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

The Bill, I hope, is non-contentious. A glance at the back of the Bill will show that it has all-party support. It is designed to deal with a nuisance which is growing round our coasts and estuaries and in our rivers. It consists of those occasions when the owner moors his boat or yacht or dinghy and then comes back and finds that it has been removed, taken away or cast adrift in his absence and without his knowledge.

Any sailor knows what great trouble is caused when a boat is abandoned and washed away by the tide or down the river, or when it is cast off. Very often it is damaged on those occasions. As President of the River Thames Society, I get complaints that this sort of thing is happening on the Thames and in its tributaries, and, indeed, on inland waterways, when motor boats and other kinds of craft are taken for joy-riding at night—moonlight rides on the river—and are left many miles away, sometimes down and sometimes up river, not properly moored and generally abandoned.

As a keen dinghy sailor, I know what a nuisance it is to small boat sailors when they find that their boat has been cast adrift and is found miles away on the mud in the estuaries or on the coast and has to be fetched back. Fishermen, whether they use motor or rowing boats, are equally affected.

Let me give one or two examples of recent cases in which this has happened and it has been found that the taking and sailing away was not an offence. There was a case at Fareham in Hampshire concerning two men and a girl, aged 18, who took a £1,200 yacht for a joy-ride down the Channel. They admitted taking the Household Brigade Yacht Club's 18-foot sloop "Septem", from its Hamble River moorings but denied trying to deprive the owner permanently of it. They did not admit stealing the boat, but they admitted stealing the petrol which they used to sail it. They were conditionally discharged of stealing the boat because there was no intention to deprive the owner permanently thereof. They were prosecuted only for stealing the petrol. The boat was swept far out to sea. A Dutch coaster brought it, together with the three young people, back to Dover.

In another case, three boys cut adrift a 75-foot pleasure boat "Amo", on the River Severn. They had only a fairly short voyage. They set off to steer this 25-ton vessel ten miles downstream from Stourport Bridge to Worcester. They tried to start the diesel engines but could not do so. The boat was carried along out of control by the current. They then decided to drop anchor. In doing this one boy fell in. He was rescued with lifebelts thrown by riverside dwellers. The other two waited on board until they were collected by the police.

Then there was the case of the £20,000 motor cruiser "Tamora", which was missing for two days from her moorings on the River Hamble and was then found at Littlehampton. These cases occurred in 1965 and 1966, and these are the kind of things that are happening.

It is not generally known that this taking away and removing of vessels is not in itself an offence. It is an offence permanently to deprive the owner by stealing, but it is not an offence when it is merely a case of joy-riding. This proves to be a great surprise to the majority of boat owners, particularly if they have their boats taken and are then told that even if they know who the offender is it is no good prosecuting because no offence has been committed.

A similar gap in our law concerning motor vehicles was put right 37 years ago in the Road Traffic Act, 1930, Section 28, which has now been incorporated in the Road Traffic Act, 1960, Section 217. In the case of motor vehicles it was made an offence in 1930 to take away a motor vehicle without the owner's consent or without believing that the owner would have given his consent. If a person took his brother's motor cycle for a ride without actually asking permission but had reason to believe that the owner would have given his consent, it was not an offence. It was, however, an offence to take it away without the owner's consent. I suggest, therefore, that it is time to correct this deficiency in the law concerning boats, all the more so as sailing and rowing boats cannot be locked up in the same way as motor cars.

To create such an offence would be a protection for a defendant. Suppose, for example, that a boy was charged with stealing a vessel and the magistrates found that his intention was to take it away for some time, under the existing law a conviction of stealing would be recorded on the boy's record for all time although it would be better that he be convicted of the proposed offence of taking away and removing the vessel.

The Royal Yachting Association has been agitating about this matter for some time, and in its Annual Report for 1966 the President said:

"The Association is at the present time actively engaged in an attempt to persuade our law-makers that the law in regard to taking and sailing away of vessels without the owner's consent be brought into line with that which applies to motor vehicles. In the case of motorcars this kind of vandalism has been dealt with by statute, but the old law that such action only amounts to a borrowing still applies to yachts. As a result, it is difficult for the courts to deal with people who offend in this way and who frequently cause substantial damage to yachts and inconvenience to their owners."

I hope that I am not importing prejudice into this matter when I say that the President of the Royal Yachting Association on that occasion was Prince Philip, in which capacity he was, no doubt, wearing his sailor's cap.

I was told some time ago that the Government agreed in principle that such a change in the law was necessary. They intended, however, to include it in the forthcoming Theft Bill, which was expected to come forward this month but has not yet done so. It may not do so for another year or two. That is why, when I introduced my Bill under the Ten Minute Rule procedure at the beginning of August, I put it down for Second Reading today—somewhat, I believe, to your surprise, Mr. Speaker—because I wanted to see whether by this time the Theft Bill had been introduced. As it has not been introduced, I propose that the House should proceed with my Bill.

I strongly feel that we should try to get this Bill on the Statute Book by summer to establish Parliament's views and intentions. The House has had plenty of time to think about it, because I introduced such a Bill a year ago, but that was killed by the General Election. I reintroduced it in August, and I have redrafted it to fall into line with the suggested Clause 10 of the Theft Bill, which was set out in full in the Eighth Report of the Criminal Law Revision Committee. I hope, therefore, that I have made the Bill agreeable to what the Government have in mind for the Theft Bill when they introduce it.

Clause 1 of my Bill provides that

"Subject to section 4 of this Act, a person shall be guilty of an offence if, without having the consent of the owner or other lawful authority, he takes and removes or attempts to take and remove any vessel, or, knowing that any vessel has been taken or removed without such authority, navigates it or allows himself to be carried in or on it."

A man might get a boy to cast him adrift on somebody else's vessel with a view to removing it and the man might navigate it. This, as well as the actual taking away, should be an offence.

The penalties which I propose are a fine not exceeding £200 or imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years, or both, on conviction on indictment, and on summary conviction a fine of up to £100 or imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months. I know that this is slightly different from the Theft Bill, but I have reduced from three years to two years the punishment for the offence bearing in mind that the Theft Bill will, I think, deal with all sorts of conveyances, including expensive items like aeroplanes, which would come within the category of a conveyance. I therefore regarded it as a reasonable compromise in the case of boats to limit the fine to £200 and to stipulate imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years for this offence, which is not a major offence.

Clause 3 provides that

"If on the trial of an indictment for stealing a vessel, the jury are not satisfied that the accused stole the vessel, but it is proved that the accused committed an offence under section 1 of this Act, the jury may find him guilty of"

the lesser offence of taking away and removing the vessel.

The saving clause is Clause 4, which provides that

"A person does not commit an offence under this Act by anything done in the reasonable belief that he has lawful authority to do it."

There could be many occasions when a person reasonably believed that he had lawful authority. Suppose, for example, that a boat was moored on a beach and a storm blew up, or that a vessel was moored in harbour and a fire occurred, anybody would be acting reasonably in moving the boat from one place to another or re-mooring it so that it was safer from the effects of the storm.

I have adopted the motor vehicle legislation provision that a person does not commit an offence if he believes that in the circumstances of the case the owner, if asked, would have given him his consent.

For the purposes of the Bill, the description "vessel" has the meaning assigned to it by Section 742 of the Merchant Shipping Act, 1894. That is a comprehensive Section which includes any ship, boat or any other description of vessel used in navigation. I have adopted the suggested provision from the Theft Bill that the word "owner" in relation ton vessel which is the subject of a hiring or hire-purchase agreement means the person in possession of the vehicle under that agreement.

I believe that the Bill is necessary before the sailing season starts, and I hope that the Government may help it forward. If they wish to suggest any Amendments, although I hope that they do not, I would be willing to talk to the Government about them and see whether we could put down such Amendment in Committee as is necessary. I cannot believe that the Bill will take much time in Committee. I therefore very much hope that it will to- day get a Second Reading and that it will go quickly through all its stages.

First, I wish to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Mr. Gresham Cooke) on introducing this very desirable and necessary Bill. I must declare a constituency interest in that Shaldon, Teignmouth, Dawlish, Dawlish Warren and Starcross in my constituency are areas which certainly would benefit from the provisions of the Bill.

There are many circumstances covered in a somewhat peculiar way by the existing law. For instance, if one fiddles a telephone box—I nearly said "If you, Mr. Speaker, fiddle a telephone box", but it occurred to me that that would be an infelicitous phrase—if someone fiddles a telephone box without extracting any money from it, I understand that the offence with which one might be charged would be that of stealing electricity. If a motor boat is taken without the intention of depriving the owner permanently of it, the offence is that of stealing petrol, but there is no offence known as stealing wind, so in the case of a sailing boat or of a rowing boat no offence under existing law is committed.

It is not only that the owner of the boat who has had it taken for a joy ride without permission is affected, but potentially other people who are legitimately at sea, in a river or on a lake, may be affected. It is a characteristic of a very large number of people who wrongly possess themselves of vessels in this manner that they are not skilled in their use. Therefore, they tend to be a hazard to other people who are properly using vessels on the sea, in estuaries, or harbours, nr on lakes. This is an additional reason why this Bill should be expedited, so that it can assist in safeguarding the public at large in relation to the property of those who own boats.

I ask my hon. Friend to clarify one point. Clause 3 says:

"If on the trial of an indictment for steal- a vessel. the jury are not satisfied that the accused stole the vessel, but it is proved that the accused committed an offence under section 1 of this Act, the jury may find him guilty of the offence under section 1."

As I read that, the magistrates trying a case under summary procedures would not have the same option. It may be that this is deliberate on part of my hon. Friend in restricting the alternative conviction to trial on indictment, but there is no immediately apparent reason why magistrates trying the case summarily should not have open to them the same option, which seems an extraordinarily sensible one.

I cannot say what the position is under motoring law, but I suspect that there magistrates have the same powers, although I would not state that as a fact. It is certainly the case that a very large number of people are unaware of the present situation and unaware that an insurance policy which covers them against theft does not cover them against someone who unlawfully takes a boat without permission without intending to sail it. Since one of the results of this debate, alas, will be to attract a measure of attention to the fact that one can with impunity in the terms of the criminal law take someone's boat and go off for a joyride in it, I strongly suggest that this is an additional reason for passing this Bill into law with expedition. Then, having exposed the gap in the criminal law, we could plug it as soon as possible.

I conclude as I started by congratulating my hon. Friend very sincerely on introducing this most useful and necessary Measure.

I also wish to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Mr. Gresham Cooke) on bringing forward this small but useful and necessary Bill. I must declare an interest as a member of the Household Brigade Yacht Club and, therefore, a part-owner of the yacht which was stolen as referred to by my hon. Friend.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is not the necessity to declare an interest in this only if one contemplates that one might be a person who thieved one of these boats?

Order. If an hon. Member wishes to declare an interest there is no power to stop him doing so.

My hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham referred to some of the larger yachts which are stolen. What we have to remember in considering this Bill is that boat-owning in one respect or another has spread now to a very large part of the population. I understand that there are well over a quarter of a million boat-owners of one kind or another. I am told by the Royal Yachting Association that last year there were 30 or 40 major thefts of vessels and the thefts of dinghies were beyond count. Although this perhaps is not a major problem in our criminal law, it is a fairly substantial one and is probably likely to grow as people realise that at the moment they can with impunity take a vessel and not be charged with the theft thereof.

I presume that it would be the intention of the Government if and when a Bill is introduced to implement the proposals of the Criminal Law Revision Committee to cover this matter in such a Bill. One appreciates the reasons for the delay in introducing such a Bill. It is therefore very necessary that in the meantime this gap should be closed by the Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham, although, of course, his Bill would be repealed when the main Measure came into operation.

When the Under-Secretary replies to this debate, I wonder if he can tell us the Government's views in relation to penalties and whether they would he consistent with the existing law relating to similar offences. I repeat congratulations to my hon. Friend and I hope that this Bill will have a speedy passage through the House.

I join with the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Sharples) in congratulating the hon. Member for Twickenham (Mr. Gresham Cooke) on bringing in a Bill on a matter which he has pursued with such perserverance. Perhaps I may start by saying something about the Government's plans as I was specifically asked about them by the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam. I am not, of course, replying to the debate as he suggested, but I am giving the Government's views in the middle of the debate.

As has been pointed out, this matter has also been dealt with in the draft Theft Bill prepared by the Criminal Law Revision Committee. That is a Bill which the Government have under consideration. It is annexed to the Report on Theft and Related Offences. As has been said, in Clause 10 of the draft Bill there are provisions which are very similar dealing with taking away of conveyances generally. "Conveyance" is there defined as including one

"constructed or adapted for the carriage of a person … by water".

It is probable that legislation on the lines of Clause 10 will be part of the Measure which the Government in due course will bring forward to implement the recommendations of the Criminal Law Revision Committee. If that Bill becomes law we shall have to see how far the hon. Member's Bill fits in with the Theft Bill.

It is obviously convenient to have all statutory provisions dealing with the taking away of conveyances, whether they happen to be cars, boats or bicycles, dealt with in one Measure. Although the definition in the Theft Bill is rather more roundabout than the direct one in the hon. Member's Bill, there are reasons for this if all conveyances are to be considered together. As the hon. Gentleman very generously admitted, there is much pressure on legislative time, particularly for Home Office matters, and it has not yet been possible to introduce the Theft Bill. Therefore, that is a matter for the future. However, the fact that we may deal with the matter in the Theft Bill is no argument for not plugging the gap now.

The Criminal Law Revision Committee, like the hon. Gentleman, recognised that there was a gap, and for boat owners it is a very serious one. It is absurd that there should be an offence of taking and driving away but no offence of taking and sailing away—that is, where there is no intention of stealing, If someone goes on a joy-ride in a motor boat or if he takes away a yacht simply for the fun of it, the owner has no remedy.

What is more, as the hon. Member for Tiverton (Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop) said, this can be a very serious matter from another point of view, because if young people with no experience take a boat to sea—those of us who have done some sailing realise that experience is highly desirable and that some of us may lack a considerable amount of experience, even after we have been to sea several times—they may risk, not only their own lives, but also the lives of others. They may also risk losing the boat, which may sometimes be of relatively little value, although sometimes it may be of very great value. However, it is of great value to the owner, because he may have put a lot of his savings into that small boat. If it is a large boat, he will have put even more into it.

The hon. Member for Twickenham mentioned an incident at Fareham. I heard about this. I do some sailing there. Personally, the subject matter of the whole Bill is very close to my heart. In general I welcome the Bill. It will give greater protection to all who like messing about in boats. It will provide more effective sanctions against all those who mess about with other people's boats. It will provide new sanctions and it will give added protection.

The only point of doubt about the Bill is the question of penalties. I will deal with this matter, since I was asked to do so by the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam. It may well be that the House—or the Committee, if the Bill is in due course given a Second Reading—will want to give further thought to this.

The hon. Member for Twickenham has departed from the penalties in the draft Theft Bill. This Bill provides for the offence to be a hybrid offence—that is to say, an offence which is triable summarily or on indictment and, on summary conviction, there is to be a maximum penalty of six months' imprisonment or a fine of £100 or both.

The draft Theft Bill tackles the matter rather differently. Clause 25 of that Bill adds the offence under Clause 10—that is, the offence of taking and driving away, or of taking and sailing away, if I may adapt its language—to the list of indictable offences triable summarily in Schedule 1 to the Magistrates' Courts Act, 1952. The present maximum penalties on summary conviction for such an offence are six months imprisonment or a fine of £100, but by Clause 26 of the Criminal Justice Bill, which is now going, through Standing Committee, it is proposed that that maximum fine of £100 should be increased to £400.

Further, Clause 10 of the draft Theft Bill provides, on conviction on indictment, for a maximum term of imprisonment of three years, compared with two years in the hon. Member's Bill and for an unlimited fine as compared with a maximum of £200 proposed by the hon. Member.

It may be arguable whether the right maximum term of imprisonment for a taking away offence should be one or the other, but the Criminal Law Revision Committee expressed the view in its Report that the present penalty of one year for taking and driving away a motor vehicle should be increased from one year to three and that this should apply to conveyances generally, except for bicycles. Therefore, it should certainly apply to yachts.

There is a good case for such an increase, for the reason the Committee gave, which was that this is a very prevalent offence indeed against which some pretty stiff penalties should be provided. If that is true of taking and driving away motor vehicles, there probably was not sufficient reason to distinguish the offence of in effect taking and sailing away a boat.

I also have some doubt whether it would be right to tie the court down, on conviction on indictment, to a maximum fine as low as £200. It is unusual nowadays to restrict the amount of a fine that can be imposed by a higher court.

In reply to the question raised by the hon. Member for Tiverton as to what the effects of the Bill would be on the power of magistrates' courts to find an accused guilty of a lesser offence if stealing was charged, the position generally at the moment is that magistrates' courts do not have power to convict of the lesser offence in these kinds of cases. For example, magistrates cannot convict an accused of taking and driving away a car if the charge is that the accused was trying to steal the car. In that respect, the Bill simply follows the present practice.

However, these are Committee points and we can return to them later, if the House sees fit to give the Bill a Second Reading. In closing, I want to congratulate the hon. Member for Twickenham on his Bill and on the way in which he so eloquently presented it.

I have it in Command from Her Majesty the Queen to acquaint the House that Her Majesty, having been informed of the purport of the Bill, has consented to place her prerogative and interest, so far as they are affected by the Bill, at the disposal of Parliament for the purposes of the Bill.

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

I shall first summarise the argument and adduce it later. The point behind the Bill is simply that, without in any way infringing on the main purpose of the Royal Parks which are situated in the middle of busy London, I want to remove the existing statutory embargo which prevents them from being usefully used in the national interest when the occasion arises.

At present, because of the terms of the Crown Lands Act, 1829, not even a small part of the parks can be enclosed and admission charged for entry to that enclosure. It ought to be made possible for the Minister of Public Building and Works to be allowed to do this if he considers at any time that a case presented to him justifies his so doing. At present he cannot do it even if he thinks that it is desirable so to do. I want to make it possible for him to use his discretion.

London is the centre of tourism. It earns us a considerable income, but we must face the fact, as recent reports have shown, that the income of Continental countries and other countries which cater for tourists is even greater than our own and that our relative share of the increasing tourist traffic is decreasing.

Such things as son et lumière, dancing displays and circuses, could be accommodated on, say, the football pitches in parks, which are not in use in the summer, without infringing on the general purpose of the parks. The parks are delightful. Their general purpose should be preserved. I submit that the activities I have listed could be carried out in parks, in the national interest, without in any way weakening the pleasure that other people get from parks.

That is a summary of the terms of the Bill. I believe that this is a matter the desirability of which can be mutually agreed on both sides of the House. If it is desirable, it is outside the party field. It ought to be mutually agreed. Therefore, there is no question of my pushing the Bill to a vote. If the Minister is not prepared to accept the terms of the Bill as they are now set out, I hope that he will find my argument worthy of his further consideration and that, even if he cannot accept the present terms of the Bill, he will be able to accept that the idea is one which he could usefully pursue from his appropriate office.

The one thing, apart from defence, which is fundamental to this country's continued development, and to the maintenance of the standard of living we have now come to expect, is that we ensure that the balance of trade figures is right. I am certain that if as an industrial nation we can get to the point where we are selling more than we are buying, or, at any rate, not buying more than we actually sell, there is a chance that we can continue to improve our general standards. I believe that this Bill pinpoints what I admit is a very tiny section of the potential that we have for increasing our income, but I believe that it is a section which is important and which will become even more important.

Everybody is aware of the advantages of selling a motor car or a machine tool or a ship and having the income which that sale brings to help our balance of trade figures. These things are accepted and are applauded. In recent years such invisible exports as banking, insurance and such things have become equally acceptable and are applauded. There is no doubt that invisibles. as well as the actual sale of motor cars, assist very definitely in maintaining our balance of trade figures. However, the service industries and entertainment industries seem to carry with them some sort of stigma which is unjustified and which I think is reaching the point of being stupid. In the modern world there are increased facilities for travel. Publications, television and radio excite and inform people as to what is going on in the world. There is also increased leisure. If we add all that together, it becomes clear that the tourist industry is now very large indeed, and in a few years' time it will be colossal.

The earnings from the service industries which go to serve the tourist trade should receive our constant thoughts, and Governments, whatever their party complexion, should be giving constant consideration to the task of helping the service industries to get an even larger share of world tourism which carries with it the potential of vast earnings. Official sources have reported that the proportion of world tourism enjoyed by this country is getting smaller. Our share of tourism went up from something like £135 million in 1957 to £193 million in 1965, but we find that the number of our own people who went abroad—5 million of them in 1965—spent £290 million, so that on balance we spent more in foreign currency—about £100 million more than we earned.

The Minister of State, Board of Trade, last November stated categorically that the relative proportion of Britain's share of world tourism was actually falling short of many of the other countries which also seek to attract tourists. We have got to correct that situation. It is vital that we should. There is every inducement to people to come to this country. Years ago when tourists came to this country, because of the mode of travel which then existed, if they came to London, for example, they would stay for a week or more. Now that we have the fashion of popping into aeroplanes, package deals and things of that sort, tourists come for one, two or three days at the outside and then they go on to the Continent. unless we can make conditions so attractive here during the tourist season that visitors stay longer. part of the tourists' money which could be spent here to help our balance of trade figures will be spent abroad.

We, therefore, have this vital question—I recognise that my Bill deals with only a tiny fraction of it—of recognising the great potential that exists in tourist traffic and of ensuring that we get our fair share of it. For that reason in the past I have criticised Governments—I have no doubt that I shall do so in the future—which give the impression of discriminating against the service industries which are in a position to take advantage of this tourist spending. I believe that we ought to give the investment allowances back to the hotels.

Order. The hon. Member is going fairly wide on this subject. I do not want him to go too wide.

I think I can convince you, Mr. Speaker, that it is essential to put the broad picture in order to cover my point—

Order. The hon. Gentleman need not attempt to convince the Speaker who is listening to all that he is saying. The hon. Member is putting his Bill in a framework. I understand that. But he is going too wide now.

The hotel, entertainment and general servicing industries which exist to look after tourists and which are the means of extracting the money that tourists intend to spend on their holidays, all deserve the highest consideration. The Selective Employment Tax—

Order. The hon. Member must heed what the Chair says to him. I hope that he will come to order.

I am very eager to adhere to your Ruling, Mr. Speaker. I understand your difficulty, and mine too. I want to put my case within the framework which the Government ought to have in mind. We have in the middle of London parks which give much pleasure to our own nationals. Londoners in particular look upon them as their own parks, but, in fact, they are not the Londoners' parks. These are national parks. They are Royal Parks, and the royal prerogative stretches over the whole of the country. I urge that we look upon the Royal Parks as a national asset, a national possession, and not merely as a London possession. I suggest in my Bill that it is possible for these parks, situated where they are, to be used to help meet this great national need of preserving our balance of trade without in any way interfering with the general amenities of the parks.

At present under the Crown Lands Act, 1929, they cannot be enclosed and an admission charge cannot be made with a view to enabling them to play their part in meeting what I have described as the nation's need. I am asking that instead of it being verboten, as it is under the Crown Lands Act, for them to be used in this way, we shall enable a Minister of the Crown to use his discretion and decide when they can be so used. When I was in the Ministry of Public Building and Works, I was asked to go to the Palace of Versailles to look at son et lumière which proved to be a great attraction and which I have no doubt earned a considerable income, I felt that if son et lumière could be used at the Palace of Versailles and at many other chateaux in France without interfering with their dignity and general atmosphere, something on those lines could be introduced in Hyde Park or in other Royal Parks and thus attract people to London, particularly from abroad, who are interested in our history.

Will the hon. Gentleman explain how he brings son etlumière into a circus, which, I understand, is the real purpose of his Bill?

I have not come to that yet. The hon. Genleman is too eager. The Title of the Bill is Tourist Trade Facility Bill. It is that aspect of it which I emphasise because that is the part which is really important. if we could have son et lumière or dancing displays in such a centre, as happens in other capitals, there would be no question of infringing the nature of the parks, and it would be an extra amenity with possibilities of earning income for this country.

I use the circus as an example. I have to confess that I made a mistake in the framing of the Bill when I presented it on 8th November. I intended the reference to circuses only as an example of the sort of thing which could be introduced into the park on the football pitch for a limited period without in any way infringing the amenities of the park. I find that, in my eagerness to get it on the record, the specific reference to circuses was printed in the Bill. Because I expected the Minister to resist any specific item such as a circus, I opened today by saying that I would not push the question to a vote and I hoped that the Second Reading would have the effect of making the general argument clear to the right hon. Gentleman, inspiring him later on to produce something along these lines which would achieve the general purpose, which is unassailable, without bringing in any narrow reference to the circus itself.

Unfortunately, the inclusion of reference to a circus in my original Bill has meant that animal lovers and those who are opposed to circuses on other grounds have objected. I wanted to clear away the thought that these provisions were designed merely for circuses. The whole idea is that we should give power to an accredited Minister of the Crown to use his discretion on those occasions when he thought that we could use the park for the nation's good without in any way interfering with the general amenities.

I urge upon the Minister that, whether he accepts these words or whether, later on, he brings in other words which he thinks will achieve the same object without narrowing the issue to the specific points made in the Bill, he should use his authority as a senior Minister to see to it that, whenever the service industries are in a position to earn foreign currency for us, past prejudice is not allowed to interfere with our opportunities of doing just that. We cannot afford to lose one iota of effort which would make some contribution towards keeping our balance of trade up to the point at which we can afford to maintain the standard of life which we have built up so far.

The hon. Gentleman the Member for Peterborough (Sir Harmar Nicholls) submitted his Bill in such a disarming way that it may seem a little churlish if I say at once that I am definitely opposed to it. Most of his speech was in support of two Bills neither of which is before the House. First, he submitted the case, which may or may not be valid, that at present there are certain restrictions on the power of the Minister regarding the user of the parks and that those restrictions should be removed. He did not substantiate that case. I am sure that, had he done so, the Minister would have considered it most seriously.

The hon. Gentleman then proceeded to make a case for the extension of facilities available to tourists.

I am sorry to interrupt so soon, but I must ask the hon. Gentleman to remember that the Crown Lands Act makes it impossible for the Minister to allow the parks to be used even if he thinks that there is very good reason why they should be. At present, he has no such power.

If that is so, I am certain that the Minister will note the point and consider whether any action on his part is required.

This brings me to my first point, which has been made already by the hon. Gentleman himself, that the Title of the Bill is a misnomer. The title Tourist Trade Facility Bill gives no indication of the intent and purpose of the Measure before us. Although the hon. Gentleman said a good deal about the need, which we all accept, to attract more tourists to this country, he failed to show that this Bill, if passed, would contribute to that end. I hope to show why it would not.

The very fine group of open spaces which we have in the centre of London, the Royal Parks are one of the features which in themselves attract visitors to London, one of the features which visitors most often remember and to which constant reference is made—this is certainly my experience—when one talks to people abroad who have been to London. They are impressed by our wonderful range of parks. I doubt that the provision of a circus in any of the parks would be an added attraction.

Second, the Bill is permissive. The House awaits with interest what the Minister will have to say about the new responsibility which it would put upon him. Since 1851, in the time of the old Office of Works, his Department and its predecessors have managed the London parks in the interests of the nation as a whole. The parks have given enormous pleasure to a great number of people, and, as the years have gone by, the Department has provided sporting and recreational facilities so that the maximum use could be made of them.

Apart from the interruption of war and other special causes, the parks have remained at the disposal principally of the citizens of London. We should remember that the citizens of London have been very jealous of what had become prescriptive rights for them long before the formal transfer to the old Office of Works. Even if the Bill were passed in its present form, the Minister would have to think very carefully before exercising the powers which would be conferred on him. He might recall, for example, what happened when Queen Caroline, the wife of George II, after proposing to enlarge the grounds of Kensington Palace to include what is now Kensington Gardens, explained to the Prime Minister of the day that she had similar designs upon St. James's Park and asked Sir Robert Walpole what it would cost. He drily replied, "Only a Crown, Ma'am".

As the hon. Gentleman recognised, this is a controversial proposal. We have to consider not just what the hon. Gentleman said about improving facilities for tourists but the sole and limited purpose of his Bill, which is to enable a circus to be provided in London's parks. A circus, of course, is much more than a "big top". There is a vast amount of paraphernalia attached to them nowadays—cages for the animals, caravans for trainers and attendants, accommodation for performers, and so on. There is the movement of heavy vehicles to and from the site. Gas, water, electricity and other services have to be laid on. Apart from all that, which in itself involves a large amount of equipment, facilities must he provided for the visitors—space for their cars, catering facilities, toilet facilities and the like. These could not be restricted to a small area. They would necessarily affect the atmosphere of the park used, and the noise and disturbance would cover a very wide area indeed.

The Bill refers to the right to permit a circus in Royal Parks being exercised during appropriate seasons. I think that the hon. Member for Peterborough would acknowledge that the only practical season for this, particularly if it is to attract tourists, is during the summer. We all know from our experience that on fine summer days the parks in London are used to their maximum. If one wanders over to St. James's Park during a summer day one finds almost every inch of space occupied. I do not wish to say much about the objections to circuses as such because I would not regard them as decisive if there were no other sound reasons, but here again is a factor which the Minister would have to take into account in considering whether to exercise his powers under the Bill.

The hon. Member for Peterborough freely admitted that he has not made a case for this Measure. I therefore hope that the House will reject it.

I wish only to emphasise some of the points that have been made.

This is referred to as a tourist industry Measure. I should have thought that it would be more correct to refer to it as an Expropriation of Hyde Park Measure. In considering the use to which the parks should be put, I would confine myself to the only park which borders on my constituency, Hyde Park. I do not know where it would be proposed to put the big top—and it would have to be a very big top if it were to be of any use in London. Where would space be found to put the vehicles involved? How would the traffic get away so that it did not add to the existing traffic, which is bad enough? How would one provide the various services which are necessary for an enterprise of this kind?

I wish to refer to only one specific item. After the war, when there was a desperate need for housing, the House decided that there should be no incursion certainly on Hyde Park for housing purposes. Important though tourism is, I cannot think that it approaches the need that there was for housing at that time.

The hon. Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. Carol Johnson) made the point that no case has been made for the need to make a contribution to tourism in London. I listened with considerable care for such a need, but no such need was referred to. I do not know what parks other than Hyde Park would be of the slightest use in this connection. Regent's Park has other uses and is not large enough. My hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Sir Harmar Nicholls) gave no indication of any other parks which might be useful.

I very much hope that the House will not give even a Second Reading to the Bill.

I was very encouraged to hear the hon. Member for Peterborough (Sir Harmar Nicholls) make it quite clear that he was not going to press the Second Reading of this Bill. This is the only encouraging thing about it.

Perhaps it would be of value to consider whether we are making the best possible use of some of the open spaces, not only in London, but in other cities. We are pleased that, on the whole, a great deal of use is made of the Royal Parks. My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. Carol Johnson) referred to sports facilities. A large number of games are played in Regent's Park, where pitches are -laid out. This is admirable, and I am very much in favour of it. I should be pleased to hear the Minister say that he would gladly consider the possibility of extensions of this kind. However, this has nothing, or very little, to do with the Bill.

There is already a zoo, if not in Regent's Park, then precious near to it. There is also a theatre in Regent's Park. How that came to develop, I do not know. This suggests that there are uses to which our famous parks can be put other than those suggested by the hon. Member for Peterborough.

There is the serious point that we want to try to encourage the widest use and enjoyment of these areas without spoiling the facilities which already exist. If one looks at what the Bill says and not at what the hon. Member for Peterborough said he meant, one would think quite seriously on the question of what is the most suitable place for circuses. I am very much in favour of circuses; I enjoy circuses. I live in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where we have the good fortune to have the enormous space of our Town Moor, much the moot attractive open space in the north of England, if not in the whole of Britain. There we accommodate circuses as well as fairs and other forms of enjoyment and entertainment. Discussions are going on as to how we can make even greater use of this enormous open space.

We should consider whether there are adequate facilities for circuses and other forms of entertainment of this kind in London. If there are not, we must consider how we can best them. I should have thought that there was great interest in the proposed development of, for example, the Lea Valley, where it is intended to have a wide range of indoor and outdoor recreational facilities. I should have thought that this was an area where provision might be made for accommodating things of the kind which the hon. Member for Peterborough has in mind. There might well be other areas in London which could be developed in a similar way.

I do not wish anyone to imagine that we on this side of the House oppose the idea of providing proper facilities for things of this kind. But we certainly do not feel that the Royal Parks are the right place for them. Even if one rather rashly assumes that the hon. Member for Peterborough meant what is in the Bill, he still seemed to be under the delusion that the Long Title of the Bill referred to other things. In fact, the Long Title says that this is a Bill to

"permit a circus in Royal Parks at appropriate seasons".

That is what we have to discuss, not what the hon. Member said.

I am delighted to understand that the hon. Gentleman is not moving this Bill. I am pleased that we have been given the opportunity to consider whether we are making the fullest possible use of our open spaces in view of the changes which have taken place in the ways in which people want to enjoy themselves. It seems to me that the Royal Parks are very well and fully used, and I hope that that will continue to be the case.

So far you will have noticed, Mr. Speaker, that no hon. Member apart from the hon. Gentleman the Member for Peterborough (Sir Harmar Nicholls) has spoken in favour of the Bill. Perhaps I could give it a side-handed compliment by saying that it is very important that we have given the opportunity to discuss the Royal Parks, because it gives me the opportunity to follow up two Questions which I put down some time ago on facilities in our central parks.

Most people would agree that Regent's Park is perhaps the finest example of our Royal Parks. It has facilities, as was mentioned, for an open-air theatre. But much more important in terms of tourist attraction is the very excellent restaurant that exists there as compared with the scruffy facilities which are to be found in St. James's Park or even the scruffier facilities to be found in Greenwich Park. I am pleased that my right hon. Friend, in answer to Questions a few weeks ago, said that he was looking into this, and I know that things are moving.

I should like to emphasise that a lot of tourist money is being lost to this country. Those of us who stroll through the Royal Parks during high summer have noticed the attraction provided by the Palace, the bands that play at lunchtime, and the Changing of the Guard. Millions of people during the course of summer find their way into St. James's Park, and they queue like mad to buy a scruffy sandwich at not very cheap prices, in most unhygienic circumstances, with the toughest pigeons in the world around to share it.

I am sure my hon. Friend will agree that there are much better facilities and more modern facilities in Regent's Park and in Hyde Park.

Yes. My hon. Friend is right about Hyde Park. My argument is directed to St. James's Park and to Greenwich Park. It is a great shame that St. James's Park is neglected in this way. So I make an appeal to my right hon. Friend to improve the refreshment facilities there. I should like to see a restaurant provided very much like the one in Regent's Park. It would make a good deal of money.

I make the same appeal for Greenwich Park, a much neglected Royal Park. Thousands of dollar-tourists visit the Royal Park at Greenwich, but, here again the facilities are appalling. Even in high summer it is difficult to get a cup of tea after five o'clock because they want to close the place.

The position at the moment is that the right hon. Gentleman could himself enclose an area for a restaurant and things of that sort, but he is not in a position to get somebody else, who is perhaps better fitted for the job, to provide the facilities. I would ask the Minister whether he will allow other people, with the necessary experience, to do a job which he is not qualified to do.

I am not sure whether that is right. My understanding is that the restaurant in Regent's Park is run by a well-known and reputable restaurateur, but perhaps my right hon. Friend can deal with that. My appeal is on the question of restaurant facilities. A great opportunity is being missed here, and I hope that it will be looked into urgently.

I am unable to support the hon. Member's Bill. The most attractive features of our Royal Parks are their pleasant setting steeped in our ancient history. I welcome the Bill in that it has enabled discussion on the subject. Even if you were to push it to a vote, I would not join you in the Lobby.

Order. Mr. Speaker would not push it to a vote. Hon. Members must address the Chair.

I wish to intervene very briefly in the debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Sir Harmar Nicholls) on the way in which he moved the Bill, and I appreciate his very real interest in the tourist trade. Nonetheless, I must make it clear that I would not be able to support the Bill. I well recall when I was in the position which he occupied at one time the very considerable pressures that were upon the Minister of Public Building and Works to release part of the Royal Parks for various purposes desirable in themselves. I remember being pressed at one time to release a part of Hyde Park for a golf driving range. I also recall being pressed to allow an exhibition on a semi-permanent basis in connection with Shakespeare to take place in the same area. The line which I took, and which the then Minister of Public Building and Works took, was firmly to resist all these proposals.

I must say that we were helped in our resistance, not only against the private person who wanted to set up an enterprise of this kind, but also against the public authority, by the existence of the present law which restricts the powers of the Minister of Public Budding and Works to release land for this purpose. It is not only private enterprise which wishes to take over parts of the Royal Parks for various purposes. The Minister will appreciate what was said by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington, South (Mr. Roots), about the pressure which existed shortly after the war to use the Royal Parks for housing purposes, and also the pressure which I am sure both he and the previous Minister of Public Building and Works have had from the Minister of Transport to take over part of the Royal Parks for traffic purposes.

The hon. Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Alan Lee Williams) referred to the question of restaurants in the parks and, as one who played some part in the development of the new restaurants in Regent's Park and in the central parks, I wish to refer to that subject very briefly. The hon. Member spoke about Green Park. There is a case for redevelopment of that restaurant, but I am sure the Minister appreciates the very real difficulties involved in the redevelopment of that restaurant, where very limited space is available, and at the same time keeping the very special amenities which exist in St. James's Park. It is a very difficult problem to try to marry the two. Nevertheless, I sympathise with the point made made by the hon. Member for Horn-church. I hope that the Minister will look at this matter again, as well as the very real difficulties over catering which exist in Greenwich Park.

The central parks in London are a priceless asset to this city. I do not know of any other city in the world which provide the unspoilt green spaces which exist in the central parks in London and with the same amount of open space available to all. One of the things which draws tourists to our City is the wide open spaces and the amount of greenery, available. Many people comment upon the feeling of space which exists in our Royal Parks.

In conclusion, I hope—and I say this with confidence—that the Minister will indicate his determination to fight in the same way as his predecessors have done for the sanctity of our priceless asset, the central parks of London.

I wish only to make a very brief contribution to the debate. I believe that the Bill is quite useless in the sense of trying to do something serious to attract tourists, and the revenue that comes from tourists, to London.

My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham South (Mr. Carol Johnson) said that the Royal Parks already provided a great attraction for tourists. They do to a degree, without doubt, but what is more important is that they are providing facilities for the existing population of London.

The Bill, in its narrow sense, attempts to give permission for the Minister to allow circuses to erect their tents and provide performances in the Royal Parks. This will not necessarily be an attraction to tourists, because a great number of foreign visitors take the same view as a great number of our own population, that circuses themselves, because they employ animals for training and performing for profit, are a bad thing. Therefore, I do not think the Bill would necessarily achieve the hon. Gentleman's object.

The intention of the Bill should be not only to help our balance of payments by bringing foreign visitors to London but also to bring to London from all over the country our own citizens who ought to be able to come to London to enjoy the facilities and visit the great historic parks, and even this House. It has been suggested to me that if they want to see a circus performing they could come to no better place than this building, particularly now that the ringmaster has cracked the whip.

I accept the hon. Gentleman's statement that 5,000,000 of our people go abroad for their holidays, though I should have thought that the figure was a little higher. A very large percentage of them go abroad to enjoy the very healthy recreation of camping. I am not necessarily convinced that it would be a good thing to open our Royal Parks for circuses. However, we should open them not only for foreign visitors who can come in with their currency to help us over our economic difficulties but for our own people so that they can come to the centre of London and pitch their tents or put their caravans here and enjoy the facilities that are available in this great metropolis. I believe that this would serve a useful purpose in broadening the appeal of the Royal Parks. One of the difficulties experienced in attracting visitors to London is that there are no facilities for the vastly increasing number of people who want to camp or move around in caravans on their visits to this country. I believe that we could make a tremendous contribution to our foreign currency earnings if we could liven up our local authorities, and also some of our Ministers, to make facilities available for campers.

Camping is a very healthy activity in which to engage. I should declare an interest here in that I am an active camper. I camp as often as possible, certainly on every holiday.

Does my hon. Friend camp regularly in Hyde Park?

I do not know about that one.

If we could make the Royal Parks open from time to time to our youth movements, the Scouts and the Guides for international jamborees, would it not be a great help to our balance of payments, as well as making possible enjoyment of the facilities in the Royal Parks?

I hope that the Minister will take my remarks seriously about making the facilities of the Royal Parks available as widely as possible from time to time and giving encouragement to local authorities to provide facilities for our own people and visitors who want to enjoy the healthy, happy relaxation of camping, with the low capital cost involved. It would be a good thing if they could have facilities in the centre of London from time to time so that they could enjoy themselves and also contribute to our balance of payments.

Is not my hon. Friend aware that international Scout camps and so on are held from time to time in Hyde Park or Regent's Park—in some of the parks certainly?

Yes, my hon. Friend is right. There was a site at Crystal Palace, but it is no longer available for that sort of activity. I cannot recall the last time when there was a World Scout Jamboree in Hyde Park. I should certainly like to think that there was a possibility of one being held there in the very near future if the Minister could make the park available and persuade the Scout Movement to avail itself of the facilities.

I would emphasise that if we want, as I believe the hon. Member for Peterborough (Sir Harmar Nicholls) does, to make available the open spaces in London for the purpose of encouraging foreign exchange to come here we must cater for the people who want to camp.

I was interested to hear my hon. Friend refer to the low capital cost of camping.

Order. Would the hon. Gentleman please address the Chair.

Has my hon. Friend not got it wrong? Is it not a high capital cost and a low running cost?

No. This is perhaps slightly broadening the debate on the Bill, but it has some relevance if we want to foster the use of the parks and want to do it by encouraging camping in particular. The capital cost of camping is very low. It is true that one can pay as much as £187—

Order. We are well away from the Bill.

I oppose the Bill because for many years I have opposed the training of animals for exhibition for entertainment. It is felt that performing animals give children an entirely false impression and that they are of no educational value whatever.

Many aspects are often overlooked in considering this subject. While some of the animals are bred in captivity, others are taken from their natural habitat and frequently transported many thousands of miles in far from satisfactory conditions. All hon. Members will know of the appalling sights when aircraft arrive here from India with loads of rhesus monkeys and so on, many dying from suffocation. That type of thing is perpetuated by circuses.

I want to refer to the action of some local authorities and to commend the local authorities to which I shall refer for having taken the actions of which I shall speak—

Order we cannot discuss on this Bill commendation of local authorities in regard to circuses. The hon. Gentleman must link his remarks to the Bill.

I was simply trying to make the point that there are many local authorities which are progressive thinkers in respect of circuses and have banned the use of their land for such performances. As recently as 20th February Wilmslow Urban District Council adopted a resolution which will ban for ever the exhibition of animals for entertainment on any of its land.

The capture of animals is often left entirely to natives, and the method of capture leaves much to be desired. It should not be assumed that I am introducing any sort of colour bar, but native peoples are not necessarily the most humane, and circuses are concerned only with having animals captured alive without any broken limbs, eyes put out and so on. Circuses are not concerned at all about the cruelty that is practised in the capture.

Many people assume that because their pet dog stands up and begs for a bone and does similar tricks no suffering is involved when animals are taught to do tricks. The household pet being encouraged to beg for a bone is a vastly different affair from a lion being driven to jump through a hoop of fire at a precise time and to a precise beat of music from a circus band.

The late Professor Sir Peter Chalmers Mitchell stressed this point when giving evidence to the House of Commons Select Committee on Performing Animals in 1921–22. He said:

"If at a quarter past eight in the evening, when the curtain goes up, you have to get your animals on the stage and do the trick at once, lest the manager and the public be discontented, then, in my experience, there is the gravest possible risk that there has been cruelty, not only in training the animal, but continuous cruelty in keeping the animal up to the mark for these—what may be called time performances."

Evidence of cruelty was given to the Select Committee by eye-witnesses who had actually been employed in circuses, and there is no reason to believe that the methods of training have seen any drastic change since then.

It is, of course, extremely difficult to secure up-to-date evidence of cruelty be- cause a good deal of the training is carried out abroad and where it is done in this country it is conducted within private grounds where inspectors of the animal protection societies are not allowed access. If any evidence is needed, however, of the cruelty that exists in both training and performance of circus animals, I can do no better than quote from the book written by Alfred Court, that great animal trainer. It was published in 1954 and is called," Wild Animals in Circuses". Mr. Court writes:

"If an animal attacks, he must be given a severe enough correction for him to realise from the first encounter that he is not the stronger. … I clenched by hand round the club and struck at the head with all my strength. … The bear had been struck where I had aimed, above the nostrils and between the eyes. Blood flowed from its mouth, its paws stiffened in a last convulsion and it collapsed."

This is not a quotation from an animal protection society but from a well-known animal trainer, now retired. He goes on:

"I had twenty-six animals: in training I should eliminate the disappointing ones and there would be a replacement if an animal was killed or badly crippled. … Energetic and instant correction is indispensable. The stick and the whip are indispensable."

Is this the kind of thing that the hon. Member for Peterborough (Sir Harmar Nicholls) wants perpetuated in London in the Royal Parks? I sincerely hope that the House will have none of it. The book goes on:

"I seized one of the heavy stools and flung it with all my strength at the beast's head. It went sprawling, knocked out. … I landed a heavy blow on her head with a whip-butt. The grip of this, reinforced by a double ring of copper, was like a mace."

Imagine, Mr. Speaker, the Deputy Serjeant at Arms whacking some poor unfortunate dumb animal over the head with the Mace.

Members of the public see only one performance of a circus and it is not always realised that the circus animals have to perform two and three times in a day. Then, at the end of a weary week, after the last performance on Saturday they are thrust into the limited space of their cages for transport by road or rail on a long, weary journey.

Would not my hon. Friend agree, with respect to the Serjeant at Arms using the Mace—

Order. We must get on with the debate.

As I was saying, it is not generally appreciated that the animals, after the last performance on Saturday, are thrust into confined quarters for journeys, sometimes the length of the country, in the worst of weather. It has been known for a circus train to be stranded in a blizzard with God knows what effect on the mental state of the animals, compelled to perform as quickly as possible after their release.

There are many forms of entertainment, decent, cultural entertainment, which could be given in the Royal Parks. Like other hon. Members, I hope for an extension of such entertainment in the Royal Parks and that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Public Building and Works will be able to indicate that this is what will happen.

There is no doubt that one of the worst things that can happen to a child is genuinely to believe that kindness is employed when an animal is trained. There is nothing wrong at all in a child being encouraged to see animals in more or less natural surroundings in a zoo, where they are well cared for and are not expected to perform. I hope that the House will reject this Bill out of hand.

I support hon. Members opposing the further progress of this rather amazing Bill. It has some arguments to be advanced in its favour from my point of view. The first is its brevity. The second is its simplicity and clarity. The third is that it shows some concern for what goes on in the Royal Parks and affords us the opportunity to discuss them. But beyond that I object to the aim of the Bill.

As far as I can see—and I have perused it carefully—the object of the Bill is to enable a circus to be held in any of the Royal Parks without further legislation. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Public Building and Works has now no power to permit people to stage performances for money in the Royal Parks and, therefore, the passage of the Bill would require a major alteration in the situation as it exists.

I would object to the alteration in principle, quite apart from the fact that it would be a major departure. Unfortunately, I was not here to hear the hon. Member for Peterborough (Sir Harmar Nicholls) advancing the full arguments that he has for the Bill but I am sure that, if it makes no further progress, it will not be because of any lack of ability which he deployed in urging its cause. We all know that he is very competent. If it does not get any further, it will be because there are strong objections in principle.

I know that the last thing the hon. Gentleman would consider in taking any action in this House would be his personal popularity. Whereas I have had no letters in support of the Bill, I have had one or two from people opposing it. I do not wish to bore the House by reading this rather long communication I have, but one or two quotations may illuminate to hon. Members some of the public opinion on the matter. The letter begins:

"I write to alert your attention to a slick move by Big Business to use the House to further their own interest."

Then there is reference to a well-known property tycoon and the assertion is made—I am sure that it is wrong, but I believe that the hon. Gentleman should know the sort of things that are being said—that this well-known property tycoon:

"… got, as a stooge, the Member for Peterborough to slip in on a ten minute rule …"

this Bill. It is said that the Bill is simply to enable circuses to be sited at Hyde Park.

Another reference to these "tycoons" says:

"Now these social climbers want … Hyde Park for a site and want the whole set-up changed to benefit their pockets and prestige".

Finally, there is a punchy postscript which says:

"Please reject the second reading of this bogus Bill and prevent another monopoly new-style Mafia!"

That is the sort of reaction which I have been getting in my mail.

I wholehartedly support those hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Crayford (Mr. Wellbeloved), who have drawn attention to the rural setting of the Royal Parks as the oases of quiet and charm and peace which they afford Londoners in the centre of London. Londoners lead pretty hectic lives and during their lunch hours, or perhaps after work, they can have a quiet stroll in the Royal Parks. Although I would be the last to oppose many forms of public provision in the parks, I feel that circuses in any one of them would seriously upset the whole atmosphere which we have learned to associate with them. This is true of Hyde Park which, more than any other, is right in the centre of the teeming commercial West End of London and more successful in conveying the rural atmosphere than many other parks are.

One of my major objections to the Bill is that it would apply not only to Hyde Park, but to Greenwich Park. Here I have a constituency interest, because although Greenwich Park is in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Power, many of my constituents make full use of its facilities. I was very pleased to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Alan Lee Williams) draw the attention of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Public Building and Works to the subject of catering in the parks. If the hon. Member for Peterborough had devoted a Bill on increasing the facilities and amenities of the Royal Parks to increasing the quality of the catering, I would have been much happier with that sort of Bill than with this.

I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch speaks from considerable personal experience and I support every word he has said. There are two refreshment places in Greenwich Park. One consists of a small round house in the centre of the park which it would be ideal to operate as a well-run snack bar where people going into the park on Saturday or Sunday afternoon could get a quick snack, a bottle of lemonade, a cup of tea, or a sandwich. Although there have been improvements in the last year or two, I would be less than honest if I did not say that the standard of catering provided there is lower than it should be. I urge on my right hon. Friend the necessity for facilities provided there to be of a suitable standard.

The object should be to provide a decent, quick, wholesome snack served in conditions of hygiene and at a low price so that the food provided could be adequate and enjoyable. My hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch will support me when I say that present facilities do not measure up to the standards which I have mentioned.

In the wall of Greenwich Park is the Ranger's House. This is a very attractive Georgian mansion. Here, too, food is provided, but a fundamental error of judgment has been made, because whereas there is already the Round House in the centre of the park which can provide quick snacks and the self-service which I am sure would meet a deeply felt need, it is silly to duplicate that sort of approach in the Ranger's House in the side of the wall on the western margins of the park. Here there are gracious surroundings where people could sit at tables and be waited on and obtain attractive and still reasonably priced meals which they could enjoy in conditions of somewhat greater leisure than at the Round House.

I do not want to spend any more time on the catering facilities in Greenwich Park, except to say that the park is one of the more attractive of the Royal Parks in London and the Bill would give powers, subject only to the Minister providing a lease and laying it before Parliament in the form of a Statutory Instrument, to put a circus in the park. If there is any park in London whose character would be absolutely ruined by having a circus, it is Greenwich Park. One of my major objections to the Bill is that Greenwich Park is not excluded from its provisions.

Apart from the character of the park, another reason is the fact that abutting on the boundary of the park is Black-heath where once every two years there is a visit from Billy Smart's circus, which puts on a very good show and which is particularly enjoyed by the children. I cannot see why there should be power to have a circus in Green-Park when Black-heath next door already caters for the situation so admirably.

My hon. Friend says that children enjoy Billy Smart's circus. Would he not accept that frequently many small children can be seen to be absolutely terrified of the performance by the wild animals and the part of the circus which they enjoy is the antics of the clowns?

I am sure that there is a great deal of truth in what my hon. Friend says and I know that he has very wide experience of these matters. As a matter of fact, I am able to have fairly good consumer reaction to a circus, because I have small children of my own who clamour to be taken to this circus whenever it arrives at Blackheath. Nevertheless, I am sure that my hon. Friend has made a pertinent point which the House ought to take into consideration.

One of my hon. Friends has already pointed out that it is not just a matter of putting a circus in a park and that there is also the paraphernalia of cages and lorries and electricity generators, and electricity generators make a tremendous noise when they are generating sufficient electricity to light up the "big top". There is also the surrounding impedimenta which a modern circus carries with it, and I would be the last to advocate the permanent siting of Billy Smart's circus on Blackheath, although its periodic visits are warmly welcomed.

The net result of all this impedimenta is that grass on the circus site is practically non-existent and there is a savage and ugly scar on the surface of Black-heath where the circus camps. If there were provision for the siting of a circus in Hyde Park, there would be exactly the same sort of thing happening to Hyde Park and there would be a tremendous churned up area of bare earth where the circus had been. This would detract considerably from the peace and pleasantness of Hyde Park as we now know them. As a matter of fact, the facilities provided at Blackheath are somewhat better, even apart from the circus, because every Easter and every Whitsun and Bank Holiday we also have a fair on the heath. These three regular visits per year and the biennial visit of the circus, inflict this damage at Blackheath.

Apart from the objections which I have registered, which I consider to be overwhelming, Greenwich has a great claim to a circus site if one were thinking of providing such a site. Tourists could embark upon a boat at Westminster Pier, travel down the river to Greenwich Pier, and in addition to visiting the circus, could visit the Royal Naval Museum. Incidentally the catering facilities at the Royal Naval Museum which the Minister provides are far superior at the moment to those in the Royal Park at Greenwich.

Perhaps he could consider whether the standard of administration in the Museum could be extended to cover the facilities in Greenwich Park? The tourists could visit the theatre which will be there and have a meal and watch a good play. The "Cutty Sark" could also be visited. There is a good deal to be said for having a circus in that area of London, if it were not for the over-riding objections of siting it within the area of the Royal Park, or siting it more frequently at Blackheath than is done already.

Has the promoter of the Bill given serious consideration to the implications of his proposal? He is urging that there should be a circus site in Hyde Park. I had hoped to catch your eye, Mr. Speaker, during last week's debate on the Transport White Paper, because the question of transport in towns was not fully dealt with then, and this may well have misled the hon. Gentleman the Member for Peterborough in putting forward this Bill. At some stage in the future this Government, or a succeeding Government, no matter what their political complexion, will be forced to place some restrictions upon the use of private motor cars in the centre of London and similar large cities. This will cause a considerable amount of bitterness among the owners of private motor cars who enjoy driving into the cities to partake of amenities there.

Yet the hon. Gentleman is advocating that, in addition to all of the attractions in the centre of London, a further attraction should be introduced. Olympia is away from the centre and the problems of a circus there are totally different from those of a circus in Hyde Park, in the centre of the West End. Before introducing this Bill has the hon. Gentleman undertaken the necessary studies, has he worked out the traffic flow, the amount of private motor and coach traffic which would be attracted to the centre of London if the Measure were passed? I doubt very much whether he has. There seemed to be no evidence of this in his speech, because he made very little mention of these problems.

This burden on the traffic system in central London is a serious matter. It requires careful forethought and planning. There is a good deal to be said against placing a circus in the centre of London, and for finding some off-centre site for it, such as Hampstead Heath. I do not advocate that with any great spirit or fervour. However, one of its main attractions, being the Member for Lewisham, North, is that it would divert the traffic from Lewisham to the northern outskirts of London. From the point of view of my constituents, this would be a major attraction.

I feel that I have rehearsed the arguments against the Bill at length. I understand that it is unlikely to receive a Second Reading, and I must say that I cannot bring myself to be sorry. In my heart I am glad that the Bill will not proceed further, but I should like to thank the hon. Member for Peterborough for having provided us with the opportunity, which we so rarely get, to discuss problems affecting the Royal Parks in London.

I am grateful to be able to take part in this debate, and in some ways one should be grateful to the hon. Member for Peterborough (Sir Harmar Nicholls) for having raised this matter. What is noteworthy about the Bill is that it seems, as far as one can judge from the debate so far, as if no London Member is in favour of using the Royal Parks for this purpose. Observing the vast expanse of green that there is in front of me on the Opposition benches, it is pertinent to observe that the Bill is introduced by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Peterborough, and the only hon. Gentleman on the back benches is the hon. Member for, I think, Dumfries, and the hon. Gentleman on the Opposition Front Bench—

rose—

I will give way in a moment. The hon. Gentleman on the Opposition Front Bench is not a London Member. He represents Sutton and Cheam—

My constituency is now a part of the Greater London area.

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has come in.

The hon. Gentleman is about 300 miles out. I am the Member for Moray and Nairn, not Dumfries.

Now we can get back to the Bill.

I apologise for having been wrong in my Scottish geography. The Bill will not be read by a large number of people inside and outside this House, and they will not appreciate the significance of what is being proposed. My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, North (Mr. Moyle) talked about the difficulties experienced when any open space has to accommodate a circus for two or three weeks. The kind of circus proposed in this Bill is not the same as my hon. Friend had in mind. Clause 1(1) gives to the Minister the power:

"… at appropriate seasons (to) lease any part of any Royal Park to any other person as an enclosure for the purpose of accommodating a circus—"

a circus, not circuses. I am fortified in my suspicion, because if one reads the speech made by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Peterborough on 8th November last when seeking leave to introduce a Bill under [the Ten-Minute Rule, he said:

"Here comes the bit about the Bill, Mr. Speaker."

I think that you had perhaps looked as if you were about to admonish him for going outside the purpose of the Bill. He continued:

"After next Christmas, London will not have every type of entertainment. It will not have a circus. Paris has a circus; Moscow has a circus; Copenhagen has; Lisbon has; Madrid has. All European countries have, but London will not have one. This is what my Bill would seek to remedy. After next Christmas London's famous circus, Bertram Mills' Circus will not have a home. No building capable of economically accommodating it exists in London."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 8th November, 1966; Vol. 735, c. 1156.]

The hon. Gentleman then goes on to suggest that one of the three football pitches in Hyde Park could accommodate a circus.

He continued then to raise an argument, which I am bound to say I thought somewhat spurious, that it would be a tourist attraction, and that there are strong foreign exchange arguments in favour of siting Bertram Mills' circus in a permanent or semi-permanent site in the middle of London. I find this prospect absolutely appalling. The idea that in the middle of London, on what has been rightly called one of the lungs of London, there should be set up permanent or semi-permanent accommodation to house a circus so that it can form the sort of attraction which the hon. Member for Peterborough has in mind, like the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen or the permanent circuses in Paris and Moscow, is a complete denial of what the Royal Parks in London are for. It is a complete denial of what our policy on the parks and open spaces in the centre of our Metropolis should be.

I was perhaps a little unfair to the Opposition, because I said that there was no Conservative London Members present. I think that the hon. and learned Member for Kensington, South (Mr Roots) paid us a fleeting visit. I am sorry that he is not here, because there are two Royal Parks in his constituency—Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. In the constituency of the hon. Member for the Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. John Smith) there are St. James's Park and Regent's Park. It would seem from the way in which London Members of Parliament approach this problem that there is no great demand from them for this facility.

The reason for that is very simple. It is that in London we need more open spaces and not fewer. We do not need semi-permanent structures in the centre of London which will considerably reduce the amenity value of the Royal Parks. My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, North talked about the possibility of Greenwich Park being covered by the Bill. If the Royal Parks extend as far as Greenwich, I suppose that Greenwich is a Royal Park. Richmond Park is a Royal Park. But I cannot imagine that these are parts of London which the hon. Member for Peterborough has in mind. What the hon. Gentleman clearly has in mind is that in Hyde Park there should be sited a circus which would be an attraction comparable to that, apparently, found in some capital cities on the Continent. I should be very much against this.

If one goes to New York, one sees how small is the amount of open space in the centre of Manhattan Island. There is Central Park, a comparatively small lung, but it is surrounded by high-rise apartment houses. Wherever one goes in the centre of New York one cannot escape the feeling of being at the bottom of a man-made canyon, albeit that one is walking on grass. I do not attack the Americans for this. If this is how they wish to build on Manhattan Island, that is a matter for them.

One thing which we should jealously preserve in London is that, save for the unfortunate example of the Hilton Hotel, if one walks in parts of Hyde Park or Kensington Gardens, one is not overlooked by very high-rise buildings. This is something which should be treasured and guarded very jealously. Londoners have an historical right to walk in the Royal Parks. One of the most famous attempts to do something about the Royal Parks and to deny the rights of Londoners to the minuscule rural seclusion which one can get by walking in Hyde Park or Kensington Gardens was made by the Regent at the turn of the eighteenth or nineteenth century. When the area around Regent's Park was being developed, it was proposed that he should arrogate to himself the right to build houses in Hyde Park. A very wise Prime Minister told him that there was no surer way for him to lose his throne or for the monarchy to cease if the Royal Parks and greenery in Central London were developed in this way.

My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, North did not make a very apt remark when he said that if we want a circus in London why not put it in Hampstead or somewhere outside the centre of London. Hampstead needs open space. My area, Hammersmith, desperately needs open space. I should be very upset if any open space, not only in London but in all our great cities, which is so scare in this overcrowded island, were used to provide a semi-permanent circus for which there is not very much demand.

I turn to the question of demand, because it is important. Since we are being asked as Londoners to give up some of the greenery which we possess and in which we rejoice, one should look behind the Bill and ask whether there is a demand, either by circuses or by the public, for the siting of a circus right in the centre of London. The experience of my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, North has certainly been duplicated in my case. I have had no letters, I have not been lobbied by any constituent, and no member of the public has approached me in favour of siting a circus in Hyde Park. This may be an experience which my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, North and I share, but, after talking to other Members representing London constituencies, I know of no great agitation which has impinged on their Parliamentary consciences. Their experience seems to be precisely the same as mine.

Are the circuses agitating for a permanent site in the centre of London? I have not been approached by either Bill Smart's circus or Bertram Mills' circus to the effect that it is necessary in the interests of their operations to have a site of this sort in the middle of London.

There was reference earlier to the appropriate seasons when the Minister would be asked to authorise the use of the parks for circuses. It is not so much a question of there being a permanent site for a circus but the fact that the people using the great Metropolis would be at the mercy of other people demanding the right to have a circus or some other entertainment in a Royal Park which would interfere with the rights not only of Londoners but of visitors who wish to see the splendours of the cities and to use the parks?

I take my hon. Friend's point. It is in line with the point to which I shall come later.

I am pleased to see my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Crayford (Mr. Wellbelovecl) in his place. I listened n, his speech with great interest and some amazement. It would be almost as bad an abomination to cover Hyde Park with tents as it would be to site a circus on it. What I am in favour of—and I sincerely hope the House is in favour of it—is preserving the parks as parks and not as areas in which people can camp or in which Billy Smart, Bertram Mills or anybody else can have a circus.

I am sure that my hon. Friend would agree that it would be desirable to increase the facilities within Greater London, either in the parks or in some other open space at the centre or on the periphery, so that people can camp and enjoy London?

I accept that. If people wish to spend their holidays camping in our doubtful weather, so be it. It is not a form of holiday entertainment in which I indulge very much, nor does it particularly appeal to me. But there are different forms of enjoyment and different forms of people. However, the places which surely we should prevent from being exploited by being overlooked by high-rise apartments, by being developed in the sense of buildings going up on them, by being exploited by siting a circus on them or by being cluttered up—I do not use the term offensively—with a lot of tents are the Royal Parks smack in the middle of London. They should be preserved as public open spaces. The greenery of their few acres is very valuable.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stockport, North (Mr. Gregory) said that the parks were themselves a great attraction. The contrary argument was raised by the hon. Member for Peterborough, who introduced the Bill, that it was necessary in terms of tourist facilities to attract tourists to London to have a circus in the middle so that, I assume, the Parisian, the New Yorker, the Californian or the German would say to himself, "I will not come to London to look at Hyde Park or to enjoy walking along these delightful stretches of grass. I will come to London to see a circus." That is an astonishingly difficult argument to follow. It completely misunderstands the argument about why people go to capital cities.

If I went to Paris or elsewhere on the Continent for a holiday, the possession or otherwise of a circus by that capital would be very low down the list of priorities that determined whether I went to city X or city Y.

The foreign exchange argument is even more spurious. If hon. Members take my point that more tourists will not come because of a circus being sited in Hyde Park, the foreign exchange argument completely falls down. I go so far as to say that if the Royal Parks are disturbed to any great extent in any of the ways I have mentioned—because this is only one of a number of ways in which we are in possible danger of infringing upon the parks—it would have a deleterious effect on the number of tourists who came to this country and there would be far more likelihood that if one were to remove the lungs from the centre of London by doing away with the parks as they are, London would be a poorer place and, in my view, which I hope is the view of the House also, fewer people would come.

People who live in London tend to underestimate the beauty of this city. One of the beauties of this city to anyone who goes abroad and returns to London, especially from the United States, is that it is a joyous pleasure to come back to a city like London which has space about it and a certain amount of graciousness. One of the real features of the Metropolis as we know it today, and which makes London a very good city in which to live and an enjoyable place in which to be and to work, is that within five minutes of this building, if I walk out of it and cross Parliament Square, I can be in one of the Royal Parks—St. James's Park—and walk through there to Green Park. If I really want seclusion at a quarter past one on a Friday, if I were to go from here into Hyde Park and walk into Kensington Gardens I would get seclusion and at least the illusion of being in the country although I am in the middle of London. This illusion and this comparatively small amount of solitude that one gets in a Metropolis of this sort is desperately important to preserve. The Bill, if passed, would be one more tiny encroachment upon the parks, and this I would be very much against. I hope that for these reasons the House will reject it.

The hon. Member for Barons Court (Mr. Richard) spoke about going over to the Continent and not being attracted by something that might be going on in a park, and he mentioned Paris. I am interested in the hon. Member's views, having been a diplomat before I entered the House of Commons and having lived in various capitals.

People go to Vienna to visit the Prater, the park there, with the fair and the famous Vienna Wheel. That is an attraction in a park which, in that capital city, has quite an effect on the tourist trade.

I am not sure whether the hon. Member was interrupting the end of my speech or whether I am interrupting him. May I put two points to him? First, surely nobody really goes to Vienna to go to the circus. What people do if they are in Vienna is to enjoy the city. That is an entirely different matter. Surely, the part of London which is analogous to the Tivoli in Copenhagen or the Prater in Vienna is already provided by Battersea Park. It may not be up to the standard of Vienna or Copenhagen, but there is no justification for encroaching on the Royal Parks in the centre of London when, if one wants to do it, one can expand the facilities already provided on the South Bank in Battersea Park and thereby provide much the same facilities. Thirdly, surely more people go to Vienna to look at the woods than go to the Prater.

That was a fairly generous intervention which I was glad to allow the hon. Member. Having lived in that city on duty, however, I dispute what he says. It was extraordinary the large number of people who came to Austria from abroad and said that they particularly wanted to visit the Prater and the Wheel. Admittedly, they had seen a famous film and this had, no doubt, had something to do with it. The Wienerwald, the Vienna Woods, are well outside the city. Congenial as they are, they were not such an object of concern or interest to incoming tourists.

I dispute what the hon. Member for Barons Court has said. There is no doubt that things of this kind are a great attraction to tourists. Having lived abroad in other capital and large cities, including New York, to which the hon. Member referred, I believe that there is quite a lot to be said for what my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Sir Harmar Nicholls) is putting forward in his Bill.

The Second Reading of the Bill was moved by an hon. Member who is not a London Member and we have had a series of speeches from London Members about the fact that the Bill represents rather the demand of the provinces for what should happen in the capital city.

The demand contained in the Bill, in the interest of tourist trade facilities to allow any part of any Royal Park at appropriate seasons to be used as an enclosure for the purpose of accommodating a circus, is really a demand that we should afford to a provincial Member a right which has so far not been demanded by a London Member.

This raises the conflict, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Barons Court (Mr. Richard) referred, of what is the right of the citizen of a capital city with all the attractions which it naturally has as against the views of a provincial Member who spends a large amount of his time in the capital, who has a certain view towards it and who then suggests what rights or extensions of purpose London should have as a city as against a place where people should live, find their enjoyment and seek their recreation. That is the main conflict.

I agree with the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Sharples), who protested in much the same kind of terms to this kind of method being adopted, that although we have a provincial view, London is a capital city and the rights of those resident within it should be well and truly recognised.

The set up in parks, certainly in provincial towns, is not to open them up for secondary or fringe purposes to find means whereby other forms of entertainment can be provided for other than the citizens themselves. We have seen many parks in the North-West disappear because of pressure, in cities like Manchester and Liverpool, for example, where the demand is for even a tiny section of the centre of the city to he preserved with grass and trees because of the great limitations on what people do after working hours. The good thing about the centre of London for its citizens is that they can use its parks, they can use the centre of the city, whereas many large provincial cities literally die when work ceases or the office closes. It is a good thing to see a city living and functioning in this way when otherwise its people would naturally be returning home.

A matter which is pinpointed by the Bill is that the demand is largely to use central London parks for the purposes provided for by the Bill while Greenwich and Richmond Parks would not be used for those purposes. Hyde Park would be the focus where the circus could go on its frolicsome way. The people of London would not be consulted as to what the appropriate season would be, The aim would be to find where the tourist trade could gain best from the circumstances.

As an hon. Member from the North-West, which has problems of this kind, and where we want parks to exist for people to find recreation, I recognise that the people of London have a right to say what happens in their parks even though they be Royal Parks. The kind of proposals made by this Bill would destroy some of the beauty of the parks. As that should not be permitted, I would strongly oppose the Measure.

An hon. Friend has referred to the hundred and one side issues when a park is used as a place of entertainment. We have to consider the movement of traffic in towns and the question of planning. We are concerned about the siting of buildings. We are also concerned about the preservation of open spaces which afford for all time the right of people to be able to wander among grass, trees and flowers. This is not a "cissified" attitude but a matter of considering the rights of people. When considering setting up a circus we have to take into account traffic movement and location. We should make sure that a visitor to a capital city may be provided with circuses if he wants that sort of thing, but not at the expense of those who want to use the Royal Parks for the relaxation that such open spaces automatically provide.

I did not have the, pleasure of hearing the hon. Member for Peterborough (Sir Harmar Nicholls), but I am told that there was reference to the suggestion that the circus should be sited, where there were football pitches, which would provide a large open space. It was suggested that if the space were large enough for two or three football pitches it could be a site for a permanent or semi-permanent circus. If a site has football pitches on it, why should those facilities be taken away and people who want to play football in the winter and cricket in the summer be deprived of that possibility so that a site can be provided in a large metropolis with the idea of having a dollar-earning kind of attraction? What is the right of the person living in the city? What provision is to be made there at all times to enable people to retire to open spaces for recreation? I do not think that a Bill of this kind should be accepted, because we would lose so much which is provided for visitors and for some permanent residents.

I am gratified to find this unexpected interest on the part of hon. Members opposite in my constituency. I have an additional reason for speaking on this subject. Not only would this Bill legislate about my constituency, but I am also a member of the Showmen's Guild and furthermore, on occasions a practising member of it. I am certain that I am the only Member of this House who has actually put on a circus—which generated a great deal of pleasure and a somewhat lesser quantity of money.

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the Royal Parks of London include Kensington Gardens, Greenwich Park, Richmond Park and Bushy Park?

The hon. Member for Barons Court (Mr. Richard) is equally aware that the proposal refers to Hyde Park. I have only one point to make so that hon. Members opposite can get on with it. The whole essence of a circus is that it should be temporary. The charm of a circus is that it is here for three days and then gone and that there is grass underneath it. Those who have been to Battersea Park and have seen what has happened there will see my point about that. Provided that a circus did not give rise to any permanent works of any sort or kind, I would wholeheartedly support this Measure, but not otherwise.

The House has had a most interesting debate which has arisen in a rather curious way. The hon. Member for Peterborough (Sir Harmar Nicholls) introduced a Bill which specifically referred to circuses, although he went much wider in his speech and the debate has also gone wider. This is within the compass of the Bill, of course, and within the rules of order. I am grateful about that.

I must say something about the circus proposal, but I also welcome the fact that the House has had an opportunity to discuss the Royal Parks. In the course of that discussion a number of suggestions have been made about ways in which their service to the public might be improved. I shall mention some of those suggestions and I shall study all of them with great care. The hon. Member for Peterborough explained that he was unable to stay for the conclusion of this debate because of another appointment. I think he was a little modest about the degree of interest there would be in his Measure and he did not expect the debate to go on to the extent it has.

I have been very much encouraged by the views expressed on both sides of the House, which support the view that I take very strongly indeed and which has been taken by my predecessors of both parties over many years. That is, it is absolutely vital that we preserve the Royal Parks as places for recreation for the public at large and that we preserve them as places of relative peace and quiet and tranquility in the midst of London. These are famous parks. They are famous for a good deal of beauty within their boundaries and for the way in which the trees, grass, lakes and flower beds are blended with each other and the way in which they are cared for.

This is something which none of us have a right to take for granted. It is something which is the result of very hard and conscientious work by the staff of the parks. As the responsible Minister I pay tribute to them. I have had the pleasure since I have held this office to visit most of the Royal Parks—not all of them, but I hope to visit the others before long. I have met the staff there and it is encouraging to see the work which is being done in the parks by gardeners, park-keepers, carpenters and industrial workers of all kinds with a variety of skills. Among them are old servants who have spent a lifetime in the work and also many young people including those who come in under apprenticeship schemes as gardeners, boys and girls. All this means that the public are able to enjoy the parks. I used the phrase "the public at large". This means not only Londoners but visitors to London, whether they come from other parts of the United Kingdom or from overseas. I shall develop that point because the hon. Member for Peterborough based his case on the need to make London more attractive to visitors.

It has been the policy of successive Governments for a long time to restrict encroachments on the Royal Parks. It has not always been so. The history of the Royal Parks has been rather chequered. We owe it to two of our monarchs, who are not always held in high esteem—King Charles I and King Charles II—more than to others, although we owe it to others as well—for the gesture which originally made the Royal Parks available to the general public.

There have been a number of attempts to reverse the trend. My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. Carol Johnson) mentioned Queen Caroline. My hon. Friend the Member for Barons Court (Mr. Richard) mentioned the Prince Regent. The prize example is Oliver Cromwell, who actually sold Hyde Park for £17,000. I do not know what the current figure would be. Fortunately, the park was restored to public use after the Restoration. If I had been going to make a more polemical speech than I am, I might have been tempted to suggest that the hon. Member for Peterborough was in the tradition of Cromwell and Queen Caroline. However, the hon. Gentleman to some extent withdrew this morning from the position he adopted when he spoke on these matters on his Motion under the Ten Minutes Rule.

The policy of preserving the Royal Parks becomes more urgent as time passes. Lord Chatham was quoted in his day as expressing the view that the Royal Park were the lungs of London. If that was so then, it is very much more so in the 1960s and, indeed, may become more so as time passes. The vast urban sprawl of London has become too big, too crowded, too saturated with traffic. All the physical and nervous pressures of living in a vast and crowded conurbation are pressing more and more upon our lives.

Very large parts of London are desperately short of open space. There are three concentric circles. There is the inner area which contains the Royal Parks. Then there is the middle area, those parts of London which developed before the First World War. I am thinking, for example, of my own constituency of East Ham, North, and of many areas at a similar distance from the centre, where there is a desperate shortage of open space and where the community consists of closely packed terrace houses, road after road, and very little open space. Then there is the area further out which was developed between the wars and in the post-war period, where much more attention has been paid to proper town and country planning and to the provision of open space. It is clearly a priceless asset for Londoners and for visitors to London to have the Royal Parks, and particularly the great central group of Royal Parks. on which most of the debate has been focused.

I advise hon. Members, when they are feeling rather jaded after too many hours in this place, that one of the best things they can do is to take a walk from here to the far end of Kensington Gardens. My hon. Friend the Member for Ash-field (Mr. Marquand) tells me that he has done this. He does not look any the worse for it. It is a distance of 3½ miles, or seven miles both ways. I suspect that my hon. Friend did not manage it both ways. At any rate, it is to be recommended to anyone who is in search of exercise and fresh air.

What is the proposal before the House? The Bill concentrates on a proposal to allow circuses in the Royal Parks. Although the hon. Member for Peterborough said that he had wider purposes in mind. I must devote a few moments to the proposal about circuses. In the speech the hon. Member made on 8th November, when he, sought leave to introduce the Bill, he stated his purpose rather more narrowly. He was concerned that Bertram Mills' circus should have a home in Hyde Park when its lease runs out at Olympia.

Even if I were disposed to agree to a proposal about circuses in general, which I am not, it, would be very much more difficult to confine permission to one circus. Hon. Members will not be surprised to hear that, after the publicity that occurred following the hon. Member's speech under the Ten Minutes Rule, the Ministry very soon received a letter from the proprietors of another circus asking, "What about us? Can we be considered as well?"

On the proposal to have circuses in the Royal Parks, the hon. Member for Peterborough obviously completely underestimated the effect. He spoke of the temporary use of football pitches in Hyde Park to provide a site for a circus. As several hon. Members have said—I need not develop the point at any great length—the provision of ground for a circus involves a very large area, particularly if it is to be a circus such as Bertram Mills', with its high reputation and the scale of its entertainment. Not only is there the big top, but also the animal cages, the accommodation for staff and for performers, the accommodation for the general public, the provision of toilets, restaurants, extra drainage, water and electricity facilities, and the very heavy traffic which would be going to and from the circus.

As the hon. Gentleman said in his speech on 8th November, all of this would be taking place in the summer, as he proposed, at a time when the Park is in the greatest demand from the public for other purposes. The effect of all this activity on the Park would not be confined to that period, serious as it is. Grass would be left churned up and might take many months to restore. The Park would be robbed of much of its attraction, not only at the time, but afterwards. It would be absolutely inconsistent with the concept of the Royal Parks as nearly every hon. Member who has spoken has understood it to be.

Further, if we were concerned to allow commercial entertainments into the Royal Parks, it is very doubtful whether giving the concession to circuses and not to other people would be justified on public grounds. I was very impressed by the well-informed and sincere speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, West (Mr. Bob Brown). There is growing concern about the question of cruelty in the training of circus animals. Without going into that controversy to any extent, I feel that I can make a personal point at this juncture and say that, whatever the degree of cruelty, I am not sure that it is acceptable to me, or that it ought to be acceptable to people generally, that we should seek entertainment in the form of watching animals perform difficult tricks.

Watching the human side of a circus—the clowns and the other performers—is another matter. I find watching the animals to some extent repugnant and there are grave doubts about the cruelty which is involved in the training of animals. Therefore, if the House were disposed to think in terms of circuses exclusively, I believe that we should run into a great deal of criticism from those who are concerned about these matters.

To be fair to the hon. Member for Peterborough, he went on to say that he had a rather more modest objective than might be expected from reading the Bill. He said that he was anxious that we should consider whether the existing legislation was too restrictive and whether the Minister of Public Building and Works should have greater power to grant permission, when he thought fit, for activities in the Royal Parks which were prohibited by the existing legislation.

I listened to that point very carefully. It is a question I have thought about in the past. I will go with the hon. Gentleman to the extent of saying that I should give more consideration to that in future. My inclination is that the state of the law at the moment, although the law is old and might be considered to be in some ways illogical, fits almost exactly with public policy as it should be pursued and as I believe that most hon. Members who have taken part in the debate would think that it should be pursued

Admittedly, there are cases on the border line. For example, there has recently been an application to hold a Shakespeare exhibition in Hyde Park. My Ministry took the view that this was outside the legal limitations. There was the proposal to hold the Richmond Royal Horse Show in Richmond Park.

The granting of permission for this was also held to be outside the legal powers of my Ministry. I think that such cases are arguable. It could be argued that cases of that kind could be consistent with the present concept of the Royal Parks and would not rob them of the general amenities that people consider valuable. On the other hand, in this case as in all cases, I suggest that one should not always argue from the marginal point of view. It is always possible, on the margin of any argument, to produce cases which seem anomalous to many people.

In general, we hold the line against the many demands which are made for the use of the Royal Parks, and I think that the law as it stands helps us to do so, as the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Sharples) said. However, I think I should point out that I have the power under the legislation and regulations to agree to some activities in the Royal Parks if these are consistent with the amenities of the Parks and if the enclosure of any area is done by the Ministry and is not leased out to some private individual or private organisation.

Within that category come some other things which have been mentioned in the debate. For example, Son et Lumière can be held in the Royal Parks and, indeed, has been held already twice at Greenwich. I would only make this comment about Son et Lumière: it is a most valuable development, particularly when it takes place in relation to a building of especial historic or architectural interest. During last summer I saw Son et Lumière at Hampton Court and at Salisbury Cathedral, and I thought that both of these performances were first-class. They enabled people to see historic buildings in a new perspective and to learn details about them in the form of an entertainment or to learn more in a pleasant way than they would by the more conventional methods of seeing those buildings.

On the whole, the Royal Parks do not lend themselves very much to Son et Lumière because they do not have this kind of building in their midst. Greenwich may be an exception, but if one is speaking of the central parks in particular I would not a agree that their is a great deal of scope for Son et Lumière.

I hope the right hon. Gentleman will never allow any more son in my constituency. I receive more letters on the subject of noise in the centre of London than on any other single topic. I hope that any suggestion of further noise in Westminster will be squashed. Let us have Lumière of all sorts, political and physical, but no more son please.

I take the point and that is just the kind of consideration that we and many others would be studying if ever we were to get a proposal of this kind.

Similarly, we are able to provide for catering in the Royal Parks because this is clearly a purpose consistent with the park amenities. I was interested to hear the remarks about the deficiencies of catering for example in St. James Park by my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Alan Lee Williams) and Greenwich by my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, North (Mr. Moyle). All this will be studied. We have plans in preparation for improvements in the catering in St. James Park and I hope that within the next year or two these will take effect. Our plans for Greenwich Park, are not yet developed to such a point, but we are giving study to the matter which will be reinforced by what has been said in the debate today.

My hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Crayford (Mr. Wellbeloved) talked about the benefits of camping which he suggested we should develop in the Royal Parks. When he did so, one of my hon. Friends passed me a note but, in view of what was contained in it, I think I had better not say which of my hon. Friends sent it. The note said that he did not think that particular proposal would be well-beloved. At any rate, I can tell the House that there is no legal bar to allowing camping in the Royal Parks, but it is not a feature that we thought we ought to encourage on a large scale. Again, this is because of the effect it would have on the park as a whole, the amount of space that would be needed and the general inconvenience to the park users.

Generally, I can tell the House that we receive very large numbers of applications from people who want to use the Royal Parks for all kinds of purposes. I cannot give a figure because many of these applications are made by telephone. Certainly the volume of correspondence is considerable. It comes from people who have a commercial enterprise in mind and also from many others who want to stage an event for charitable purposes. They represent many causes that most of us would want to support, and some others that most of us would not want to support. I see only a small percentage of such letters personally, more particularly those which are backed by hon. Members who write to me about them. But during the few months that I have been doing this job I have been convinced that it is only possible to preserve the character of the Royal Parks if we take a very rigid attitude to these applications. Certainly there are some that have come in about which I have felt, "This is a good cause and I should like to help it; does one exception matter?" But I think that the sheer volume of these applications is such that if we made any concessions in that direction we could very soon reach the position where we had destroyed completely the atmosphere of the Royal Parks as we have come to appreciate it.

The hon. Member for Peterborough—I am glad that he has now been able to return to the debate—made a very important point about tourism. May I say, if it needs saying, that I agree with him that tourism clearly must play a very big part in the earning of foreign currency. It ought to play a growing part. It is up to the Government and public authorities in this country to help and encourage it wherever possible. I accept that absolutely. I think that was the strongest point that he made.

Of course, it could be argued that because it is so vital to Britain, the balance of payments should be the paramount consideration and that whatever I and others have said about the Royal Parks is secondary to that one particular issue. But I am bound to agree with more than one hon. Member who has said that it does not follow that the provision either of circuses or of other entertainment in the Royal Parks would on balance be a help to tourism. I would have thought that people overseas choosing to come to this country would not specifically come here because they wanted to see a circus. But then it could be argued that they would come here if they thought that London was a gay city and if there was plenty of entertainment, and that therefore a secure home for the circus would help to create this image in their minds. This may be so for some people, but I am absolutely certain that for many others the Royal Parks as they are, with the amenities they present and with the atmosphere they have, are at least as strong an inducement and, I would have thought, on the whole a stronger one. Indeed, I would have thought that people travel abroad to find what is unique in the places they visit. Circuses happen all over the place. The Royal Parks in London are quite different from anything which is available in other similar cities in the world.

I accept the logic of what the right hon. Gentleman says. People would come here specially to go to the parks. They would not come here specially to see the circus, Son et Lumière or a dancing display. But once they are here, what entertainment we provide decides how much they spend. When people walk along Oxford Street, what is in the shop windows and behind the counters decides what they spend. That is the point that I made when I referred to helping the balance of trade figures.

I accept that, but I still do not feel that it adds up to a case for using the Royal Parks in such a way as to make a material contribution to what visitors would spend. If we were to affect the balance of payments materially by this means we would have to make a major incursion into the Royal Parks. We would no longer be talking about a marginal activity. We would make a major incursion which would be destructive of their atmosphere. Since the hon. Member introduced his Ten Minutes Rule Motion, we have had a number of letters protesting against the proposals and hoping that we would resist them. Some of those have come from overseas. There was one from an American addressed to my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell), my predecessor in office, saying that he understood that my right hon. Friend was the Member of Parliament for Hyde Park and hoping that he would use that office to resist the proposal in the hon. Gentleman's Bill.

Seriously, I feel that, if one looks at both sides of the question in relation to the tourism argument, admittedly, a very important argument, there is more to be said for preserving the Royal Parks as they are than on the other side presented by the hon. Gentleman.

I conclude in this way. I am flatly against the specific proposal in the Bill regarding circuses, and so, to a greater or lesser extent, I think, have been all hon. Members who have taken part in the debate. As regards the more general proposition that the law should be made more flexible, although I shall think further about it, I can do so only in the sense that I feel at the moment that, on balance, the law is about right in relation to public policy regarding the Royal Parks. Even if they are considered a bit old-fashioned and anomalous, the legal limits at the moment do not impose any real burden on me, and are not likely to do so on any other Minister in this office, if we start from the standpoint that we want to preserve the character of the Royal Parks.

The Royal Parks are a great national asset. I think that we should preserve them as they are, while trying to make improvements in catering and other matters of the kind mentioned by hon. Members today. Nevertheless, although resisting the Bill, I say at once that the hon. Gentleman has done a service by enabling us to have a debate today. The debate has ranged widely, more widely than I expected when I came into the Chamber, and it has brought forth a lot of suggestions and ideas on this important topic.

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

I am grateful to the House for giving me the opportunity to move the Second Reading of this Bill, and in so doing I cannot but reiterate what I said when I was given leave to introduce the Bill and pay another tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Central (Mr. Edward Short). My right hon. Friend persisted for many years, in face of objections from right hon. Gentlemen opposite who blocked his Travel Concessions Bill for a long time. He had to wait until 1964 and the return of a Labour Government to see an injustice, particularly for the old folk, put right. I sincerely hope that right hon. and hon. Members opposite will not wish to object to my Bill today.

There is no doubt that many thousands of old and disabled people who benefited from the Travel Concessions Act, 1964, are extremely grateful for the concessions which it made possible. However, like many good Acts of Parliament, that Measure has revealed anomalies in operation. Although it has been a great boon to many thousands of old-age pensioners and disabled people, it is operating unfairly against thousands of others, and this is what the present Bill would put right.

I give the House an example. In my constituency, every qualified disabled person or old person—the qualifying age is 60 for a woman and 65 for a man—now enjoys the benefit of concessions granted by the Newcastle City Council. Across the road, however, still within the boundaries of my constituency, there live about 4,000 qualified people within the area of the Newburn Urban District Council. That figure can only be an estimate because it is impossible to get accurate figures, but I assume that there are about 4,000 people there who, if they lived on the other side of the road within the City of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. would benefit from concessions under the 1964 Act. The area of Newburn District Council is served by Newcastle Corporation transport and by private transport operators operating along the same route. The local authority service is augmented by a private service. Because of the terms of the 1964 Act, however, the local council is precluded from paying any subsidy in respect of a private bus operator, so that people living on a route which is served entirely by a private operator are precluded for ever as the Act stands. One of the Clauses of my Bill would put that anomaly right.

To illustrate the second anomaly, I again use the example of the Newburn area. The council can pay a subsidy for corporation transport in respect of that part of a journey within the boundaries of the urban district. A qualified person, on reaching the boundary of the Newcastle City Council has to pay the full fare. This is a ridiculous state of affairs, and, as I said in my Ten Minute Rule speech, it is being used as a peg on which local authorities can hang their hat and evade acceptance of their responsibility to provide the concessions which the 1964 Act empowers them to give.

The same applies to the Newbiggin Hall estate. Although this is not in my constituency, I feel some moral responsibility for the 500 or so old folk living there because every one of them was formerly resident in the City of Newcastle, and many of them were, indeed, resident within my own constituency. These people take it badly that, as a result of the city council's redevelopment proposals, they are compelled to move outside the city boundaries so that, after having enjoyed travel concessions there for about two and a half years, they are now deprived of them. This takes some explaining to elderly people, and they feel strongly about it.

I am grateful for the support I have had from the Newbiggin Hall Labour Party on this matter. If I had received the same goodwill from the Castle Ward Rural District Council, which administers the estate, the plight of the old folk of Newbiggin Hall would have been greatly improved. I take a poor view of a rural district council which delegates to its clerk the duty of making excuses for its failure to offer concessions to its elderly people living on the Newbiggin Hall estate, using the medium of the correspondence columns of the local Press to do so. Unfortunately, the clerk simply has not understood the existing law. He wrote a letter to the Newcastle Evening Chronicle saying that if the council provided concessions to these old people of Newbiggin Hall estate, they would have to pay an increased fare. Clearly he does not understand the Act, because the Act lays it down clearly that concessions can be made consisting of free travel or anything between free travel and the full fare. Surely if the administrators of the Newbiggin Hall estate—that is, the Castle Ward Rural District Council—were to give the concession of free fares there would be no question at all of the old folk on the estate having to pay more.

If I may be so bold as to hope that I shall have the support of my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport, may I point out that any amending legislation is made much more difficult by the type of agreement which at present operates between the private bus company operators and local authority operators. There is the anomalous situation in which along the same route one can have a corporation transport undertaking operating and two private bus operators and on that route there can be two different forms of agreement between the local authority undertaking and the private bus operator. I appeal to local authorities who run their services in conjunction with private operators to get down to the job of establishing a common operating agreement throughout the country, because I am certain that it would make it much easier for my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport to get on to amending legislation quickly if local authorities nationally achieved a common operating agreement.

I do not want to repeat at great length any of the points which I made when I first introduced the Bill. While I have specifically mentioned old-age pensioners, the present Act makes no reference to old-age pensioners. It refers to men over 65 years of age and women over 60 years of age as being qualified persons under the Act. Nevertheless, all of us in considering the matter have old-age pensioners in mind, because, by and large, these are the people who experience hardship when they are moved from the centre of a city, where they have spent all their lives, where they have brought up their families and where they have seen their grandchildren grow up and are put like expendable material five, six, seven or eight miles from the city centre. Moreover, instead of having to pay the bus fares to which they were accustomed in the city, say 2d. or 3d., they are faced with fares of Is. 6d. or perhaps ls. 10d. if they want to get back into the area where they have lived all their lives and of which they feel a part. These are the people for whom I make a particular plea.

I begin by offering my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, West (Mr. Bob Brown) on his splendid initiative in bringing the Bill forward. My hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport should make it clear in the debate that the Government are willing to accept the Bill because I believe—and this view is shared by my hon. Friends—that the Bill is necessary not only in the provinces but also in the Greater London area.

I want to speak, in particular, about the Greater London area. For some time people concerned with the welfare of the elderly and the retired in the Greater London area, in the London boroughs, have been trying to devise some machinery whereby elderly retired people could have reduced fares on London Transport buses. A number of London boroughs have taken this matter up with the London Transport organisation but—and this is one of the reasons why I am making this speech—I am afraid that, so far at least, there has been no concession on the part of London Transport. In the Greater London area it is virtually impossible for retired people to get reduced fares on London's buses or trains, and that is why I am in favour of the Bill.

If it is impossible for London Transport to make this concession, obviously a change in the law is needed. The Act which came into operation shortly after the Labour Government entered office was excellent in so far as it allowed local authorities which run their own transport undertakings to introduce this form of reduced fare, but that does not alter the fact that not only in places mentioned by my hon. Friend but also in the Greater London area where local authorities are not responsible for running London Transport this concession does not apply.

I remember that a year or so ago, when I was a member of the Council of the London Borough of Brent, we made representations to London Transport. My hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt) will support me in what I am saying. In all fairness to London Transport, they said that they would supply tickets in bulk which could be received by the local authority at a discount of 10 per cent., but basically this does not solve the problem, which can be solved only by elderly people being granted reduced fares on London Transport. The view of the Borough of Brent was that it would be extremely difficult to arrange this from an administrative point of view.

Obviously there is a need for new machinery and therefore a need for an extension of the existing Act. Sometimes the argument is advanced that what is required is that elderly retired people should have a fair income and that they should not need this sort of concession. It is argued that this is not the way to deal with the problem. I should be the last to argue that retired people should not have an adequate income, and I am pleased with the progress which has been made since the present Government came into office, with the substantial increase in pensions and the social security minimum which came into operation last November. But I do not accept the argument put forward by some people because I feel that it will be a long time—and most of us are realistic enough to appreciate this—before the majority of elderly people are anywhere near the sort of income that we should like them to have.

That will be a long-term operation, and in the meantime I am in favour of making the kind of concession which makes life easier and more tolerable for the elderly and retired. We have a situation in parts of the country, and certainly in Croydon, where elderly people find it virtually impossible, because of the fare, to visit their relatives and friends six or 10 miles away. They cannot afford what to them is a substantial fare. For example, New Addington, a part of my constituency, is six or eight miles from the central part of Croydon, and the fare from New Addington to the centre of Croydon is 1s. 6d.—3s. for the return journey. It is virtually impossible for many of my constituents living in New Addington to travel to Croydon frequently, let alone to travel further away than the London Borough of Croydon. So there is a need and a great justification for some kind of machinery whereby the present Act could be extended to cover the Greater London area.

In the last few months I have received quite a number of letters from retired people and from various branches of the old-age pensioners' association pressing me to support this sort of Measure. I am certain that the feelings of retired people in many parts of the country are the same as those of people who live in my constituency.

I am willing to concede the point—and I hope my hon. Friend will not mind my saying this—that the Bill which he has introduced may not be the ideal solution for the Greater London area. What I said at the beginning is quite valid, that if the Minister or the Parliamentary Secretary feel that the Bill is not the solution, I hope that the Government will take up the Measure and will introduce an extension to the existing Act within the next six months. A number of hon. Members have raised this matter and the Minister has replied. I do not have the quotation from HANSARD, but she replied stating that the matter is in hand and that she is urgently reviewing the position. That is fair enough, and I expect great things from my right hon. Friend after her great victory yesterday. She has been active in other matters. At the same time I hope that there will not be a long delay before the Government make up their minds and before an extension to the existing Act is introduced.

I conclude by saying that there is no doubt that there is a need to extend the Act either by the Government taking up the Measure or by the present Bill becoming law. Elderly retired people in all parts of the country should be able to receive some assistance, during off-peak hours with their travelling. This is only right and just. I therefore give my hon. Friend my full support.

I should also like to add my support to the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South (Mr. Winnick) must have been referring to me when he raised the argument about the general financial position of pensioners. I was one of those who had grave doubts about the kind of concessions which the 1964 Act provided. There is a grave danger, in looking merely for concessions, that we may overlook the main intention, which is to provide all retired people, and indeed anyone else who falls by the wayside in our community, with a reasonable standard of living. I am sure the House would agree that it is important in a free society not merely that people should have this standard of living, but that they should have freedom of choice in the way in which they make use of what is available to them.

Two things have made me change my mind and have caused me to support the Bill. The first is that the 1964 Act clearly is operating unfairly between one group of retired people and another. Secondly, we are coming to realise, even more so today than in 1964, how very rapidly the whole urban scene is changing. We are seeing very quickly the break-up of old communities. We are seeing people drifting apart, moving out into new communities, perhaps in one local authority area, outside the city boundaries, and going into new towns.

Like my hon. Friend, I represent, to some extent, a fringe area, an area which covers two district authorities, but bordering on a very large city. The kind of problems to which he referred affect my own constituency, particularly in the urban disctrict of Beeston and Stapleford. We had exactly the same kind of problem with the Nottingham City transport department which provides concessions side-by-side with private operators. I hope therefore that we can get this kind of concession going.

I am more and more disturbed at the way in which our community is drifting apart. We have to travel much further, not only to work but also to visit friends and relatives, to visit places of entertainment, and to places of worship. It is quite a problem for the vast majority if us. We are now becoming much more mobile. More and more of us own motor cars and think nothing of travelling long distances to work, to entertainment, and to visit our friends.

But there is this very important and substantial minority in our community, the elderly people. I was very impressed, during the election campaign last year, by the number of old people I met who were only too pleased to meet one simply because it was someone to talk to. Sometimes they had not seen their relatives for weeks, for months, or for years. This awful problem of loneliness would make any hon. Member, canvassing, in an election or between elections in surgeries and on general visits, almost weep. This is real suffering brought about simply because our communities are splitting up.

It is not only a question of providing these kind of facilities, but also of providing those vital facilities that elderly people make use of, such as visits to clinics and chiropodists. It was brought home to me in the last few weeks, when I took up with my right hon. Friend the Postmaster-General the question of provision of sub-post office facilities on a large housing estate, the very large number of elderly people who had moved away from the centre of the town and who, although they were happy with their attractive new homes, were unhappy at being taken away from friends and relatives, and even more unhappy about the difficulty in drawing pensions and supplementary benefits, and about going to the chiropodist and clinics.

All these problems were made very much more difficult simply because my own local authority had engaged very sensibly in housing development and in providing special facilities for elderly people. But unfortunately those facilities were a long way away from the town centre.

We do not know what recommendations will be made by the Royal Commission on Local Government, or what the House will decide about local government when the recommendations are made. But clearly the problem of overlapping authorities and overlapping transport facilities will increase, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary will have some good news for us when he replies to the debate. I hope that if it is good news the House will enable the Bill to become law in the shortest possible time.

There is a rightness in the Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, West (Mr. Bob Brown) in that I am one of those hon. Members who can recall so well the excellent fight put up year after year by his colleague from Newcastle the present Postmaster-General, on the starting point of this Bill. I therefore congratulate him riot only on introducing a first-class Bill but on following the worthy traditions of that part of the world.

The hon. Member for Croydon, South (Mr. Winnick) expressed a point of view which is very prevalent in my constituency of Willesden, West, which is part of the London Borough of Brent. The Parliamentary Secretary will recall that he recently replied to me in connection with a deputation that I had received from the Stonebridge old-age pensioners' organisation. About 400 members were campaigning very vigorously, and I am grateful to the Parliamentary Secretary for the helpful reply which he sent to me on that occasion.

Those of us who live in the Greater London area are not able at present to do as much as we would like to do. The London Borough of Brent endeavoured to take this matter as far as it possibly could with the London Transport Executive. It was able to do that only because it had at that time recently acquired autonomous powers following the London Government Bill. This would have been a matter for the Middlesex County Council. I am certain that a number of boroughs in the Greater London area are in the same position as my own, wanting to do more for their elderly people than they are at present able to do, and the Bill will enable them to go on with the kind of job they have in mind.

I would emphasise the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Gardner) on the subject of loneliness. I have a special interest in health matters, as the House knows. One of the great problems with elderly people is breaking down the feeling that they want to withdraw into themselves, that they do not ant to go out because it becomes an effort and a burden. We can do what we like with social security, meals on wheels and other schemes to try to make their lives a little fuller and more in the present and less in the past, but loneliness is something for which we cannot legislate. We cannot give people company and friendship by passing an Act of Parliament.

However, what my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-on-Tyne, West has done is the next best thing—facilitating the ways in which loneliness can be broken down. On that ground alone I hope not only that the Joint Parliamentary Secretary will give us good news about the Bill but that the whole House will applaud its intention, and that hon. Members will seek not only to pass the Bill but to do all they can in their constituencies and work to further the intentions that my hon. Friend has had in promoting the Bill.

I intervene to give the Government's view on the Bill put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, West (Mr. Bob Brown) before the House comes to a decision on the Second Reading. I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend on introducing this Bill on Second Reading. He is in the strong tradition of those from the North-East Coast who, in this House, have agitated for the granting of travel concessions, as I shall mention in the course of giving a little history about the background to the Bill.

The history of the legislation on travel concessions is interesting. Many municipal undertakings have built up over many years a strong tradition of granting free travel or reduced fares to various classes of travellers on their municipal buses, not only children but old-age pensioners, the blind, the disabled, and others. When we examine the history, we find that this practice went undisputed until 1955 when it was successfully challenged in the courts in a case against Birmingham Corporation as having insufficient authority in law. It was because of that decision that all municipal authority concessions were placed in jeopardy.

Then my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Central (Mr. Edward Short), the present Postmaster-General, 12 years ago introduced his first Private Member's Bill. At that time it would, if passed, have secured for all local authorities the powers to grant these concessions on municipal transport which they had until that case thought that they could grant. But the Government of that day were prepared to go only so far as to confirm the powers of the municipal authorities for the concessions that they were then granting, and my right hon. Friend's Bill, with the then Government's support, passed in that form to become the Travel Concessions Act, 1955.

I am very glad to say that this by no means satisfied many Labour and progressive authorities which wished to see an extension of the powers to grant concessionary fares. Thus, one of the first acts of the present Government when they came to power in October, 1964, was to introduce a Bill which restored to local authorities their freedom to arrange for these concessions on municipal transport. That Bill was very quickly passed, and became, I think the first Act of Parliament under the present Government, the Travel Concessions Act, 1964.

However, I agree with my hon. Friend that experience since 1964 has shown that some local authorities are still placed in an anomalous position and are not able to give the concessions that they want to grant. Some of these difficulties arise because the concessions, as matters stand, cannot be arranged on non-municipal buses. This, as my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South (Mr. Winnick) will know, also affects those which are nationalised buses, and, therefore, includes London Transport. Some of these difficulties arise in the granting of concessions on municipal buses. This is because of the way in which the present Acts are drafted.

In, for example, the Newcastle-upon-Tyne area there are examples of these kinds of difficulty both in the fringe areas and where there are non-municipal buses.

For these reasons, my right hon. Friend last year put in hand a full-scale review of the position under the Travel Concessions Act, 1964. She circularised all the local authority and bus operator associations in order to collect information about how existing travel concession schemes were working, what they were costing and what sort of anomalies were existing, and she asked for their views on what powers the local authorities considered they needed and what classes of persons should be the beneficiaries under any extension of the powers to grant travel concessions.

My right hon. Friend has received very helpful replies from the local authority associations. It is clear to us that there are a number of points to be considered: first of all, in connection with the present powers, which are not, I am afraid, free from ambiguity under the present laws; and, secondly, in connection with the proposition that the powers should be extended to non-municipal transport. There are a number of problems, for example, where municipal and non-municipal services are linked in a certain way so as to prevent the granting of concessions on municipal buses; where municipal and non-municipal services operate in an area but the concessions can be given only on the municipal services; and, of course, in the areas which are served by non-municipal transport. So it will be appreciated that when we get outside the realm of municipal transport undertakings, we are in a much wider field in terms of the kinds of local authority, the kinds of transport operator, and the kinds of service provided.

My right hon. Friend has felt that reviews and consultations have been essential in order to deal with this matter since the Travel Concession Acts are somewhat complex and the powers under them rest with the local authorities to exercise. We lay down no view nationally as to what concessions they grant. These are permissive powers that are put in the hands of the local authorities. My right hon. Friend has now received the comprehensive background information that she needed, and she is considering this to ascertain what amending legislation on a national basis may be necessary, to remove the anomalies and to meet the quite understandable demands that the power to grant concessionary facilities should be extended.

I would tell my hon. Friend that the Minister is not yet ready to put forward any definite proposals, but I can assure the House that in the very near future she will be making a statement on the subject. We appreciate very seriously the difficulties which my hon. Friend is seeking to remedy in his Bill. Therefore, on behalf of the Government I can state that we are in full sympathy with the objects of the Bill—on Second Reading it is the principles of the Bill that we are discussing—which my hon. Friend has presented, though I must, of course, reserve the position of my right hon. Friend on the detailed matters which would be discussed in Committee and which will undoubtedly be the subject of a statement by her in the near future. On that basis, I advise the House that we find my hen. Friend's objectives perfectly acceptable.

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

In moving the Second Reading of the Bill, I am conscious of a privilege. The House has been well served over the years by right hon. and hon. Members who themselves have suffered a disability and yet succeeded in serving this House well. In trying to put forward a Bill which I believe will help deaf people considerably, I follow the tradition set by the late Edward Evans, who used to be the hon. Member for Lowestoft and who for many years was recognised as the spokesman for the deaf in this House. Since he left the House in 1959, no voice has been identified with the disability of deafness and therefore it is a privilege for me to be able to follow in the footsteps of my late colleague.

This is a difficult Bill because it does not fall easily into compartments or categories. It has a number of provisions. It seeks to ensure that the prescription, fitting and servicing of a prosthetic appliance—a hearing aid—is only done by professionally qualified people. This is the only prosthetic device to aid a disability which is not fully regulated or governed in some form or another.

Despite the fact that there may seem to be a parallel with the case of spectacles for those whose eyesight is failing, there is in fact no genuine parallel because the fitting of a hearing aid which is not the right appliance for a person's disability cannot impair the hearing mechanism of that person, whereas a pair of spectacles, such as could be bought from Woolworths at one time, could definitely impair the eyesight of the wearer.

So, on strict health grounds, I cannot put up a case that it is right that there should be professional standards of fitting and making appliances for people wearing commercial hearing aids because, unless there are professional standards, the mechanism of the ear will be impaired. In the same way, it is difficult to say, however, that a paraplegic cannot get about in some way or another in spite of his disability and that no further deterioration will occur if we do not provide him with an invalid carriage.

What I am seeking is to give protection to the person who goes to a hearing aid manufacturer or supplier so that he is able to be assured that the appliance he buys will assist in his problem and will not add to the difficulties that can arise for a person trying to cope with a disability in the community at large and. in addition, lead to his being harassed and in a state of nervous anxiety because he is trying to cope inadequately through bad professional service.

I have had a shoal of letters since the House gave me leave to introduce the Bill. I quoted on the previous occasion a case in my constituency and I want to emphasise the importance of this to people who are hard of hearing. About 2¼ million people in this country are affected by hearing disability, of whom about 800,000 or perhaps 1 million are already catered for by the Medresco aid issued by the National Health Service. I have a letter here from a Harley Street specialist an otolaryngologist. He said:

"As a doctor over forty years, I hear and have heard plenty of complaints of those high pressure salesmen who get £60–£100 from poor old people with startling promises of what they can expect and in the end no real result. It is to my mind the biggest racket of all".

I have another letter from a Kent doctor. It is a long letter detailing the case of one of his patients. He says

"A patient of mine, a spinster in her 70s and severely crippled with arthritis, so that it is all she can do to get the 300 yards to church …"

bought an aid. When she complained that it did not help, the salesman "bullied" her and said that it was much too soon for her to give up. After more pleading, the firm eventually said that it did not suit her but that a second aid was just the job. It then admitted a further mistake and said that what she really needed was Model No. 3. The doctor adds:

"You may be interested to learn that she was now £120 out of pocket. … This has taken most of her life's savings."

My colleagues on the Front Bench can duplicate that story time and again—stories of people who have been trying to cope with their deafness or who have been in the situation where relatives have got tired of shouting and have said, "Grandfather is not really deaf. He can hear when he wants to," and persuaded him to try an aid. My problem here is that the disability of deafness gets the least sympathy from the public of all disabilities and part of the objective of this Bill is to give deaf people the kind of sympathy that other disabilities attract, and at least that they can have a fair deal.

As I have said, everyone will accept the need to try to do something and the Bill falls into two distinct categories. The first half is that which requires professional standards. One cannot sell a prosthetic device in the same way as one can sell a vacuum cleaner. The Board of Trade can test a cleaner and judge its advertisements and so on. But when a person is deaf he does not lose the whole range of hearing and can amplify all sounds. It will be easy for you, Mr. Speaker, to imagine a keyboard which has lost five notes in one place and five in another. It is the same with a deaf person. He has lost notes here and there. If, therefore, a hearing aid amplifies all sounds the result is confusion worse confounded.

Therefore, if we are to protect the person who buys a hearing aid, that aid must suit the particular disability and must be prescribed and fitted in the same way as any other prosthetic device may be fitted to a disabled person. It is because these devices do not fall easily within the category of Board of Trade protection for consumers that the Ministry of Health comes into the picture.

I have said that there is no immediate damage to the mechanism of the ear and, therefore, inevitably a large proportion of the Bill must be reckoned to be consumer protection. I want to deal with some of the aspects that will arise if the Bill becomes law and which might be used as objections to the Bill going forward in its present form. Incidentally, I accept that no Private Member's Bill is ever perfect in form and I should be delighted to receive further help in getting it nearer to perfection. I seek the statutory registration of people who deal in these aids. This would not be a professional body directing and governing itself. My proposal is much wider.

The Bill would provide that the council would consist of 42 per cent. coming from people who actually manufacture, supply, retail or import hearing aids and, for want of a generic terms, in the Bill I have called them traders. But 58 per cent, of the council would be die consumers, the audiologists, the doctors and consultants and representatives of interests like the Royal National Institute for the Deaf and the British Hard of Hearing Association. The council would not be comparable with the kind of organisation which the Monopolies Commission is examining, such as that of lawyers who have a professional association which has certain practices, or such as that of the dentists. If the dentists had an organisation such as I am suggesting, the majority of those on its council would be representative of the people who have their teeth pulled or filled or stopped. My council would not fall into that kind of professional category, therefore.

I appreciate that there is always a problem when one has an organisation which does not fit neatly into a compartment, and it might be said that my council would create a precedent and that councils would be popping up all over the place wanting to regulate this, that or the other. But I contend that this is the only prosthetic device not covered, and the only other possibility which I can foresee of a similar council would be if, as the result of a great deal of research which is now marching forward, there were electronically controlled artificial legs, rather as there are electronically controlled artificial arms. If that became a commercial proposition, there might be such a council to make sure that the fitting was done correctly. But there are no other grounds for saying that my proposed council would establish a precedent.

There is then the question of whether there are other means by which the object of the Bill could be met. Unfortunately, I do not think that that is possible. For example, it would be very helpful if hire purchase were much more effectively on the side of the consumer and if there were things like a complete stand-off period between signing and sale. But that cannot apply to a hearing aid, because the time factor involved could not possibly apply to any other commodity. I remind hon. Members that it takes at least a month, and it took me three months, to know whether a hearing aid is of any value in one's disability. I cannot see how there could be provided such a tremendous stand-off period for any other commodity. The same is true of doorstep selling. A certain amount of protection can be given, but when a person is using a hearing aid to counteract his disability, a rehabilitation process is required which may take months and months.

If the process is done ethically, then the right thing to do is to go into the deaf person's home and to conduct the test there, not in a sound proof room where one may hear the clock ticking, but not hear anything else. Hon. Members would be surprised by what a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association reception sounds like to someone wearing a hearing aid and trying to sort out the conversation of someone from Botswana, and someone from Jamaica. But that is the kind of condition in which a deaf person has to use the apparatus, not a sound proof room. For a number of reasons, servicing is as important as the right prescription and fitting.

In preparing the Bill, I have taken as my model the Opticians Act, 1958. What I am trying to do about hearing aids is largely identical with what was done about spectacles by that Act, and in some of the Bill's provisions about discipline and so on I have leaned very heavily on that Act. I have also leaned heavily on the Professions Supplementary to Medicine Act. It is amazing that I cannot have my corns cut without the chiropodist being registered and having to maintain a professional standard, but that my hearing, which is far more important to me than my feet, can be messed about by any Tom, Dick or Harry who cares to poke something in my ear. There are problems in other respects which are met by people requiring professional services which my Bill would help to solve.

I am in the fortunate position of having achieved a large measure of support from the country at large. I also pay tribute to my colleagues on the opposite side of the House. The hon. Member for Ross and Cromarty (Mr. Alasdair Mackenzie), who is one of the Bill's sponsors, has been a constant help to me in the early stages of the Bill and he carries with him the support of his party. A previous Minister of Health, the right hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton), who introduced the Opticians Act, the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dame Joan Vickers), the hon. Member for Hertford (Lord Balniel) and other sponsors from the Conservative benches and the Parliamentary Labour Party Health Committee have given me full support.

What has been most amazing has been the support of those whom the Bill seeks to control. I make it clear again, as I did when seeking leave to bring the Bill before the House, that there are many traders and retailers who are completely ethical and who give tremendous service to sufferers who cannot be satisfied in their particular disability by the Medresco aid. The majority of these traders are ethically sound, and the Bill does not seek to do anything which would hinder them in the continuation of their work.

The organised traders are at present within two bodies. One is the Hearing Aid Manufacturers and Suppliers Association, which includes firms like Multitone, Amplivox, Ardente, and Fortiphone and other well-known names. I have a letter from the chairman of that organisation, Mr. B. Montagu, saying:

"May I wish you every success on March 3rd"

and this was after long correspondence in which he gave me his constant support. I pay tribute to Mr. Montagu for the way in which he has supported the Bill, both in the interests of the trade and of the deaf people concerned.

The other organisation is the Society of Hearing Aid Audiologists which consists of people who, similarly to opticians, have hearing aid centres—"shops"—and who are qualified to fit. I have had a letter from the Society wishing me good luck in bringing the Bill before Parliament. The Royal Institute for the Deaf has given me considerable support, as have the British Hard of Hearing Association, the British Association of Otolaryngologists of the Royal College of Surgeons. The Consumer Council has given complete support to the Bill and attended to much of the drafting.

It may interest the House to know how the Bill started its progress, at least how I got the idea for it. On 3rd April, 1964, there was an article in the New Statesman on exploiting the deaf, an article which I read with great interest. It quoted some of the things which had happened and showed where the consumer needed protection, and it concluded by saying:

"The promotion and sale of hearing appliances certainly call for investigation by the Consumer Council … it might still be necessary to introduce legislation …"

The author of that article was then the chairman of a committee of which I was then vice-chairman, the Parliamentary Labour Party Health Committee. He is now the Minister of Health. I am following his good advice. The Consumer Council's investigation for which he then asked produced a report entitled "Deaf Aids", which is the wrong name, because they are hearing aids. From that emerged the solid feeling that legislation would be necessary if we were to control and to give some kind of protection to the people using commercial aids.

The Medresco aid is quite free and is professionally fitted. It is a first-class instrument for 75 per cent. of cases and no one within that percentage needs to buy any other instrument. But its design is 10 years old. In addition, there are some people for whom it cannot give the service that a commercial aid will give. I am one of them. The House will have seen that I am wearing two aids. They would cost £150. I would be delighted if my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary could tell me that this sort of aid would shortly be available on the N.H.S., free to all users.

In the realities of the situation the most that I can hope for in the fairly near future is that the present body-worn aid will achieve a greater degree of selectivity in order to give help and relief, especially to professional people who may need it in the courts of law or even in places like the House of Commons. In the meantime, people will inevitably turn elsewhere. We look for a miracle, and all the time what we really want is a new pair of ears. If anyone would give us a new pair of ears we would give them the moon. There is this tremendous feeling: "If only I could hear."

I told the House that one of my delights is good music, symphony and opera. I face the fact that without an aid the whole of that world of art would be dead to me. With the Medresco aid, such music in the Royal Festival Hall is equally dead to me. There will be people who have a strong urge to solve their problems, and the industry is doing its best to help. These traders need protection from the fly-by-nights. This Bill is attempting to establish a kind of standard, and control the people in an industry who do not compete on fair terms.

The production cost of the aids that I am wearing would be about £12. In other words, there is a margin of £60 between the cost of producing the instrument and its selling price. That margin can be justified if one is spending a lot of time on servicing, rehabilitation, training and ensuring that the aid works correctly. If someone sells an aid for £60 or £70 and then one cannot get the necessary adjustment, this is highway robbery, and it is where protection is needed. The fitting of the mould into an ear is a highly skilled job. If the mould does not fit correctly then the distortion is worse than when the person is not wearing a hearing aid. Inevitably, because I am a Member of Parliament, I may well receive even greater attention than even an ethical firm would give anyone else.

But I can tell the House that the mould on my right ear is the fifth that I have had before obtaining a satisfactory fit. If this happened to an elderly person, he would inevitably reach the stage where he gives up. A firm can therefore get away with bad service, but it is unnecessary for that to be so if the regulations governing the fitting, prescribing and servicing of aids are fully accepted as a statutory undertaking. There has been much discussion about whether it would be a costly undertaking to establish another council. I have drawn heavily upon the General Optical Council for my information and if the House saw fit to give the Bill a Second Reading and pass the necessary Money Resolution, at the most the Measure might cost £5,000 a year.

I realise that this sum has to be added to all the others, but if we cannot find £5,000 out of a hard-pressed economy, who for people who are hard of hearing I find it difficult to understand how we can find £10,000 for a pub in Wales, in order to help Messrs. Whitbread provide a service to a community, or how my hon. Friend the Minister of Education can find so much money to give to golf courses. I do not want the House to misunderstand me. I have no objection to either drinking or playing golf, but £5,000 would be a well-spent sum on behalf of that part of the community which is so disabled.

The Bill would provide for a register and for registration. This would mean that there would have to be a registrar and an office. The registration fee is not to be compared with that received by the General Optical Council. In that case there are something like 11,000 people able to pay an intial fee and an annual renewal. This Bill would apply to something like a dozen large manufacturers and firms, and about 700 professional hearing aid audiologists, incorporated perhaps into some 200 or 300 firms. The amount forthcoming in fees from the hearing aid industry would be about £2,000 to £2,500.

The Bill seeks to establish a code of practice, which will deal with the construction, durability and amount of permitted distortion. It is drawn very widely and it is similar to that already operated by the ethical manufacturers and suppliers. The difficulty is that at present, without this Bill, it is impossible for them to enforce the code upon the naughty boys, because of the way in which hearing aids have to be sold. Hard selling to the hard of hearing is a common practice.

Inevitably the salesman is working on a large commission basis. Because of the competitive nature of the business, unless a code of practice can be enforced it is not worth the paper that it is written on. A kind of Gresham's law operates whereby the fly-by-night salesman forces the standard downwards of those who would like to be more ethical in their approach.

Standards of training need to be promoted. Clause 5 would institute training and would seek to have examination and standards approved. One of the valuable by-products of the Bill is that it seeks to incorporate in it the Society of Audiology Technicians, which concerns itself with those who are working on Medrescos in hospitals in the National Health Service. The standards of prescribing, fitting and servicing need to be raised throughout the community. We should have in the Health Service audiologists comparable to those working outside. Standards should be raised and proper professional standards would be a means of enriching both within and outside National Health Service provisions.

One of the difficulties of the Minister of Health concerning all the ancillary services of the National Health Service is that the rates of pay are not comparable to those which a similar skill commands in trade or industry outside. One of the byproducts of the Bill in establishing proper training standards would be that it would not only benefit the people who are in the commercial hearing aid industry but it would help to raise standards in the National Health Service.

The Council would have power to vet advertisements. This is very important, and it is something which an ordinary voluntary system cannot possibly cope with. It is not just a question of whether an advertisement is true. It is a question also of whether it is applicable to the disability concerned. We have all seen advertisements which pretend, first, that the problem is very small and that one is merely out of focus and need not worry very much, and, secondly, that the aid is entirely invisible and nobody would notice it. I look forward to the day when nobody minds whether it is invisible and when people accept that wearing a hearing aid is like wearing a pair of glasses to overcome a disability.

There is at present no mechanism for receiving the kind of complaints of which I have a complete file here. I have received over 100 letters since the House gave me permission to bring in the Bill on 1st November. The council would have the right to receive and investigate complaints.

One of the difficulties of the wearer of a hearing aid is that he is never sure whether the poor performance which he is getting from his aid is attributable to the aid or to himself. There is no exact measurement. One cannot test it in any way. The fact is that if one has catarrh in the morning one's aid does not work as well as if one does not have it. If the House decided to meet at 10 a.m. and to go home at 2 a.m., I should lose five decibels of sound between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. the next morning. Because there is no way in which a person can be certain whether the fault lies with him or with the aid, there must be professional backing. One must be able to complain and to be able to have one's aid tested to know whether the distortion is lower than should be permitted to give the hearing which the person is entitled to get.

As in the General Optical Council and in the Professions Supplementary to Medicine Act, there is provision in the Bill for a disciplinary committee which will have the opportunity to act, having examined the difficulties which may have arisen over advertisements, over complaints of unprofessional conduct or practice, or over anything on which there is no stop in the present code of practice but which causes great annoyance. A person who optimistically fills in a coupon in a newspaper may have as many as six or seven calls in spite of the fact. that often an assurance has been given to the contrary. Under the code of practice proposed, these kinds of badgering calls should not be made. The ethical firms do not indulge in them. Matters of this kind could be referred to the disciplinary committee.

A further difficulty which arises is that there are two distinct specialties involved. The otologists are concerned as surgeons with the hearing mechanism, and the audiologists are concerned with the electronics and the way in which sound vibrates and the way in which an instrument can interpret that sound. I have sought in the Bill to bring both specialties into one consultative body. At present it is very difficult in the Ministry of Health to marry the otologist and the audiologist, the neurologist and geriatrician, and not least the psychologist into the kind of body which can help the person whose hearing is impaired. All those specialties are concerned with it. The Bill seeks to make sure that the way in which a person tries to cope with his disability calls in aid as much as possible the wide spectrum of advice that is avail- able before a hearing aid is either prescribed or fitted and to ensure that it is adequately serviced.

Naturally, I have had to include an Interpretation Clause, by which "hearing aid" means

"a prosthetic device for the amplification of sound to assist persons with impaired hearing".

The basic element of a hearing aid is mainly that it is a means of amplifying sound. I did not wish to bring within the Bill the sale or servicing of transistor radios. Therefore, one has to be clear that it covers only prosthetic devices.

By the Interpretation Clause "salesman" means

"a hearing aid audiologist, a person competent not only to sell but also to fit a hearing aid and advise on its use".

"Audiological technician" means

"a person competent to repair and adjust the mechanism of a hearing aid".

The description "trader" covers the whole scope of firms, corporate bodies, manufacturers, importers and anybody who has to do with the preparation of a hearing aid and getting it into the ear of a person with impaired hearing.

There are two Schedules to the Bill. The first specifies the constitution and powers of the Hearing Aids Council. I had to face the possibility of having a large council which would have to work through sub-committees or a small council which could act on its own. if the Bill were passed in its present form, four persons would be nominated by the Privy council, two by the Royal National Institute for the Deaf, one from the British Association of the Hard of Hearing, one from the British Association of Otolaryngologists, one from the Institute of Laryngology and Otology, one from the Society of Audiology. Technicians. four from the manufacturers, four from the Society of Hearing Aid Audiologists and one from the Consumer Council, giving a body of 19 persons which, I believe, would adequately fulfil the functions which the Bill sets out to perform.

There are a number of details similar to those concerning the General Optical Council, with which the House will be familiar. The disciplinary committee will cover the same kind of ground that the disciplinary committee of the General Optical Council covers. The difference between the two bodies is that whereas in the case of the Hearing Aids Council the Bill provides for a permanent ratio of 42 per cent. representing trade interests and 58 per cent. from doctors and the welfare associations, it is obvious that in the disciplinary committee it is only fair to have an equal number of traders and non-traders because it is the traders who will be disciplined. That body would be under the chairmanship of the president of the council, who would be appointed by the Privy Council.

In the six months which have elapsed since the House was kind enough to give me leave to introduce the Bill, I have sought to iron out as many of the possible objections as I could. I have had long meetings with the interests concerned and once again I pay tribute to them for the way in which they have sought to be constructive. I have had considerable advice from consultants and hearing specialists and considerable help from the welfare officers of local authorities concerned with deafness and from organisations like the Northern Regional Association for the Deaf and the Southern Regional Association for the Deaf. I am now in the situation where I have to throw myself on the mercy of the Government in the hope that this Measure, the purposes of which are, I think, generally acceptable as being good and desirable, will not be found to be impossible to fulfil for technical reasons.

On an earlier Bill, today, we discussed the problem of loneliness of elderly people. The loneliness of a deaf person, whether he is old or young, is something which only those who have suffered it can realise in terms of human suffering. For a person who is an extrovert type, who loves his fellowmen, is gregarious and wants to mix with them, to be found that he is cut off from that friendship may seem to be a small matter, but when this House is not concerned with this kind of thing affecting a small section of the community suffering from a disability, this House will no longer be serving the kind of function which my constituents sent me here to serve.

I support with great pleasure the hon. Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt) on this Bill. I was aware for a long time that many people suffered from this disability and they certainly have my sympathy, but I am more convinced than ever after hearing the hon. Member, who speaks from experience, proposing the Second Reading of his Bill, in such moving terms and explaining its various provisions. I congratulate him on the very clear and explicit manner in which he stated the case for the Bill.

I think we must all agree that those of us who know something of this problem from our experience as local authority members and as Members of Parliament realise the necessity for introducing some legislation to ensure that necessary standards are maintained and that those who sell these aids and also audiological technicians are qualified for their work. At the moment it seems that a great many people are selling hearing aids without having the required standards.

Very considerable improvements are made from time to time. It is important that those who suffer from this disability should know about the latest developments in this matter. This is important because hearing aids are very costly. Those who suffer from this disability and are carrying on in important jobs have frequently to change their instruments. They find this a very costly matter. There is a case for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to make a concession in respect of these instruments.

On 31st January last I tabled a Question to the Chancellor asking if the purchase of a hearing aid by a person who needed it for the purpose of continuing in his profession or work was

"regarded as a legitimate expense against which Income Tax rebate could be claimed".

The Answer was that

"an employee is not entitled to tax relief for an expense which arises from his personal circumstances.—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 31st January, 1967; Vol. 740, c. 35.]

I was very disappointed with that reply, because people who have to buy tools and instruments for their work in various trades and professions get such a concession. It is very disappointing to find that a person who needs a hearing aid to carry on his or her profession should not be able to get some concession in this respect. If this is the law, it is time it was changed. I know of many people who suffer hardship because of this.

The hon. Member for Willesden, West, said that he looked forward to the time when a hearing aid was regarded in the same light as spectacles. This is how hearing aids should be regarded. A hearing aid is as necessary for a person who suffers from defective hearing as a pair of spectacles is for someone who has poor eyesight. The hon. Member put the case very carefully. I hope that the Government will look with favour on the Bill. It is a good and necessary Bill. The Government may not like some parts about it as drafted, but there will be time to make Amendments in Committee. From the Liberal Bench I give my fullest support to the Bill. I hope it will be accorded an unopposed Second Reading.

In general I support the Bill. Its intention is good. Its general principles cannot be objected to. However, it would be far better if people suffering from this great disability took the most sensible course of seeking medical advice and following it, preferably through the National Health Service. The wisest course is to be treated by a qualified practitioner.

I agree with the hon. Member for Ross and Cromarty (Mr. Alasdair Mackenzie) that hearing aids should be regarded in exactly the same light as spectacles. I do not think that spectacles are advertised. I can remember the time when one could go into the big popular stores and see great trays of spectacles on sale. People, in the main elderly people, could be seen trying them on and buying them cheaply. No doubt in the process they ruined their eyesight, but they obtained something at a reasonable price. This was before the National Health Service.

Today there is the same approach in regard to hearing aids. There is a tendency for people to see a well presented advertisement, for them to build up hope, to spend a great deal of money, and to be bitterly disappointed.

I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt) has devoted a great deal of time to this matter. Clause 6 allows advertising. I do not think that advertising should be allowed to continue on its present scale. I would go as far as to stop advertising, in an attempt to stop the present high-pressure salemanship. I object to high-pressure salesmanship seeking to profit from disability. We should take a dim view of high-pressure salesmanship of false legs. Deafness is a great disability and an embarrassing one.

If the Bill reaches the Committee stage, very careful consideration should be given to the question whether advertising should be allowed. I have advocated that people should use the National Health Service. The Minister and his Department should consider making the aid supplied through the National Health Service more attractive and less obvious. Through the wonderful developments which have taken place, hearing aids can be installed in spectacle frames so that they are not conspicuous. A hearing aid is not like a pair of spectacles. Spectacles improve the appearance of some people, though I make no personal claim in this regard, but a hearing aid can be conspicuous even if it is small. Out of respect for people's sensitivity we should seek through the Health Service the provision of a hearing aid which is less conspicuous, because many deaf people are often easily embarrassed because of their handicap.

Public attention should be called to the great danger of dealing with advertisers of deaf appliances in newspapers and magazines without getting proper medical advice. I am not stretching the imagination too far when I say that a hearing aid imperfectly fitted could lead to loss of life, particularly in a street accident. It is as serious as that.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, West for introducing this Bill. I have been in this House for quite a while now and I am aware of the tremendous amount of work that he does outside this House in connection with this subject. Credit should be given where it is due. If the Bill should not be given a Second Reading—I do not know what will happen, because one cannot forecast a decision of the House—something on the lines of this Bill should be done by means of a Government Measure.

I join in extending my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt) on having brought forward a Bill of such considerable importance to perhaps a minimal number of people but, nevertheless, to an important class of people. My congratulations relate not only to bringing in the Bill but to the extremely able and interesting way in which my hon. Friend outlined the problem which the Bill is designed to overcome and also the provisions of the Bill itself.

My hon. Friend referred to the lack of sympathy shown by those who do not suffer from what must be a very unhappy affliction. Deafness in others has always, unfortunately and very unkindly, been a subject for a good deal of ill humour. We have gone a long way from the days when the cartoonist and the humorist, in order to get a laugh, showed an ear trumpet at a person's ear, and we are very grateful for the passing of those times. But deafness is an affliction which people are very unwilling to admit and they are reluctant to seek aid to remedy the affliction. Therefore, it is extremely important that great care should be taken to ensure that persons who wish to cure their affliction should be able to do so by resorting to deaf aids and other appliances. For that reason one welcomes any attempt to ensure that the standard of manufacture, training and discipline in the trade shall be high. I therefore welcome the attempt which my hon. Friend has made to establish a code of procedure.

I am sure that everyone will agree with the principle that underlies the Bill. I believe that the doubt which some may have is whether this is the right way of tackling the problem. I certainly agree with the suggestion of my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North (Mr. Wallace) that people ought more readily to seek professional and competent medical advice before resorting to manufacturers and suppliers of deaf appliances. It may be thought outrageous if I say that no one ought to be allowed to supply deaf aids and appliances except on the production of a prescription or a certificate from a member of the medical profession.

I am not qualified to speak on this subject, but I imagine that the initial stages of deafness might well hide other conditions which ought to be rectified first or, at least, in conjunction with the attention given to the deafness itself. I pass no criticism on a profession of which I know little or nothing, but I think that there may well be at least some firms which would not pay regard to side-effects or the possible presence of other defects not obviously apparent.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this interesting point. It is a point which I would have liked to cover in the Bill. The only reason why it is not so covered is that I have reached agreement with the trade and profession to exclude it; on that condition they will support the Bill. There it is.

My hon. Friend is very frank in explaining what one might describe as horse dealing, if that be the right expression. Nevertheless, I feel that I could not accept such a compromise, even though it may have been a tactical one, because I believe it to be important in regard to not only deafness but all other conditions that those who are qualified to treat them should be brought into the picture at the earliest possible moment. Perhaps it is not too late to introduce a suitable provision in Committee.

I am not at all happy that the supply of appliances of this description, so important for the health and happiness of the people concerned, should be left to commercial exploitation. I would like it to be possible for deaf aids and other such appliances to be obtained only through the National Health Service itself or through institutions or organisations approved by the Minister of Health.

However, having said that, I acknowledge again how important it is that something should be done. My hon. Friend's Bill represents a comprehensive way to tackle the problem. In a debate on another subject one Friday not long ago, I spoke of the need for the professions themselves to control their own discipline and destiny. We must have some regard to whether we may be setting up too complicated a machinery to deal with a problem which, in my view, could be dealt with quite adequately through the National Health Service. One sees the necessity for registration of traders, but I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive my saying that I regard it as something of a defect in his Bill, as I read it, that there is no requirement that the trader himself shall in any way be professionally qualified or conform to any standards. Presumably, his qualification is the ability to organise and manage in order to reap the profit which may accrue to him from his business. It is most desirable that anyone wishing to engage in this work should himself conform to certain professional standards or, at least, technical requirements. I should like to see this Bill as the basis for action in regard to all trades and professions so that people were registered and thereby subjected to rigid discipline if they attempted to take unfair advantage of their trading facilities and position.

It is good that the proposed council shall draw up a code of practice and, perhaps. standards and specifications of construction and durability to which the instruments and appliances should conform. Again, I should like to see this admirable provision extended in other directions. It is welcome, also, that provision is made in the Bill for standards of training to be investigated, and, more than that, for action to be taken to ensure that adequate training is available for those who engage in this important trade.

I have carefully considered the Clause regarding advertising, and I share the doubt expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North about whether any advertising should be allowed. I should have thought that it would be adequate if people were recommended through various sources to those who supply these aids. But it is very wrong, immoral and probably even a heinous offence to put into an advertisement statements which may attract people and give them a hope that their hearing may be cured when those advertisements are very exaggerated in their content.

In any event, if advertisements are to be allowed we ought not to shut the stable door after the horse has bolted. I should like to see any advertisement, which it is proposed to insert for these appliances, first submitted to the council for approval before it appears in public. In that way control could be exercised on advertisements without our having the risk of the advertisement already being seen by the public and perhaps wrongly persuading some people to buy an appliance which is of little or no value to them.

The Bill proposes to establish a disciplinary body which will have the right—a very serious right and one which must be exercised with considerable care—to remove people entirely from the trade which they are carrying out. This is a disciplinary committee, a provision not uncommon in the professions, but I am a little doubtful, if we are not to establish a profession and not to establish professional standards of entry into it, whether we ought to have a disciplinary comittee which has these powers.

I apologise for making these criticisms, which I have tried to make constructive criticisms, because it is obvious that my hon. Friend has tackled a problem which needs to be dealt with urgently. I wish him well, if not in the Bill itself at least in the principle underlying it and in my hon. Friend's desire to see that these unfortunate people who are afflicted with deafness have a fair deal from those to whom they go.

The whole House is indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt) for introducing the Bill and for the moderation and thoroughness with which he addressed himself to the problem.

My object in intervening is to explain to the House to what extent there is a case on purely health grounds for the type of control over the hearing aid industry which he proposes. It is not my duty to go into other aspects of the problem or into the commercial arguments; I shall leave these to my right hon. Friend the Minister of State at the Board of Trade. What I say will, therefore, be necessarily brief.

I am sure that we all ought to have the greatest sympathy with the deaf. Their affliction, perhaps more than any other, cuts them off from their fellows. The unhappiness which this can cause and the difficulties of adjustment which may arise from the onset of deafness can be very great. To a deaf person, therefore, a hearing aid can be a life-line. It is thus no wonder that the subject of hearing aids, their performance, availability and method of supply is one which causes the strongest feelings. Those of us who came out of the war with our hearing to a limited extent impaired, for various reasons, know the anxieties involved and know how this potential development in our physical state affects our thinking.

The National Health Service makes provision for the deaf, and the Medresco range of hearing aids—first the valve models and for the last few years the transistorised instruments—has been available since the beginning of the Service. These are body-worn aids, and there are some people who are not altogether happy with them for what are known as cosmetic reasons. But technically the Medresco aids are sound and afford a good performance, and they can help all save a very small minority of the patients who are capable of benefiting from any hearing aid at all. The position, therefore, is that the National Health Service helps all patients except a small minority. We are keeping under review the aids which we provide in the hope that we shall be able further to improve our service.

Only a few patients are thus obliged to resort to purchasing their hearing aids privately, so that the scope of this Bill is quite small. This is not to belittle what it aims to achieve, but it is important when considering it to remember that the National Health Service provides hearing aids without charge, of which the vast majority of patients can avail themselves if they so wish.

It might be supposed that an unsuitable or badly fitted aid might damage the user's health. I am assured—and I am addressing myself to the particular point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North (Mr. Wallace)—that on the basis of the best specialist advice available, this is not so. The chances of any damage being done to an adult by wearing an aid which is not really adapted to his needs, or is badly fitted, or is even unnecessary, are negligible and can be dismissed.

Regarding children, a minority of doctors think that there might occasionally be a slight risk, but any risk that there may be is no more than marginal, and, in any event, children are well supervised by the school health service.

There is this very important point of safety, particularly when the patient is walking about. If the hearing aid does not fit or work properly, there is a danger to the individual.

I take my hon. Friend's view on that. I was addressing myself to the long-term threat to a person's health. My advice is that a case cannot be made out for the Bill on medical grounds. It is no doubt true that a deaf person who is sold an unsuitable hearing aid which does not properly meet his needs will have unnecessary difficulty in adjusting himself to his life in society. and this may have a bad effect on his general wellbeing. But this is the kind of problem which affects all sorts of people in all sorts of circumstances.

Can the Parliamentary Secretary say if there is any other person with disability to whom his remarks would apply?

No. I should have thought that this was peculiar to this problem. There are very few of us who have not, at some time or other, had personal experience of this problem in one form or another. It applies to almost any defect in the social environment, however created, for it is undeniable that social discomfort—or for that matter, any sort of social deprivation—may affect health, mental or physical, by direct or indirect means. These are very broad issues. They go right outside the health field as normally conceived, and they do not affect the firmness of my conclusion that a case for the Bill cannot be sustained on health grounds.

This is, to some extent, a side issue because, as I see it, the main arguments advanced by my hon. Friend and other hon. Members are not health arguments, but rest mainly on the need to protect a small number of people from the alleged undesirable selling practices adopted by some parts of the industry.

These issues do not come within the purview of my Ministry, but will be dealt with in due course by my right hon. Friend. I must confine myself to putting on record the advice which I have received, that a case for the Bill cannot be made out on specifically health grounds. I am sorry to have to emphasise this point, because I must confess that I was very impressed by the speech of my hon. Friend on the general need of the public for some sort of protection, to which I believe my hon. Friend will address himself.

I was interested to hear the remark of the Parliamentary Secretary that the Bill cannot be justified on health grounds. I have never supposed that it was. I saw this Bill as an attempt to meet a disadvantage attached to the disability of deafness, to which almost all previous speakers have referred. I hope it is not an unkind way of putting it when I say that deafness is not taken as seriously as are some other disabilities.

By means of some form of regulation as set out in the Bill, this occupation will be raised to the status of a profession, and will be given a measure of dignity, which will be of great assistance to those who suffer from this disability.

I hope that my hon. Friend will not allow that impression to go out from here unchallenged. The importance that we attach to the Bill is very great indeed. Indeed, it is a matter of regret for my right hon. Friend that he could not come here today. For various reasons, including his long association with this matter with my hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt), he would have liked, had he been able, to attend the debate. For what comfort it may be, there are my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, Board of Trade and I here representing the Government to express their viewpoint today. As I said, we attach a great deal of importance to this matter.

I am obliged for that intervention. I am sorry if my remarks gave the impression that I was being critical of what has been said.

My hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt) referred to this as a small Bill. I cannot think why. Surely the importance of the Bill is measured not so much by the number of people affected by it as by its importance to the class of people involved, and I should have thought that to those who suffer from this disability the Bill was of considerable importance.

I want to make it clear that I congratulate my hon. Friend upon introducing the Bill because I want to turn, if he will forgive me, to one aspect that seems to require rather careful thought. I put forward these thoughts not in any sense suggesting that we should fling the Bill out now but rather in the sense that this matter should be given more detailed thought at a later stage. I refer to Clause 8, which sets up the disciplinary committee.

I fully acknowledge that if standards are to be established and maintained there must be some measure for enforcing them and ensuring that they are properly kept. Nobody could quarrel with that, and I do not. But I note with a little alarm the tendency in the Bill to make the profession a judge in its own case. This tendency seems to be common in the professions. It is the practice in the legal and medical professions; they have disciplinary committees which judge their own members. I am not too happy about this.

If I may correct a misapprehension, the disciplinary committee would consist of 50 per cent of persons not in the trade—representatives of the Consumer Council, the National Institute for the Deaf and so on; people not in the trade at all.

I am very much obliged. I readily concede that this makes the proposal somewhat less disagreeable to me than it might have been. But it does not entirely remove the unease that I feel about this sort of disciplinary committee.

Associated with Clause 8 is Schedule 2, which sets up the disciplinary committee. I congratulate my hon. Friend on the comprehensive detail that he has packed into it. It is clear that an effort has been made to make the proceedings just and reasonable—in other words, as much like those in a court as they can be. But I should have thought that in cases like this we should have gone the whole hog and used the courts. I do not like these private tribunals. I should have thought that there would have been a perfectly adequate role for the disciplinary committee in preparing a case, if a case were necessary, against anybody offending against the regulations, and that the case should then be brought in a court, where, of course, the proceedings are public. I am not clear whether the disciplinary committee will sit in public. I believe that the disciplinary committees of other professions do not always sit in public, and I regret that. If the livelihood of anyone is to be judged by a body of people, whether their peers or not, I should have thought it desirable that the body should meet in public.

To some extent my objections are met by subsection (4), which provides for a right of appeal. This is desirable. But if there is to be an appeal to some higher court, I should have been much happier if the public courts of the country had been used in the first place. These are not objections of substance to the Bill but just objections on a point of detail, and I hope that they may be considered at a later stage, because, with that proviso, I should give a very warm and hearty welcome to the proposals in the Bill.

Every hon. Member who has taken part in the debate has congratulated the hon. Gentleman the Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt) on bringing the Bill forward, and on behalf of my right hon. and hon. Friends I do the same. Clearly, the Bill has a great deal of work behind it and the hon. Gentleman's speech reflected his great knowledge of the subject and the great amount of work that he has done.

Indeed, he has had the rare compliment paid to him of drawing two Ministers to reply to his speech. This is quite something and we look forward to hearing the second Minister. After the events of this week, we hope that he will say something quite different from what his colleague said.

Why?

If the right hon. Gentleman reads HANSARD for the last few days, he will see why.

My main purpose is to welcome the Bill on behalf of the Opposition. The hon. Member for Willesden, West said that it is an uncontroversial Measure between the parties. Indeed, three of my right hon. and hon. Friends have joined with him in sponsoring it. Time is getting on and we are anxious that the Bill shall get a Second Reading, so I would merely say that we shall do what we can to facilitate its passage, if it should get a Second Reading, and will help it in Committee and try to make it, as he indicated, a better Bill.

The hon. Gentleman was very modest. He said that he thought improvements could be made to the Bill and we have some points to make. We cannot, I am afraid, hope to provide what he really asks for—namely, a new pair of ears—but we will at least help him if we can to produce a better Bill. With those comments, I leave the debate to the second of the duo of Ministers.

I shall be brief. I join in the congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt) upon the hard work that he has put into the Bill. My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health has told the House that, in the view of the Ministry, there are no medical grounds for the Bill. I cannot express any views on that aspect. The question that remains is whether the Bill therefore comes within the purview of what we call consumer protection, which is where I come in.

I go all the way with my hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, West in condemning the kind of high-pressure salesmanship he has described. Anyone who misrepresents the goods he is selling and dishonestly impresses people to buy them deserves condemnation but when he is practising fraudulent activities upon deaf people his behaviour calls for the utmost condemnation.

There are two points in the Bill which give us a great deal of concern from the point of view of consumer protection. One is the setting up of what I must call a professional body, despite my hon. Friend's plea that the proposed council would be unlike any existing professional council and that, because it would be set up in a peculiar, indeed, unique fashion, it should not come within the terms of reference of the Monopolies Commission in its inquiry into professions.

I cannot agree with him because, if the Ministry of Health found good reasons for supporting the setting up of a council of this kind for medical reasons, it would be a professional body in the ordinary sense of the term and there would not have been such strong arguments for not accepting it. But, in view of the Ministry of Health's attitude, we would be very reluctant indeed—and I speak now for the Board of Trade—to set up an additional professional body before we had the Monopoly Commission's recommendations on how professional bodies or quasi-professional bodies should be organised, what their standards of competence should be, how their rules and standards should be enforced, and so on. Therefore, we would hope that such a council, whatever its merits might be, would not be set up for the time being.

Another factor is that dealing with the control of advertisements and the way in which it is proposed that the council should receive complaints from the public and investigate claims and deal with them and so on. There is a time factor, because as the House knows, we intend to bring forward the Protection of Consumers Bill, a Bill which was introduced in another place before the General Election and which will be reintroduced as soon as possible. The purpose of the Bill is to bring together and revise the many confusing and quite inadequate pieces of legislation now on the Statute Book which aim at protecting consumers from disreputable trading practices. The last things we want are any further bits of legislation which would have the effect of removing control and enforcement over parts of consumer protection from the comprehensive arrangements laid down in the Bill which we intend to reintroduce as soon as possible.

I am convinced that the measures within that Bill will do all that my hon. Friend wants to do to protect the customer from misrepresentation, from high-pressure salesmanship and the rest. I do not have time to spell this out, but I can assure my hon. Friend that appropriate parts of that Bill will do the job which he wants done about advertisements and high-pressure salesmanship.

Having examined that Bill, I can assure my right hon. Friend that, unless the Bill is very much altered, it would specifically not cover the cases which I have in mind.

I am sorry, but I disagree with my hon. Friend. If he proves his point, obviously we shall have to do something about the Bill. However, let us assume for the time being that the Bill will do what I have said. We then come to the time factor. If we could get our Bill on the Statute Book within a reasonable time, not too far ahead, we should be able to deal with this problem far more quickly than if it were left to a council set up under my hon. Friend's Bill.

There is a further consideration. In addition to the consumer legislation which we intend to bring forward, we have given a Third Reading to the Misrepresentation Bill which will help in certain cases in which civil action can be taken to recover damages for misrepresentation. These two Measures together, the Protection of Consumers Bill and the Misrepresentation Bill, will deal with dishonest salesmanship far more quickly and far more effectively than would be possible under the Bill which my hon. Friend is asking the House to approve.

To some extent I am rather disappointed with the replies that we have received in this debate. I do not quite follow how, as my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary has said, if a hearing aid is fitted badly and requires constant attention and repositioning, causing inflammation of the inner ear, he can claim that that does not affect a person's health.

He was correct in what he said about the National Health Service. It provides hearing aids, but one of the difficulties there is the repair service. People to whom I have spoken tell me that the service is disgraceful, that there is a long waiting period and because of the pressure upon the technicians, the aids do not receive proper attention. I have heard of cases where people have had to send the aids back two and three times, and finally finish up with a hearing aid which is not doing a proper job. Then they have to turn up the volume and they get a whistling noise, so that when they are sitting around the family circle listening to television there is this whistling noise going, on. Sometimes the television is blamed.

Can the system be improved? I understand that it will cost money but these people ought to be given the best possible service. I do not believe that people deliberately set out to defraud, as was perhaps suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt). Manufacturers attempt to influence people.

The problem is switch selling—advertising at 15 gns. and selling at 70 gns.

I was coming to that. But to deal with advertisements, I do not think that manufacturers are attempting to defraud, they are encouraging people to buy a better quality set. I would draw the attention of my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to what is being said in these advertisements. The advertisements suggest that it is all very well a person having a National Health Service aid but they are not as good as the sort that manufacturers can provide.

This is rather like spectacles. People are encouraged to have different frames to those provided by the National Health Service, because they are led to believe that the N.H.S. type is not good enough. This is the sort of thing which is being said about hearing aids. People are being persuaded that if they purchase more expensive equipment in some way this will give them a better result. Sometimes this is true but not always.

Because of the trouble to which I have referred, and the repairing of these aids, people fall for this line, believing that it would be better to have such equipment. It is not so much a matter of trying to defraud, but persuading people that they can get something better if they are prepared to pay more. I do not object to that if it were true, but I am advised that many of the hearing aids costing more do not show any sign of being a better piece of equipment than that supplied by the National Health Service. The Bill is of some merit if we can draw attention to a code practice which will put an end to this type of scheme. Like the hon. Member for Chislehurst (Mr. Macdonald). I was very worried about the suggestion for the setting up of a disciplinary committee—

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With the permission of the House, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Bill.

Bill, by leave, withdrawn? Order discharged.

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It is my good fortune to have the privilege to raise the subject of the continuation of the M5 motorway, and the particular aspect of the problem which I wish to debate is the delay in the acquisition of land for the next section southwards from Twyning in my constituency. I had the honour to raise this matter over four years ago on 6th December, 1962, in the Adjournment debate, when the delay was in putting the motorway in the programme at all and in starting the preliminary stages.

It is impossible to overestimate the growth since that time in the importance of getting this particular section of the motorway completed. The spokesman for the Ministry of Transport at the time, my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Hay), was unable to give a date and was not quite as enthusiastic as I was about the importance of the motorway at that time. Since then there has been no doubt, on the Ministry's own recognition, that it is one of the most important sections of our motorway system, and they have done everything they can to hasten it forward and I have done everything possible to continue the pressure on the Ministry to make sure that this matter was not further delayed. The route has been known for many years. The county council sent the Ministry the centre line of the road in 1959. It was not until June, 1964, however, that the line was fixed and the order was made for the line of the motorway. At that time it was forecast that construction would start in April 1967—that is, next month. That was an improvement on what was originally hoped, but it was still too late a date for many of the inhabitants of Tewkesbury and elsewhere in my constituency to whom it vital that this road link should be completed.

The reason why this is so important is that all the traffic coming south from Birmingham has been funnelled on to the existing M5 as far as Twyning and then it is disgorged into the narrow streets of Tewkesbury, doing great damage to the buildings, the amenity and the peace and charm of that ancient and beautiful town.

The side roads order for the motorway was published in April 1966, but it was not made until October. My first question to the Joint Parliamentary Secretary is to ask why there was such an inordinate delay in making the side roads order—the Section 13 order—and why it took almost six months to do it. This was clearly one of the first places where the programme began to slip.

Early in November last year, a constituent told me that he had suddenly been approached to have his land acquired for the M5, that this was the first he had heard of it and that he had to be out by April. Since he was a farmer, he would have to find a new farm to which to move his stock and he would be faced with all the difficulties which farmers experience in moving. I was amazed that the Ministry had not even warned landowners along the route before October last year when it wished to start construction of the motorway in April. I do not suggest that the motorway should have been delayed. I only suggest that it is extraordinary that so little preparation was done as to start acquiring land so late.

I then put down a Question to the Parliamentary Secretary early in December last year. He replied even at that time that no land had so far been acquired but that some of the land was being negotiated for and it was expected that negotiations for the remainder would be opened soon. It is extraordinary that some of the land had not even been negotiated for in December when construction was scheduled to start in April.

I wrote to the Parliamentary Secretary and asked for an explanation of the delay. He gave broadly two main reasons. One was that there were quite a number of amendments to the land plans which had to be made consequent upon small alterations to the design detail of the side roads and various drainage details of the motorway, and that as these small alterations were arising it had not been worth setting out to acquire the land beforehand.

That was a very bad excuse. Why not start the main negotiations for acquiring the land much earlier or at least warn people like farmers or householders that they will have to move? No one would wish them to move precipitately or without having good opportunity to find an alternative place to which to go. Nobody wishes to reduce the period, which is short enough in all conscience, which people have, but if they are given definite notice—and the route for the motorway has been known for almost eight years—it seems extraordinary that they could not have been given much more firm and early notice that they would have to move even though the exact boundaries of the areas which the Ministry needs for the road were not at that time known.

The second reason given by the Parliamentary Secretary was that the road trespassed upon common rights. Indeed, there is a lot of common land in the area. The hon. Gentleman will know from his Department that considerable difficulties were experienced with the section of M5 as far as Twyning because of the common in that area.

I am certain that anyone could have told the Department that there would be difficulties about common rights when the second part from Twyning South was negotiated. This has been known about for years. It was quite extraordinary that in letters to me and to my constituents in December the Minister pleaded that it had just discovered that there were common rights which would need a Bill to be put through Parliament and that this would delay the start. The truth is that no preparation was done on the acquisition of land in anything like sufficient time. If the motorway start date is put back it will be for this reason and this reason alone.

I ask the Parliamentary Secretary what effect this will have on the completion. To be fair, it is not the start of the motorway which affects the traffic; it is, of course, the completion and its opening. From correspondence I have received it appears that he still believes that it will be possible to open the whole section south of Bristol by 1970. That will he two years later for the inhabitants of Tewkesbury who at one time expected to have the by-pass completed by 1968. The question must arise, how long will it be before Tewkesbury is by-passed effectively and the section just south of the city of Gloucester is completed and open to traffic?

My guess is that the work will not start until the latter part of this year at the very earliest. As the road work, the earth shifting, will have to be done at a most unpropitious time—in the autumn—I would be surprised if the Tewkesbury to Gloucester section is completed by the end of 1970. I should be extremely pleased if the hon. Gentleman could say that this could be done. It is very important to reassure people in the area that they will get this by-pass within the not-too-distant future.

I also ask the hon. Gentleman to say when he thinks the first section will be opened, the section from Twyning to Gloucester. Other hon. Members doubtless will have great interest in the most southerly part of the motorway, but I believe it is the northerly section which is vital because of the damage which is being done to Tewkesbury, not only to its buildings but to the life of the town, the shops and the people who live there and because of the disappointment caused when the announcement was made that a start was being delayed because of failure to acquire the land. Because of that many feel that the town is being strangled by the appallingly heavy traffic going through the town ceaselessly night and day, at weekends and on weekdays, summer and winter alike.

Perhaps there are a few wider considerations which arise out of this incident. I do not want to go over the ground again as it was so thoroughly gone over last Friday. I have read the hon. Gentleman's speech with a great deal of interest and with much of it I have found sympathy. But from this experience it would be worth mentioning two points which seem important. We should start on the acquisition of land earlier even if we are able only to say to a farmer, "You will have to move although we cannot tell you exactly the boundaries of where we want to go." We must start by giving people much more notice than, as in this case, a farmer is given when he is told that he will have to move in six months although the Ministry has known for eight years what land the motorway would need.

Certainly, and this does not apply in particular to my constituents, more generous compensation would greatly help to speed the process of land acquisition. I am convinced by foreign experience that by paying more, perhaps a little more than the land is worth, we can do much in the way of increasing the speed at which the process of planning can go.

Thirdly, the length of time to complete the proceedings is as a whole too long. However, that is not the point of this debate. The point of the debate is to plead with the Joint Parliamentary Secretary that he should take to heart the lessons of the road and the delays which have occurred to it and do everything he can to speed up the construction, because it is of much greater significance than just the convenience to motorists or the time which will be saved by those who use the road. It is a matter almost of the health and welfare of Tewkesbury. I assure the hon. Gentleman that feeling on this matter runs extremely high and that he will be popular and welcome if he can bring forward the date of completion of this important motorway.

Last Friday we were dealing with the general. The hon. Gentleman has brought me down to the particular in the case of M5. I understand his apprehensions and those of his constituents. I shall do my utmost to allay those apprehensions, because I recognise that a very difficult situation exists.

I know that traffic conditions in Tewkesbury are bad. Many people feel that the stopping of M5 short at Twyning in 1962 is a major, if not the principal, factor for these bad conditions, and that what should have been done was not to build the Ross Spur but to continue the M5 southwards.

The Ross Spur was built as part of a plan to improve connections between South Wales and the Midlands. Such roads as existed were steep, winding, narrow and unsuitable for heavy traffic. The need for this road was recognised as long ago as 1946 when the first blueprint of the future motorway network was drawn up, and the project received strong support in 1953 when the Lloyd Committee, set up to advise on ways of encouraging industrial development in South Wales, stressed the need for better roads in this area.

The Ross Spur is the essential link in the main route from Swansea along the Head of the Valleys Road from Strensham to the Midlands. Congestion in Tewkesbury does not arise solely from the stopping of M5 at Twyning. Tewkesbury is one of the main trunk roads between the Midlands and the South West and a large volume of traffic, including heavy lorries, is bound to pass through it until we manage to achieve a complete by-pass of Tewkesbury. The effect of a temporary stopping at Twyning was foreseen. but it is inevitable that motorways have to be built in sections. The first section of M5 was built to the junction with the Ross Spur to give the route into South Wales, and this point was a justifiable halting place for M5.

That is a very brief sketch to the background of the problem. I turn now to the future, which I hope will be more encouraging to the hon. Gentleman. The construction of M5 southwards from Twyning to Almondsbury and then beyond Bristol into Somerset is recognised as an important project. It forms part of the first 1,000-mile motorway network. We are determined that work will start as soon as the statutory processes can be completed and entry obtained on to the land needed for the roadworks. But I must say, as I said last Friday, that we are bound by the statutory processes, and some part of the answer to the hon. Gentleman's criticisms lies in the fact that the laws at present about entering upon land for roadworks and the processes for scheming roadworks bind us to pursue the processes in a certain way.

In the case of the M5 south of Twyning, we encountered unforeseen difficulties. The draft scheme fixing the line of route of the M5 from Twyning to Almondsbury was made in June, 1964. The fixing of the line, however, is only the preliminary to a tremendous amount of detailed work before instructions can be given on the acquisition of land and before matters can be taken to the point of giving a contract for the starting of work.

The next step was a detailed soil survey for which a tender was let in December, 1964. Preliminary design proceeded on the basis of interim reports, but until this soil survey was completed the exact requirements for widths, slope of embankments, siting of overbridges, junctions and other things of that kind could not be settled. The final soil survey report was received in January, 1966, and it revealed that on the Twyning-Almondsbury length soil conditions were generally poorer than had been anticipated. It was as a result of this and recent research on the stability of embankment slopes that the preliminary design of the motorway had to be amended. We had to provide for flatter slopes on embankments, for deeper cutting and a thicker pavement.

In addition to these design considerations, difficulties were also encountered over the location and design of certain junctions and the siting of a service area. The detail of the interchange at Eastington could not be finally worked out until late in 1966. Another preliminary which has to be undertaken is the making under the Highways Act of schemes and orders for the connecting roads between the motorway and the local road system.

I have mentioned these preliminary works which had to be gone into because, as the hon. Member will appreciate, the amount of land required cannot be settled until these design questions have been worked out in detail; and, until we know precisely what land we require, we cannot give instructions to the district valuer to open negotiations for acquisition. Moreover, work cannot begin until all the statutory processes have been completed. I told the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Mr. DoddsParker) in February last year that work on the extension of the MS from Twyning was provisionally expected to start by the autumn of this year, depending on the time required to complete the statutory processes and the acquisition of land in order to complete the whole project in 1970.

It became apparent, however, early in 1966 that design difficulties made it unlikely that the statutory processes and land acquisition could be completed in time to give a start of work in the autumn of this year. Because we fully appreciate the need to complete the motorway as soon as possible and so, of course, among other things, to by-pass Tewkesbury, the construction programme was rearranged in order to avoid delaying completion beyond 1970. It was, therefore, decided to build first the Bredon Bridge and its embankments. The latter will have to cross the flood plains of the Bredon Valley, and time must be allowed for settlement of these embankments before final surfacing is carried out. By starting this scheme before the main road works, settlement will be completed in time to allow the later main road works contracts to be completed in a period of two years.

Prior attention, therefore, was given to the orders required under the Highways Act to allow for alterations to side roads and footpaths affected by the Bredon Bridge scheme, and I am glad to say that these have been made. Land plans were at the same time prepared on a priority basis but, unfortunately, it was found that a number of alterations had to be made to these at a late stage, in such matters as areas of plots, revision of land requirement for drainage purposes and reciting of accesses.

These are not major matters, but such amendments must be made before instructions can be given to start land acquisition. As I am sure the hon. Member will appreciate, opening negotiations on incorrect detail in matters of this sort would not only be annoying and disturbing for landowners but would add in the long run to the time taken for the negotiations.

It was these last-minute amendments which prevented instructions being given until October, 1966, to the district valuer to open negotiations for the land required for the M5 as far as Tredington, which included that needed for the Bredon Bridge scheme, and for the relevant compulsory purchase order to be prepared and published. On the Bredon Bridge section, common rights over much of the land have to be acquired and this means that the compulsory purchase order when made will be subject to special Parliamentary procedure. Nevertheless, we hope that, as I have already told the hon. Member, the various preliminary stages will be satisfactorily completed to give a start of work on this scheme in June. As regards the statutory procedures for the remainder of the extension of the M5 southwards from Twyning, we hope to complete these in time for the contract to be let by the end of 1967, but I do not expect that construction will now start before spring, 1968. We are at present consulting the local authorities and other statutory bodies affected by the proposals, and I hope that this process will be completed shortly. As soon as possible, the necessary schemes and orders under the Highways Act will be published, the district valuer will be instructed to begin land negotiations and the relevant compulsory purchase orders prepared and published.

It will be appreciated that, under the statutory processes which are laid down, we are compelled, in spite of any information which we have in advance, to follow the 39, or 31, steps which are frequently mentioned in the House. I should, perhaps, make clear that actual ownership of the land is not a prerequisite to the start of work on the scheme. If entry on the land is available either by agreement or by the use of powers under compulsory purchase orders, work can begin well before the district valuer has completed his negotiations and ownership of the land has passed to my right hon. Friend.

I well appreciate that the hon. Gentleman is disappointed that the various difficulties which I have mentioned have prevented earlier instructions for the opening of land negotiations and that work has not already started on the extension of the M5 southwards from Twyning. I share his disappointment. But, if re-adjustment in the timetable has to be made in the course of following the statutory processes laid down by Parliament and the working out of the design by the engineer, this does not indicate any lack of purpose or drive on our part or that the project will be delayed in the long run.

I give the hon. Gentleman this assurance. We will make every effort to get work on the extension southwards from Twyning started as soon as possible, and we still aim to ensure that this development as far as Almondsbury will be completed in 1970.