understandably, got an entirely commercial answer.

I do not want to labour this point, but I think that the hon. Gentleman will agree that it is most important that the new Authority, as soon as it is constituted, should be under no illusion that this is an important matter. The hon. Gentleman will also agree that to adduce accurate figures on transatlantic traffic is difficult. I have certain figures which I think will go some way to putting the record straight. I will quote first the eastbound transatlantic flights landing first at London as a percentage of the total scheduled flights to Europe. They are for the winter and summer of the years 1962, 1963 and 1964. The winter figures are those for January and the summer figures are those for July of each year.

The winter figures for 1962 showed that the percentage landing at London was 34·5 per cent.; in 1963, it was 29·5 per cent.; and in 1964 it was 26 per cent. The summer figures show that in 1962 it was 29 per cent.; in 1963, 26·5 per cent.; and in 1964, 24 per cent. My source in this case is B.O.A.C. and I will turn, finally, to some equally relevant figures, which I got from the I.A.T.A., showing the percentage of eastbound transatlantic flights landing first at Heathrow and the precentage going direct to the Continent.

In 1961, the percentage landing first at Heathrow was 39·8 per cent., while 60·2 per cent. went direct to the Continent. In 1964, the percentage going direct to the Continent was 63·7 per cent., while 36·3 per cent. landed first at Heathrow. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will accept that, if the figures are accurate—and I have reason to believe that they are the best assessment that can be made—they show a disproportionate increase in direct flights to the Continent, though perhaps not a very great one.

When we consider the views of Americans here, we would do well to take account of comments other than those contained in rather snap replies to questions by journalists, and I will quote first Mr. Boyd, Chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board of the United States speaking in Houston last September. Broadly speaking, he put the American view:

"Airport charges ought to be based on amortisation of debt and maintenance expense. An airline airport with airline service is a major asset to the community. There is no valid reason to get further profit from excess charges on the airlines."

The relevant phrase is "on the airlines". We know that a profit is necessary and the Authority will have to budget for a profit, but we agree with Mr. Boyd that excess charges on the airlines are not justified.

The other quotation is by Mr. Cole, who is currently the Chairman of the I.A.T.A. charges working group. Within the last day or two he has said:

"Present landing charges at London, which are the highest of any major airport in the world, will be likely to force principal non-British Transatlantic carriers to reconsider frequencies to London in the future."

This is an important statement and the Authority will have to bear it in mind.

As I said, the reason for the falling-off to London certainly has something to do with the increased and steadily increasing tourist traffic to Southern Europe and the Mediterranean area and the range of the big jets, but high landing fees, in the circumstances, must be a contributory factor and one to which the Authority will have to pay urgent attention.

The only other matter which I want briefly to raise also concerns the job of the Authority once set up rather than any specific provision in the Bill. It is the subject of freight. I believe that the Minister will agree that there is an important commercial future in freight as an independent revenue earner. Over recent years the figures have been increasing vastly. Freight is handled by both B.E.A. and B.O.A.C., although B.E.A. is the largest and most active cargo handler at Heathrow. At the moment, it is dealing with about 2,000 tons every week, about 1,000 tons for export, about 600 tons for import and 200 tons of mail. It is also acting as the agent for about 15 other airlines. Its Argosy service is hard at work and once B.E.A. gets its Argosy 220s, I understand that there is to be a 24-hour service. B.O.A.C. handles about 700 tons a week already and although its facilities are adequate—those of B.E.A. are definitely not—it can already foresee the time when it will become saturated. At the moment, the best the Ministry has been able to do is to propose a special cargo-handling area in the south-west corner of the airport, but that is five years ahead. This is one of the most important tasks facing the Authority and I hope that the Authority will seize on it immediately it is constituted.

Having made those comments, I emphasise again that they are not a criticism of the Bill as such. I am sure that our debates in Committee and in the House have been thoroughly worth while, not only because of the Amendments, but because of the general light which has been thrown on the problems of the Authority itself. In the Bill we set up the machinery for an important improvement in the administration of our airports, but the machinery itself is not enough and the success of the Bill will now depend on the quality and calibre of the people chosen for the Authority. The Authority's task is urgent and there is no doubt of that. We on this side of the House wish it well.

I shall not detain the House for more than a moment. The Bill has given the House an opportunity of discussing aviation matters in detail. To my mind it has revealed one thing—and I hope that in saying this I shall not be taken as intending any disrespect to the Minister—namely, that the level of knowledge of this highly technical subject is deplorably low. When I hear speeches made by some hon. Members I sometimes wonder whether we are really contributing to a solution of the extremely important problems which face us for decision, and whether we are assisting the Minister to come to his own decisions.

I believe that there is an analogy between the freedom of the sea and the freedom of the air which has been brought into context by the Bill and the Amendments to it. The analogy is a very close one, although very narrow. Maritime law was built up by individual experience—with this country very largely at its head—from the earliest times. It was individual experience brought out through collective organisations, such as the Cinque Ports, which developed the maritime law that we know today. I know of no attempt by the Plantagenets to create a "British Cinque Ports Authority".

That slightly jocular reference leads me to my next point, which is that aviation law, with all this highly technical subject matter, now comes to us from above. It has not been built up from below. It is dictated by Governments, through the hon. Member's Ministry. There we lay ourselves open to certain grave dangers. One of them was expressed in a rather bitter comment only two nights ago by one of the most experienced aviators in this country. I retail it second-hand, for what it is worth. He referred to a certain regulation of the International Civil Aeronautical Organisation and said that regulations framed by this organisation were intended for observance by the British, for circumvention by the Americans, and for disregard by the rest of the world. That bitter and rather characteristic comment has a certain germane substance, of which this House should be aware. I contend that we do not give the matter the close attention that it merits.

The regulation which was referred to specifically concerned letters two feet high, called registration letters. That is the vast height at which those letters now have to be painted on aircraft. A practical man—perhaps a sailor—might well have suggested that we should be better employed in providing binoculars for control officers rather than putting forward regulations of this kind. I welcome the Bill, but I wish to draw attention to that grave difficulty.

I am asked by Mr. Speaker to announce that all the Amendments have been selected.