I beg to move Amendment No. 1, Clause 1, in page 1, line 9, to leave out "or ethnic".

I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that it might be convenient for the House to discuss, at the same time, Amendments Nos. 57, 60 and 63, in Clause 5, page 5, line 5 and Clause 6, page 5, line 21 and line 28 respectively, to leave out "or ethnic". These are all drafting Amendments to the same effect, and I should have thought that we could have disposed of all four together.

I thought that that might be so. I am obliged to the right hon. and learned Gentleman.

During the Committee stage I drew the attention of the Home Secretary to the rather strange position that we have of using the word "ethnic" in the Bill at all. Of course, it is not one of the major points in the Bill, but I think that it is a point which deserves attention. I think that entirely through oversight, because he was making a long speech dealing with a number of points at the time, the right hon. and learned Gentleman did not reply to the point that I made about this in Committee.

The point is that, in the first place, the word "ethnic" is ambiguous. The dictionaries, so far as I have been able to ascertain, do not agree upon whether it is derived from the Greek word ethnos, meaning "a race", or ethnikos, which means "a heathen or pagan". If it is derived from ethnos, meaning "a race", we do not need to have "ethnic" in the Bill at all, because we have already got the word "race" in the context in which "ethnic" is used in each of the four cases to which I am referring. So the use of "ethnic" if it means "race" is merely repetitive, and we should avoid using repetitive words.

If the word is derived from ethnikos and means "a pagan or heathen", then even more we should try to keep it out of the Bill because, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman was at pains to emphasise in answer to certain Amendments moved by one of his lion. Friends in Committee, the Bill has nothing at all to do with religion. I should have thought that it would avoid confusion on both of these scores if we left out the word "ethnic".

But I would make just one more point in this context, that the word is used in Clause 6, and Clause 6 will deal with indictable cases. "Ethnic" may very well have to be brought into an indictment because it is conceivable that it will be correct for the person drafting the indictment to use the whole of the expression:

"colour, race, or ethnic or national origins."

It would be a very great pity if, in the rather few cases that come up under Clause 6, there is a dispute, which could well go to appeal, as to whether the kind of hatred that had been stirred up had been stirred up against somebody of ethnic origin. For these reasons, it would be much simpler to leave this out and avoid that possible sort of confusion.

However opinions may differ about the Bill, it is the common purpose of everybody that, if it is to be enacted, it should not exclude anybody; that is to say, it should produce the result that any grouping of citizens would be entitled to its protection. We do not wish incitement against any groups, whoever, they may be, whether they be coloured, Jewish, Maltese, Cypriots, members of an African race, French, Germans or English, Scottish, Irish or Welsh.

It is an objective which is of prime importance in the Bill that no grouping of citizens of whom one could, in ordinary English parlance, predicate that they have, or are thought to have, or are merely represented to have, some common features or characteristics or origins that, broadly speaking, one relates to the stem from which they proceed. None should be excluded.

It has been the Government's endeavour to select language that would produce, so far as language is capable of certainty, that result, and I am certain of having the assent of the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) to the proposition that that should be our purpose. I am sure that none of us would wish to leave any grouping out.

If that is the common purpose, can we choose language which is preferable to the language embodied in the Bill? The right hon. and learned Gentleman's criticism is of the word "ethnic". What is the criterion which, in the courts, we adopt in construing the language of a Statute? The courts ask, "How does an ordinary member of our community, who habitually speaks as his language the English language, construe the words? What do they mean in common parlance?"

Applying that test, one reaches the following conclusion. The right hon. and learned Gentleman said that it is uncertain whether, in its ordinary connotation, the word "ethnic" in the English language is regarded as derived from that branch of the family, as it were, which one associates with the word ethnikos—where it means a heathen—or stems from the other branch of the family and has something to do with origin.

I would have thought it beyond controversy that it cannot, in this context, be related to the expression "heathen" because, in this context, it has to be read with the word "origin", and "ethnic origin" could not, I should have thought, in ordinary connotation be construed as implying any heathen origin. It means, surely, an origin which has something to do with one's blood or the origin from which one proceeds. The right hon. and learned Gentleman's argument is not substantiated. The word could not mean "heathen" in this context. It means whatever else in the English language the word "ethnic" means.

11.15 a.m.

The word "colour" is one which ordinarily would be understood. It is actually a quite inaccurate term, because everyone has some sort of colour. But in ordinary English connotation the word contains a fairly clear conception in the mind of the ordinary person in the light of the way the word is used in this context.

The word "race" is perhaps a little more ambiguous. The words "ethnic or national origin" are deliberately introduced into the Clause to make certain that no one is left out of the description "colour or race". We want to be certain that, because of some accident of language, some ambiguity of outline attaching to the words "colour or race", we do not fail to cover anybody who could possibly have fallen outside the ambit of these two words.

I put it to the House that the word "ethnic" is not an unsuitable term. The word "national" would bring to the mind of the ordinary person the idea of a particular country; a person, for example, who is a German is one regarded as having German as his nationality and, if he lived here he, and his grouping would have the protection of the Bill. For example, what is a Maltese? It is open to doubt as to whether he could be said in ordinary parlance to belong to a particular race. It might be said that the word "national" would embrace it but it is open to doubt.

I think, therefore, that the interposition of the word "ethnic", stemming as I hope it would be thought to stem in this context, from the Greek word ethnos—people, a group—would have the effect of removing any doubt as to whether a particular group fell outside the scope of the other words in the Clause. I mention the Maltese purely as an example.

I know that the right hon. and learned Gentleman shares the purpose in this context that we all have in mind and I assure him that there is no better term that one could import into that series of words han the word "ethnic" which has been put there. We have given a great deal of thought to this since, on Second Reading, the question was specifically raised as to what was exactly meant and whether this passage is appropriate. We have thought it over very carefully and our considered conclusion is that these four words get as near to certainty as, by that extraordinarily imprecise instrument, the human language, certainty can be obtained.

I do not wish to press this point. I am grateful to the Home Secretary for his explanation, but I am not convinced. I think that we could improve the Bill by the Amendment, but in the circumstances I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

I beg to move Amendment No. 4, Clause 1, in page 1, line 14, to leave out paragraph (a).

Perhaps it would be convenient, Mr. Speaker, to discuss at the same time Amendment No. 5, standing in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Smethwick (Mr. Peter Griffiths), in page 1, line 14, leave out "public house".

And also Amendment No. 11 standing in the name of the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Sharples), in page 2, line 13, leave out subsection (5).

Our main purpose is to enable the Home Secretary to give certain assurances. I have notified him in advance of the points I wish to raise in seeking reassurance, in particular, for the licensed trade.

The licensed trade had considerable misgivings about the whole of the Bill and very considerable misgivings about the Bill as originally drafted when it contained the criminal sanction against discrimination. The trade still has a number of doubts about the operation of the Bill.

The first thing it would like to be reassured about is that nothing in the Bill in any way alters the common law duty of the licensee to keep order on his premises, which must be his first and most important duty, and that nothing alters the lonig-established tradition in the trade that he is able to refuse to serve anybody with a drink without giving any reason whatever at the time.

We had considerable discussion about this in Standing Committee and I do not wish to labour the point. I am sure that hon. Members will appreciate that this is a field in which the greatest difficulties about discrimination itself will probably arise. It is very often when people have had a drink or two that tempers become inflamed and they say things which they afterwards regret saying. The responsibility for keeping order and maintaining the good name of his house rests fairly and squarely on the licensee, who is answerable at the brewster sessions for the way in which he has conducted his business. Had the Home Secretary maintained the criminal sanctions in the Bill, the position of a licensee would have been impossible.

Can the Home Secretary say who is to be held responsible in a case or alleged case of racial discrimination? Very often in a large public house the bars are quite separate from one another. The barman in charge of a bar has to exercise his own discretion about whom he serves and the reasons why he refuses to serve a person. If a case of alleged racial discrimination should occur in a bar, or even a number of cases, about which the licensee himself may have very little knowledge and about which he may have no reason to have any knowledge, who is to be held responsible? Is it to be the employee, the person working the bar himself, with a considerable degree of responsibility, or is the licensee himself in every case to be brought before the conciliation committee and possibly eventually threatened with legal action?

Many public houses, in fact the majority, are divided into different bars and some of these bars are regarded by regular clients almost as club rooms. One can see difficulties when someone going into a bar being used virtually as a clubroom is asked to go into one of the other bars, not on the ground of racial discrimination, but because the bar is being used by regular clients for one of their regular meetings. Will the licensee be able, without being accused of racial discrimination, to ask someone who may be coloured to go into a different bar? This is not an entirely easy matter.

In certain areas, for instance, where there are different coloured races using a public house for the purpose of maintaining law and order, the licensee may try to keep one bar for clients of one race and another for clients of a different race. Will he be accused of racial discrimination if he should try to do so in the interests of maintaining law and order?

Licensees who have regular clients often put a notice outside their premises saying "No coaches" or "No gypsies", because in the hop picking season there is sometimes a very large influx of additional population which can disrupt the whole of their trade and create a burden upon them which they cannot meet. Will a licensee still be able to put up notices of that kind, provided, of course, that they are not offensive? I think that everyone accepts that if he puts up a notice saying "No niggers served" that is offensive and would fall within the terms of the Bill, but the licensed trade certainly would not condone such a practice. However, if a licensee puts up a notice to say "No coaches", or "No gypsies", or "No hop pickers", will he be accused of discrimination of any kind?

We are later to discuss the composition of the conciliation committees. Will a licensee be debarred from being a member of a conciliation committee because of his interest in the Bill?

Those are the main points which I wish to raise. I have given notice to the right hon. and learned Gentleman that I intended to raise them and one or two others.

In his introductory comments the hon. Gentleman said that the purpose of moving the Amendment was to secure certain assurances from the Home Secretary. In order that there is no misunderstanding afterwards, will he indicate that his purpose is not to see that paragraph (a) is excluded? I would be grateful if he could make that clear.

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I have no intention of trying to do that, but, as the hon. Gentleman will know, under our rules of procedure, on Report one has to put down an Amendment if one is to raise an issue.

I support my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Sharples) in this Amendment. Some of my hon. Friends and I suggested an Amendment which would have excluded a public house from the provisions of the Bill. Such an Amendment would suit us very much better. I make no secret of the fact that I am against the Bill as a whole. I think that it is a bad Bill because it legislates for people's hatreds and feelings and removes much of the freedom which the public has enjoyed.

11.30 a.m.

Licensees in this country have had a very good record in this respect. I do not think that the public generally has ever had a serious complaint against licensees as a whole for the way in which they dealt with their customers. They have very little choice about whether to serve any customer, but the customer has every choice and can use any public house or hotel he chooses. The licensees have always behaved amiably. I do not think that there are any specific cases on record of licensees discriminating against any individual, or set of individuals.

As the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary told us during the Committee stage, the licensee has very serious duties. He is not allowed to serve people under the age of 18. Many of us know that it is very difficult to decide whether an immigrant is under the age of 18; in fact some of the immigrants do not even know their correct age. But the licensee has this responsibility. He is also responsible, as the right hon. Gentleman told us, for keeping out people likely to be offensive or dirty, or who are quarrelsome or bad tempered. I believe they exercise this duty very well indeed. There is a law by which they are subject to a review of their licence, and if the licensee has behaved badly there could be a charge of discrimination against him, and it could be brought before the licensing justices. I would have thought this in itself was sufficient, because it always has been considered to be so and has worked very well.

There are all sorts of things which are abhorrent to us and which are against our laws, such as the sale of drugs and gambling in public houses. However, to many of the immigrants these things are not always objectionable. They are accepted in their countries. The practice of taking and selling drugs is not, to them, a terrible problem. It is for the licensee to make quite sure that such things as dope peddling and gambling do not take place in his public house. The responsibility is there and he has to decide whether the people who come in to buy a drink are a risk in this respect. I support my hon. Friend; I go further and would wish to press this Amendment in the hope that it will be accepted. I think it is a very bad thing to inject into our laws anything which will inhibit the licensees of public houses. The possibilities are enormous. We have already heard rumours suggesting that a number of immigrants could, after the passing of this Bill, if this Amendment is not accepted, go into a public house to test the licensee. If a man was refused a drink by the licensee on perfectly reasonable grounds, unconnected with discrimination, there could then be a test case brought before these Committees.

I think that it is a bad thing to subject licensees to this sort of risk. After the passing of this Bill before serving a drink they will have to decide whether they run the risk of arrest and whether they ought not to discriminate simply because the person is coloured or a foreigner. It is much better for the licensee to be quite uninhibited and to say "Here is a risk, this person may cause trouble, I will not serve him a drink." There is also the question of excess of drink. Here the licensees have done a magnificent job. They have prevented serious drunkenness taking place and disturbance of the peace. It is quite clear that this particular Clause, as it stands, would have the opposite effect to that which we seek in what we call a Race Relations Bill. It could cause disturbances by reason of the fact that the licensee has had to refuse drinks or to reject an immigrant.

The whole purpose of this Bill, which I profoundly hope will be achieved, is to bring harmony, harmonious relationships, into our community, and not the reverse. It would be a major failure if the reverse ensued as the result of provisions of this Bill. We have introduced it, as I have said on a number of occasions, because we are face to face with a new and major social problem—the presence with us of a very considerable number of settlers from Commonwealth countries. The primary purpose of this Bill is to enable them to be settled happily into the community as fellow citizens and to prevent the kind of action which is wounding and provokes ill-will and bad feeling. That is the object of this Bill, and it has been designed for that purpose.

It is obviously the responsibility of the Minister in charge to explain precisely what purposes he wishes the Bill to achieve, how he hopes and thinks the Bill will work. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Sharples), and the hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Gurden), will of course, know that it is ultimately for the courts to decide exactly what the language used in the Bill means. But the Minister in charge will say what, according to his views and his own thinking, will be the effect of it. I willingly rise to do that because I recognise that up and down the country there are large numbers of licensees whose employees wish to know, so far as it can be precisely stated, exactly where they stand. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Sutton and Cheam was good enough to send me, before this debate arose, a list of questions which licensees would wish to be answered and he has repeated them again today. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Selly Oak has particularly explained one of them. May I try to give the best answers which I can? They are certainly the answers which I believe to be true and which I hope will be confirmed by the courts if, unhappily—I underline that word—cases should have to be decided as matters of law in the courts.

The first question, put by both lion. Members, was this, and I summarise it: is the duty of the licensee to maintain order in his premises and the powers which he at present has to take steps for that purpose to be in any way altered or inhibited by the Bill? The answer which I give without qualification is "No". The purpose of the Bill is to prevent the refusal of facilities to sections of the public, not because they are disorderly, but because they are particular members of the public. The language which we have chosen in defining discrimination has been directed towards bringing that about.

The hon. Member for Selly Oak gave a number of very pertinent and relevant examples. He said suppose the licensee feels that he should not serve a particular would-be customer because he suspects that he is under age. Is lie to be allowed to do that? The answer is undoubtedly "Yes". The question in each case is whether he is refusing to serve him because he belongs to a particular—and may I use the generic term—ethnical group, or is the reason different and not connected with the fact that he belongs to that ethnical group but, for example, because the licensee feels it his duty to take the step of refusing the custom for the purpose of preserving order or complying with the order about not serving people who are under age?

Therefore, if a coloured person comes into the bar and the licensee sees that he is behaving in a disorderly way, that he is dressed dirtily, that he is offensive to other people and that he is causing himself to become a centre of disorder—not because he is coloured but because of his behaviour—then undoubtedly he can refuse to serve him. Suppose that he has already, in the judgment of the licensee, consumed too much alcoholic refreshment so that he is becoming noisy and obstreperous. The licensee undoubtedly can refuse to serve him with any more. There is no question about that whatever.

The only prohibition is against the licensee saying to himself, "I do not like people of that colour. Because they are of that colour, I will not serve them". The Bill is aimed against the licensee saying to himself about a perfectly respectable, well behaved, quiet, orderly, decent coloured person, "I do not like people of that colour. They are not coming in to my bar to have alcoholic refreshment from me". The Bill is aimed against that, and nothing beyond that. Therefore, I say without qualification that the answer to the first question is that there is no alteration of the licensee's duty to maintain order in his premises.

Is it not also further the case—and this assurance should be emphasised once again—that isolated incidents are not caught by the Bill? The test is whether there has been a course of conduct and whether that course of conduct is likely to continue. This is even a further assurance for the publican that no one is trying to interfere with his right in the kind of case which the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Gurden) mentioned.

I entirely endorse what my hon. Friend says. I was coming to that point and wish emphatically to reassert it. It is not the isolated act but the course of conduct which is relevant.

I want to take the questions in sequence. The next question asked by the hon. Member for Selly Oak was: has the licensee, when refusing a drink for some perfectly legitimate reason, to give that reason, or any reason, to the person to whom he refuses it? The answer is emphatically "No"; he is under no obligation. He exercises his own judgment and says privately to himself, "I think that that man is behaving in an obstreperous fashion. I refuse to serve him." He is under not the slightest obligation to say to that person, "I refuse to serve you because you are being obstreperous." He must simply exercise his judgment. He need simply refuse to serve the man without giving reason and he is in no way infringing the provisions of Clause 1.

11.45 a.m.

The next question was who would be responsible? Would it be the licensee? Would it be somebody serving behind the bar? Could the licensee be held to be responsible in a case in which it was perfectly apparent that he knew nothing about the act of discrimination? To answer that, I go to the terms of the Bill. Clause 1 says that the unlawful conduct may be committed by anybody

"being the proprietor or manager of or employed for the purposes of any place of public resort …"

Therefore, anybody serving behind the bar who had a predilection against individual groups or coloured people could contravene the provisions of the Clause. It might be the licensee, the manager, the proprietor—whoever happened to be in charge—who could be brought to the courts. Any one of the categories to which I have referred who could be shown to have been guilty of a consistent course of conduct in breach of Clause 1 could be brought to the court.

The hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam asked whether a licensee who had in no way participated in the course of conduct and who might be completely ignorant of it—indeed he might have given instructions to the contrary—could find himself the subject of an injunction. I should have thought that that was absolutely impossible. An injunction is granted only, at long last, after the conciliation procedure and the rest of it has failed. If the court is satisfied under Clause 3(2) that

"the defendant"—

he might be a licensee—

"has (by himself or by his servants or agents) engaged"

in a course of conduct in contravention of Clause 1, the court may grant an injunction. There must be a course of conduct. One act is nothing like enough. It might be, in a very exceptional case, such an outrageous act that the court would infer that it was part of a course of conduct, but it must be shown that the licensee engaged in a course of conduct.

More than that, it must also be shown that he is likely, unless restrained by order of the court, to persist in such conduct. It is, in the nature of things, impossible that a person would be likely to persist in a course of conduct if he knew nothing about it. Therefore, my answer to the question whether a licensee who knew nothing about it could find himself the subject of an injunction is unhesitatingly in the negative.

The next question concerned a licensee who has a particular bar or room—a lounge or something of that sort—which he wishes to confine to people of a certain race or from which we wants to exclude people of another race. The question is: is it because of their race, or is it because he is treating all members of the public alike? I can imagine a case in which a licensee might have let a particular room to a particular society or group of people. It is then a private party. The door is closed. It is not open to access by members of the public. It is let for a private purpose. There is nothing to stop the licensee doing that. What he must not do is this. When he has opened his premises—the saloon bar, the general bar or whatever it is—to members of the public at large, he must not, as a matter of consistent conduct, exclude from them certain sections of the public because of their race, colour, and so on. It does not matter for that purpose whether it is the saloon bar, the general bar, or any other bar. The test is this: is the part of the premises for which the licensee is responsible open to members of the public? If it is open to members of the public, then it must be open to all members of the public without distinction of origin.

The next question in the hon. Member's written draft is whether it is right that the local conciliation committee should, as Clause 2(2,a) provides, be able to consider a complaint of a single act of conduct. The answer is "Yes"—as it is bound to be. We cannot have the local conciliation committee closing its ears until someone comes to it and says, "I am not complaining only about one act of conduct. I am complaining about four such acts". In the very nature of things the complainant must be able to say, "This happened to me last night", or "This happened to me the night before last", or "I was there with friends the night before that and we were excluded". The conciliation committee must be able to listen to him.

It is for the conciliation committee to make up its mind whether the act is no more than a single, isolated act, in which case it is not enough for action to be taken, or whether it forms part of a course of conduct. I believe that the Bill is rightly drafted in enabling the conciliation committee to listen to and take into account each individual act and to see whether they add up to a course of conduct.

The next question was, would a licensee be prohibited from putting up a notice "No Coaches"? Certainly not. He can do that as he does now. Why? Because the notice "No coaches accepted" applies to all members of the public in coaches. If he puts up a notice, "No coloured coaches accepted"—[Laughter.] How right I was to put in the word "ethnic". If he were to put up a notice saying that he would not accept coaches containing coloured occupants, he would be infringing the provisions of Clause 1. But he can say "No coaches accepted" because coaches bring persons of all colours and all races.

The question about gypsies is a more difficult question. Having regard to their history and the place which they occupy in the community, are gypsies, in the ordinary connotation, as we understand it, people who can be distinguished and are distinguished and known in ordinary parlance as forming a particular group by reference to the origin from which they sprang? For centuries they have been so deeply integrated into our community that the answer to that question in 1965 might be that they are so intermingled that when we speak of a gypsy it is a term of art which means very little.

I hope that the House would say that it is one of the fringe questions which it is difficult to answer. I hope that licensees would not seek to exclude gypsies because I would not say that there was not a risk of it still being held to be the case that the gypsy community of this country, for whom we all have great affection and whose literature and habits intrigue many people, still belong to an origin of their own. It may be that that is wrong. Possibly that is one of the puzzles which ultimately will come before the court. I hope that it will never come before the court, because I hope that this Act will not result in proceedings.

But I would say to a licensee, "If I were advising you and you put up a notice 'No gypsies', and if the reason for that were not that they were misbehaving but that you did not want gypsies as such in your premises, I would say that you would be at some risk. If a particular gypsy or couple of gypsies or three gypsies misbehave in your bar and you exclude them, you are absolutely dead safe, but if you put a ban against gypsies in general I think that it would be within the possibility of it being held that you were putting a ban against people who, in terms of blood, origin and history, may be regarded in this country as perhaps belonging to a common origin." I say that with great hesitation and I should not like to commit myself. It is very much a matter of opinion. I hope that no court ever has to decide it. But I should not advise a licensee to do it.

I am afraid that I can go no further in giving a more positive answer to the House.

Is it not the case that if a publican seeks to exclude gypsies, and it affects persons who are bona fide travellers seeking refreshment and who happen to be gypsies, then such an attempt at total exclusion may in itself be a breach of the licensee's obligation under the existing licensing laws?

The answer to that question may well be, "Yes".

I come to the last question, which concerns the composition of the conciliation committees. The question is, "Would a licensee be eligible to be appointed a member of a conciliation committee?" The answer is, "Yes". It is the Government's desire that the composition of these committees should be left to the judgment of the Board. It should be isolated from political affections or considerations and should be done by an independent board. I should have thought that the Board might well think that a particular licensee would be a valuable member of a committee.

But I hope that the Board will not think that it has to choose heads. Once we start doing that, there are so many possible heads that we might choose. We might choose a Pakistani and an Indian and a West Indian and an Irishman—and, once we start doing that, we have all kinds of groups of representatives, which will not achieve the objective which we have in mind. I hope that those who are chosen will be the best people for the job.

That is a concept which is deeply inherent in our social arrangements in many contexts. We say that we do not want to choose representatives, but that we leave it to somebody's judgment to try to get the best person for the job. I hope that that will be done. But I do not take the view that a licensee would be excluded from possible participation in the work of a committee because he was a licensee.

To avoid misconception, I hope that licensees will always have in mind how this machinery works. It is not a question of their being dragged straight off to the courts if there is an infringement. The complaint goes to the conciliation committee. The committee, on a friendly and sensible basis, tries to bring the parties together. That is not a judicial proceeding; that is as informal as it can be. We get sensible local people to try to bring the parties together. We hope that that will be an end of the matter.

Only if that fails and if the conduct is likely to be persisted in does the report go to the Board. It is then for the Board to see whether it is proper to pass the complaint to the Attorney-General. Then it is for the Attorney-General to make up his mind whether the case is one in which the public interest requires that he should seek to take it to the court. All that has to be gone through before there is any question of an injunction.

The procedure is designed to promote harmony, and I feel that it adopts the machinery best calculated for that purpose.

The Home Secretary has made clear to the House, as he did in Standing Committee, what are the intentions of his Department in promoting the Bill. Some of us are still in some doubt about the effect, however good the intention, if only because once the law is tightly drawn in a Statute certain people will immediately start looking for loopholes in the law or ways round the law.

When the Home Secretary was talking about the question of a licensee who has two or more bars or private rooms which he can let to clubs, I was struck by the possibility of there happening in licensed premises something similar to what we all know happens in the theatre on some occasions as a way of getting round the control on certain types of production on the stage. It seems to me very easy to turn a theatre into a club—almost at the drop of a hat—in order to put on plays which cannot be put on in the public theatre.

It seems to me to be possible that licensees who wish to evade the intentions of the Bill may find ways of doing the same thing in their premises if they have rooms or bars other than the ones normally open to the general public. They could let them, as it were, permanently, to a club formed out of people who were otherwise likely to be regular customers of the premises, and through that club exercise in that part of their premises discrimination against minorities.

I fully accept the Home Secretary's statement of the intentions of the Bill and his interpretation of how it will work. I want only to ask if he would be good enough to reaffirm in this larger and more public forum what I understood to be the upshot of his replies to some of the debates in Standing Committee. What I seek to do is to generalise the questions put to the Home Secretary by my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Sharples) and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Gurden) in this simple comprehensive question: am I right in understanding that Clause 1 of the Bill—and, indeed, other Clauses as well, but Clause 1 in particular, because that is what we are now on—does not in any way modify or diminish the existing law; that it does not diminish or qualify the existing rights or duties of any person; that all that it does is to add a new type of offence?

This has been my understanding of what the Home Secretary has said in Standing Committee, and I think that one might, on the face of it, infer this from the absence from the back of the Bill of any Schedules of repeals. In other words, no other Statute is affected by the Bill. However, a great deal of the law on this difficult subject does not rest on Statute; it rests on the common law. Therefore, one would not expect to see any Schedules of repeals if the Bill were merely modifying the common law.

It is for that reason that I should like to ask the Home Secretary for a categorical assurance that the Bill does not, as I say, in any way modify or diminish existing rights and duties under the existing law, whether common law or Statute law.

I feel that I probably echo the thoughts of many hon. Members when I say that when the Home Secretary answers questions his replies raise more questions as to the working of this Bill than existed in the first place. I do not feel that it is in the straightforward examples of the kind he gave that difficulties will arise, but rather on the fringes and at the points where the Bill is not absolutely clear.

Let me give some examples. Amendment No. 4, moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Sharples), would delete from Clause 1(2) paragraph (a) but would leave in paragraph (b), which relates to theatres, cinemas, dance halls, which are all places to which one gains entry by buying a ticket. If, as is often the case, the tickets are numbered one can see where a person is in the queue, whether he is first or not. There is thus some control of entry and that control is quite clear. I would have thought that no one could possibly support any kind of discrimination in a place of that sort, nor would any discrimination be likely to occur.

Paragraph (a) relates to hotels, restaurants, cafés, public houses, which are places to which the public has entry without particular control; they have free entry. One does not there clearly know whose turn it is or how long anyone has been waiting for food or drink and no one knows whether one is in the queue first or last. In such a place one is not shown to a reserved seat, or to a seat in turn, as in a theatre or cinema, and one has to wait for service, and we all know that service in some cafés and restaurants can be slow and very often it is the public rather than the waiters who do the waiting. This sort of thing happens and it happens to everyone. It happens to hon. Members just as much as it happens to members of immigrant communities. I would have thought that it is here the difficulty would arise. Where people come in and have to wait and it is not known who was first or whose turn it is we shall get all kinds of complaints.

I feel that in some ways the Home Secretary shows some naïvety which, one feels, is rather refreshing in a Home Secretary, as in his feeling that in the working of the Bill we shall be dealing only with reasonable people. I can assure him that there are some very unreasonable people who are waiting to make use of the provisions of the Bill. In Birmingham, we have a body of people called C.A.R.D. who held a meeting as soon as this Bill was published and announced that within 24 hours of its coming into law they would be testing it.

The Bill is in this sense an agitators' charter for those bodies who want to find cases of discrimination in order to justify their existence—because if there is no racial discrimination we cannot have a committee against it. These people are going round looking for these cases, and if they look far enough, at the fringes of these places of public resort, they may find individual cases.

Is the hon. Member not aware that under the National Health Service inspectors can go into a chemist's, supply the prescription which the chemist makes up and then it is checked—there is no identity given—to see whether or not the chemist is complying with the terms of the National Health Service?

I am aware of that and and I am very much in favour of that testing by those inspectors. I am complaining about testing by unofficial agitators.

I will not labour the points which have already been made, but I would suggest that Amendment No. 5 would be helpful and the reason is simply this. It is a question of a course of conduct, which it would be extremely difficult to define in a number of individual incidents. The Home Secretary has said that individual incidents can be reported to the race conciliation committee. But isolated incidents can occur in so many ways.

For instance, on Saturday night at closing time the last call is made: "Time, gentlemen. Last orders, gentlemen, please." There is a general rush for drinks and some people get them and some do not. There is not time. It is not a question of anybody's turn. Some coloured man, who perhaps was not then served, goes away, without complaining to the landlord, and makes complaint to the race conciliation committee. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Chapman) said it would be turned down, and it might, but the fact is that the landlord is being pilloried—because I am quite sure that those people who make these complaints will make them publicly—as some sort of race hater and because of a supposed offence when none was intended.

A little later in the week, perhaps, someone goes into the public house early. There is not service in every bar the moment it opens. So he has to wait. There will be yet another complaint. Of course, this complaint in itself would be rejected, but it is yet another complaint against that landlord.

We are developing a course of conduct. How will a landlord ensure that this will never happen again? When he is called before the Board, will he be able to assure it that the incidence will never be repeated? Of course he will not, and if the Board receives no assurance from him on that score, it will say that the matter will have to be the subject of an injunction. Licensees will be put in an absolutely impossible position, and since our discussions upstairs, when much the same questions were put to the Home Secretary and his reply was widely publicised, licensees in the Midlands, near to my constituency, have said that they are not satisfied, that they are worried about the Bill, and that they wish to see this Clause amended.

I propose to deal next with the question of the private bar. It is not a matter of a bar which has been hired by a group of people, a fishing society, or some specific club. Many public houses, particularly in large cities, keep a private bar, a "regulars only" bar, from which anyone, of whatever race or creed, would be frozen out if he attempted to enter. It is kept specially for regulars. This is traditional, and there is nothing whatsoever wrong with it. It is reasonable for people to keep a "regulars only" bar.

Can the hon. Gentleman tell me how the Bill in present form will affect a ban imposed by a publican on the whole of the general public, by which white, coloured, green or brown people, and even the hon. Gentleman are excluded? That sort of bar would not be caught by the Bill.

If I can be assured that that sort of bar will not be included, that will remove one of my doubts about the Bill. The system to which I am referring is understood by English people, and when one enters a pub and sees that there is a "regulars only" bar, one goes to the other bar. This will not be so well understood by coloured persons, and if they are led by people whose motives are probably suspect anyway to believe that they can use every bar in every pub, we shall have, not racial harmony, but a deterioriation of race relations, because the arrival of a large number of immigrants, led by these Left-wing type leaders who have said that they are going to test the Bill as soon as it becomes an Act, will lead to a deterioration of relations between white and coloured.

Licensees already have a very heavy burden to carry. Theirs is an extremely difficult job, and one that is made more difficult by the fact that they sell alcoholic drinks. Anything that adds an extra responsibility will, as my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford (Mr. Woodhouse) said, be to the disadvantage of the trade, and also, I believe, to the disadvantage of good relations between white and coloured people in our large cities.

Sheer humbug.

If the Bill goes through unamended, it will lead to a series of nasty little agitations to produce cases of discrimination, and of course these will be publicised. The result will be a deterioration in relations between white and coloured. I therefore hope that, whether Amendment No. 4 is accepted or not, Amendment No. 5 will be, so that we can make it clear that we are not producing an agitator's charter.

If the Home Secretary is to be accused of naïvety because he takes the view that immigrants are reasonable persons, likely to abide by the law, no one would accuse the hon. Member for Smethwick (Mr. Peter Griffiths) of being naïve. One would, of course, find that he is not particularly knowledgeable on this matter—

Nor is the hon. Gentleman.

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will allow me to complete my sentence before he passes judgments—because, if, as he suggests, there are minorities who are anxious to cause incidents which will bring about embarrassment to publicans, perhaps I might point out that this can be done now, by a person attending the brewster sessions and opposing the grant of a licence to a publican on the basis that he has shown discrimination. To assure the hon. Gentleman that those who take this action are not all black, let me tell him that I have done so at brewster sessions and succeeded in getting undertakings from a publican as a result of which he ceased indulging in racial practices.

12.15 p.m.

I think that the good point made by the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Sharples) was this, that a publican wants to feel that it is no more difficult to refuse to serve a person or require a person to leave because he happens that coincidentally to be coloured than that he may be a citizen of this country That is the point, and I think that it is covered by subsection (5) which, when defining the meaning of an hotel, refers to it as an establishment

"offering food, drink … without special contract, to any traveller presenting himself who appears able and willing to pay a reasonable sum for the services and facilities provided and who is in a fit state to be received …".

Surely that is the clearest possible indication that the right of exclusion is maintained by the landlord where he can say that either the traveller is not in a fit state, or he does not appear to have adequate financial resources. I think that that should allay many of the fears of publicans on that matter.

I do not find the innuendo about drugs by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Gurden) particularly helpful, and, on reflection, he may think that it will be interpreted in a wider context than he intended, or perhaps he did so intend.

Surely the issue is this: a pub, if I might be allowed to make such a profound remark, is a pub. It is a public place, and if there were any attempt by a publican to segregate a bar, even as between one British subject and another, both of whom were white, surely it would be arguable whether he was committing a breach of his obligation under the licensing Acts? Therefore, any attempt to exclude persons from a "regulars only" bar would be restricted to the publican politely requesting people not to use it, and he would have no right to make that a reason for ejecting a person from the public house. If I went into a regulars only bar and preferred it to the other part of the pub, I would have no hesitation in staying there.

I hope that it will go out from this debate that the view of the Official Opposition is that expressed by the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam who, quite reasonably, asked for various qualifications which will set at rest the minds of those who have public houses, and it will be made quite clear that the views expressed by the hon. Members from Birmingham command only a minority of support in this House.

I think that the Home Secretary has made the intention of Parliament abundantly clear, and we are all grateful to him for doing so. Unquestionably, if any case of alleged racial discrimination comes before a court that court will have no difficulty whatsoever in deciding what Parliament intended at the time the Bill was passed. That is a great step forward, and a considerable protection to the licence trade.

A court will not be able to ascertain the intention of Parliament. It will have to assume that the intention of Parliament is as laid down in the Act.

I shall not quarrel with my hon. Friend, who is learned in the law, and I am not, but I know of cases where courts have tried to interpret the intention of Parliament as laid down in an Act. That is what the Home Secretary has made quite clear, and I am saying that if the matter ever reaches a court, that court will be able to determine what Parliament intended. That is a good thing. But a lot may happen before a case reaches court, and it is on that aspect of the problem that I wish to dwell for a moment.

We have been told—and it has never been contradicted—that the publican holds a very special position of responsibility. He has to maintain law and order, and has a right to do so without giving any reasons. But an aggrieved customer can make a great deal of trouble for him. Even though the publican may be protected by the Bill it is a simple matter for an aggrieved customer to go to a conciliation committee and say that he has been discriminated against on the ground of race or colour.

It is easy for another aggrieved customer to do the same, and ultimately a case will be built up, which, in the end, will mean that the publican will have to attend a meeting of the conciliation committee in order to explain himself. That, in its way, is reasonable enough. The committee may then turn down the complaint entirely and say that the publican was quite right in what he did.

None the less, the complaint has cost him time and it may well have cost him money. It will undoubtedly have cost him a great deal of effort. He may have had to call several witnesses. Even before the conciliation committee his sole word will not be enough against two or three complaints. He may have to produce people who were in his public house at the time, and who can say that there was no discrimination and that the man concerned should have been thrown out of the public house.

I have no doubt that the conciliation committee will then support the publican but it has cost him time, money and effort. In my view some provision should be made, somewhere, for reimbursing him. I see no provision in the Bill for his being awarded costs against unnecessary or frivolous complaints. I should like to see that. It would help the threatened publican a great deal. Presumably that would now have to be done in another place, but I hope that it can be.

Is not the hon. Gentleman exaggerating a little? Does he not know that in Committee the Government gave an assurance that these conciliation committees would have officials whose job was bound up with the process of conciliation? Is it not more likely that on the sort of occasions that he is mentioning a publican would not be put to the trouble of appearing before a conciliation committee; he would simply have a visit from an official, and the matter would be settled by means of a quiet chat.

The hon. Member says that this is more likely. It may be more likely, but it is not certain—and in our legislation we ought to try to provide some certainty in these matters.

The publican has enough difficulty with brewster sessions as it is. Anybody who is in the least likely to be really sympathetic to him is excluded from sitting on those sessions, so he has a very difficult case to prove if anybody appeals against the renewal of his licence. Even if a conciliation committee has said that there was nothing in the complaints that had been made on one or two occasions, it can be put to the brewster sessions that the licensee has already had two complaints against him for practising racial discrimination. I see no safeguard against that, and I am not sure how we can make certain that a rejected complaint will be excluded from consideration at brewster sessions. We ought to provide in some way that it will be.

Those are very small points, but their acceptance would reassure a large body of men. It has been said that the Conservative Party lives on them, but a great many other people do, also. They are a worthy body of mea, and they are genuinely apprehensive, as the Home Secretary appreciates only too well. I hope that before we end our discussion of this part of the Bill he will be able to add a little to the assurances that he has given in this matter.

The hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. Wise) made a measured contribution to the debate. I want to try to answer the point he raised about brewster sessions in the spirit in which it was raised, because it is a question which the licensing trade is entitled to have answered. I know that some apprehension is felt on this matter in the trade, because some has been expressed to me. In my view, however, in relation to brewster sessions the publican will be in a better position if the Bill is passed than if it is not, for two reasons.

At the moment, any person who wants to make a complaint against a publican can attend brewster sessions and object to the renewal of a licence. When he attends he may assemble his witnesses to help him in his opposition to renewal. But if, at the hearing before the licensing justices, complaints which have already been considered and rejected by the local conciliation committee are put forward, I cannot imagine for a moment that those licensing justices would pay a scrap of attention to them.

The licensee would have one advantage. Let us assume that a complaint of discrimination was made against him to a local conciliation committee. That complaint would be dealt with and investigated by that committee at that time. The memories of the witnesses would be fresh. With the passage of time, however, there would be opportunity for witnesses' memories to fade. We all know that, perhaps with no attempt deliberately to mislead a court, a witness may end up by giving evidence which is quite contrary to the facts of the case.

A conciliation committee can investigate a complaint when the evidence is fresh, but at brewster sessions, when perhaps two or three complaints are made against the landlord all of which have been investigated at the time they were made by the conciliation machinery, and all of which have been rejected by it, the repetition of that evidence—which by then may be 10 months' old—will be very difficult for the magistrates to act upon to the extent of depriving the licensee of his licence.

It therefore seems to me that since we have this fairly informal machinery for investigation of complaints at the time they are made, and when the costs involved would be extremely small, far from being in a worse position the licensee is in an even better position.

The hon. Member has made a very clear point, with which I largely agree. He says that it would be very difficult for the licensing magistrate to act on that evidence. Why not let us make it impossible, by providing that a complaint of racial discrimination which has been rejected by a conciliation committee shall not be taken into consideration by brewster sessions?

The difficulty is that we cannot do that in a race relations Bill without taking into consideration the whole of the licensing laws. No doubt the hon. Member can put down a Motion, or even introduce a Bill to amend the licensing Act, but it cannot be done in this Bill. We are trying to establish a system of conciliation, with a residual approach to the courts if all else fails. I hope that the hon. Member will agree that the licensee will be in a better and not worse position if this machinery is established.

The Home Secretary has said that the main purpose of the Bill was to improve race relations, and that if it did not do so it would be a major failure. It is a major danger in the minds of many hon. Members on this side of the House that the Bill will do just the reverse of improving race relations. That is why we have our doubts about it. It is not a question of what is intended by the Bill but what is likely to be its effect.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman has said that the purpose of the Bill is not to inhibit in any way a licensee in carrying out his common law duty to keep order and to protect the good name of his house. It may not be the purpose of the Bill to inhibit the licensee, but my experience convinces me that it is likely to do so. For 20 years I have been a director of a company which is responsible for administering about 40 licensed premises, and so I have an intimate knowledge of the difficulties experienced by licensees.

I honestly think that there are very few members of the public who appreciate the heavy burden which falls upon a licensee in running a public house. I wonder how any hon. Member would feel if he found himself in a crowded bar on a Saturday night with 200 or 300 people in it, a number of them getting rather excited and loud in their remarks, and he was faced with ensuring throughout the evening that there was no trouble. There are many areas in which the atmosphere in a public house can be near explosion point for much of the evening because of one or two troublemakers.

For such a licensee to have to worry about whether he is wrong in refusing service to a man seems to me to be adding an extra burden on members of the community who are already heavily burdened. It is not merely that they have a licence to protect. They have to consider their livelihood as well. If they lose their licence because of this sort of difficulty they lose their livelihood because no brewer will take them as tenants or employ them as managers.

The Home Secretary said that if there were a complaint, the reaction would be to ask whether there was some reason other than ethnic grounds for refusing service. It is not merely a question whether a man had had sufficient drink to make him provocative. A man might be suspected of importuning for immoral purposes. He might be suspected of many activities which would endanger the licence of a public house. It is not just a question of taking a look at the man and deciding whether it is possible to get another witness to agree that he was being noisy and troublesome. The real point here is that at no time in the past has a licensee been required to give any such reasons.

I do not wish to intervene for too long, because, obviously, we all want to get the Bill passed. All the publican would have to do would be to give an answer and say that he thought the man was importuning or something of that nature. If so, the whole thing would be finished. Is it not ridiculous to try to protect a person who wants to use the colour bar as an excuse and who seeks protection against legislation of this nature?

The hon. Gentleman is reinforcing my point. The whole point is that in the past the licensee has not had to give reasons to anyone. Therefore, there was no risk of proceedings being taken against him—

What about the brewster sessions?

No. I can assure hon. Members that many of these complaints which may come up in the course of a year never reach the brewster sessions at all. Under the Bill the licensee may be required to give to an official a reason for refusing service. In doing so he will be making an allegation. [HON. Members: "No"] It is all very well for hon. Members to say "No" and to shake their heads. The licensee will have to say to the official, "I refused service to this person because I thought that he was importuning," or passing betting slips or something of the sort.

Will the hon. Gentleman face this point? Let us assume the worst possible case against the licensee which has been put from the benches opposite. A man may have been deliberately trying to stir up this sort of trouble for, let us say, a period of six months. Whatever the hon. Member may say about this Bill, if a licensee were faced with that sort of situation, would he not be better off under this proposal than if the whole matter had to be investigated before the brewster sessions?

No. The hon. Member has not had the experience that these licensees have had of running a public house from day to day and keeping order. It is no comfort to a licensee, when he is in this difficulty, to know that when the brewster sessions are held he can defend himself and justify what he has done. The point is that in the past he has not had to give any reasons for refusing service. This is a situation which has been accepted by the courts for many years. Now it is proposed that a licensee should be forced to give a reason when an official is sent round to see him.

Does the hon. Gentleman really believe that if a person entered a public house for the purpose of importuning, either directly or indirectly, he would have the folly to make a complaint?

The hon. Gentleman is taking a lot for granted. I am not saying that it would necessarily be the case of a man who was importuning. It may be any one of many cases. It is all very well for hon. Members opposite to get excited about this. The Home Secretary made it quite clear that the whole purpose of this legislation is not to inhibit in any way the actions of a licensee.

Under the Bill he must be inhibited from carrying out his duties as he has performed them in the past. He has to stop and think whether he can defend himself. For instance, if he gives his reasons to the conciliation committee, is he certain that those reasons will not be passed on to the complainant? If the complainant knows that it is suggested that he has done certain things, is the licensee certain that the complainant will not go to court and bring a civil action against him for slander?

This is the whole point of the protection in the past in not having to give reasons. There was no chance of thy complainant subsequently being able to take the licensee to court for slander, for making allegations and damaging his reputation. Now it is proposed to give the licensee this additional worry which will be at the back of his mind whenever he is concerned about the behaviour of people in his public house.

It may be that suggestions about a licensee's course of conduct are based on complaints which are basically frivolous, but if the complaints came from coloured people the inference would be that the licensee was discriminating, although this may not be true at all. It is putting him into an intolerable position and imposing an additional burden upon him to ask him to submit to this limitation upon his normal course of action.

I do not consider that Amendment No. 4, which seeks to leave out paragraph (a), is as important as Amendment No. 5 to leave out "public house", because I do not think the licensee is faced with the same problem as a person who is running a licensed restaurant or other premises where drinking is merely a part of the business, as opposed to a public house where the main purpose is for people to go and drink. One is doing a very damaging thing by introducing discrimination in favour of immigrants and against the rest of the people. One is putting the immigrant into an entirely different position compared with every other person living in the country. If I am refused service, I cannot go to a conciliation committee.

If the hon. Member is refused service because he is Irish or red-headed he can go to the brewster sessions.

Of if he is a gipsy.

Or a Member of Parliament.

I can. But I cannot go to the conciliation committee—[Interruption.]

Order. The House is not in Committee and, much like the publican, I must keep order. We will have one speech at a time.

It is absurd to suggest that there is no danger here of someone who has a grudge against the licensee—and people do have grudges when they do not have their own way—will get someone to go to the Committee and follow up the case and allege a course of conduct. I have not been reassured about the Bill by anything said in this debate and I still submit that the object of not inhibiting the action of the licensee will not be achieved. The effect of the Bill can only inhibit him. The burden will be an extra one on someone who is already carrying a heavy burden and is serving the people of the country so well.

I have some sympathy with my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Sharples)—(HON. MEMBERS: "Honourable Friend."]—that is merely an indication that he should be right honourable and doubtless will be in due course. My hon. Friend put his case against singling out the public house for special treatment in a moderate and persuasive way. My own premise, which he may or may not share, is that the Clause should apply to all public places. I am sorry that it has been selective in this way. It has been selective for reasons known to the Home Secretary; I am sure that none of us thinks that that is intended to reflect on the licensed trade as such. My hon. Friend the Member for Smethwick (Mr. Peter Griffiths) has been in a somewhat prophetic rôle this morning but we must stick to the facts. I am not, I must confess, a very assiduous user of public houses.

Did the hon. Member say that the hon. Member for Smethwick (Mr. Peter Griffiths) was prophetic or pathetic?

I said "prophetic", and I said that I was not an assiduous user of public houses, although from time to time I repair to those establishments for the purpose of light refreshment. I have noticed that in certain bars the clientele appears to be static. This is what is called a "regulars' bar", but in my limited experience I have never been refused admission to a bar because it was confined to regulars. If that is the custom it should be brought to an end as soon as possible, and if this is the effect of the Bill it is a desirable side-effect.

The burden of the reflections of my hon. Friend the Member for Smethwick on this Clause is that the Clause may be misused. That applies to any legislation. It is a consequence of original sin, and nothing that we in this House can do will alter that particular aspect of the human condition. But if it is on occasions misused this is not altogether a bad thing, because those who misuse it will be using the Act, as it will then be, purely as a safety valve, and the Act even in its misuse may serve some useful purpose.

With great respect to my hon. Friend, the Member for Smethwick, I dissent from his phraseology. He calls the Bill an "agitators' charter". It is nothing of the kind. It is a declaration of the public conscience that in practice as well as in principle we believe in the equality of the rights of all citizens of the country irrespective of the colour of their skin.

12.45 p.m.

As for the position of the licensee, the Home Secretary made it quite clear that he still has the right to exclude those who are objectionable in some way. This was a point made much of by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Gurden]—that some people are dirty, quarrelsome, or drink too much. I am sure that there are no such people in Birmingham, but if they behave in this way the licensee is able to exclude them as before. The Bill is concerned only with discrimination on the ground of colour, race and so on, and the House should realise that this must be affirmatively proved and that this is a great protection to the licensee.

It has been suggested that the refusal of a licence at brewster session is a sufficient sanction. There has been a recent case in the Midlands where undoubtedly there was discrimination practised by the licensee and he went as far as to say," might as well be frank. This is a colour bar". That brutal confession, I am glad to say, shocked many people, but his licence was renewed.

Secondly, looking at the problem from the point of view of the licensee, as the hon. Member for Barons Court (Mr. Richard) has said, he would be in many ways better off under the Bill, because surely it cannot be said that it would be a good thing for a licensee to risk losing his licence by people taking the case to brewster sessions. This Bill applies a sort of sieve and if he is acquitted—in the non-legal sense—by the Conciliation Committee that would be a factor which would tell in his favour should the point be raised subsequently at brewster sessions.

One final point which has not been raised so far is that the Bill in many ways strengthens the licensee. Let us suppose that we have a situation where a customer comes in and says, "I do not want to drink with niggers, wops or spades", or whatever the current phrase may be. When the Bill is passed the licensee then can reply, "I have every sympathy with you. I do not like these persons myself, but it is the law that I should serve them". The Bill would greatly strengthen the licensee's position.

My hon. Friend is suggesting that anyone who intervenes on behalf of the licensee is merely trying to create a loophole for him to carry out racial discrimination. This is not the point at all. The point is whether or no the customer is causing trouble. My hon. Friend makes it out as if licensees were wholeheartedly against serving coloured people.

My hon. Friend has misunderstood me. If that is the impression I gave I withdraw it. I was putting an extreme case to make my point more effective. I agree that the large majority of licensees wish to serve anyone. I was making the point that even if there were a licensee who did not he would be strengthened by the law. I do not in any way wish to reflect on licensees in general. I have the greatest respect for the licensed trade.

If the Bill had contained any criminal procedure I would have been very much against it. It would have been quite intolerable to have exposed licensees to discrimination which involved the criminal law. The whole situation has been transformed by the introduction of this conciliation machinery. I assure my hon. Friend the Member for St. Albans (Mr. Goodhew) that I am well aware of the long and honourable connection between the Conservative Party and the licensed trade. This is not something one need be ashamed of in any way. After all, the essence of Toryism is enjoyment, just as the essence of Socialism is misery. What the Clause is intended to do is to provide equality of opportunity for enjoyment to all citizens of this country irrespective of the colour of their skins.

We are all very grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for the careful and painstaking way in which he answered the questions put to him, but he will agree that, unfortunately, what the Home Secretary says is not evidence and the courts will not look at it, so that he was, in fact, advising us as to the way in which he thought matters would go rather than taking the opportunity to put on record something which would influence or affect the interpretation of this Measure. In this case, I almost regret that this is so because one would be happier if the matter were to go forward for judicial administration with, on the record and to be looked at, the background which the right hon. and learned Gentleman gave. The anxiety I have is that it will not turn out quite in that way because of the somewhat inflammable situation which exists.

The hon. Member for Barons Court (Mr. Richard) raised a point which, at first sight, has persuasive value, that the position of the licensee might actually be helped. I doubt this. It is not really accurate to speak of a complaint being rejected by a conciliation committee, as the hon. Gentleman did, or to use the expression adopted by my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) and speak of a licensee having been acquitted. Clause 2 makes clear what will happen. A complaint will be made to a conciliation committee. The committee will investigate it. It will endeavour to bring the parties together, to smooth the whole episode over and prevent it becoming an issue rather than try an issue and find someone guilty or not guilty. If that is the operation—I believe we are agreed in thinking that that should be the nature of the operation—it is not accurate to say that, if, subsequently, an ill disposed person raised objection at the brewster sessions, the licensee would be in a position to say that the complaints had already been adjudicated upon by a conciliation committee and rejected, or that he had been acquitted, the committee had found in his favour, or something like that.

There is no acquittal in the legal sense and no rejection in the technical sense, but Clause 2(3) makes clear what will be done. The conciliation committee can, if it thinks right, send the case to the Race Relations Board. What the licensee would say at brewster sessions, therefore, would be that there had been complaints investigated by the committee and none had been referred to the Board.

I appreciate that, and I hope that I did not overstate my point. He can say that, or he can say that, although the complaints had gone to the Board, the Board had decided against referring them to the Attorney-General. But this is becoming a somewhat complicated matter. It is not like being able to say, "These complaints were rejected" or "I was acquitted". In my view, the licensee's position will not be strengthened.

It seems to me that we shall create the risk of a vendetta against a licensee, with persistent complaints. I was glad that my hon. Friend the Member for St. Albans (Mr. Goodhew) said what he did because he made a point which has not been adequately made before, that most licensees are not the owners of free houses but are managers employed by large brewing companies. If a licensee becomes a target for a lot of complaints, he will be in a very difficult position. Even if the complaints are not forwarded by the conciliation committee to the Board, if he appears to be a constant target the brewers will move him, as a matter of business administration. That will be a disagreeable thing for the licensee and may in the end be positively damaging. I am very much afraid that the way that this will work in practice is that some licensees will be very hard done by even though they do not become subject to the ultimate legal procedures envisaged under the Bill.

I am not happy on the question of vicarious liability about which the right hon. and learned Gentleman gave us some assurance. Public houses are getting larger nowadays and more and more have to be operated through staff. There will come a point, if there are continual complaints—I am envisaging such a situation—when the conciliation committee itself may say, "There are so many complaints coming up about your employees that we must draw the inference that the policy guidance comes from you." This is not a novel sort of inference in the courts, nor is the doctrine of a course of conduct of much protection here. The right hon. and learned Gentleman will know all about the meaning which the courts have given to persistent cruelty in matrimonial cases. It has been held to require two incidents, and cruelty in the divorce jurisdiction, without the word "persistent", has been held to mean one incident. So the courts tend to put a rather technical meaning on this sort of expression. Remembering that a course of conduct is certainly likely to be interpreted as meaning at least two complaints and, if there is a dead set on a house, there will be an inference that the licensee is responsible for the acts of his staff. I am not sure that the position is quite so happy on this point as the Home Secretary sought to assure us it was.

We know that just leaving out the word "public house" is open to certain drafting objections because of the ejusdem generis words following it. If the Home Secretary accepted the validity of the doubts and anxieties expressed in the debate today, he would wish to put forward an Amendment in slightly different form to implement them, an Amendment to take out of the effect of the Bill licensed premises as such. Bearing in mind that he must be persuaded on this if we are to get anywhere, I ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman to remember that, if complaints go forward, proceedings are taken and an injunction is granted against a licensee, that will be something enormously more important than a criminal penalty of, say, a £50 or £100 fine. It is a perpetual injunction, and breach of it is contempt of court, involving, as we all know from wardship cases and the like which we read about nowadays, indefinite imprisonment. It is something which is often treated much too lightly, because civil penalties are so much milder than criminal penalties. However, a man convicted of a criminal offence and fined pays his fine and that is the end of it. A civil injunction, on the other hand, is a perpetual injunction, and the punishments attached to it are quite extraordinary.

1.0 p.m.

I ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman to consider the difficulty of the position of the licensee, his vulnerability because of his position as an employee, his vulnerability to a campaign against him, and the extreme nature of any penalty which might be imposed in the end. Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman not consider whether there is not a perfectly genuine case, accepting the main theme of the Bill as we now must—I do not, but we now must—and whether he could not in another place put forward an Amendment in a different form to give some kind of protection against these anxieties.

I am sure the House will appreciate that this has been a useful debate. Many of my hon. Friends have been able to put to the right hon. and learned Gentleman points which have been troubling them and their constituents. I am sure he will appreciate that even after the very full explanation which he gave, many of those doubts still remain. On the other hand, the House will be grateful to him for the care which he took in answering the specific points which were put to him through me by the licensed trade. Although many doubts remain, he has gone some way at least towards giving the reassurance which the trade requires.

On that note, I would beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I do not want to delay proceedings, but I did put a short categorical question to the Home Secretary which, if answered, would help to clear up the doubts of hon. Members on this side. Would it not be possible to ask the Home Secretary briefly to reply to it?

If the House gives me leave, and if the Motion put by the hon. Gentleman for Sutton and Cheam can for the moment be regarded as being in suspense, may I, by that flexibility of procedure, try to deal with the question?

The Bill is specifically worded so as not to interfere with any existing right.

Does the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Dr. Wyndham Davies) wish to move his Amendment for a Division?

No.

I beg to move Amendment No. 7, Clause 1, in page 2, line 1, after "of", insert "public worship, or place of".

The Amendment will be appreciated by my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) because it helps to remove the original sin. We pride ourselves on religious freedom. Unfortunately, I was not a member of the Committee, but I read the proceedings and I note that on 25th May in column 13 the Home Secretary said:

"One must try to take steps to make immigrants first-class and not second-class citizens."

He went on to say:

"We must remove the feelings of bitterness and disgust which naturally arise when people are kept out of places of public resort open to others."

I would draw to his attention the point that places of religious worship are not specifically mentioned in the Bill. I understand they can be easily defined as a place which is derated.

Article 26 of the Draft Convention of the United Nations on Civil Political Rights specifically states that:

"Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hostility that constitutes an incitement to hatred and violence and shall be prohibited by the law of the state."

As I say, we pride ourselves in this country particularly on freedom of worship, and I would like to see freedom of worship is defined in the Bill. There has been a previous attempt to bring religious beliefs into the Bill, but apparently it was not acceptable to the Home Secretary. It would show that we have freedom of worship if we were to declare that places of public worship should be open to all.

I quite realise that many people coming to this country do not want to go into places of worship. They like to bring their own places of worship with them, and certainly in the Sikh temple they make everyone welcome who wishes to go there. But there are many people who have adopted our religions when we have sent missionaries overseas. But, regrettably, I heard someone say not very long ago, "We try to go to your churches. We find we are not particularly welcome. In many cases we find they are empty, and we begin to wonder whether you still believe in the religions you brought to our country."

For that reason, I want people to be able to read the Act and know that they are welcome in any public place of worship.

I rise to make a short contribution to the debate. The main value of the Bill is that it gives statutory expression to the strong sense of moral disapproval of racial prejudice. It is true that Acts of Parliament do not change men's minds or hearts, and that a Bill of this kind will not in itself eradicate prejudice. But it can and I hope it will tackle some of the manifestations of prejudice and, because of the respect in which the law is held in this country, it can exercise important educational effects upon both attitudes and behaviour.

The discrimination sections of the Bill deal mainly with the questions of colour, race, and ethnic—whatever that word may mean—national origins. But there is no section dealing with religious dis- crimination. I have in my constituency sizeable Jewish and Catholic communities. The leaders of the Jewish community have been to see me because of threats to burn down their synagogue and personal threats to the minister. They want to know what sort of protection is going to be given to them by the Bill.

I appreciate that people who stoop to this kind of threat are a lunatic fringe, but one must accept that many Jews who have lived in Europe and others who have relations in Europe who have seen these threats put into action are obviously concerned.

There came into my hands last night a publication which is known as Spearhead, which is the journal of the Greater Britain Movement, a Nazi organisation. It is published on the borders of my constituency, in Norwood. It may well have a bearing on the threats which my Jewish constituents have received.

I will not waste the time of the House in making a long quotation from it, but let me just say that one of its editorials is headed "Gleanings from the Ghetto", with the sub-heading, "The Stench of Israel". It says:

"Most of you will have been aware, either through the medium of the Press or television-newsreel, that the Prime Minister of the bandit so-called 'State' of Israel … has recently paid an official visit to our country—one of World Jewry's more important colonies—in order to issue his orders for what I shall laughingly refer to as Her Majesty's Government."

One accepts that there might be that lunatic fringe type of statement. We rightly value freedom of speech, and I hope we always shall. Indeed, it is on these very grounds that many of us have had some reservations about the Bill.

But this sort of thing is an incitement to hatred. While it is right to guard freedom of speech, it can scarcely be argued that it is important for us to be free to stir up hatred whether it be by race or religion. We rightly penalise the dissemination of pornography, and the peddling of racial or religious hatred seems to me to be at least as objectionable. I accept that the Jews are not alone in this. Strangely enough, into my hands last night also came an anti-Catholic tract. But we must not blow up all this sort of thing—

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. Does not what my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North-East (Mr. Weatherill) is saying really come under Clause 6? He is talking about incitement. I am only asking that the buildings shall be open to the general public.

I think that is so. The hon. Gentleman should confine himself to the Amendment which we are now discussing. I think that I ought to tell him also that, although the use of copious notes is allowed, speeches must not be read.

I accept your Ruling, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. The point that I am making is, I think, relevant. There is a lunatic fringe of people—my hon. Friend the Member for Smethwick (Mr. Peter Griffiths) described them as unreasonable people—who wish to go into pubs in order to create trouble. There are also unreasonable people who may wish to go into churches or synagogues to create trouble. I wonder whether it is wise to accept an Amendment of this kind which will enable anybody to go into a church or a synagogue without any prevention whatsoever, irrespective of whether he may want to go there to cause trouble or not.

Surely if any person goes into a place of public worship not for the purpose of worship but to cause trouble and damage, that would be covered by the existing common law and criminal law, in which there is adequate provision.

I accept that, provided that one knows that the person is going there for this purpose. But I think it reasonable to say that the Bill as it stands provides adequate safeguards for places of public worship, and I should like to see it remain as it is.

Although I entirely sympathise with my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dame Joan Vickers) in what she is trying to achieve with her Amendment, I am a little bothered about the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North-East (Mr. Weatherill).

I am sure that many of us have in our constituencies Sikh temples where the Sikhs gather together to worship in a public place. In my constituency they use a cafe. That becomes, I suppose, a place of public worship. It seems to me conceivable that one could get an organised, orderly but rather threatening body of people marching into such a service, possibly merely to hake up all the places and to make it impossible for the Sikhs to carry on their worship. I do not want to exaggerate this, but it seems to me that there is a potential danger in the Amendment in the form in which it has been moved.

If it were a cafe, it would be rated. My Amendment refers to only derated places.

I do not wish to insist on the point. However, I can still imagine circumstances in which the effect of the Amendment might be undesirable. I think that it might achieve precisely the opposite effect to the one that my hon. Friend is seeking. I should have thought that the Bill as it stands gave a clear enough indication of the way that authority is supporting enlightened public opinion in this matter, and, on balance, I should be inclined to recommend that we do not accept the Amendment.

I intervene briefly in support of my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dame Joan Vickers) and to make two points, one of principle and the other of practice.

First, on the general point of principle I am sure that my hon. Friend would agree that there is no evidence of any discrimination on racial grounds being practised in places of worship in Britain. As regards Christian places of worship, such discrimination would be quite contrary to the Christian religion, which, after all, both on theological grounds and on grounds of social philosophy, recognises the fundamental equality of all men in their civil rights. Nothing, I think, would cause greater scandal than a situation where discrimination was practised in a Christian church. Fortunately, it has not happened in this country, although it has, of course, happened in the United States. So it is not happening in principle.

Secondly, it is not happening in practice either. Unfortunately, the churches in Britain at the moment are so very badly attended that they are very often not in a position to refuse anyone. In fact, they are most anxious to add to their numbers.

Nevertheless, I would ask the Home Secretary whether he could not accept the Amendment. First, it would certainly do no harm. I think that the examples of harm that we have had are a little far-fetched. Secondly, it might well do some good. Thirdly—this is really the important point—it might be useful in preventing the sort of situation arising which has arisen in some parts of the United States.

I am in no position to make an ex-cathedra statement on the subject, but if I can make a statement, as it were, ex-banco, I can say that I do not think that the Catholic community would have any objection to this Clause, although, as the Archbishop of Westminster has made plain, the Catholic community has said that it does not wish to have special legislation protecting it on religious grounds because it is felt that there is no need for it and that it would be undesirable. However, the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport is a very different one, and I hope that the Home Secretary will be able to give it very sympathetic consideration.

The hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) asks for a sympathetic reply. Obviously, anybody would detest and loathe any sort of exclusion from a place of religious worship of anybody who genuinely wished to worship, or, indeed, to be present when others were worshipping. I think that support for the Amendment would be abundant in every part of the House. The question is whether it is expedient and right to make it.

With regard to the remarks of the hon. Member for Croydon, North-East (Mr. Weatherill), the relevant parts of the Bill, which I hope will be found to be perfectly adequate to deal with the mischief to which he called attention, are those in Clauses 6 and 7. They are specifically designed to prevent incitement. Clause 7 would, indeed, cover religious incitement as against incitement on ordinary colour or racial grounds.

Turning to the immediate point raised by the hon. Lady the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dame Joan Vickers), whose sincerity everyone would recognise at once—we all delight and glory in it—I should have thought that the equality of man was deeply inherent in any of the great religions in which worship takes place in this country and that there really cannot be any need for an Amendment of the sort that she is proposing. I should have thought that it was almost unthinkable that any place of worship in this country could be used by those responsible for it for discrimination of the sort that we are trying to outlaw in the Bill.

This legislation is, of course, legislation to deal with a new problem—a problem perhaps still to emerge. The Government have said on more than one occasion that we want to get in first, as it were, and be ready with legislation to deal with mischief as and when it does emerge. But it is very unlikely in this country that we will ever get to the stage where we will see a place of worship closed or barred to anyone on the ground of origin—something that person cannot possibly help.

It would be a very sorry day if we were ever to come to that situation. I put it to the hon. Lady that a case has not arisen for the Amendment. As she will have noticed, we have tried to select the broad types of places of public resort, the ones in which perhaps this sort of friction, unhappily, could arise. We have simply generally included places of public resort in order to focus attention on the fact that this is where one might or perhaps does experience this type of friction.

Places of public worship simply do not qualify to be included on that ground. It would be almost unthinkable that in this country, whatever may happen elsewhere, we should, in the foreseeable future, unless there is a very serious deterioration in our relationship one with another, find places of public worship barred to anyone on ground of origin.

While I have every sympathy with the purpose and spirit of the Amendment and with the hon. Lady's deep feelings, I would simply say that there is not yet—perhaps I might withdraw the word "yet"—there is not a case for this sort of Amendment. I used the word "yet" and asked leave to withdraw it because I hope it never will be the case, and I cannot conceive that, in this great country, we should ever have to prohibit those responsible for places of public worship from barring particular groups because of racial origin.

I thank the right hon. and learned Gentleman for that reply but I am not entirely happy about it. I wanted to give real assurance to people coming to this country. The Bill is prohibiting in many ways people doing this, that and the other and I thought that my Amendment would give them a welcome. However, in view of what the Home Secretary has said, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

I beg to move Amendment No. 8, Clause 1, in page 2, line 4, leave out "or neglects to afford".

It would be convenient to discuss also Amendment No. 9, Clause 1, in the name of the right hon. and learned Gentleman, in page 2, line 5, after first "or", insert

"refuses or neglects to afford".

Both Amendments go together, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. Amendment No 8 is the paving Amendment and Amendment No. 9 achieves the result.

This is a drafting matter and one which was explored fairly fully in Committee. I do not want to take up a lot of time on it now. Having re-read what the right hon. and learned Gentleman said in Committee, I was persuaded and convinced by the argument that he put forward in so far as it related to the expression "or neglects to afford" where facilities or services are concerned. But his argument did not appear to be related to the question of neglecting to afford access.

I find it a very difficult conception indeed that there can be such a thing as neglecting to afford access. It may be that my imagination has not worked deeply enough on the point. I do not think it is very easy to contemplate, however. Let us take the case of the café, which was the case we discussed in Standing Committee.

If the café is shut at times when the general public are to be excluded, then it is shut, and when the doors are open and the general public are let in, the café is open. But when the café is open like that, if a particular person is excluded from entering there is clearly a refusal of access to him. That is plain enough. But, in these circumstances, how can the position arise, if the doors are open and if he is not specifically excluded, that there is neglect to afford him access?

To overcome this difficulty surely the right thing to do is to accept the Amendments. In that case, the subsection would read:

"for the purposes of this section a person discriminates against another person if he refuses him access to the place in question or refuses or neglects to afford him any facilities or services available there."

If the subsection were to read like that it would both fulfil the Government's intention and more nearly meet the actual circumstances which we ought to anticipate.

I support my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) on Amendment No. 8, but for quite different reasons from those that he has expressed. He merely seeks to alter the wording of the Clause. I would like to alter its purpose and for that reason I did not add my name to Amendment No. 9.

To my mind, there is every objection in the world to refusing access or refusing facilities to people solely because of colour or national origin and I am certain that we all agree on that. Where I have had objection to the Bill throughout has not been on the matter of principle, but on the fact that it does not make clear exactly what is to happen and will cause persons who do not intend to discriminate to be publicly accused of discrimination. Experience has shown that this sort of accusation can be made very readily.

If a person seeks entry to a café or another place of public resort and is told that he cannot come in because he is coloured or because of some other reason then he has been refused entry. That is so clear and straightforward a position that whether the matter is dealt with by the Board or by the civil courts the case will be open and shut.

Equally, if a person is allowed to go into such premises and is refused facilities on those premises—for instance, a cinema or a swiming bath—again it would be absolutely straightforward and any person who refused him would be deliberately discriminating. On a number of occasions the Home Secretary made clear in Committee that these are the people he wants to catch—people who are deliberately discriminating—and I am with him in that.

The owner of such premises affords entry, though he does not go out and invite people to come in. That is normal commercial practice. It may be that a stallholder in a market will call to people and invite them to the stall or that the butcher anxious to get rid of stocks on Saturday night will stand at the door and invite people to come into the shop. This is not normal. Usually it is up to the customer to come forward and seek entry, and the onus rests on the customer and not on the manager.

1.30 p.m.

Equally, when a customer has entered a shop, the onus of seeking service or facilities should rest with him. Today, many shops are self-service or invite one to come in and look round, and, particularly with people who, by their dress or colour, are apparently foreign, the shopkeeper may feel that he wants to give them the opportunity to look at his stock and to examine what he has for sale or what he is showing. For example, if they go into a cinema, they may want to go into the foyer or use the cloakrooms and not wish immediately to be shown to their seats, and if they are not English-speaking, this is something about which an usherette may feel kindly and generous.

It is up to the customer when he wishes to be afforded the facilities to be shown to his seat or served by the waiter or whatever it may be, but to seek facilities and to make it clear that he wants them. If he does seek them and is then refused those facilities, I would be strongly in favour of the person refusing the facilities finding himself in trouble.

However, interpreting "neglects to afford" may lead to great difficulty. Any person who is a little diffident about asking for service can later feel aggrieved and complain and the danger is that these numerous small complaints made against a cafe proprietor, or the owner of some place of entertainment, while in themselves unimportant would be regarded as important by the conciliation committee if made on a number of occasions and be likely to lead to a person who had no intention of discriminating being pilloried as some sort of race hater.

I hope that Amendment No. 8 will be accepted, and then we shall get the big fish, the deliberate discriminators, against whom we all want to see the Bill operate and for whom none of us has any sympathy.

The right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire raised the drafting point and put his argument in the form a the question, "What do you mean by 'neglecting to afford access'?" The hon. Member for Smethwick (Mr. Peter Griffiths) would go further, because he feels that if we include the words "neglect to afford" we will give rise to the possibility of a number of unsubstantial complaints.

I know that he thinks that I am naïve and ingenuous because, he thinks, I suppose that everybody is reasonable. I wish that I had passed through life able to harbour that belief. I would cherish it almost as something valuable beyond conception. I am afraid that I also think that people are sometimes unreasonable, but I must confess that I believe that it is almost naïve to think that members of the conciliation committees themselves will not at least include a high percentage of reasonable and sensible people able to distinguish very clearly between piffling unsubstantial complaints and complaints of substance. One must assume that they will be persons who can distinguish between what is important and what is not.

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has ever noticed the sometimes apparently involuntary deafness of a waiter, or the curious odd circumstances that a waiter happens to be looking in the opposite direction when someone is seeking to attract his attention. It is that kind of thing—I do not say only waiters, who in general are most attentive and careful—when the waiter may not fancy a particular customer and that sort of thing, and not only among waiters but among those generally who have to receive the public on one footing or other, for which we want to provide. If we take out the element of neglecting to afford from this complex of words which go to make up the definition, we shall emasculate the Bill to such an extent that in many cases it will not mean anything and will have no effect.

I come from that to the more technical issue which was raised by the right hon. and learned Gentleman. There may constantly be cases where there is neglect to afford access. With the open café, where the customer just walks in without hindrance and sits down at a table, we are not likely to get it, but the Bill deals with a whole variety of places of public resort, including theatres, cinemas, dance halls, sports grounds, swimming baths and so on. There may be all sorts of situations in which there is neglect to afford access.

There might be a queue and the commissionaire, or whoever is responsible for admitting people into the overcrowded cinema, when there are one, two, three or four places available, if he has a colour prejudice or those responsible for the cinema have, he could go to the queue and say, "You, you and you" and carefully leave out anybody who is coloured. I give that sort of situation as an example.

I believe that these things will be rare—I hope that they will be very rare—and because I believe that, I think that the Bill will rarely be put into effect in that kind of context. But if it were to be made open to persons in charge of public resorts to slight the racial groups whom they did not like, we would leave a wide loophole for those who wished to evade the law.

By looking in the opposite direction, or not being there at the required time, it is the easiest thing in the world to affect not to notice people waiting to buy a ticket, or to pass through a gate which has to be opened to them, or waiting to use any means of access open to the public in general. It is not so difficult for a malign-minded person who harbours prejudices and wishes to wreak his dislike on unfortunate individuals of a particular origin. It is not so difficult for him not to notice that they are waiting for access and in that way to prevent them from gaining access to the place of public resort.

The phrase "neglects to afford access" is not a phrase which stands by itself in isolation. The full context is:

"neglects to afford him access … in the like manner and on the like terms in and on which such access, facilities or services are available to other members of the public resorting thereto."

In other words, the situation envisaged by the Clause is the situation in which access is available to members of the public at large and where, by neglect or inattention, it is so arranged that people of a particular racial or national or ethnic origin do not gain access.

I put it to the right hon. and learned Gentleman that if the Amendment were made the definition would be considerably weakened and many cases which he and I and other hon. Members would wish to be covered would be left out, and I therefore hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will agree that the House ought not to approve his Amendment.

Would this cover those places which put up a sign outside as a result of which certain people do not enter? For example, if a deserted wife goes to get a passport for her child and is told that her husband's signature is necessary and she does not know where he is, she gives up the idea of getting a passport for the child. Would this provision cover the place which did not prevent people going in, but which nevertheless had a sign which prevented them from entering or which made them not try?

One of the difficulties is that we are on Report and not in Committee so that I cannot speak again except by leave of the House.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman is mistaken. The Bill was committed to a Standing Committee and therefore the Minister in charge of the Bill and the mover of an Amendment has a right to speak a second time.

You have removed an obstacle in the way of giving the answer to the hon. Lady which I would very much like to give, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. If there were a notice outside a place of public resort within the scope of Clause 2, it would be the most cogent evidence that any refusal of access or refusal of facilities was part of a course of conduct. If one has a notice "No coloureds wanted" in the window of some place of public resort, then it would be a very cogent reason to think that any case of individual refusal was not merely accidental but part of a course of conduct and therefore within the scope of the Bill.

It was not my intention to narrow the scope of the Bill in moving this Amendment. My intention was to try to achieve greater clarity. However, I accept the explanation which the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary has given and I ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

I beg to move Amendment No. 15, Clause 2, in page 2, line 26, at the end to add:

"at least one of whom shall be appointed by reason of colour, race, ethnic or national origin of a minority group".

With this Amendment we can discuss Amendment No. 17, Clause 2, in page 2, line 28, after "committees", insert

"on each of which at least one member shall be appointed by reason of colour, race, ethnic or national origin of a minority group".

I have put down these Amendments because I would like the assurance of the Home Secretary that he intends to have some people, not of this country, on, I hope, both the Board and the local committees. I am certain that the commissioners selected will be chosen with great care from among people with great knowledge, and that they will be impartial. But I feel that it would give greater confidence to the people coming here from overseas and improve race relations, if they had some sort of representation on the committee.

I realise that as the Board is drawn it is extremely small and I am not going to press the Home Secretary to say that he will place somebody, of the origins I mentioned in my Amendment, on the Board as it stands, but perhaps in due course he will consider it a good idea to enlarge the Board. That depends on the number of cases likely to be brought before it, and we all hope that they will not be very many.

On the other hand, he will, I hope, accept my Amendment in regard to the local conciliation committees because these people are in the areas concerned. There is no number stated in the Bill and these people will be able to play a very big part in conciliation work. They will have an understanding of the customs of their people which is a very great advantage.

I have had experience of working as a welfare officer for the Colonial Office in Malaya and I found that when I had to adjudicate between different races with completely different customs, not easy to understand, it was a great advantage to form a committee of the leaders of the various communities with which I was working. When I had any difficulty I always went to this committee for advice, and I would have thought that it would be a very great advantage, from the point of view of the local conciliation committee to have such assistance. It will also give the people the assurance that their point of view is going to be put forward. Often the people of this country are not particularly knowledgeable of the customs and ways of overseas people as they have not had the advantage of living amongst them.

I think that a tremendous number of the difficulties which occur at present are due to a lack of understanding of an individual's background. It may be said that someone is not as clean as one would wish, that he has different standards and that he has habits which annoy his neighbours. But if it can be explained that it is a person's habit, people can perhaps be got together and a better understanding achieved. A great many people carry on their own customs because it takes them a long time to become assimilated. I am certain that a great many of the present difficulties are because we do not take sufficient interest and have insufficient knowledge of their customs.

I hope that if the Home Secretary cannot accept Amendment No. 15 he will accept Amendment No. 17, as this will give a real assurance to the people concerned, and definite guidance to the Board as to their future action. I shall be grateful if he will consider this Amendment and give a reassuring answer on Amendment No. 17.

I would like to support my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dame Joan Vickers). It is vital, if the conciliation machinery which has been set up under the Bill is to work smoothly and effectively, that we should include some representatives of the immigrant community, in order to reassure members of minority groups who may be brought before the local conciliation committees, that their inquiries are being conducted in a completely impartial way. As my hon. Friend the Member for Devonport has said, it is the old tag of justice being seen to be done.

One other reason why I would like to speak in favour of these Amendments is that I am sure that one of the essential prerequisites to racial harmony in this country in the years ahead is going to be the development of experienced and responsible leadership within the coloured community. One of the disappointing features of the current race relations scene is that comparatively few immigrants have so far come forward to voice the views and aspirations of their communities. It may be that service on these local conciliation committees would provide an invaluable opportunity for members of the immigrant community to extend and expand their experience of public work and public service to the immense benefit, not only of themselves but of their community as well, and to the general cause of race relations.

For this reason I hope that the Home Secretary will be persuaded to accept at least Amendment No. 17.

I hope that the Home Secretary will not accept this Amendment, mainly for the reasons he gave to us in Standing Committee, namely, that he wants to have people on these committees who are the most capable of dealing with the job, and who are not representing specific groups or organisations. One could put up a very strong case for saying that local authorities and others should be represented on these committees. I accept the strong case made by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dame Joan Vickers) for these particular people to be represented on these committees. But, clearly, there could be a very strong case made for so many groups which, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman explained in Committee, would confine representation to these groups and possibly make it very difficult to keep down the size of these committees and enable them to make a good job of their work.

We have to remember that among the settlers who come to this country we have many different types who are not always in harmony with one another. They may come from the same part of the world, but from different countries which are opposed to each other. I am sure that if a person of one nationality was represented and not of the other nationality it would be felt that they were not getting a fair deal. These people have to adjudicate, and I am sure that the Home Secretary is right when he says that they must be selected for the work which they are capable of doing and not because they represent a particular society.

I find myself in agreement with a good deal of what the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Gurden) said. I am not able to accept either of the Amendments. May I say why and indicate the Government's concept to the hon. Lady the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dame Joan Vickers) and the hon. Member for Bromley (Mr. Hunt).

We envisage the Board as being very limited in number—three. We are most anxious that it should not be in any sense representative of particular sectional interests. We think it essential that we should obtain the right people to serve on the Board, and that that should be the sole criterion. By "right people" I mean people, whatever their colour, race or origin, whose character and intellect are such as in the judgment of the Minister responsible, mainly myself at the moment, would be able to bring to bear a mature and balance judgment in the setting up and constitution of the committees.

The prime objective is to select the three people whose character and qualifications best befit them for the work which they have to undertake which we not only hope, but firmly intend, should be entirely divorced from political influence or pressure. This is to be a wholly independent Board which is to bring its judgment to bear on what, in the first place, is the administrative task of setting up the committees. It would seriously impair their qualifications for that job if they were selected in any sense because they have a loyalty to any particular racial group or minority group. The last thing that we want is to do anything which could possibly seem to represent jostling or fighting on behalf of any particular group.

I would desire to leave the matter of the members of the conciliation committees wholly to the discretion of the Board. The plan is that the Board should be entrusted with the duty of deciding on the composition and what sort of people should be invited to serve on the committees. I do not exclude the possibility that the members of the Board may think that in particular areas it would be useful, because of the make-up of the population in the area, to appoint a representative of that population. I do not assert that or deny it. It would be a matter for them to decide in the exercise of their bona fide judgment in the light of the circumstances of the area for which they are providing in setting up the committee. One thing which I do not wish to do is to influence them. Therefore, in making these observations, I guard against saying anything, and hope to be so understood, which they might think is a norm or requirement emanating from the Government as to how they should carry out their functions.

I see difficulty in constituting committees, or any other boards, in a way which might give rise to battles inside the committees. We wish them to work together and approach the general problem of social relationships with a common good will. Nevertheless, they might think that in a particular area the advantage of encouraging the appointment of members of particular minorities would outweigh the danger of a battle in the committee. This is a matter for their discretion and I would not wish to influence them in it.

I hope that they would, in the exercise of their judgment, be careful to select people who carried confidence in the locality and who could, and would, be trusted by the local inhabitants of the community to be completely detached and fair-minded in their approach to any cases of complaint brought to their notice. They would obviously make careful inquiries from people who had knowledge of the locality as to which per- sonages in that locality would carry that type of confidence and would, I hope, make their selections accordingly.

Paragraph 7 of the Schedule, which deals with the appointment of the local conciliation committees, reads:

"The Board may pay to members of a local conciliation committee, and to persons assisting in or concerned with the carrying out of the functions of any such committee, travelling or other allowances …".

The object of that is to enable them to be provided with, upon the basis of public service, not remuneration, such advice as to local conditions in an area which may be some distance from the quarters in which the conciliation committee sits, sufficiently far away for them to be generally but not particularly acquainted with the situation in that area. We envisage that they might wish to seek that advice or special assistance. If they called upon other people of good will to assist them, then those people should not have to suffer pecuniary loss. That is the objective of that part of the Schedule.

I hope that the hon. Lady the Member for Devonport and the hon. Member for Bromley will accept that the Government's concept is best framed to achieve the purpose which we have in mind—an experienced, mature Board with a limited membership, appointing up and down the country conciliation committees which may, or may not, as they judge in their discretion, be, to some extent, representative. They will have to judge in the individual circumstances how best to make up the membership of the Board.

I thank the Home Secretary for what he has said. As he previously talked about not choosing heads, I did not expect a very favourable answer. I am rather disappointed that he did not say more definitely that he would like to see a rather wider membership of the conciliation committees. However, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

I beg to move Amendment No. 19, Clause 2, in page 2, line 31, after "complaint" to insert "as to the practice".

The purpose of the Amendment is to get some clarification from the Home Secretary about how he thinks this procedure will work and at the same time to stimulate him into having further thoughts about the contents of this part of the Bill.

A rather strange situation arises. The two provisions which are most relevant subsection (1) of Clause 1 and subsection (2, a) of Clause 2, which I seek to amend by way of probing Amendment—are somewhat inconsistent with each other and with the procedure outlined in the next two Clauses and which could culminate in an injunction being granted at the instance of the Attorney-General.

Clause 1 (1) says that it is unlawful to practise discrimination. When the Home Secretary, in Standing Committee, moved an Amendment to it, he pointed out that it was the course of conduct which was contemplated as being unlawful and not an isolated act.

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In Clause 2(2) the procedure for testing illegality and for arranging consultation is brought into force. According to what the Home Secretary said in Standing Committee, it is not necessarily a course of conduct which amounts to discrimination which sets the ball rolling. It could be an isolated act. He said:

"Perhaps I might explain how the Clause works. Discrimination is already defined in Clause 1(3) as the refusal or neglect to afford what I may shortly call facilities. One then looks at subsection (2) of the new Clause"—

that is now Clause 2—

"which requires the committee to receive and consider any complaint of discrimination. That complaint could be of a single act. When the committee has considered that single complaint, it has to proceed in accordance with the subsequent paragraphs of subsection (2), and if it meets with no success it reports to the Race Relations Board."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee B, 29th June, 1965; c. 363.]

Bearing those words in mind, what happens in these circumstances: suppose somebody complains of a single act of discrimination and the local conciliation committee finds that the complaint of that single act is well justified? The matter is left in the hands of the person against whom the complaint is made. Let us assume that that person commits another act. It will be a second act, and that, presumably, is a course of conduct. That is plain enough. Finally, the matter will go to the Race Relations Board, who will consider whether the original act, plus any further act or acts, amounts to a course of conduct which is illegal because it is a practice of discrimination within Clause 1(1). The matter is then referred to the Attorney-General.

This is a very elaborate procedure. It has been described—I am not trying to criticise it in using this expression—as a steamroller to crack a nut. I should have thought that the procedure would be far less susceptible to that description and far less susceptible to any criticism if it were made clear from the outset that it is not the isolated act which is to set the procedure in motion, or the complaint as to an isolated act, but that it is the practice of discrimination, as Clause 1(1) seems to indicate is the intention. It was only in the later Clauses and the explanation which the Home Secretary gave of them that we found that the complaint made in the first place could be a complaint of a single act.

I hope that I have said enough to alert the Home Secretary of the point. When we are making a new departure in human relations of this kind, and when we are putting forward a very elaborate form of machinery, we should make sure that it will be evoked only when it is necessary. Let us not be left with the criticism that it may be regarded as a steamroller to crack a nut.

I do not think that the difficulty which the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) apprehends will arise. I do not think that the procedure is as complicated as he fears. Let me indicate how I picture that the procedure would work. The coloured man who is refused a drink or told that he cannot go into a cinema feels under a grievance, goes to the local conciliation committee, and says "This happened to me last night", and describes it. If the proposed Amendment were accepted the conciliation committee would have to say to that person, "Do you allege that it is part of a course of discrimination as described in Section 1 of the Race Relations Act, 1965?" The coloured man will not have the dimmest idea of what all that means. All he will know is that he is under a grievance because he was not allowed to go into a cinema.

I desire it to be the case, and I hope that on reflection the right hon. and learned Gentleman agrees, that if he makes a complaint, the conciliation committee should be enabled by the terms of the Act to consider what in those circumstances the coloured man says. What happens? If it has jurisdiction, it is within its function to consider an isolated case, and it has to make up its mind what it will do. First, it may make such inquiries as it thinks necessary. It may think that none is necessary and that the complaint is so trivial and piffling that it can be disregarded. That should be the end of the matter. On the other hand, it may think that there is something in it, and make inquiries.

If, after inquiries, it feels that there is a case of discrimination contrary to Clause 1, a case amounting to the practice of discrimination, it uses its endeavours to bring about a cessation of that practice. If it is unsuccessful, the conciliation committee reports to the Board, and the Board has to bring its judgment to the report and to ask itself whether, within the meaning of subsection (3), there is a course of conduct in contravention of the Act.

In other words, the Board would no doubt have assembled before it a number of complaints of this sort. One coloured man complains about not being admitted to the cinema. Another complains three days later of similar conduct at the same cinema. This goes on for three months, with a series of complaints. Accumulatively they result in a determination by the committee that it ought to report to the Board. The Board examines the report and decides whether there was a course of conduct, and it must go on to ask itself whether that course of conduct is likely to continue. It is only then that the Board brings its judgment to the committee's report and decides the questions which I have asked it to answer. If the answer to both is "Yes", it will report the case to the Attorney-General.

I put it to the right hon. and learned Gentleman that in the very nature of things the committee will not be able to function unless it can take account of the individual complaint. It puts these complaints together. If it thinks that there is a course of conduct, it reports to the Board, and the Board has to confirm or reject the view which it has formed.

I entirely accept the view expressed by the Home Secretary. It is a good thing that we moved the Amendment in order to give him an opportunity of elaborating what he said in Committee, which gave rise to a certain amount of doubt. Particularly important is the point which he made about a number of complaints which were unconnected in so far as the people making them were concerned but which, when examined, were all found to channel back to the same source. It is important that we should leave the Bill as it is in order that that situation may be covered. I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

I beg to move Amendment No. 22, Clause 2, in page 2, line 35, after the first "the", to insert "written".

This is a very short point. The Act provides that anybody may make a complaint or that somebody may make a complaint with the authority of another person. Normally one can think of provisions in the Statutes by which things which have to be put down in writing are otiose and usually objectionable because they provide a formality which may deprive people of their rights. On the other hand, there are occasions when this is ncessary. Here an individual can make a complaint personally. If he is not prepared to make his complaint personally, then the Bill provides that is can be made with his authority. Suppose that a complaint is made on the supposed authority of a complainant, at a later date there may be very heavy pressures, when he did not want to complain at all, upon him to say that he had done, and in other cases there might be equal pressures upon a man who did complain to say that he did not and had not in fact complained.

The point of the Amendment is to make sure at an early stage of the proceedings if he makes a complaint himself—certainly he need not do that in writing—but some other body or institution or person proceeds with the complaint on his behalf he attaches his signature to a piece of paper so that there can be no doubt al all that the complainant has authorised the making of that complaint, and that never thereafter can there be pressure exercised upon him to say he did not authorise it, or people making complaint under his authority and wanting him to say it was made with his authority, when it was not authorised in the first instance.

It is a matter of judgment, and I do not press it, but it seemed to me a matter that ought to be considered, and that there would be an advantage in having the authority in writing.

I wonder whether the right hon. and learned Gentleman would be so kind as to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment on my assurance to him that I should like to consider this carefully when this Bill goes from the House of Commons to another place. It seems to me, if I may respectfully say so, that there are grounds for this change but that I should like to think them over rather carefully before making the change.

I am delighted to do that, and I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for undertaking to consider this matter, and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

I beg to move, Amendment No. 35, Clause 2, in page 3, line 27, after "Board" to insert:

"and any local conciliation committee constituted by the Board under section 2 of the Race Relations Act 1965".

This deals with the position of Members of Parliament and disqualification. The Bill as at present drawn provides that a person who is a member of the Race Relations Board itself cannot also hold a seat in the House of Commons. I would have thought that that principle ought to have been extended to the members of the local conciliation committees. I know that, of course they are not paid in the same way as members of the Board are, but they are, as it were, agents for the Board and they are discharging functions under this Bill, and to that extent I should have thought it undesirable that Members of Parliament should take part in the work either of the Board itself or of the agents of the Board, the conciliation committees in the various areas.

I would have thought there were really two substantial reasons why Members of this House should not serve on the local conciliation committees. First of all, as I say, they will, to some extent, be members of subordinate bodies taking directions, as I understand it, and appointed by the Race Relations Board, and whose appointment would be subject to termination by the Board, which is not itself a Parliamentary body.

2.15 p.m.

Secondly, it seems to me that if one asks oneself about one's own constituency one might come to this conclusion: I would not like to have another Member of Parliament on the conciliation committee of my own constituency. I should not think there are any Members of this House who would particularly welcome it if another Member of Parliament were suddenly to appear on the conciliation committees in their constituencies, whether a Member of one and the same party or the opposite party, on whichever side they sat, One likes to look after one's own constituency when these difficulties arise, and therefore I would have supposed, if we are to have Members of Parliament on the local conciliation committees that they would be the local Members themselves, each one in his own constituency. That, however, I would think highly undesirable, because in these matters a Member of Parliament is representing everybody in his constituency, including the people of both sides of any dispute of this nature; they would all be his constituents. The hon. Member had much better not get muddled up in the first stages of such a dispute. For instance, he might like to ask Questions in Parliament about it. There might be very hot Questions about the proceedings of the conciliation committee, or Questions other than about the conciliation committee itself. If a Member of Parliament were also a member of the local conciliation committee he might well feel himself inhibited in his work as a Member of Parliament.

For these reasons it seems to me that we ought to consider whether it is right that Members of Parliament, while not being members of the Board, should be members of the local conciliation committees. I should have thought it would have been very embarrassing for most members of the local conciliation committees, and for Members of Parliament who are members of the committees covering constituencies other than their own, and I should have thought they would be glad not to be placed in a position in which they could be elected to conciliation committees in their own constituencies, and that probably they had better perform their functions as Members of Parliament and not get involved in these disputes in this detailed way as they may arise in their own constituencies.

My right hon. and learned Friend has made a very good case, and I entirely agree with it and for the reasons he has stated, but I should just like to clear up one point he made about a Member of Parliament acting on a committee within his own constituency. This, as we had it from the Home Secretary, would not be at all possible, because these committees are not to be drawn necessarily on a constituency basis but may cover one or 51 constituencies. These committees will not be confined to any county borough, or to any boundaries of the kind—and quite rightly. They are to be formed only where they are necessary, says the Home Secretary, and I agree with that. All these reasons strengthen my right hon. and learned Friend's argument.

We are most anxious that the proceedings of the committees should never become cockpits of political controversy. We want them to function completely untrammelled and uninhibited by political pressures of any sort. It seems to me that the Amendment would conduce to that, and I should be happy if the House would agree to accept the Amendment.

I beg to move Amendment No. 38, Clause 3, in page 3, line 38, after "defendant" to insert:

"within the period of three years prior to the commencement of the proceedings".

With Amendment No. 38 it would be convenient also to consider the right hon. and learned Gentleman's Amendment No. 44, in Clause 4, page 4, line 13, at the beginning to insert:

"within the period of three years prior to the commencement of the proceedings".

The two Amendments have the same intent.

The Amendment was put down with the idea that there ought to be some form of limitation on the raising of these matters by the Attorney-General in the course of proceedings for an injunction, or by the Lord Advocate in Scotland. The right which we are creating is somewhat anomalous. I do not think that it is tort; it is certainly not a breach of contract. It seems to be a sort of statutory duty enforceable by special process. I think that it is universally accepted that it is in the interests of the State that there should be an end to litigation.

It would, I think, be unfortunate if people were to drag out events which were long past, to have them reventilated in the courts, particularly in matters of this sort, which are largely questions of emphasis and of attitude—such as whether the man looked very cross at the time, or how individuals saw things in the particular circumstances of particular events.

To have to call evidence all these long years afterwards seems to be quite wrong. I do not say that three years is the right period, but I would have thought that it was. It is the period within which one must bring an industrial injuries action. Unless a man starts the process for an industrial injury action within three years, he loses his right to bring that action. I think that six years is much too long, but, if we had no period at all, the matter could be brought up at any distance of time thereafter.

It may be said that the safeguard lies in the discretion of the Attorney-General and of the Lord-Advocate in Scotland who would not institute proceedings that were long past. On the other hand, it is useful, even for holders of offices such as those, to know that Parliament regards stale claims and stale litigation as unnecessary. I therefore put down the Amendment with a view to asking the Home Secretary and the representative of the Secretary of State for Scotland whether it would be desirable to have some limitation of the period after which matters of this kind ought to be buried and no longer litigated upon or brought before the courts.

I do not completely close my mind to the idea of some time limit, but I would not like to commit myself in any way now. After all, we are dealing with a course of conduct. It is not as though we are dealing with an isolated case. If the question before the court were a particular happening—the right hon. and learned Gentleman mentioned industrial injuries actions—I would have thought that there was a great deal to be said for stipulating a period of time, but, in the nature of things, one is considering something which is the opposite of that.

A course of conduct may spread over a considerable period of time. The right hon. and learned Gentleman measures his period of time back from the time when the proceedings are instituted. I would have thought that there might be cases in which that would have the result of excluding what would be relevant in the circumstances, though I agree that such cases would be rare.

My preference is to leave it to the discretion of the Attorney-General. I cannot conceive that it will be other than in the very rare and exceptional cases that the Attorney-General of the day will seek to stretch back into the past beyond some time limit. It is not easy to fix the appropriate time limit. Therefore, while I do not close my mind to it, I confess that on balance my inclination is against doing so at the moment.

One of the objectives of introducing the Attorney-General into the machinery of the Bill is to see that it is administered in a sensible way to achieve what is desired in the public interest. Whilst, therefore, I can hold no promise—my mind is not finally closed—I must say that my present inclination is to invite the House to reject the Amendment.

With the leave of the House, may I thank the Home Secretary for promising to consider the matter. I ask him to consider it also on the basis that while there would be a limitation of complaint against a course of conduct within the period, a course of conduct outside the three years would be admis- sible and relevant on the likelihood of persistence in the conduct. I would not want any statutory limitation to shut out past history, because it would be relevant as to whether there was likely to be repetition. But I think that there is something to be said that there must be a basis of some course of conduct during the three years.

I shall not take up further time on this matter. The Home Secretary has promised to consider it, and, with the leave of the House, I desire to withdraw the Amendment.

I beg to move Amendment No. 41, Clause 3, in page 4, line 10, to leave out "party" and to insert "parties to whom and".

The subsection deals with the admissibility in evidence of communications which have been made to the Race Relations Board, or any of the local conciliation committees, or any of its officers or servants. As at present drawn, the subsection says that provided the party who made the communication gives his consent the terms of the communication may be admitted in evidence. I would have thought that it was desirable not only that the consent of the person who made it, but the consent of the party to whom it was made, namely, the local conciliation committee, or the Board or its servants or agents, should also be given.

We know that the security which is given to a communication made to the police is given to ensure that people can, in secret and in confidence, make communications to the police, and that they will not subsequently be disclosed. It is particularly important also that secret communications which affect third parties, and which are given under the seal of secrecy, should not be disclosed, because if they are the result might be to dry up sources of information in the future.

It may be said that it is satisfactory if the party who makes the communication has to give consent, because anybody making a secret or confidential communication to the Board or to a conciliation committee knows that it will be secure and will not be given in evidence in the future unless he consents. I accept the strength of that argument. On the other hand, there may be circumstances in which a person who has changed his mind, and changed his attitude, and who wishes to damage a third party may be anxious to give his consent to a communication becoming public and admitted in evidence but it may be highly disadvantageous to the Board and to its officers for such a course to be taken by a person on whose information the Board has relied, particularly when it might affect a third party.

I do not think that the consequences of the Amendment would be very serious, because one would naturally expect the Board and its officers and servants, or the conciliation committee, to act responsibly and to choose carefully the circumstances when it was in the public interest not to disclose the communication if the other party was willing to give his consent. My only anxiety is that we may not see far enough, and that there may be conditions in which a person who has made a communication changes his attitude. The communication will have been given and received within the bounds of confidentiality. It may be that the Board itself wants to maintain that confidentiality, but the Clause as drawn will not enable it to do so. If the need for confidentiality has disappeared, the Board can consent, also. It is with this idea in mind that I tabled the Amendment.

I feel that the Amendment ought not to be accepted and I shall tell the House why. Clearly, one would have thought that if a person against whom a complaint was made wished to make a statement to a conciliation committee, he should be able to impress on that statement the seal of confidentiality. It is only fair, in his own interests, that he should be able to do so. The Amendment would go on to provide that that statement should not, in any context, whoever wished to use it, be available in proceedings in the county court or in the High Court.

That might be unfair to the person who made it. I take the case in which it might be said against a defendant that he sought to justify his refusal to provide facilities on the ground, for example, that the customer—assuming that this is a publican—had behaved in a disorderly manner. It might be said that that was an excuse which he has trumped up at the last moment, and that he had not raised it at the time. He could then say, "I did raise it at the time. At the first moment when I was asked to give my explanation before the conciliation committee, that is what I said. I said that I had refused to serve this customer on no other ground than that he was behaving in an obstreperous manner".

It seems to me that if the statement should not be admissible unless the person against whose behaviour it reflects also gives his consent, we might be putting on the person against whom the complaint is made a very unfair incubus. He might be inhibited from being able fairly to deploy his case before the court. I should feel difficulty in accepting the Amendment.

2.30 p.m.

I would add, however, that the whole of this business is in the control of the Attorney-General. It is for the Attorney-General to tender what evidence he thinks it right to tender before the court. That evidence must comply with the rules of evidence. He could not tender a statement which, for one reason or other, was not evidence in accordance with the ordinary rules of the court. But, in addition, he uses his discretion. That is the point of bringing in the assistance of a person charged with high responsibility in order to facilitate the purpose of the Act and the proceedings of the court. The Attorney-General will exercise his discretion in this matter, but if the consent of the person against whom the allegation is made is also required at the time it may occasionally make for injustice.

It was never my intention that the two parties who should consent should be the complainant and the person against whom the complaint is made; the two parties should be the person who makes the complaint and the receiver of the statement. The receiver of the complaint will be a member of the Race Relations Board or a local conciliation committee officer. It is only the maker of the complaint plus the official of the Board or the local committee; who should have to consent.

I agree that the Amendment is more limited and slightly different in scope from the interpretation that I put upon it, but it must surely be a matter for the Attorney-General to say what evidence he will tender. I should have thought that it would be highly undesirable that when the conduct of the proceedings is in the hands of the Attorney-General a conciliation committee or the Board should be able to tie his hands. The only occasion on which his hands should be tied should be the occasion when the person who makes the statement objects to its being used against him, because it has been given under the seal of confidence. For a conciliation committee to say to the Attorney-General, "We shall tell you what evidence you can tender," would be utterly unacceptable. This should be left to the Attorney-General.

I beg to move Amendment No. 42, Clause 3, in page 4, line 10, at the end to insert:

(4) If any party to any civil proceedings for the enforcement of section 1 of the Act brought in a county court is dissatisfied with the determination or direction of the judge or jury on any question of fact or law or upon the admission or rejection of any evidence the party aggrieved by the judgment direction or order of the court may appeal therefrom to the Court of Appeal in such manner and subject to such conditions as may be for the time being provided by the rules of the Supreme Court.

This is a rather technical matter. As I understand it, the Bill does not create a tort or breach of contract. If so, and if all that we have is a statutory duty, enforceable by a special process, the right of appeal, if the proceedings are brought in a county court, would appear to be limited to questions of law only. It is only when there is a breach of contract or a tort and the amount of damages is above a certain level that a person has the right of appeal to the Court of Appeal on questions of fact.

I have drawn the Amendment wide to make it plain that every matter can be raised on appeal from the county court. If I am right—I may be wrong, and I shall be glad of the advice of the Solicitor-General on this point—under the Bill as it stands there would be an appeal from the county court in the case of an action seeking an injuction by the Attorney-General on questions of law only. In my view that ought to be widened to include appeals on questions of fact. The Attorney-General himself might think that a county court judge had taken a completely wrong view of the facts. I would have thought that in such a case the appeal ought to be both on law and on fact, and it was in order to secure that that I put down the Amendment. I realise that it is capable of some improvement in drafting.

The advice that I have received is that the position is as the right hon. and learned Gentleman has stated it, namely, that Clause 1 does not create a new tort. As a result, in a case which was heard in the county court there would be no appeal on fact to the court of appeal. I should like to consider whether we ought to introduce such a right of appeal. I do not think that the arguments are all one way. They need careful balancing.

If there is a right of appeal, there must be a right of appeal on both sides. The Attorney-General must have a right of appeal, as well as the person against whom the complaint is made. If the matter rests as it is, and if a case is brought within a county court, there will be more finality. There will be no right of appeal on fact, although there will be in law. If we gave a right of appeal on fact by statute, a person against whom a complaint was made might find himself taken to the court of appeal by the Attorney-General. Whether that is a proper result is open to question. It might be that the defendant should be given the option of having the case referred to the High Court if it is brought in the county court.

It is our desire that proceedings should be as simple as possible, and should not drag on or involve expense. Some expense is bound to be involved, but resort to a county court should result in an inexpensive hearing, and it is open to question whether a matter which probably would be a fairly simple issue of fact should be one which could be again canvassed in the Court of Appeal and perhaps the House of Lords.

I will consider the matter. I agree that under the Clause as drafted there is at the moment no right of appeal from the county court.

I thank the right hon. and learned Gentleman for what he has said, and in the circumstances I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

I beg to move Amendment No. 43, Clause 4, in page 4, to leave out lines 11 and 12 and to insert:

(1) Civil proceedings for the enforcement of section 1 of this Act by interdict may be brought in Scotland by or on behalf of the Lord Advocate in the Court of Session or the Sheriff Court.

(2) If in any proceedings under this section the Court is satisfied that the defender.

With this Amendment we can discuss the following Amendments, all in Clause 4, Amendment No. 45, in page 4, line 19, leave out "sheriff may make an order" and insert:

"court may pronounce an interdict".

Amendment No. 46, in line 19, leave out "that person" and insert "the defender".

Amendment No. 47, in line 23, leave out "order" and insert "interdict".

Amendment No. 48, in line 24, leave out from beginning to "on" in line 27 and insert:

(3) Without prejudice to all rights of appeal against any interdict pronounced under the foregoing subsection it shall also be competent to appeal to the Court of Session against any order imposing.

Amendment No. 49, in line 28, leave out "order made" and insert "interdict pronounced".

Amendment No. 50, in page 4, leave out lines 29 and 30.

I move the Amendment with the greatest trepidation, as it affects matters of Scottish law in which I have no expertise. I understand that it is the intention of the Government that the Clause should be similar to Clause 3, and should institute exactly similar procedures and rights as that Clause does for England. But this Clause does not proceed as the English Clause does, to give the Lord Advocate the right to seek the well-known remedy of an interdict, which corresponds to an injunction in England.

The whole Clause applies in reference to a process by which, in Scotland, the Lord Advocate can go to court and ask for the remedy of interdict which already exists in Scottish law. The purpose of the Amendment is to assimilate Clause 4 for Scotland to the procedure laid down in Clause 3 for England, where the Attorney-General will seek an injunction.

I am advised by those interested in Scottish law, whose names appear with mine in support of the Amendment, that this is a proper remedy and that it would in many ways be much more convenient to provide, as we have done in Clause 3, for the remedy of interdict to be sought in the courts by the Lord Advocate. It attracts rights of appeal in respect of proceedings in Scotland which may not be so attracted in the event of our providing a special remedy which is not the remedy of interdict.

There are also two points, apart from this general one, which I should mention. It appears to be provided by Clause 4 that all applications by the Lord Advocate are to be brought before the sheriff in the sheriff court and there is no provision, as there is under Clause 3, for any process at the instance of the Lord Advocate being brought in the Court of Session. Under Clause 3 it is possible for the Attorney-General to proceed in High Court if he desires, although he has an option to proceed in the county court.

It is probable that the majority of cases in England will be commenced in the county court, but there might be serious events in the heart of London where the sensible thing would be for important issues of law and fact, in circumstances of great publicity, to be commenced in the High Court by the Attorney-General and not in the county court.

I should have thought that the same thing could be said of Scotland. Whilst they might be rare there might be events causing great anxiety and publicity and of important interest in which considerable circumstances were at issue affecting the rights of citizens not only under this Bill but other rights which might be seriously affected. There might also be a difficult question of law which might have been the subject of dispute between different sheriffs in different parts of Scotland and it might be highly desirable to commence proceedings in the Court of Session in Scotland at first instance. The Amendments are intended to give the Lord Advocate the right if he desires in a particular case to start in the court of Session instead of having to start in every case in the sheriff court.

There is a point here where Clause 4 differs from Clause 3 and that is in the right of appeal to the House of Lords. Clause 4, as drawn in lines 29 and 30, provides that in any such appeal the decision of the Court of Session shall be final. I think that that applies generally to all appeals in proceedings begun by the Lord Advocate under Clause 4. I should have thought that it would be most regrettable if appeals in matters such as these are to go in England to the House of Lords, as I understand they will go, but that there will be no appeal from the Court of Session to the House of Lords.

There have been frequent occasions in the past when the courts of Scotland and of England have disagreed on particular views. It would be most unhappy if this Bill, of all Bills, was applied in different ways in different parts of the United Kingdom. I do not know whether in Scotland one would not be entitled to say something about an Englishman by reason of ethnic origin. It would be most unhappy if a court there took the view that Englishmen were of a different ethnic origin and the courts here decided that we were all part of the United Kingdom. I should have thought it highly desirable that if the laws of England and of Scotland appeared to be diverging it should be possible to reconcile the two by appeal from Scotland to the House of Lords.

I do not suppose that many cases would go to appeal. One must have leave and one would have leave only if it was essential that such an appeal should be brought. The fact that one should have it wholly excluded in Scotland but not in England seems a curious result, and for that reason alone I hope that some of the Amendments, and particularly the one about appeals to the House of Lords, may be accepted by the Government.

As the right hon. and learned Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir J. Hobson) has said, the effect of these Amendments would be to make three changes in the procedure set out in the Bill for the enforcement of Clause 1 in Scotland. The procedure is similar to that set out for England with certain differences which we think are suitable far Scottish practice in the courts and which suit Scottish legal traditions.

I will deal with those three points, but, first, I should like to say that the procedure under the Bill itself is, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman has described it, that the Lord Advocate applies to the sheriff court for an order and there is an appeal from that to the Court of Session, and no appeal further than that. The changes which these Amendments would make are that, first, the Lord Advocate would not apply for an order. He would apply for an interdict. Secondly, in addition to being able to apply to the sheriff court he would be able to apply to the Court of Session. Thirdly, there would be an appeal to the House of Lords.

In respect of the first of the three proposed changes, there is no subtle plot behind the provision in the Bill. It is simply that while, generally speaking, the interdict is the Scottish equivalent of an injunction in England, nevertheless the form of interdict which the Scottish courts have developed down the years would not be suitable in our view to cover cases under this Bill. Interdicts are granted only where rights have been infringed, and Clause 1 is not drafted in terms which expressly purport to create new rights.

It has, moreover, been held that the court would not grant an interdict for the purpose of seeking to ensure that a person obeys the law in general terms, but it is an essential part of the Bill that orders can be granted in this form to ensure compliance with the provisions of Clause 1. The Secretary of State, after consulting the Lord Advocate, decided that the kind of case which may arise under the Bill requires a different approach from the courts than that which has been developed over the years as a result of individual petitions for interdict.

Here there will be the Lord Advocate asking the court to order someone to desist from a practice not in itself a criminal offence but contrary to the public well-being. This is almost without precedent and in our view it requires new procedure on the lines indicated in the Clause. It is for this reason that we have set up the procedure that the Lord Advocate should apply for an order.

The second point which the right hon. and learned Gentleman raised was whether or not the Lord Advocate should be empowered also to be able to make application to the Court of Session. We agree that there are two possible views about this, but the Secretary of State and the Lord Advocate have considered at fairly great length what they feel would be most appropriate in Scotland. For the reasons which I gave in Committee, they feel that applications should be made to the sheriff court.

In the main, cases arising under the Bill will be concerned with local circumstances, local incidents and local issues, and in our view they should be dealt with in the local court. The Lord Advocate, who is the Law Officer charged under subsection (1) of the Clause with the initiation and conduct of proceedings for enforcement, has at his disposal established machinery, in the shape of the Procurator Fiscal's Department, in each sheriff court. The Procurator Fiscal will act on behalf of the Lord Advocate in taking action under the Clause as necessary, and he is, of course, responsible to the Lord Advocate.

In Committee, my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary said that in the county courts in England justice was not too expensive and that it was speedy and effective. The same arguments apply to the sheriff courts in Scotland, but there is this difference between the sheriff courts in Scotland and the county courts in England. The sheriff court has always had a much wider jurisdiction than the county court.

For those reasons, we feel that the application should be made to the sheriff court. We were concerned also about the possible effect if cases were taken to the Court of Session. Taking account of all these factors, we felt that this was the right procedure in Scottish circumstances. The Lord Advocate can always go on appeal to the Court of Session, and the important issues which the right hon. and learned Gentleman said might arise in Scotland could, if necessary, in that way be settled there.

As regards appeal from the Court of Session to the House of Lords, our view is this. A case will have been considered by the conciliation committee, it will have been considered by the Board. It will have been considered by the Lord Advocate, it will have been considered by the sheriff court, and it will then have been considered by the Court of Session. In the circumstances, we feel that this really should be the end. The matter will have gone through a very long procedure.

It is not unprecedented in Scotland for there not to be an appeal to the House of Lords. I have a note of two precedents, one in the Small Landholders (Scotland) Act, 1911, the other in the Solicitors (Scotland) Act, 1933, and I understand that there are others. This was given very careful consideration by my right hon. Friends, and they felt that, by the time the matter had reached the Court of Session, it had travelled a pretty long way and received a great amount of consideration, of the lay kind at the beginning and of the legal kind in its later stages. For this reason, we were inclined to leave it at that and not prolong the process further by the lengthy and expensive procedure of appeal to the House of Lords.

Perhaps I may mention that I have discussed these matters with the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh, Pent-lands (Mr. Wylie), who apologised to me for not being able to be present today. I should not like to say that we agreed about them; there were differences between us. But the Government's view at present is that the Clause as drafted is the most suitable for the conditions which obtain in Scotland.

I beg to move Amendment No. 53, Clause 5, in page 4, line 40, to leave out from "dwelling-house" to the end of line 2 on page 5.

I suggest that we ought to consider at the same time Amendment No. 54, Clause 5, in page 4, line 42, to leave out from "residence" to the end of line 2 on page 5; and Amendment No. 55, in page 5, line 2, at the end to insert:

"or where any accommodation other than accommodation required for the purpose of access to the premises is shared by the tenants."

If desired, I will call Amendment No. 54 for a Division.

Neither my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Gurden) nor I question the right of persons of different colours and races to find it easy and straightforward to find homes. Those of us who are concerned about overcrowding regard it as essential that there should be an adequate supply of dwellings available to them on reasonable terms. But when we are discussing race relations we ought to have some regard to the practicalities as well as to the broad principle.

It is quite common for people to have dwellings within one building, that is, to share accommodation. But we all know that when persons have to share facilities in common difficulties can easily arise. If the facilities are mere entrance halls, there should be no great difficulty, although with children playing in them friction can easily be caused even if the people speak the same language and can understand one another. I am thinking more particularly of the sharing of kitchens, bathrooms and toilets. These are the points of friction when families share one dwelling-house.

Amendment No. 53 deals particularly with an individual dwelling-house used by more than one family. If friction is possible, it is at this point that it will come. The difficulties of two housewives sharing one kitchen are well known, and the difficulties are exacerbated if one of the housewives is, for example, an Asiatic who wishes to cook strange and exotic foods just at the time when an English housewife wants to get on with her bacon and eggs. There is quite enough friction if a kitchen has to be shared by two families both of which want to cook bacon and eggs.

The same applies to bathrooms. Anyone who has ever waited outside a bathroom occupied by someone else knows how exasperating it can be. Particular difficulty can arise over the toilets if they are shared with Asiatic families, for instance. I sometimes think that those who advocate the shared use of toilet accommodation do not fully appreciate the difficulties which orthodox Hindus have when they have to use a Western style toilet. It is extremely difficult if people of different cultural and religious backgrounds have to share toilet accommodation. Serious friction can develop.

I suggest, therefore, that where such facilities are used in common this shall be a good reason for withholding consent to the transfer of a lease. The subsection goes on to give the weakest of all arguments by providing that it is reasonable to withhold permission if the person who holds the lease himself has to share the accommodation. This is really the grossest hypocrisy. On the one hand, it is provided that the person holding the lease shall be entitled to refuse to share with a coloured person or immigrant while, on the other hand, he can tell his tenant that it is quite right for him to share in such circumstances. In my view, this is the worse kind of "Do as I say rather than do as I do." If integration is good, it is good for everyone, and the law ought to be that everybody should do it, or, I suggest, far better that the rule should not be extended to cover these particular points of friction.

With the Amendment, we should have a simple straightforward Clause which provided that the sharing of facilities in one dwelling-house, being likely to cause friction, was a good and reasonable cause for a landlord to withhold consent to the transfer of a lease or tenancy. It would improve the Bill, and I hope that, even at this late stage, the Home Secretary will realise that, if the Amendment is not made, there will be a constant source of trouble and friction here.

I will be deliberately brief, because my hon. Friend the Member for Smethwick (Mr. Peter Griffiths) has proposed the Amendment in adequate terms. I just want to say to other hon. Members who have constituencies which are not so terribly concerned with immigrants that this is a very serious matter. Perhaps the hon. Member for Devon, North (Mr. Thorpe) will be interested to hear some of the things that happen in areas where immigrants congregate in great numbers. People not only have to say, "We must accept settlers from abroad coming to live within our shores; we must do all we can to live with them peaceably," because it is quite a different matter when we say by law that they should be forced to live with them in the same buildings.

Let us remember that the Bill as it stands now, as my hon. Friend the Member for Smethwick said, allows the owner or lessee of a building who happens to live in the building to discriminate and say that the Bill does not apply to them and they need not suffer the penalties under the Bill within their own houses. But if the owner or lessee happens to live away from the building, all his tenants have to suffer the difficulties.

As the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary said,

"Kitchens are perhaps the most fertile premises of dispute,"

when he was giving the reason before for the owner of a building not having to suffer the restrictions of the Bill, and my hon. Friend and I see no reason at all why other tenants in the building should have to live with people they do not want to live with, no matter whether it is an English person, a Scottish person or a person from overseas. If they do not want to share that accommodation with them, we do not see any reason why they should be forced by law to do it.

I will leave the argument at that. Very much more could be said about the Amendment because, as I said earlier, hon. Members have to have the sorts of constituencies where the troubles arise before they are able to see the importance of the Amendment.

The Government have got themselves into a proper jam on this Clause. It is very selective. It deals with only a highly selective part of the law on the relationship between landlord and tenant.

The strange position which arises on the Clause was brought to a head by my right hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (Mr. Thorneycroft), whose absence we very greatly regret today and whose interesting leadership of the Opposition on the Committee stage was, I think, appreciated by all. In column 301 of the Committee proceedings, he asked this question of the Home Secretary:

"I have listened to what has been said about the sharing of bathroom and kitchen. But why is it easier to share it with a tenant than with a landlord?"

The only answer that was given by the Home Secretary was:

"The answer is that one has to draw the line somewhere".

It is a pity that we are in the position of having to draw the line anywhere at all in a situation of this kind. My hon. Friend who spoke when he moved the first of the three Amendments now under discussion suggested one point at which the line should be drawn, and that is to say that the subsection should not apply to a tenancy of premises forming part of a dwelling-house at all.

We do not go quite so far as that. What we say—I think that our two Amendments can rightly be looked at together; indeed, if the first is accepted, the second could be accepted too—is that the second part of the proviso is likely to make race relations worse. The Home Secretary was very candid when dealing with this in Standing Committee. He said:

"The kind of situation which one has in mind is sharing kitchens. A proviso of this sort, is, as it were, an invasion of the general purpose and spirit of the Bill. It is designed to deal with, shall we say, a situation in which friction may develop between housewives. Experience has shown, I think, that, however friendly relations may be between families living in the same accommodation, if they have to share kitchens, bathrooms, and similar facilities, disputes and friction may arise."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee B. 24th June, 1965; c. 300.]

Too true. That is a statement of a situation in human relations which could not be more accurate, and a situation which apparently the Home Secretary is prepared to stomach—and very surprisingly. But he need not stomach it if he will accept the two Amendments which my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Sharples) and I have put forward.

If the proviso is allowed to remain as it is, I shall find it a most illiberal provision. As an old Liberal myself, I deprecate interference with the right of privacy to the extent proposed. If the proviso is not amended on the lines that we have suggested, it must be clearly understood that a man's home is no longer his castle. Whether he is an Englishman, a Jew or an Indian, it will no longer be his castle.

Is it not intolerable that a person good enough to allow a tenant or sub-tenant the right under a tenancy to share his bathroom or his kitchen should be compelled by law to consent to that tenant or sub-tenant nominating another person to share his accommodation whom the landlord may not even ever have seen? I find it hard to believe that, whatever views we may have about the best way of dealing with this very difficult question of race relations—on which the Opposition have made some constructive efforts, which have been acknowledged by the Government, to handle the matter more satisfactorily—it is right for us to leave the Bill in a way which would enable what I have described to happen.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth said in the Standing Committee:

"The most difficult examples centre on the situation where a house has been sub-divided. It may be quite unreasonable to complain that a coloured person is living in the house next door, but, as the Home Secretary argued in his intervention, it is a different matter when people of different colours and races, and different cooking habits, are sharing a kitchen. To start legislating in some way which says, 'We think that they ought to share the kitchen", is going rather far in the anti-apartheid approach to life. It is taking such an exaggerated view that one is more likely to cause trouble than to ease the differences."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee B, 24th June, 1965; c. 308.]

I think that looking at it from the most humane point of view, from the viewpoint of anyone having the strongest desire to improve race relations in this country, this is such a plain case for amending the Bill that I most earnestly hope that we shall have a sympathetic reply from the Solicitor-General.

I rise to support the spirit of the Amendment. Since the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire (Mr. Renton) mentioned his antecedents, I would say that I do so in spite of the fact that a "nationalised" Liberal supported it. There is a strong case for the Amendment. We start with the first proposition that it shall be unlawful to refuse consent on the ground of ethnic origin. We then seek to carve a limited exception out of that general proposition, an exception which I think extremely artificial. We say that if the person who is required to give the licence is himself the co-occupant, it is entirely reasonable for him to refuse such a licence, but that if he does not live there and is not sharing the premises, then for anybody else to oppose the licence at once becomes unreasonable.

I cannot see the distinction between the two. Either it is consistently wrong to refuse a licence on the basis that the shar- ing betwen different communities might cause friction and difficulties and lack of racial harmony—either it is wrong in all cases to refuse it, in which case I cannot see why we should make a distinction between the person who grants a licence and the person who occupies the shared accommodation; or, alternatively, it is reasonable to allow the right both to the landlord and to the tenant. I cannot see why we should try to make this distinction. There is very little logic in it.

What the Bill tries to do is to express the public abhorrence which we feel in the House towards those who try to stir up race hatred and lack of harmony between races and towards those who discriminate in private places. But he would be the first to accept that, while one may publicly express one's view, an Act of Parliament in itself cannot change people's morality and private attitudes. It is merely a public example which perhaps will have some part in educating public opinion at large. Therefore, if one tries to force people to accept something which is abhorrent to them—which to others would not be abhorrent and which they would not mind in the least—and if one tries to ram it down their throats, one may well cause more trouble than one cures.

I therefore hope that this artificial distinction in respect of withholding a licence will be recognised and that one or both of the Amendments wil be accepted.

My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and I fully appreciate the force of what has been said by every hon. Member who so far has addressed the Committee on these Amendments about the difficulties which may arise when there is the sharing of a bathroom, of a kitchen or of a lavatory—the sort of difficulties with which many of us were familiar about a quarter of a century ago when we had the evacuees at the beginning of the war. But I hope that I shall be able to satisfy the House that in this matter there is a very clear distinction between the position of the landlord and that of the tenant. It is because we appreciate the arguments about shared accommodation that we want to include the proviso to Clause 5(1).

3.15 p.m.

I come now to the Amendment of the hon. Member for Smethwick (Mr. Peter Griffiths). If that were accepted, it would make nonsense of the whole Clause, for it would provide that the subsection should not apply to the tenancy of premises forming part of a dwelling-house. All dwelling-houses would then be excluded from the operation of the Clause. So far as we on this side of the House know, there has been no instance of discriminatory provisions on racial grounds in leases of commercial or agricultural or other non-residential property. If it happens, it must be very rare. The area in which that discrimination arises is precisely among dwelling-houses and therefore the Clause would have no value unless it were directed to accommodation in dwelling-houses. I therefore invite the House to reject that Amendment.

I fully appreciate the force of what the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) said, but I hope that I can satisfy the House that Amendment No. 54 would create considerable difficulty.

I am not quite clear what the Solicitor-General meant about Amendment No. 53. The Bill refers to parts of dwelling-houses.

But the effect of the Amendment would be that the Bill would read:

"Provided that this subsection does not apply to a tenancy of premises forming part of a dwelling-house."

Therefore, the prohibition would apply only to premises which did not form part of a dwelling-house, that is to say, to other forms of accommodation.

Surely the Solicitor-General is not right. It does not apply to all dwelling-houses, but only to dwelling-houses in which there is some accommodation, that is to say, dwelling-houses which may be in multi-occupation.

Certainly a limited category of dwelling-houses, but, none the less, there would be this distinction between dwelling-houses and other forms of buildings which are let, and that would be a perfectly illogical distinction and would deprive the Clause of nearly all its force.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman's Amendment No. 54 would end the proviso at the word "residence" so that it would read:

"Provided that this subsection does not apply to a tenant of premises forming part of a dwelling-house or which the remainder or part of the remainder is occupied by the person whose licence or consent is required as his own residence"

Supposing, for example, that there were a block of flats and the landlord owning it retained one flat for his own residence, he would be able to veto any assignment or sub-letting of any other part of the block. This is much further than it is necessary to go and certainly further than the Government desire to go.

On the face of it, the next Amendment is attractive. It would have a somewhat different effect. However, it would still produce a rather anomalous result. In the block of flats which I have instanced some part of the accommodation, say, a common laundry, might be shared in common, and in that case if the landlord himself were the occupant of a flat within the block, the Amendment would operate and he would be able to have a complete veto.

The proviso in the Bill would already cover the situation where the landlord lives in the block. What the Amendment refers to is where the landlord himself is not the occupant, but is not able to protect his tenants as he would himself.

I appreciate that and that brings me to what, I think, was the principal argument of the right hon. and learned Gentleman, the distinction between landlord and tenant.

This is a matter with which the hon. Member for Devon, North (Mr. Thorpe), was also concerned. He suggested that it was illogical to have this veto so far as a landlord is concerned where there is shared accommodation in the house and not so far as the tenant was concerned. I appreciate what both hon. and learned Gentlemen have said on this point, but I submit that there is a very clear distinction here. The landlord is the owner of his own house and the effect of this Clause is that he can at least prevent an assignment or subletting where there is a common kitchen, lavatory or bathroom. We all appreciate that that is necessary.

When one comes to the tenant, he is in a different position. The tenant, when he takes on a tenancy of this kind, enters it on condition that certain facilities are to be shared. If one goes into a lodging house, where there is a common bathroom, one of the conditions of the tenancy is that the bathroom will be shared. That is to say the tenant has no complaint because other people are entitled to share the accommodation. It would create an undesirable situation, to deal particularly with the lodging house, if any tenant of the lodging house had a veto over any coloured person coming into the lodging house.

That is what the effect of these Amendments would be. I cannot imagine anything more likely to stir up racial prejudice in a lodging house where there might be a dozen or two dozen lodgers, for one tenant to be able to say, "Because I have shared accommodation, which I undertook to share at the time of taking the tenancy, I can veto anyone of another race coming in with the consent of the landlord and taking lodgings in the same premises."

What the hon. and learned Gentleman was saying a moment ago about a proviso in a lease having the undesired effect is surely not relevant to this discussion, because subsection (2) of this Clause would permit no such proviso.

I am not concerned with subsection (2). I am concerned with the proviso and with the arguments addressed to me. I say that the Amendments would inevitably have the result that any single tenant in a lodging house or premises would have a veto over any coloured persons coming into those premises, even though everyone else living there is perfectly willing to accept him. I do not think that is the result which hon. Members in any part of the House would wish to bring about and, therefore, I invite the House to reject the Amendment.

I have listened with great respect to what the hon. and learned Gentleman has said, but I must say it is completely unsatisfactory and I could not withdraw my Amendment. The responsibility must fall to the Government to reject this sensible proposal.

I am in your hands, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I did not move the first of the three Amendments although I have already spoken in the debate. As I understand it, and I am rising to a point of order—

The right hon. Gentleman will have to ask leave of the House.

If I may have the leave of the House to speak very briefly, may I say that I think everybody on this side of the House who heard the argument put forward by the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor-General was amazed. He did not acknowledge that there was any need whatever to cope with the great difficulty in human relations caused by shared kitchens and bathrooms. The only reason, as I understand it, why he would not accept Amendment No. 54 was because in a particular example, a rather extreme case which he gave, the situation would not be satisfactory.

The Solicitor-General instanced the example of a block of flats. Everyone knows that the more common case to consider is the house in the twilight area which is divided into a number of small flats, sometimes consisting of only two rooms each, but with certain common facilities being shared. But, even if we take the block of flats, is that a sound answer? A block of flats contains, in effect, a large number of separate dwellings. Indeed, each flat may be within the definition of a dwelling-house. It is self-contained in every sense. The only thing which is shared is the access. In any event, if the Government are worried about that situation, would not the proper and open thing be for them to introduce legislation to cover the wider issues of the letting of tenancies in blocks of flats?

This Clause, as drafted, was obviously intended to deal with houses mainly in twilight areas divided into a number of separate small flats. We discussed it in Committee on that basis. Therefore, we cannot accept the Solicitor-General's answer to Amendment No. 54 as being even reasonable. When it came to Amendment No. 55, I found it impossible to follow him.

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

We have come within sight, I hope, of the end of what I believe have been constructive and sincere discussions on a Bill of great public importance. As has been said before, its purpose is to meet a new and developing situation. The Government envisage the Bill as a Bill designed to get in first, to be ready to cope with frictions and difficulties which may arise. Let us hope to goodness that they do not arise, or that if they do they will arise in very small compass.

We regard this as an experimental Bill forming part of our own legislative system. Other countries have introduced legislation of this sort. Many people in this country, among them some of my hon. Friends, think that we should have gone further and tried to reproduce in greater completeness the pattern of civil rights legislation in countries which have had in perhaps a more acute form the problems with which we are confronted.

We have taken what in a sense is a first step. I hope that events will show that it is not necessary to take any further step and that this may be the last step. If the Bill turns out to be a successful Act of Parliament and to achieve its purpose, it will, by a paradox in a sense, very rarely need to be called into operation.

The Bill contains two parts. The second part deals with incitement. That I think, is a necessary part of it, and I propose to say no more about it. The major portion of the controversy has arisen about the first part, on which some have urged that it goes too far and many have urged that it does not go far enough. I simply say that the Government will watch the situation as it develops. Should it appear that the provisions are inadequate to deal with the mischief against which it is directed, it may well be necessary for the Government later—one hopes never—to expand its scope and to reconsider its effect and operation. I have said and I repeat, that I pray that we shall never be faced with that need.

It would be an ugly day in this country if we had to come back to Parliament to extend the scope of this legislation, which is designed to prevent frictions from developing between different communities in the country. We must therefore keep our minds active on this matter and the position open.

Secondly, it has been urged that the functions of the committees should be more widely flung and that the Board should have greater powers of research and investigation. As hon. and right Members will have observed, the committees must make reports to the Board. The Board must make reports to the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State must lay them before Parliament. I believe and hope that in the course of time the committees and the Board, and particularly the Board, having to consider their reports, will accumulate a considerable body of knowledge, of understanding and of expertise in these problems.

Speaking for myself, I should certainly welcome advice from the Board, as indeed I always welcome advice from which ever quarter it may come. It will come from public opinion, public discussion, and public reactions to the problems as they arise. The Government will most certainly consider carefully what emerges in these coming months and years and will take such steps as may be dictated to suit the needs of the developing situation.

I want to say little more in commending the Bill to the House on Third Reading, except this. I desire to emphasise that the Bill takes away no existing right which anybody has. It is not as if a person who is dissatisfied, or feels that he has a grievance which can be vindicated by the law as it at present stands, in any way has his rights inhibited or curtailed. Those rights remain exactly as they have always been. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Oxford (Mr. Woodhouse) is particularly anxious that that should be the case, and I gladly emphasise that the Bill does nothing to curtail the existing rights of any citizen. It creates a new class of unlawful conduct, a course of discrimination on the ground of origin.

It is designed, in the first place, to bring such discrimination, if it comes to light, to an end in conciliation, but providing, nevertheless, that if conciliation does not prove possible, up and down the country a Board may take the matter further, and that ultimately, if necessary, it may fall to a judge, in a county court or in the High Court, to consider whether an injunction ought to be declared to stop that course of conduct. If a person persists against the injunction he will stand at risk of the ordinary consequences—of a motion to commit him.

We have given great thought to this and I acknowledge freely that we have received a great deal of valuable advice, and I do not hesitate for a moment to say that we have changed the first view we took upon it as a result of the general reaction to our first proposals. I do not think that there is anything unnecessarily discreditable in that. I would personally never hesitate to change what I thought was a right decision if it turned out to be a decision which could be improved upon, and that is what we have done.

I hope that the House will think, after we have gone through its provisions and changed it in places, that it is now a useful Measure, which should be put on the Statute Book, and I invite the House to give it the third Reading.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman, the Home Secretary, has acknowledged, generously I think, that the Bill owes much to the representations which we on this side of the House have made. Certainly, the Bill which we now have before us is a very much better Bill than that against which we put down a reasoned Amendment on Second Reading. It contains conciliation machinery which was one of the main features of the reasoned Amendment which we put down.

One of the difficulties which has arisen over the Bill is that through the substitution of a conciliation machinery for the criminal procedure that we virtually had to consider in Standing Committee, and then on Report, was a new Bill which never in its present form had a Second Reading. Here today hon. Members on both sides of the House have had to exercise a considerable amount of restraint. Hon. Members, who have never had a Second Reading chance of con- sidering the Bill in its present form, had to exercise a great deal of restraint in order to get the Bill through, if it was to have its Third Reading today.

I do not think this was a satisfactory means of proceeding, and I think that even at the risk of trotting out old horses again, it would have been much better if the right hon. and learned Gentleman, when he found the original proposals would not be acceptable, had taken the Bill back, redrafted the whole thing, and brought it forward for Second Reading again properly, so that the House would have had the time to consider this important Measure properly, and not in the rushed conditions which we have had today in the situation in which we found ourselves.

As I say, the Bill provides for conciliation machinery. I believe that a great deal of the success or failure of the Bill will depend upon how that conciliation machinery is set up. On an Amendment, the right hon. and learned Gentleman spoke of the composition of the Board. I know quite well that he will be determined, in his selection of the Members of the Board, to give the machinery as good a chance as possible of making an effective contribution.

I think that much more difficult will be the selection of the members of the conciliation committees. They are the people who will come into direct contact both with the person making the complaint and the person complained against. The Board will have to give very careful consideration to the selection of members of the conciliation committees, because it is essential that they should be respected locally both for their impartiality and for their sound judgment. A great deal will depend, too, on the competence and fair dealing of the officials who are called on to assist the conciliation committees in their work.

As the Home Secretary has acknowledged, the Bill deals only with a very narrow aspect of the whole problem of race relations. Clause 1 deals with such matters such as ships, aircraft, and public transport, where the problem of race relations is hardly likely to arise. It deals also with places of public resort maintained by public authorities, where, again, the real difficulties of race relations are not likely to arise. Thus, if one deletes those places, one finds that there is very little left in Clause 1.

One of the difficulties with which we have to contend is that people like licensees wonder why the Government have decided to single them out in an effort to find a solution to the problem of race relations. For good reasons the Bill does not, and cannot, deal with the real basic problems of race relations. It cannot and does not deal with the problem of jobs, of advancement, of trade union membership and of apprenticeship, simply because those things cannot be dealt with by law.

The Bill does not deal with the main problems of housing. We have just concluded a debate on a Clause which deals with a tiny fraction of the whole problem of the law of landlord and tenant. The Bill does not deal with the social problem. It does not deal with the housing problem, the allocation of council housing, and problems like that. It does not deal with them, simply because it cannot. As the Home Secretary admitted, these problems are far too difficult to be dealt with by law. The Bill does not deal with the problem of social relationships between the different races now in this country. These things simply cannot be dealt with by law.

I still have some reservations about Clause 6, which deals with incitement. I am sure that we all abhor the scurrilous pamphlet, the dirty obscene piece of paper pushed through the letter box with the intention to frighten. If the Clause had been confined to the written word, to the pamphlet, it would have been very much easier to administer. I think that it will be very much more difficult to administer where it deals with the spoken word. It introduces a new principle into our legal system, and places a very heavy onus on the individual policeman to decide whether to bring a complaint to the notice of his superiors. I do not want to dwell at length on that, because I know that some of my hon. Friends wish to take part in the debate.

We certainly hope that the Bill will work, but we have grave doubts whether it will make any significant contribution to the real problems of race relations. Although we hope that it will work, I cannot say that we are able to give it our unqualified blessing.

I have changed my mind twice about the Bill. When it first appeared I was fairly convinced that it was likely to do more harm than good—more likely to frustrate its objectives than to achieve them. It was then turned almost upside down in Committee, and I found that I could not really maintain any of my earlier objections to it. But I was still doubtful about the opportunity of it. I still felt that it would be better to allow the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Economic Affairs to get on with the job that he is doing. Incidentally, I take this opportunity of paying tribute to the work that he is doing. I felt that the introduction of the Bill, harmless though it was, might interfere with the success of his task.

During the course of the past few weeks, however, we have seen a movement in the direction of the imposition of restrictions on Commonwealth citizens in this country. I have always felt that if we are going to make a success of race relations our policy must include some element of reassurance to the man in the street. It is no good making him feel that he is in the dock because he still harbours lingering doubts about admitting coloured people to full comradeship with him. In my view we have to to take him along slowly, and an element in this task has to be some kind of reassurance that he will not be flooded out or forced to live in a completely coloured neighbourhood.

I felt doubtful about the effect of the Bill on the white population, but since we have had this sudden lurch of both parties in the direction of applying greater restrictions to Commonwealth citizens it is important that we should couple this movement with an element of reassurance the other way—to Commonwealth citizens in this country. In speaking on this subject my right hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (Mr. Thorneycroft) always made a great point of the importance of marching in double harness—of coupling every measure of restriction with a measure of liberalisation. In those circumstances it is immensely important, now that we are moving towards a greater restriction of Commonwealth citizens, that we should simultaneously adopt a Measure which, for all its imperfections, will be regarded by the coloured people in this country as something for them.

Although I have spoken somewhat less than wildly enthusiastically about the Measure—and there are points about it which do not make me entirely happy, especially the question of shared accommodation, which was covered by the Amendment which has just been lost—once the Measure becomes law I pledge myself to do everything in my power, both in my constituency and outside it, to see that the Bill contributes to the improvement of race relations in this country.

All of us will welcome very much what the hon. Member for Eton and Slough (Sir A. Myer) has said. He and a number of his hon. Friends have been extremely helpful on these issues of race relationships in recent months. We should be proud of the bridge between the parties on this matter as something which has emerged in this Parliament. I am particularly pleased about it.

We wish particularly to thank the Home Secretary. We have had our battles with him throughout the Bill. He is right in saying that we appoached the matter from a rather different standpoint. We believed that once we began to alter the Bill it should have been altered to something more like the civil rights legislation of other countries.

I summarised this legitimate difference between us in Committee on 23rd June. I hate doing it, but I quote one of my own sentences on that occasion, when I referred to my right hon. and learned Friend and said:

"He hopes that the good sense of the British people will be such that, having outlawed it in the most public of places, they will follow his reasoning and apply it more widely than is defined in the Bill and will be tolerant in every field of a public nature."—[OFFICIAL, REPORT, Standing Committee B, 23rd June, 1965; c. 263.]

This is my right hon. and learned Friend's intention—to do the job by example, by outlawing discrimination in most of these places so that this will provide the main cure to this disease which otherwise, in our most difficult circumstances, might spread in our society.

We accept the legitimate difference between us, but we are grateful for my right hon. and learned Friend's assurance this afternoon when he said that as this Bill is experimental, in the sense I have been talking about, its progress will be carefully studied and a watch will be kept on possible loopholes. He said that if necessary—he did not commit himself on this but I hope that he meant it—legislation would be introduced in due course to take the matter further. Let us hope that that situation does not arise and that the example which the Home Secretary is setting in the Bill will do the job and take a great step forward in securing permanent harmony in race relationships in our community.

If my right hon. and learned Friend does this with this limited attack he will have a great achievement to his credit, something other countries have not been able to do. This is to harmonise race relationships and cut out discrimination by the most gentle of interventions by Parliament. If he does it he should be very proud, and he will be able to say that in this as in so many other fields Britain has set an example to the world. A number of us differed from him on the way we thought the Bill should be developed but we are grateful for his assurance and we are delighted to wish the Bill Godspeed. It may well be that he will be proved right, that it will do the job and that we in the end will be proved wrong.

I should like to say a few words as an individual Member of the House about the Bill. Like other hon. Members who have spoken, I am glad that the Bill, in an amended form, has become a matter of much wider agreement between the parties than it looked like being at the beginning.

I speak of one aspect of it, and that is part of Clause 6, because I think that I am able to give a warmer welcome to that Clause than has been given from this side of the House by any other speaker. I represent a constituency in which there are a large number of Jewish people. I do not think that we have many immigrants. I have been very much disturbed recently by the number of attacks on Jewish property. They can be dealt with by the ordinary criminal law, and they ought to be because the penalties of the ordinary criminal law are more severe than the penalties imposed by this Bill. Nevertheless, one should remember the extent of these outrages in approaching a Bill of this kind. The Board of Deputies gave me a list of 22 outrages against Jewish property since last November, divided into 8 major and what they call 14 minor, but the minor cases involved petrol bombs thrown against Jewish property. One major case involved loss of life.

It is not simply a question of ordinary criminal offences. Side by side with outrages of an ordinary criminal kind there has been, to the knowledge of all of us, a recrudescence of written matter going through the post attacking Jewish people and coloured people—written matter of a kind which is quite certain in the end to lead to the open outrages of the kind which I have mentioned.

I therefore approve of and support that part of the Bill which deals with this kind of thing. I had believed and hoped that the Jewish people had suffered enough in our life-time without having this frightful thing rearing its head again. I should have thought that the example of their suffering was enough in our time to stop people from attacking other men and other communities. I hope that the Bill will be a success and I hope that this kind of conduct will be treated as the criminal thing which it is.

It would be churlish at this late stage to reiterate any reservations which may be felt on this side of the House.

I think that all that needs to be said about the Bill can be said very shortly and simply: it is that it is my belief and my hope that no successful case will ever come to court under any Clause of the Bill. If that is so, some of us may continue to say that it proves the Bill to be unnecessary while others will continue to say that it proves that the Bill has done its work. Neither of us need feel any disposition to oppose the Bill at this stage. I only hope that it will never be used.

It is the first racial legislation that we have ever had in this country—the first legislation involving the word "race" on the Statute book. I can only again express my hope that it will never be used as a precedent for the introduction by people, however well-intentioned and well-meaning, of legislation of a more serious racialist kind such as other countries in the world have unfortunately put on their Statute books.

I should like in one or two words to express my personal thanks to the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) for his remarks in respect of a very serious matter which is perturbing not only the Jewish people in this country but also other Jewish communities abroad. Jewish communities outside as well as within Britain have a very high respect for the outlook, ideas and ideals of our country, and incidents of the kind which are taking place at present, such as the right hon. and learned Gentleman described, horrify Jewish people within the country and Jewish communities throughout the world.

I have just come back from Israel where ex-inmates of Bergen-Belsen and their children from all parts of the world are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the liberation of that camp. If this Bill does anything to help in the direction of preventing a repetition of some of the horrific events of the past, it will do extremely important work.

One is placed in a quite impossible position in debating the Bill on Third Reading. I do not wish to obstruct its passage, but it is unfortunate that those who have opinions on the Bill which are different from those which have been expressed in the last twenty minutes have had no opportunity of debating a Measure which reaches us in an entirely new state from the Standing Committee.

I will use this minute to say that, contrary to what the Home Secretary said, the Bill takes away from the ordinary citizen two rights which he possesses—to behave in the manner described in Clause 1 and to say the things which are proscribed in Clause 6. In my view it is not within the proper function of the State in ordering the affairs of those who live within it to enter upon either of those spheres. I have always believed in liberty in its widest aspect. I regard this Bill as a most dangerous attack on liberty, and I greatly regret its passing.

I think that it would be convenient to discuss with new Clause No. 1 the first Amendment, in Clause 2, page 2, line 27, at end insert:

Provided that the scales shall not be so fixed as to produce a greater revenue than in the opinion of the Minister would be equal, taking one year with another, to the total of the following amounts, that is to say—

(a) the expenditure to be incurred by him under this Act;

(b) the repair and maintenance of the specified carriageways; and

(c) the sums required to amortise over a period not exceeding forty years the cost incurred in providing the specified carriageways.

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

The Clause results from the consideration we promised during the Committee stage of the Bill, following criticisms that had been made about the powers granted to the Minister by its original draft. As the Financial Secretary, my right hon. Friend and I stressed on Second Reading, the intention behind the Bill was to give to the Minister of Transport the power to levy tolls in order to recover the exceptionally high cost of building the Severn Bridge, which will bring such tremendous benefits to travellers. That was the intention. In the drafting of the Bill, we provided for the maximum flexibility in the scale of tolls to be charged and their possible variation over the years to be exercised by the Minister himself.

During the Committee proceedings there were many criticisms about the width of the power and, in particular, the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) and other hon. Members expressed the view that the costs that it was intended to recover by exercising the power to levy tolls on the Severn Bridge ought to be specified in the Bill, and that some limitation should, therefore, be put on the exercise of the power by my right hon. Friend.

The Clause responds to that criticism in two ways. In the first place, it imposes a time limit on the power to levy tolls. It provides that the power to levy tolls should end after a period of 40 years, though we also provide for the power to extend the levying of tolls, but only by means of the Minister coming to Parliament and getting an Order passed to extend his power.

Secondly, we provide in the new Clause that a ceiling is put upon the amount of revenue to be raised, taking one year with another, by means of charging tolls on the Severn Bridge, and in the Schedule that goes with the Clause we specify the costs which it is intended to cover by means of the levying of tolls over this period of years, setting the maximum year by year at the amount required to pay for the bridge as if the bridge had been built by means of a loan.

We all know that the bridge has been built by expenditure out of national funds, but to introduce a conception whereby we have set a limit upon the Minister's power to raise revenue by charging tolls it is necessary to introduce the idea that, if the bridge had been built by means of a loan on which interest would have to be paid, the principal would have to be repaid and other costs would have to be covered for the purposes of maintenance, renewal and other things of that kind. That would give us the amount of money that ought to be raised annually to cover the cost of the bridge.

That is the basis of the new Clause and the items which are set out in the Schedule, which give a complete outline, an outline which is more complete than the things specified in the right hon. Gentleman's Amendment. That is why we prefer our new Clause with a complete itemisation of all the costs with which we are concerned. It sets a ceiling on the amount of revenue which it is legitimate for the Minister to raise by exercising the tolls.

I hope, therefore, that the House will feel, because very much work has gone into the drafting, that the Clause meets the two criticisms; first, that there was no time limit; and, secondly, that there was no ceiling upon the amount of revenue to be raised by the Minister. The Clause and the Schedule meet these two criticisms, while at the same time giving the advantage of flexibility, as it were, underneath that ceiling and over the period of years that we have specified, which we regard as necessary in the exercise of this power.

I am sure that the Government have been right in abandoning the attempt which was implicit in the Bill in its original form to take to themselves the unlimited power to impose tolls in the use of this Bill by ministerial orders and in not persisting in the somewhat technical distinction between this toll bridge and previous toll bridges upon which they had relied in departing from the precedent that hitherto, where a power to levy tolls has been given by this House, an indication has been written into the Statute of the principles upon which the tolls would be assessed. The new Clause, as the Joint Parliamentary Secretary rightly says, supersedes and is much fuller and more effective than the Amendment which I and one of my hon. Friends placed on the Notice Paper. We shall have an opportunity when we come to the new Schedule to consider the detailed elements of the computation which are set out in that Schedule. At this stage, therefore, I should merely like to invite the Parliamentary Secretary to seek the leave of the House to speak again in order to clear up one question which arises in subsection (3), the subsection which enables the Minister by Order to extend the 40-year toll period by successive periods of five years at a time. I take it that he would not be at liberty to extend it for less than five years but has to do it in lumps of five years at a time—by quinquennia.

I wonder whether the Parliamentary Secretary could go a little further into the circumstances in which he envisages that this would happen. Clearly, the Minister will set out by attempting to hit off broadly correctly the sums which will achieve the desired product within the 40 years. He is not deliberately going to fix the tolls at a level which is not likely to achieve the required repayments within the 40 years. One can conceive that there might be a minor miscalculation and that it would be reasonable that a margin should be allowed for that miscalulation to be made good without the tolls having to be varied, let us suppose, in the last two or three years during which they were levied at all.

On the other hand, it seems to me that this consideration does not quite justify the power to extend the toll period for an unlimited number of quinquennia. After all, the capital elements of the cost are already known now, and the initial capital costs will not, of course, alter during the 40-year period. So far as the costs which the tolls will meet vary according to the value of money and the cost of work, one assumes that they will be periodically adjusted to allow for that and will not be held down during the 40 years so that any under-yield accrued in this way during the 40 years has to be recouped in the subsequent five, 10 or 15 years, whatever it might be. This is, therefore, on the face of it, a rather strange provision in the unlimited character with which it endows the Minister's power to extend the toll period for succeeding quinquennia.

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will help us by indicating a little further the circumstances in which it is envisaged that not just one quinquennium but several more might need to be added to the 40 years.

By leave of the House, I should like to reply to the right hon. Gentleman, first welcoming what he said in his opening remarks.

We are looking ahead here over a quite long period and we cannot be at all sure at what rates it will be desirable to levy the tolls and what the relationship may be to the notional calculations of what is required to repay the capital and cover maintenance costs. Moreover, one cannot be sure what is likely to be spent in renewals or possible improvements to the bridge, or just what different views might be adopted by Ministers of Parliament regarding the charging of tolls in general.

The Bill permits the easy cessation of tolls. This could happen at any time during this period if it were thought right as a matter of policy. But in subsection (3) we conceive of the possibility that, over the period we have laid down, the aggregate amount required to cover the large costs of this bridge and its maintenance and the expenses for renewals and improvements may not be raised. It may be desirable for the Minister to bring forward an Order to extend, five years by five years, the power to charge tolls so as to raise the necessary sums.

We have provided by subsection (4) that this can be done only by the approval of Parliament. I suggest that the safeguard required by the right hon. Gentleman is built into the new Clause because any extension of this power by Order after the 40-year period will require the positive approval of Parliament, presupposing that Parliament is able to discuss the whole issue and the reasons the Minister might bring forward for requiring more than a 40-year period. I hope, therefore, that the House will approve the Clause.

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

This is a straightforward new Clause, following our promise that, year by year, under the administration of the Bill, annual accounts will be prepared by the Minister of Transport using calculations on the basis of the items mentioned in the Schedule and the new Clause which we have just approved. Such a statement of accounts is to be sent by the Minister to the Comptroller and Auditor General so that there is, year by year, a report to Parliament and to the public on the relationship between the revenue raised by charging tolls on the Severn Bridge and what is calculated to be the annual cost for maintenance, repayment of capital and so on.

In a sense, this new Clause is consequential upon that which the House has just added to the Bill and it is wholly right that, having limited the Minister's power as the first new Clause does, the House and the public should be enabled to see how he is exercising it in future. Indeed, I expect that these annual accounts will provide useful and interesting material which may be of wider application than simply to the Severn Bridge itself, and I certainly welcome the addition of this new Clause to the Bill.

I beg to move Amendment o. 2, Clause 5, in page 5, line 16 after "may" to insert:

"for the purpose of carrying out any experiment".

During the Committee stage of the Bill the Parliamentary Secretary indicated very clearly, I think to the satisfaction of the Committee, the purpose for which Clause 5 gives the Minister power temporarily, up to eighteen months, to suspend or reduce the tolls. It was, he said, in order to give the Minister power to experiment. I have searched his words carefully and I find that in his view it was to this purpose that the need for the power was limited.

That being so, it is the contention of this side of the House that it would be better if the purpose were to be specified in the Bill. When a suspensory power of this sort, even subject to safeguards, is given to a Minister by the House, it is always desirable in principle that the purpose for which he should exercise it should be as accurately and as nicely defined as possible.

I appreciate that the Government may have sought to meet this point by their Amendment to Clause 18 which has the result that an order made under this Clause could be annulled by Resolution of the House. We shall thus have more control over the Minister's exercise of this power. But, even so, it would be more in accordance with good legislation—unless there are some other purposes for this power, so far undisclosed—for the single purpose to be spelled out and written into the Bill.

I quite understand why the right hon. Gentleman has moved to define the purpose in this way. It follows from what I said in Committee. Our conception is that a temporary suspension or reduction of tolls will be overwhelmingly for experimental purposes. But, in spite of what the right hon. Gentleman has said, we cannot be absolutely sure that this power temporarily to suspend or reduce tolls might not be required for other exceptional purposes which might arise with a river crossing of this kind.

It is because we wish the ambit of this power to be wide and because exceptional circumstances with the traffic flowing across this bridge may occur, requiring a temporary suspension which could not truthfully be said to be for experimental purposes, we prefer that such an order, which will be mainly for experimental purposes, should instead be subject to Parliamentary check as a safeguard, rather than that we should have the narrowing definition which the right hon. Gentleman has proposed.

On that ground and with the assurance that there will be the safeguarding provision for the House to subject any such order to the negative procedure, I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will be willing to withdraw the Amendment.

I beg to move Amend-mend No. 3, Clause 7, in page 8, line 14, to leave out from "carriageways" to "by" in line 15.

On re-reading the proceedings in Committee on the Bill I am inclined to conclude that the object of this Amendment, which was discussed there, was never really understood by the Government. If it had been understood then I do not think they could have resisted it.

I am reinforced in this by re-reading the speech made by the hon. Gentleman the Parliamentary Secretary in Committee. He began by saying that for many years past he had been agitating for particular vehicles to be banned from the centre of Newcastle-under-Lyme. It is just possible that the Parliamentary Secretary has been agitating for vehicles which he knew to belong to well-known and powerful Tory supporters, not to be allowed to go about their lawful occasion in the town from which his constituency takes his name.

On a more generous construction of his words, however, I am inclined to believe that he understands "particular vehicle" in the sense of vehicles of a particular class or description. But they are already included in the rest of the wording of this Clause. All the peculiarities of a vehicle which the Parliamentary Secretary proceeded to list, which might very properly justify being forbidden the use of the bridge by those administering the bridge, appear to me to come under the description "vehicles of any particular class or description", in line 15 of the Bill.

The hon. Gentleman mentions very tall vans, vans of a particular shape or character. These are all characteristics which could be specified but they are not the characteristics of a unique vehicle. It seems to us that the addition of the words "any particular vehicle" to that already comprehensive phrase "vehicles of any particular class or description" would permit those controlling the bridge literally to discriminate against a particular vehicle, a van not different in any physical respect from other vans, but a van which belonged to Jack Robinson or Joe Smith. Of course that is not the intention and I suggest the Clause would be entirely satisfactory and give rise to no particular risk if those words were omitted.

It was perhaps rather dangerous to refer to Newcastle-under-Lyme during the Committee stage, but I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that I actually had in mind particular vehicles—I do not know whether they belong to Tory supporters or not. We are thinking here of particular vehicles and the need for somebody (again we are discussing exceptional circumstances) to judge whether or not a particular vehicle should cross the Severn Bridge in, for example, a 100-mile-per-hour gale. It is not possible to put into the Bill every kind of vehicle we might have in mind because we would have had to define every kind of weather condition we had in mind and every kind of movement of the bridge in the face of an 80 to 100 miles-per-hour gale.

The reason for allowing the power in respect of particular vehicles is to discriminate against them in order to safeguard the drivers, so that someone who knows conditions can say to the drivers, "You should not cross the Severn Bridge in these conditions because it would be dangerous to you and damaging to the bridge, and, therefore, you should go round another way." That would be not prohibiting a whole class of vehicles, but the particular type of load which the man had on the vehicle in the conditions and circumstances of the time.

Orders have to be made about this. They will be subject to the negative resolution procedure. But I hope that it will be appreciated that there have arisen very considerable dangers to people in the past about river crossings and bridges in this country and other countries. We have exceptional circumstances in mind and the need for someone to have the judgment, and the power to back that judgment, in the prohibition, not just of classes of vehicles, but of particular vehicles in these exceptional circumstances.

The Parliamentary Secretary will perhaps be relieved to know that, although I am still not satisfied with his answer, I do not propose to call into action on this Amendment the numerous troops by which this building is packed from attic to Crypt. I venture to hope, however, that the Government will look at this matter again during subsequent stages of the Bill.

I simply cannot believe that it is impossible in regulations to hit upon some such description as "by reason of its size or other peculiarities is likely in the circumstances to cause danger to itself, the structure or other users of the bridge", which would bring any particular vehicle within a class and would enable the person who believed that he was being unreasonably discriminated against to have a basis on which he could, in extreme cases, test the matter in the proper way.

Therefore, it is not because I am satisfied, but because I wish to allow the Government the opportunity of further consideration of the matter that I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

I beg to move Amendment No. 4, Clause 18, in page 14, line 24, after "2" to insert "or section 5".

We have already covered this matter in the introduction of the negative Resolution procedure. I hope that the House will accept the Amendment.

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

This is the Schedule to which I referred in relation to the new Clause on the limitations of the powers. It is a full statement of all the matters that we discussed in Committee concerning the costs involved in building the Severn Bridge, its maintenance and renewal, possible improvements, and so on, which have to be taken into account in drafting the accounts and calculating what revenue is to be raised by exercising the power to levy tolls.

I must again try to tempt the Parliamentary Secretary to his feet, with the premission of the House, because, although this is a new Schedule to a Bill which has not excited very wide interest, although it is of considerable importance in itself, and although this is an unusual hour on a Friday afternoon for the House to be legislating, this Schedule does something very remarkable, if not entirely unprecedented.

I refer to the provision in paragraph 4 of the Schedule which includes, among the items, the cost of which is to be defrayed by the tolls

"such provision as in the opinion of the Minister is adequate for defraying the expenses … likely to be incurred in … continuing after the end of toll period"

to do various things. During the period of 40 years, or 40 years plus multiples of 5, the Government propose to collect money in order to make provision for subsequent expenditure.

4.30 p.m.

This is a very remarkable innovation in our public finances. As the House is aware, unlike any individual member of the community, the State cannot itself save against the future, but must, broadly speaking, consume as it produces. This raises the question whether there is some concept here that a fund might be built up during the toll period for expenditure after the period. But this in itself would be a very remarkable proceeding. Is anticipated future expenditure to be capitalised at a certain number of years' purchase, and that sum to be accumulated by the yield of the toll? If so, what is to be done with that sum? Presumably it will not be invested in equities, and of course we all know that if it is invested in gilt-edged securities that is equivalent to its expenditure in the current year.

This is what makes this part of the Schedule so remarkable. It appears to be a case of the Government seeking to accumulate a capital sum in one period against liabilities to be incurred in a subsequent period, and this is so extraordinary and, I believe, so novel that I draw the attention of the House to it in this way. I am sure that the House would be grateful if the Parliamentary Secretary would cast some light upon the way in which this financial operation is to be performed—whether, for instance, this provision is to be used for writing off parts of the National Debt or whether it is to be invested, how it is to be held, and over what period the subsequent expenditure is to be capitalised for this period.

May I have the leave of the House to reply? I am always delighted when it is possible to introduce something truly novel, but I am disappointed and frustrated on this occasion, in spite of what the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) said. We have been forestalled. This provision, as some hon. Members know, has already been included in relation to the Forth Bridge and to the Tay Bridge. We have taken the precedent of the law on the Forth and Tay Bridges and incorporated it in relation to the Severn Bridge. I do not know that anybody worried too much about it in relation to the Forth Bridge.

It is a very simple idea that during the period of the power exercised to levy tolls, the necessary sum should be raised which, if properly invested, would give a return which would cover the annual maintenance costs of the bridge in the future. A very simple concept lies behind the legislation. We calculate the sums to be raised in relation to the maintenance costs of this very expensive project when we are considering the period when the power to exercise the toll has lapsed or when Parliament has decided that it should cease. The aim would be to calculate the sum required, as an investment, to give a return to cover the annual maintenance costs of the bridge, taking one year with another.

As in all these calculations, we consider what would be a legitimate amount of revenue which the Minister might decide to raise by charging tolls and we calculate the capital sum necessary to give an interest which would cover the maintenance costs. It is a fair calculation, as already incorporated in relation to the bridges over the Forth and the Tay.

With the permission of the House, I would say that it is ironic that in the matter which we were discussing on the first new Clause the Government should have relied on the difference between their situation in building this bridge and that of the authorities which have built the other toll bridges, whereas now they are relying on the identity of their situation to justify this provision.

However, I deduce from what the hon. Gentleman has said that there is no question of a sum being here funded, that this is merely a notional calculation in order to arrive at a global total within which the revenues from the bridge are to be embraced. In those circumstances, I do not propose to raise further objection to this new Schedule.

I am very grateful indeed to have the opportunity this afternoon of raising a matter which has caused a great deal of resentment and dismay to many of my constituents, namely, the decision indefinitely to postpone the redevelopment plans for Bromley Hospital. This debate this afternoon arises from a highly unsatisfactory Answer which was given to me some weeks ago by the Parliamentary Secretary, who, I see, is to reply to this debate, when he said that he was unable to give any indication as to when the work on the redevelopment plan for Bromley Hospital would be able to start. So I hope that this afternoon we shall have no more of the evasive wriggling with which I was confronted on that previous occasion.

At that time the Parliamentary Secretary shielded himself behind the South-East Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board by saying that the decision to defer the work had been made by the regional board in reassessing the priorities of its development programme.

What we are entitled to know today is who asked the board to reassess the priorities. The board is eager and ready to proceed with this work as soon as the money is made available by the Government. So I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will accept his responsibilities in this matter and will admit frankly to the House that this deferment, like many others which are going on in many parts of the country at present, is a direct consequence of this Government's deplorable decision drastically to cut back on the hospital building programme which was launched by the Conservative Administration.

It really is ironical to recall that only nine months ago people in my constituency, and, indeed, all parts of the country, were being assured that Labour would press ahead with a revised hospital plan, and, as the First Secretary of State and Secretary of State for Economic Affairs said

"The health of the nation demands and will get an intensified programme of new hospital building."

All that I am asking for this afternoon is that so far as Bromley is concerned that election pledge shall be honoured, and honoured without further delay.

The Bromley scheme was first drawn up in 1962, and, as the Parliamentary Secretary will be aware, envisaged the eventual rebuilding of Bromley Hospital as a new district general hospital, with 400 beds, and the first phase was to have been dealt with in 1966–69, at a cost of £600,000. One of its main features was to have been the provision of an accident centre to replace the present cramped, out of date, and totally inadequate casualty department at the hospital. I do not need to remind the House that, unhappily, the number of road accidents is rising steadily month by month, and Bromley is no exception in that respect. One ought to warn the Government and the Ministry of Health that it is impossible to expect the existing facilities at Bromley Hospital to cope for very much longer with the mounting casualties on our roads.

As well as the new accident centre, the first phase of the Bromley Hospital plan also envisaged improvements to the out-patients department, and to the X-ray and physiotherapy departments, all of which at present are operating under very considerable difficulties indeed. One of the most frustrating features of this matter is that the surgeons and senior staff at Bromley Hospital have spent many hours discussing and preparing the details of plans which have now been callously cast aside, and, understandably, a wave of anger and indignation swept through the hospital when the Minister's veto became known.

An additional point of complaint which was put to me when I visited the hospital some weeks ago was that over the past two or three years many minor improvements had been shelved in anticipation of the major building scheme going ahead as planned as from April of next year. Now, they have not only been denied the major scheme, but they have lost the opportunity of making the minor improvements as well. Meanwhile, the waiting lists grow longer every day, and the morale of everyone concerned is at a very low ebb indeed. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will take account of that. This is a deplorable and a deteriorating situation, and unless something is done about it, and done quickly, it will have a serious effect on the health and welfare of many of my constituents.

A further important factor which I urge the Parliamentary Secretary to bear in mind is that Bromley is now the geographic and administrative centre of a vast new London borough of 300,000 people. In view of that, it is surely not too much to ask that Bromley should have a hospital of a size and standard appropriate to its new status and importance as one of the major centres of population in the South-East of England.

The proposed cost of this first phase—which is all that we are talking about at the moment—was to have been £600,000, and yet Government money is not available to carry out this urgent work. Government money has, however, been made available to carry out a totally irrelevant and unnecessary action, namely, the abolition of prescription charges, at an annual cost of £30 million. What a sad commentary that is on the Government's distorted sense of priorities within the National Health Service!

Even at this late stage, I beg the Minister and his Parliamentary Secretary to look again at the amount of money which they are making available for hospital improvement work in this country, and in particular to reconsider the needs of Bromley Hospital which, as I hope I have shown this afternoon, are very real and very urgent.

The hon. Member for Bromley (Mr. J. Hunt) has tried to reiterate this afternoon some of the foolish things that he said on the previous occasion when he tabled a Question to me, when I said that his charges against the Minister were nonsense. They are equally nonsense today. The mere repetition of them does not prove anything.

I will turn shortly to the project to which he has referred, but it is about time that we tried to explain, or to spell out in simple language to hon. Members—not merely the hon. Member for Bromley (Mr. Hunt), who has been here this afternoon but to other hon. Members who have had Adjournment debates of this kind, and to hon. Members who will want to have them in the future—the general framework within which decisions on individual projects are taken.

The hon. Member will recall that on 8th February my right hon. Friend the Minister told the House that because individual hospital schemes which made up the previous Government's Hospital Plan had been imprecisely defined and costed, the resources which they had thought to be necessary were soon found to be far from sufficient for all the schemes listed in the plan to be undertaken.

This was already evident in the two revisions of the plan which were made not by the Labour Government, but by the previous Administration. Schemes had then to be deferred on a considerable scale. Obviously, the schemes which were deferred by the previous Administration, in the plan that they themselves had prepared, and which were costed in such a way as to create dismay once the plan had been tabled for a period of time, caused disappointment to hon. Members on both sides of the House.

On the Adjournment on 18th May, the hon. Member for Cheadle (Mr. Shepherd) referred to the deferment of a hospital building project. I referred them to the badly costed schemes that were entered into the Hospital Plan of the previous Government. I thought that it was wise to tell the House on that occasion what we meant when we talked about badly costed schemes. What I said then is on the record. I gave a number of examples of schemes which had originally been costed to a certain figure and in respect of which, the real cost was found to be substantially in excess of that which was laid down in the plan. I do not propose to reiterate the illustrations that I gave. It might be a good exercise for the hon. Member to read the report of the debate and see what those illustrations are.

On 8th February my right hon. Friend explained that the position that we inherited remained difficult and that the Plan would be reviewed. One of the main objects of such a review is to look still more closely at the content and estimated cost of each project in order that the schemes embarked upon can be more realistically matched with the resources likely to be available. The hon. Member again referred to the suggestion that Labour had broken its promises. Considering the fact that the previous Administartion had had to make two revisions. I do not see that it can be established that we have broken any promises so far.

There are two points which I should like to emphasise. First, my right hon. Friend has not interrupted the programme which he inherited, nor has he reduced the amount of money allocated to it. Indeed, despite the difficult economic situation, the Government decided that the £63 million envisaged for hospital building in the current financial year by the previous Government, of the party to which the hon. Member belongs, should be increased by £5 million to £68 million so that all those schemes which were ready to start this year could start. If we had not increased that allocation by £5 million it would not have been possible for the schemes which had already gone into the pipeline for this year's start to be put into effect.

Secondly, the review is being carried out by the regional hospital boards, as statutorily responsible for the planning of the hospital service in their areas. It is true that the content of and cost limit for each major scheme, that is one costing over £120,000 exclusive of fees and equipment, is agreed by the boards with my Department; and my right hon. Friend determines what sum of money each board may expend on hospital building each year. But within the sums made available for them each year, it is for the boards and not the Minister to determine which schemes they can afford to proceed with and which they must hold back.

Let us get this absolutely clear. There is no question of the Minister, once a project has been determined by the regional hospital board and agreed by him, vetoeing any project. The hon. Member for Burton (Mr. Jennings), on the occasion when the hon. Member was putting his Question, asked whether the Minister ever vetoes such decisions by a hospital board. The answer then and the answer now is that when a board has been appointed after consultation with local interests to administer the hospital services in its region it must be the judge of the relative priorities of the different schemes in the region.

I do not know what the hon. Member wants us to do. Does he take the view that when we have regional hospital boards with whom we agree on costings and who themselves determine the priorities within the region the Minister, unlike Ministers in previous Administrations, should tell the boards what to do, even though the regional people ought to know the priorities within their regions, because some hon. Member opposite is not satisfied with judgments taken in the region? Is this the type of policy that the hon. Member is urging upon the Government? It is important that the hon. Member should get the position clear in his mind. It is not the slightest bit of use his charging the Labour Government with not honouring their promises if, in the first instance, he does not understand the simple mechanism by which we arrive at a decision.

What mystifies me is the distinction between vetoeing a plan and not making the money available for it. Surely there is little distinction between the two.

We make the money available and we agree on a programme for a period of time. The regional hospital board then determines in its own region which schemes shall be put into effect. If regional hospital boards cannot do that, who can? Can we? Of course not. After the regional hospital board has prepared its programme, we do not put a veto on it. The board determines it.

I come now to the particular case of the Bromley Hospital. It is remarkable that the hon. Gentleman has again quoted today a figure much lower than the one which really applies to this project. This is a large and expensive scheme intended to provide a full-scale accident and emergency department, two operating theatres, a new physiotherapy department, two diagnostic X-ray rooms and 56 additional beds. The cost of the scheme is not £600,000 but just short of £700,000.

One of the essential parts of the scheme is the accident and emergency department, since the existing accident departments at Bromley, Farnborough and Beckenham Hospitals are at present, we readily admit, under heavy pressure. The South East Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board, which is the planning and administrative authority for hospital services in the area, is as aware as we are, and as the hon. Gentleman is, of the need for up-to-date accident centres.

I do not know what the hon. Gentleman meant when he spoke of the regional hospital board's attitude in this. I hope that he will forgive me if I misconstrued what he said. I do not want to be unfair to him. He suggested that I had been responsible for evasive wriggling, that I had sought to shield behind the regional hospital board, and that the regional hospital board was ready and eager to go ahead with this project, when the money is forthcoming. So is every other regional hospital board ready to go ahead with every possible project ever envisaged in its region. But does the hon. Gentleman suggest that the regional hospital board has informed him that we are the only people stopping this project going forward? Is that what he meant to convey?

I am suggesting nothing of the kind. What I am saying is that, under the previous Government, the regional hospital board was quite confident that the project would have gone forward, and this explains its disappointment and dismay.

All I can say is that, if this project had gone forward under the previous Government, something else would have had to be taken out. I have already reminded the House that the money thought to be sufficient by the previous Government has been increased by £5 million. If it had not been increased by £5 million, somewhere in the country, whether in London or elsewhere, some current projects envisaged at that time would have had to come out. One cannot have more projects in the pipeline than one has money to meet.

The Board itself has recently completed a new minor accident centre at Woolwich and is either engaged on or about to build major accident centres at Dartford, Gillingham and Canterbury. Also, it has pressing demands for new maternity units, out-patient departments, diagnostic X-ray departments, operating theatres and other specialised units. We have drawn the board's attention to the particular and detailed need for accident and emergency departments and I am glad to see that the South-East Metropolitan Hospital Board has taken this advice so much to heart.

I come now to the reason for the South East Metropolitan Hospital Board's decision to defer the building scheme at Bromley Hospital which it had hoped to start in 1966. The Board was faced with the position that it had in progress eight major hospital building schemes, each costing over a quarter of a million pounds, and it had five more major schemes planned to start in 1965–66 and 1966–67. But the Board found that the money available to it, even though increased by the present Government, could not be stretched to cover all these schemes. Something had to go. After very careful consideration, the Board decided that the scheme at the Bromley Hospital must be deferred.

I have made reference to a number of projects and I asked previously what the hon. Gentleman would do. What does he propose to do here? We have X number of projects, and he says, "Well, mine must go forward."

I would be grateful if the Parliamentary Secretary would leave me one minute before the time for the adjournment comes.

I am sorry that the right hon. Gentleman did not indicate that before I started speaking, because, in practice, it is not quite fair for the right hon. Gentleman now to give me notice that he should be granted an additional minute when I have no opportunity to reply to him. I am replying to the debate and not the right hon. Gentleman. If he wants to adopt that practice, then he must do so when another Parliamentary Secretary is at the Box.

The hon. Gentleman is not following the conventions. When I was at that Box, I always gave time to an Opposition Front Bench spokesman, now the Foreign Secretary, to have one or two minutes at the end of my speech. It is common practice.

I have been in the House for a number of years now, and it is not common practice. It may well be that the right hon. Gentleman had his own conventions, created them and maintained them.

The hon. Gentleman is taking up time.

Of course I am taking up time. The right hon. Gentleman will not have any time, I can assure him. I resent the very idea of the right hon. Gentleman indicating that he wants a minute when a speaker from this side is answering a debate. If he had come to me beforehand, it would have been a different matter. It is not as though we were short of time. We were waiting for half an hour.

If the hon. Gentleman had given the sort of reply to my hon. Friend that we had understood, I would not for a moment have wanted to intervene. But he must realise that an Adjournment debate is a debate, and it is open to Opposition representatives to question or comment on some of the Government's answers. I regard the hon. Gentleman's answer to my hon. Friend as inadequate, and I wanted to point out why. I hope that he will give me the courtesy of one minute to do so.

The right hon. Gentleman is saying that, not having heard the completion of the case I am presenting, the case so far is inadequate. If the right hon. Gentleman is to advise anyone, I would suggest that he advises his hon. Friend that the way to get a reasonably clear statement of this kind is not to initiate debates solely for political purposes and not for the purpose of assisting the regional hospital board and the constituents about whom he has spoken this afternoon.

I resent that very much. Is the hon. Gentleman implying that I have not the right to raise matters on behalf of my constituency? I resent the implication that I am doing it simply for political purposes, because nothing is further from the truth.

The hon. Gentleman says to me, with his hand on his heart, that he is looking after his constituents, that he was really serious and wants me to try to persuade the regional hospital board that this project ought to go back into their scheme of priorities, which is the only purpose for which such a debate should be initiated.

There is no point in initiating a debate of this kind unless the hon. Member wishes the Ministry by some method to bring pressure to bear on the regional hospital board. I should have thought that the very last thing he would have done would have been to spend the first two or three minutes of his speech talking about the Answers to Questions I gave on 31st May and saying that he did not want today the evasive wriggling of the Parliamentary Secretary, that he did not want the Parliamentary Secretary to seek to shield himself behind the regional hospital board.

The hon. Gentleman has said that once.

I am now saying it again. The hon. Gentleman might as well learn now. He may want an Adjournment debate in the future, and if he wants a fruitful Adjournment debate he had better learn the technique.

When I came here today I had intended to be friendy towards the hon. Gentleman, to try to give him as much information as I could both on the general principles and on his own project. But if he comes here and expects to get away with the type of political propaganda that he attempted to get away with—[Interruption.] Then what is the reason for raising the subject of these deferments and the cut-back of the previous Governments plans—