House Of Commons
Monday, 17th July, 1967
The House met at Ten o'clock
Prayers
[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]
Selective Employment Tax
10.6 a.m.
With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement.
As the House knows, payments of refunds and premiums are made under the Selective Employment Payments Act to employers whose establishments satisfy the conditions laid down in the Act. Appropriate Ministers are required to register such establishments on the application of the employer. Section 7(2) of the Act provides that such establishments shall be deemed to have been registered either from the date when the application was received by the Minister concerned or from any earlier date which the Minister regards as reasonable. Refunds and premiums are payable to the establishment from that date onwards. When the Selective Employment Payments Bill was before the House last summer, my right hon. Friend made it clear that he would take advantage of these powers to register as from 5th September 1966—the day when the tax first became payable—all applications which satisfied the conditions and which were received by him before the end of December 1966. Early last autumn the Government took space in national newspapers to notify employers how they could obtain application forms and guidance on filling them in. Employers were invited to make their applications from the beginning of October onwards. Many employers applied for registration in good time, but some were slower to do so, and despite further publicity in Decem- ber, it was clear that at the end of the year there were still a considerable number of applications to come. My right hon. Friend therefore decided to continue to exercise his power under the Act to backdate all qualified applications to 5th September, 1966. He has continued to do so up to the present time; a small number of late applications are still coming in. My right hon. Friend has also been advised by the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, who share with him the responsibility for dealing with registrations under the Act, that they believe there are still a number of employers engaged in agriculture, horticulture or forestry who are eligible for refunds but have not registered. While we cannot go on indefinitely granting full back-dating to belated applications, we are anxious to provide employers with a reasonable time in which to apply for registration. My right hon. Friend and his colleagues accordingly propose that the concession allowing full backdating to employers making late applications should be extended up to 4th September, 1967, and should then come to an end. Employers will, therefore, have had 12 months in which to make their application for registration under the Act. Any applications received up to and including 4th September next in respect of an establishment which satisfies the requirements of Sections 1 and 2 of the Act, and has done so since 5th September 1966, will be accepted and the establishment registered as from 5th September, 1966. In the case of any applications received after 4th September this year, the establishment will be registered as from the date on which the application is received.That was a long and not particularly satisfactory statement. Is the hon. Gentleman aware that there could be many employers who thought that they would be entitled to an annual refund or premium and who, therefore, would not apply until after one year is up? Has he considered this possibility? Since there will doubtless not be a moratorium on those who have not paid their tax after one year, why should there not be a continuing liability on the Government to pay the refund for much longer than one year?
I accept that I made a rather long statement, and I apologise for that. However, its length was due to fie complexity of this matter and my obligation to put all the facts before the House.
The necessity to place a stop date on the time when applications for refund are to be made is due, as the hon. Gentleman will appreciate, to the fact that this tax has some specific functions and objects in addition to the collection of revenue. Those functions can be served only if employers take the benefits of the tax within a reasonable period.Orders Of The Day
Referendum
10.9 a.m.
I beg to move,
My proposed Bill makes provision for only the mildest form of referendum—I would call it a form of complete public opinion poll. I have tried, I believe successfully, to avoid the well-known objection to the principle of the referendum. The Bill provides that Parliament shall, at a General Election, allow a poll at the same time as the election for M.P.s, on certain issues selected by Parliament, but limited in number by Parliament. The Bill is drawn in very wide terms, simply because, in Committee, hon. Members will best be able to fill in the details which would suit the House of Commons. My supporters and I have immediately in mind as issues for a referendum such particularly contentious items as the reintroduction of corporal punishment and capital punishment. I mention those because the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. William Price) and my lion. Friend the Member for Totnes (Mr. Mawby), who support the Bill, have their own opinions on them, but are also anxious that the public should express an opinion. I, too, have strong opinions on these matters, but none of us is of the same mind. Recent changes in the law relating to homosexuality and to abortion will be in people's minds at the moment, but the Bill would not specify any particular subject—that would be for the House to decide. I seek to obtain the opinion of the electorate, such as we have never had before except by the small sampling of public opinion polls, so that Parliament will be in no doubt about the will of the people on the issues put before them. Those issues would, I hope, be selected by, perhaps, a Select Committee from a list of suggestions made, I suppose, by hon. Members to the Committee by leave of the House. I visualise the selection of items of such importance as create wide public concern, and about which the political parties, or, in the main, Members of Parliament, have never sought a mandate from the public, and which in General Elections the public have had no opportunity at all to express their view. For the most part one has in mind the sort of subject brought before almost every Parliament in Private Members' Bills—items on which the public are well-informed and which I believe, we in this House are in no better position, or are no better qualified, to judge than anyone else. I do not, of course, refer to complicated matters which demand great study and thought from elected Members of Parliament. Though, by the Bill, Parliament would not be bound to place any one matter before the electorate, it would give the public a fair deal. There could well be contentious items that we cannot forsee. One that has just emerged rather strongly in Birmingham is the legalisation of brothels. That is seriously proposed by city councillors and members of the public as a means of containing the nuisance caused by prostitutes. I have refused to bring in a Bill to deal with that subject, but in these days of the liberalisation of morality who knows what will come before us at any moment? Other things that come to mind are blood sports, and the like. On none of these have we a complete idea of what the public would wish, yet we represent the people, and are supposed in the House to do their will. Now that the Government gives facilities for Private Member's Bills—and I do not argue that point—anything can happen against the will of the people without the authority of the people. I find myself in favour of some of the items I have mentioned, but not of some existing or proposed legislation, but no one can confidently assert that any of these things represents the will of the majority of the people. The important thing is the will of the majority of the people—democracy. We all claim to believe in democracy. We recommend it abroad, we legislate for others to practise it, we have gone to war for it, yet we do not fully practise it ourselves. I must admit that even in the Bill I would not allow for what I call the full com- plete measure of democracy. Now we have some chance to say whether or not we will grant a larger measure of it to our people. The form of referendum practised under our law by means of town polls has proved of great value. Among the countries which have experience of referendums are Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, Ireland, Germany, France and Italy, but all in a fuller, different and stronger form than I propose. A referendum has been held on the sale of alcoholic drinks, and even in this country we had a kind of local referendum on that subject. Other items have been nationalisation, monopolies, social services, rents and prices, and military services. These are all interesting studies, but my Bill does not purposely intend to stretch the matter as far as that, but, rather, to deal with those subjects for which at present Private Members' Bills are brought forward. I have been asked about the Common Market—That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide for a referendum to be held with a general election.
Order. I would remind the hon. Gentleman that he is seeking leave under the Ten Minute Rule.
I beg your pardon, Mr. Speaker. I will cut down my remarks, and merely say that times have changed and that, by the use of television, radio and Press we now have a more educated and informed public. Gone are the arguments against the referendum that might have been valid when so many people could not read or write.
10.17 a.m.
I oppose the Motion. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Gurden) has sought a rather interesting and novel way of introducing the referendum into this country, but I suggest that his Bill would compound the difficulties already existing by adding a few more. The hon. Member says that Parliament should decide the issues to be presented to the electorate at a General Election, but I suggest that this Bill would mean that the Parliament that was ending would, in effect, bind its successors on items that it believed should be put before the general public.
The choice would, presumably, be made by a Select Committee during the lifetime of the previous Parliament, but if, in the long run, Parliament as a whole was to decide, the Government of the cay, of whatever party, would decide what issues, if any, would be put before the public. The effective decision on the matters to be put to the public would rest with the Government of the day, so that the hon. Member's Bill would add to the power of the Executive, and not lessen it. By confining a referendum only to times of General Elections, the hon. Member is suggesting that only then can we decide to discuss such moral issues as he mentioned. I should have thought that, if we were to introduce a referendum, it should be held at convenient moment when issues of great importance arose. Under his proposal, a disproportionate amount of time would be given to the particular issues under consideration and not to the manifestos of the political parties, which ought to be the most important things being discussed at a General Election. Then there is also the problem of the size of the vote. The hon. Gentleman thinks, presumably, that he has got over his problem by having it at a General Election, but it does not follow that the electorate would vote in any great numbers on particular issues put before them alongside the general vote for the parties. Therefore, I believe that many of the difficulties which exist anyway when one talks about referenda are present in the hon. Gentleman's suggestion, but my most important point is that the whole suggestion of referenda being used in our electoral system works away from our system of representative government on which the whole basis of our democracy rests. En a system of government such as ours, the centre of democracy must rest with this Chamber because, the moment one moves away from this and introduces a system of referenda and other extraneous ways of trying to find out people's views, one is weakening our democracy. When the electorate go to the polls at a General Election, they know that they are electing a person who belongs to a party, or not to a party, who will be their representative, responsible to them and responsive to their views. He will be responsible for the next five years or less, depending on the date of the following election, for carrying forward, in his view and in his conscience, what he believes to be the right issues. The moment we introduce other ideas, such as referenda, we are breaking away from that system and in our system of government that is not the right thing to do. The hon. Member mentioned other countries which carry out referenda, but it is fair to argue that we are concerned here with the system of government in this country—and that system depends on the effective working of democracy within this Chamber. What would happen—as I believe has happened in other countries where referenda are used—is that, so far from what he wants being achieved, they would be or could be used by the Government of the day to appeal over the heads of the Chamber, just as in ancient Greece the Charismic leadership of the day appealed to the mob and tried to get Greece away from the idea of a representative Chamber. The hon. Gentleman is putting forward a solution of how we should gauge public opinion which would damage Parliament and not enhance democracy.Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 13 ( Motions for leave to bring in Bills and nomination of Select Committees at commencement of Public Business).
Objection having been taken and since a Division has been claimed, I am bound by paragraph 4 of the Sessional Order to declare proceedings on the Motion deferred until the end of today's business.
The Proceedings stood deferred pursuant to Order ( Sittings of the House ( Morning Sittings)).
Irish Sailors And Soldiers Land Trust Bill Lords
Order for Second Reading read.
10.24 a.m.
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The Irish Sailors and Soldiers Land Trust was set up under the Irish Free State (Consequential Provisions) Act, 1922, so that cottages could be provided in Ireland for ex-Servicemen of the 1914–1918 war. A lot has been done since the Act was passed and today the Trust has 1,896 tenants of its cottage properties on both sides of the Border, and of these, 759 are widows of former ex-Servicemen tenants. Thanks to the prudent and skilful management by the trustees for many years, a reserve fund has been built up. Interest from this fund, together with rents received, is enough to pay for the current running costs but the trustees have now asked for an extension of their powers so that they can confer additional benefits on the beneficiaries of the Trust, the ex-Servicemen and their widows, in ways more suited to present conditions. The Bill is designed to give them these powers. Clause 1(1) enables the Trust to provide these men with accommodation other than cottages. The House will appreciate that, at the time when the Act was passed, the men qualifying were young and active, seeking houses for themselves and their families on their return from war service. For them, cottages were an appropriate and satisfactory type of accommodation. So, naturally, the Act was confined to providing this kind of dwelling. But many years have passed and for a large proportion of those on the waiting list the tenancy of a cottage would be of little advantage. There is now clear need to extend the Trust's powers so that, in so far as its funds allow, it can provide qualifying ex-Servicemen with other kinds of living accommodation —for example, it could be appropriate in some cases for old people's fiats to be made available. Subsection (2) gives the Trust power to sell cottages to widowed tenants. The Trust has a temporary power to make sales of this kind under the 1952 Act, but that power has long since lapsed. There will be two advantages from the use of this proposed power. First, the widows will be able to secure for themselves and their families the ownership of properties they at present inhabit as tenants and, secondly, additional funds will accrue to the Trust from these sales which can be used either for the benefit of remaining tenants or making additional accommodation available for those on the waiting list. This will obviously increase the prospect of assistance of those still on the waiting list. The Trust's affairs are managed by five trustees. Three of them are appointed by the Home Secretary—Sir Edmund Compton, who is Chairman, Lord Carew and the Duke of Westminster; one trustee—Brigadier Calwell—is appointed by the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, and the fifth trustee—now Lord Killanin—is appointed by the Government of Eire. All these trustees give their services without financial reward and I am sure that the House would like to express our gratitude for the services they render. Some hon. Members have been familiar with the affairs of the Trust for many years and I am glad to see here today in particular the hon. Member for Belfast, North (Mr. Stratton Mills), who has taken an active interest in securing these additional powers for the Trust to enable it to discharge its obligations with even greater adequacy in today's circumstances. I commend the Bill to the House as a Measure entirely beneficial and which commands the support of the Trust's tenants, the ex-Service organisations and the trustees alike.10.28 a.m.
I welcome the Bill, the provisions of which are as we would wish, and add to the tribute paid by the hon. and learned Gentleman to Sir Edmund Compton and the other trustees for the work they are doing. At the same time, I am glad that he also paid tribute to the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, North (Mr. Stratton Mills), who has taken such an interest in the welfare of the tenants from time to time.
However, there is one important question to which the hon. and learned Gentleman did not provide the answer. It is the key question of how many veterans there are on the waiting list, because this raises a question of policy which I wish to mention. Under the Bill, more of the cottages are likely to be sold to the widows. Is it envisaged that the proceeds of such sales will go entirely to the acquisition of properties such as flats, or are they likely to be taken into investment or put into reserve, which seem already to be very adequate and, indeed, considerable? If the funds are not all to be exhausted in this respect, and if the waiting list is not as long as some might imagine, should not consideration be given to the position of veterans of the Second World War? Can he perhaps tell us whether a study has been made of that suggestion? When it was raised in another place, the noble Lord, Lord Bowles, who introduced the Bill for the Government, said:I do not think that the noble Lord, when he said that, meant to rest his case against any such proposal to do something for second war veterans on the implication that First War veterans were different in the sense that they happened to be volunteers and were not conscripted. In case he was resting what he said on that proposition, I must point out the obvious, namely, that, in the Second World War, there was no conscription in the Republic of Ireland since there was no allegiance and there was no conscription in Northern Ireland, although the Government of Northern Ireland at the time asked for conscription to be applied. The situation was not the same. We are, therefore, dealing in both cases with men who were volunteers and who are just as entitled to a mark of their country's gratitude as their predecessors. I can understand the point which the noble Lord went on to make that he thought there might be reluctance to apply any new provision of this kind to veterans of Eire, because it might be taken as holding out an inducement to subjects from an independent republic to fight in the British Army. However, there need not be any such inhibition about the case of volunteers from Northern Ireland. I should like to know what the Minister feels about that and whether, even if this is not entirely the appropriate occasion, that possibility will be considered in the future. Otherwise, I warmly welcome the provisions of this small but humane Measure."… I may say that the proposal has been raised before and it was turned down on the grounds that this Imperial Trust was set up for those volunteers of the First World War—because there was no conscription at that time in Ireland—who were promised that when they came back from the war they would be given appropriate accommodation as a mark of the country's gratitude for their war service. That was what was done, and that is why I do not think it appropriate that the 1939–45 war veterans should have the same kind of treatment."
10.32 a.m.
I would join with other hon. Members in welcoming this most useful Bill, and, in passing, I should like to thank the Financial Secretary and my hon. Friend the Member for Londonderry (Mr. Chichester-Clark) for their kind personal remarks. The House should also place on record its thanks to the trustees of this Trust and, in particular, the chairman, Sir Edmund Compton, for bringing forward this piece of legislation. It would be churlish not to thank the Government for bringing forward the Bill and finding time for it in their very busy Session, and I also appreciate that its place in the waiting list has been rather shorter than most Bills of this kind.
As I say, I welcome the Bill, but I have had several letters and visits from people who have expressed opposition to it on the ground that as there are a number of ex-Servicemen still on the waiting list it is wrong to sell to the widows. I have explained that this view is wrong for two reasons. First, I accept that it is arguable whether it is right to sell the houses to the ex-Servicemen tenants as long as there are people still on the waiting list! I have put the view to people who have corresponded with me on this that if the ex-Servicemen are entitled to buy then it is right that the widows of those who have not survived—many have died early through war wounds—should have the same right that their husbands would have had if they had survived. I am encouraged in this view as it is also the view of the British Legion of Northern Ireland, which is supporting this legislation. It is right that the Trust should sell the houses to the ex-Servicemen. Many have paid rents all their lives and if they wish to have the right to own their own homes then it is perfectly sensible. Many of the elderly tenants who are not in the best of health may want a daughter or a son to come and live with them, and there is the additional inducement that, after the tenant becomes the owner, his or her children can live on in that house as of right, whereas, if they die as tenants, their children would not be able to keep the tenancy after their death. The second reason why it is right for the Trust to sell the houses to the ex-Servicemen is that at present it has to keep a very large reserve—and perhaps the Financial Secretary could tell us the current reserve—of many hundreds of thousands of pounds so that the interest from the reserve can be used to meet the cost of repairs. It is worth remembering that the rents which are paid, broadly speaking, do not cover the cost of repairs which is why this substantial fund has to be kept. The Trust will be relieved of the cost of repairs on the sale of the houses and it will have a further capital sum which can be used to provide new accommodation. This is a point which is worth pointing out to those people who are still on the waiting list of the Trust. What of the future? I very much welcome that the trustees have taken powers in the Bill to provide other types of accommodation. I quote from Clause 1, subsection (1):The Financial Secretary said that the trustees had in mind particularly pensioners flats. Could he say a little more on this? There might be a case for considering some kind of old people's home of the type run by local authorities for particularly elderly ex-Servicemen of the Second World War. I think that that would be welcomed. While I take the point that many of the tenants are elderly, there is a wish for the Trust to provide a very small cottage of the kind provided by the Northern Ireland Housing Trust near Belfast called pensioners' cottages. These are purely on one floor, with limited accommodation, but they have been extremely popular. I hope that the Trust will consider this. Perhaps the Financial Secretary can give some further details of what the Trust has in mind on those lines? My hon. Friend the Member for Londonderry asked about the numbers on the waiting list. I know that the trustees feel that the waiting list is not big, but I feel that sometimes all the people on the waiting list come and see me. Therefore, I have the possibly misleading impression that the waiting list is extremely long. I should like the Trust to carry out a complete review of the people on the waiting list to bring it up to date. This would be most useful. There are many people on the waiting list and, as the years are passing by, I should like the trustees to press on most urgently with providing additional accommodation. They will now have new capital. I hope that in the interim period, while the new capital is coming in from the sale of houses, they might perhaps consider borrowing additional moneys from the bank, as well as calling on the reserve, to press on with building new homes, particularly in the Greater Belfast area where the waiting list is longest. If the Trust could set some form of target of perhaps 200 'additional units in a crash programme within the next 18 months, that would not be unduly ambitious. I end as I began by warmly welcoming the Bill and thanking the trustees and the Government for introducing it."… to providing … or assisting in the provision of living accommodation other than cottages …".
10.40 a.m.
By leave of the House, may I say that I have only approximate figures for the numbers on the waiting list, but as such I give them to the House. In Northern Ireland, there are about 450, of whom some 300 are in the Belfast area, and in Southern Ireland there are some 300, of whom about 120 are in the Dublin area.
The hon. Member for Londonderry (Mr. Chichester-Clark) asked whether it was intended that the proceeds of these sales to widows where they occurred would be devoted entirely to the acquisition of properties, and the hon. Member for Belfast, North (Mr. ,Stratton Mills) developed questions on that theme and on the type of accommodation which might be provided. Deliberately, the wording of the Bill is extremely wide to allow the maximum discretion to the trustees. It is not envisaged necessarily that it should always be for the acquisition of properties. For example, the trustees might have in mind making contributions to charitable bodies which would be able to provide accommodation for these ex-Servicemen. The hon. Member for Belfast, North rightly stressed that this was a matter of same urgency. Fifty years have now elapsed since the end of the First World War and, naturally, those on the waiting list are elderly people. As I suggested, some are in need of more than just bare accommodation and need welfare help and assistance. Accordingly, I am sure that the trustees will closely study the remarks of the hon. Member about the kind of accommodation which might be provided and which might be suitable. I am not sure that it lies within their power to embark on a crash programme of the kind he mentioned, simply because, I imagine, it will take some time before they are able to build up the necessary funds from sales to widows, but, of course, they may think it right to use some of their present reserves in the knowledge that with this additional power they will be able to supplement the reserves again. The interest from the reserves is being used to help to maintain existing cottages along with their beneficial rents. The present total of the reserves is £761,970. The hon. Member for Londonderry raised the difficult question, which has been mooted before, of whether, when the needs of the ex-Servicemen of the First World War no longer occupy the trustees, the funds can be devoted to similar uses for veterans of the Second World War. Obviously, with a waiting list of this kind there is no need to make any decision about that now, but I must say that it would raise problems of considerable difficulty and complexity, political as well as economic problems. However, this is a matter which will have to be decided in due course and it is not somethng which we have to decide now. I was interested to hear the hon. Member for Belfast, North, who has many contacts with the organisations and people interested in the work of the Trust, say that there has been a certain amount of opposition to this proposal, due to a misunderstanding of its nature, and I am grateful to him for the explanation which he has given to those concerned. If it were the position that people on the waiting list would be prejudiced by sales to widows, we would not dream of suggesting that the trustees should have this power, but it is quite the contrary. The whole object is to be able not only to give this additional security, comfort and help to the widows, but also to be able to get funds which can immediately be applied for the benefit of those on the waiting list. Otherwise, there would be the unpleasing prospect of having to wait to see whether they outlived the widows to get any assistance. Clearly, those on the waiting list stand to benefit much earlier—and time is of the essence—if there is this power to sell to the widows. As I have already said, for many of those on the waiting list the existing cottages are not the right or the best type of accommodation and with these flexible powers the trustees will be able to give the accommodation of the kind needed. For that reason I am sure that they will closely review the waiting list to make sure that they know what are the real needs of those on it. I am grateful to hon. Members for the welcome which they have given to the Bill.Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time.
Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[ Mr. Ioan L. Evans.]
Committee Tomorrow.
Welsh Language Bill Lords
Order for Second Reading read.
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
This Bill comes to us from another place, where it received a warm and generous welcome and was passed without Amendment. The Welsh Language Bill honours the pledge made in the Welsh Grand Committee on 14th December, 1965, by the then Secretary of State for Wales, my right hon. Friend the Member for Llanelly (Mr. James Griffiths), to introduce a Bill to remove the existing legal obstacles to the use of Welsh and to repeal or amend those Acts which at present prevent or limit its use. The Bill will do away with the remaining legacy of those legal restrictions in the fields of public administration which have beset the Welsh language since Tudor times. Indeed, a quirk of fate has decreed that it shall be the fortune of the Member for Anglesey to be responsible for a Bill which restores to the Welsh language much of the status it lost at the hands of the Tudors, a dynasty which was founded in Anglesey at Plas Penmynydd, in the 14th century. The Act of 1536 passed by Henry VIII declared:That the language has survived despite such legislation and that it still shows such vigour over four centuries later are facts to ponder upon. When introducing the Welsh Courts Bill in 1942, the then Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison, made some comments which are as true today as when they were first spoken. He said:"henceforth no person or persons that use the Welsh speech or language shall have or enjoy any manner of office or fees within this realm of England, Wales or other of the King's Dominions upon pain of forfeiting the same offices or fees unless he or they use and exercise the speech or language of English."
I can only echo these sentiments and admire the faith in the future shown by Parliament at that time of crisis during the last war in devoting time to legislating about the rights of the oldest language of the United Kingdom. The Welsh Courts Act, 1942, enacted that"The Tudors, however, suffered from the mistakes of their age, and one was the belief that before we can have national unity we must have national uniformity. … I am all in favour of that national spirit which takes pride in its individuality, in its culture, its literature, but which is not so exclusive and intolerant as to require the repression of all other forms of language, literature and culture." —[OFFICIAL REPORT, 14th October, 1942; Vol. 383, c. 1659–60.]
No prior notice of the intention to speak Welsh is required. This was a big step forward at the time, but conditions change, and with it the nature of society. There are now few persons in Wales who are unable to speak English. Many who speak English may prefer to express themselves in Welsh. But an increasing number of Welsh-speaking persons speak English as fluently as they speak Welsh, and it is these persons who are deprived by the 1942 Act of the right to speak Welsh, their mother tongue, in court. The Bill is designed to restore to the Welsh language in the fields of administration of justice and public business in Wales the status and respect which it should rightly have, while, at the same time, recognising the consequences of the fact that the majority of Welshmen do not now speak the language. Much of the administrative and legal business of the country has indeed for centuries been undertaken not in Welsh, but in English. The Bill is, therefore, a sincere attempt to strengthen and dignify the status of the Welsh language while respecting the rights of the majority in Wales who do not speak it. Clause 1 of the Bill is intended to give the right of any man or woman to speak Welsh in legal proceedings in Wales or Monmouthshire on the same terms as he or she has the right to speak English. This gives effect to Recommendation No. 14 of the Hughes Parry Report that all witnesses who desire to do so should be able to give their evidence in Welsh in civil and criminal cases. The provision extends this right to any legal proceeding. The Clause does not contain any elaboration of what is meant by legal proceedings, but the implication, from the repeal in subsection (2) of this Clause of most of paragraph 7 of the Schedule to the Pensions Appeal Tribunals Act 1943, is that a person has the right to speak Welsh in proceedings before a Pensions Appeal Tribunal. The intention is clear, namely to confer the fundamental right to speak Welsh. In so far as any proceedings, for instance, a public inquiry, may be said not to be a legal proceeding, arrangements to allow persons to speak Welsh will continue to be made administratively. There should now be no circumstances in which a person is denied the right to speak Welsh if he so desires in such proceedings. In the case of proceedings in a court other than a magistrates' court prior notice may be required by rules of court. In the case of these higher courts it would be to the convenience of the courts and to the parties to the proceedings that advance arrangements should be made for interpretation if required. This is a matter of convenience. The possibility of expensive adjournments and waste of time which might result whilst the services of an interpreter are obtained will be avoided. The Hughes Parry Committee—and here may I pay a warm tribute to Sir David Hughes Parry, Professor Glanmor Williams and Mr. Jones Williams for the Report which they produced on the Legal Status of the Welsh Language—recognised this fact. The considerations that I have mentioned with regard to higher courts do not apply to the same extent in magistrates' courts. The right to speak Welsh in such courts will, in the majority of cases, be exercised in Welsh-speaking areas. In these areas no difficulty of interpretation seems likely to arise. As one who for many years practised in magistrates' courts in Welsh-speaking areas, this is my experience. I am sure that hon. Members on both sides of the House would agree that this is the general experience in these areas. In cases occurring in mainly English-speaking areas, arrangements can often be made for interpretation at short notice; and even in the event of an adjournment being necessary, the persons concerned will usually live locally and an adjournment will not cause as much inconvenience or expense as in the higher courts. The need for interpretation in courts in Wales has long been recognised. Rules under the Welsh Courts Act, 1942, have laid down the court's responsibility to provide at its expense for interpretation. The provisions contained in Section 3 of the Welsh Courts Act regarding interpreters are retained, but it has been thought desirable to include in the Bill the statement that"the Welsh language may be used in any court in Wales by any party or witness who considers that he would otherwise be at any disadvantage by reason of his natural language of communication being Welsh".
The object here is to indicate in the case of all legal proceedings that if Welsh or English is spoken in the presence of those who do not understand it, it must be translated. This, I would have thought, is the only reasonable arrangement. My right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General has already indicated that if additional interpreters are required in future, in consequence of the Bill, the necessary arrangements will be made. Subsection (2) repeals those Sections of the Welsh Courts Act 1942 and the Schedule to the Pensions Appeal Tribunals Act 1943 which impose a restriction on the use of the Welsh language in court. Under these existing enactments, the Welsh language could be used by any party or witness who considers that he would otherwise be at a disadvantage by reason of his natural language of communication being Welsh. It is these provisions which have caused difficulty and embarrassment in the courts of Wales in recent months, and the repeal will go far towards removing what the Government feel to be a legitimate cause of complaint. Clause 2 authorises the provision of Welsh versions of certain forms and words which are specified by or under Acts of Parliament, and makes provision for determining the circumstances and conditions subject to which these versions may be used. This Clause is intended to clarify the status of Welsh in official forms. There has been doubt as to whether it has been possible to prescribe Welsh versions of forms which have been prescribed in English only. To remove any possible doubt, the Clause has been drafted in the widest possible terms to give Ministers the power in future to prescribe Welsh versions of any documents or words which they may decide to prescribe. It is not possible to foresee at present the documents or words in regard to which the power to prescribe Welsh versions may be exercised, nor is it possible to assess what difficulties or complications may arise with regard to any documents or words that may be prescribed in Welsh or in Welsh and English. A considerable amount of work has been done to test the application of this provision in particular instances. But to go through all the enactments and Statutory Instruments to try to determine those in which the power to prescribe Welsh versions might be used would be an impossible task. Circumstances change, and it is not possible to determine in advance whether a Welsh version of a particular document or form of words will be required in the future. It is for this reason that the prescribing authority is being given the widest discretion to decide in what circumstances to exercise the power. Hon. Members will perhaps be wondering whether any indication can be given of the sort of circumstances in which it is likely that the power will be exercised. The view of the Hughes Parry Committee was that"… any necessary provision for interpretation shall be made".
It is not, however, the intention of the Government to produce a large number of Welsh versions immediately. The purpose of the Bill is to open the way to the translation of these forms should the responsible Ministers decide that there is justification for them. It has been suggested in certain quarters that Welsh versions should be provided regardless of cost. This, clearly, is not possible. We have a responsibility to the electors not only as Welshmen and women, but also as taxpayers. We would be failing in our duty if we did not take each of those duties seriously and make a decision on the merits of each case. Perhaps I can best illustrate the considerations that the Government have in mind by referring to a specific instance —the use of Welsh versions of forms for the purpose of legal proceedings. How the powers conferred by Clause 2 will be exercised is, of course, a matter for the Ministers concerned, but I think I can say that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will probably wish to take advantage of the provisions of Clause 2 so as to make available, in appropriate cases, Welsh versions of the forms most commonly used in criminal proceedings, and in some proceedings in juvenile courts relating to children who are in need of care and control or who fail to attend school. Thus I think that it is very likely that there will be available—as I understand there is already avaliable on an unofficial basis—a Welsh version of the form of summons used in a magistrates' court. But forms used in civil proceedings in the High Court and the county courts stand on a rather different footing as the Hughes Parry Committee recognised in paragraph 206 of its Report. As the Committee said, summonses and other documents used in criminal proceedings normally emanate from the court itself and there may well be little difficulty in ascertaining whether the defendant to whom the document is addressed would expect to be addressed in Welsh. Moreover, criminal proceedings have a territorial association with the defendant which may be altogether lacking in civil proceedings between private individuals. In civil proceedings, the court has little control over documents passing between one party and another and it would be quite wrong for one side to send the other a document in Welsh which the other party might be quite incapable of understanding. It is doubtful whether there is really any demand for documents used in such proceedings to be in the Welsh language at all and it would certainly be a waste of time and money to produce Welsh translations of the enormous number of forms used in civil proceedings in the county courts in the absence of clear evidence of a need for them. This is a matter on which the decision must rest with my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor, but I think it quite likely that he will not wish to prescribe Welsh versions of forms of this kind unless it could be shown that they would really serve a useful purpose. Clause 2 also gives the appropriate Minister or body the discretion to precribe conditions subject to which a Welsh version may be used. I will illustrate the manner in which this discretion might be exercised by reference to the courts. Where a Welsh version of a form is used in court proceedings, an English version will have to be made available as well. This will be particularly necessary where the forms are needed in a court outside Wales at a later stage in the proceedings; in the event, for instance, of an appeal. It is obviously essential that anyone into whose hands any form may come should be able to understand everything in it. It will be possible to provide for this, as well as for the possibility of any discrepancy between the Welsh and English versions of a completed form, by means of any order that may be made under Clause 2 of the Bill. It is the Government's intention under this provision to authorise entries in Welsh in the registers and certificates of births, marriages and deaths as soon as the powers conferred by the Bill are exercised on behalf of the Registrar General and subject to any conditions that may then be prescribed. Clause 3 contains supplementary proviiions in respect to the Welsh versions authorised in Clause 2. Subsection (2,a) contains a power to provide that, in the case of any discrepancy between an English and Welsh text, the English text shall prevail. The example has already been given that where a Welsh version of a form is used in court proceedings, an English version will have to be made available as well. It may well be necessary to stipulate, when prescribing a Welsh form of notice which has to be published, that the requirements for publication will be satisfied only by the publication of two forms, one in each language, or of a notice in both languages. In such cases it may be necessary to prescribe that the English version shall prevail in the event of any discrepancy between the text in English and Welsh. The purpose here is not to detract from the validity of the Welsh version as such, but in the interests of certainty to make clear which version shall prevail in the unlikely event of discrepancy between the texts. Subsection (2,b) prescribes the conditions subject to which a document shall be treated as a true copy of another document. It may be used, for example, to enable certified copies to be provided on birth, death or marriage forms with bilingual headings, of the original entry on forms with only English headings and for such certified copies to be treated as true copies. Some statutory provisions allow the use of a document or words to the like effect as a prescribed form of document or words. Subsection (3) authorises a similar departure from the prescribed form of document or words in the case of a Welsh version as is allowed in the case of the English version. Subsection (4) provides that the powers conferred by Clause 2(1) shall be exercisable by Statutory Instrument to be laid before Parliament. It includes the power to vary or revoke an order under that subsection. I have gone in some detail into these provisions because it is important that the courts in Wales and the general public of Wales should be certain of what this Measure intends. Under Clause 4, the Wales and Berwick Act, 1746, is amended so that "dominion of Wales" shall not, in future legislation, be covered by the expression "England". This brings the law into line with current drafting practice. These are the provisions of the Bill—a Bill which contains all those legislative changes recommended by the Hughes Parry Committee which the Government have accepted. Many of the other recommendations can be, and are being, put into effect by administrative measures. I am glad to announce that the Lord Chancellor has issued the necessary instructions to the district Probate Registries in Wales to ensure that wills in Welsh are treated in the same way as those in English. Indeed, the Government have already gone a long way to implementing most of the recommendations of the Hughes Parry Report. But throughout all their consideration of this Report the Government have never lost sight of the fact that it would be nothing short of a tragedy if the Welsh nation, from Holyhead to Chepstow—o Fon i Fynwy—were to be split on the issue of the language. The Government have therefore, rejected those recommendations of the Hughes Parry Report which appear to give preference to those who speak the Welsh language. Until we arrive in heaven, those of us who speak Welsh will have to compete on equal terms with those who do not. Four hundred years ago an event of the greatest importance to Wales occurred—the translation into Welsh of the New Testament by William Salesbury. The survival of the Welsh language was secured because the people of Wales took advantage of the opportunity that this great translation presented. Although I cannot claim that the Bill is of comparable importance, it is another historic milestone. Although no Parliament can legislate so as to compel people to speak a language, the Bill provides another opportunity for the Welsh people. The Council for Wales, in its Report on the "Welsh Language Today", stated:"A Welsh form would be appropriate where it was likely that the recipient would regard it as natural that he should be addressed in Welsh or if as a matter of principle he wished to be so addressed. We recommend that special arrangements shall be made to ensure a supply of Welsh documents in fair demand."
No power or influence can compel society to accept that which it is not willing or ready to accept, and to divide Wales on this issue would be to imperil the future of the language. Nevertheless, the Government are anxious to create those conditions which will favour the continued growth and use of the language. It is with this in mind that the Bill is now before the House. I am proud of its provisions. It is a sincere endeavour by the Government to do justice to the Welsh language and, at the same time, to the people of Wales as a whole. The Bill incorporates those amendments of the law recommended by the Hughes Parry Committee which the Government have accepted. It gives the Welsh language its rightful place in the administration of courts and public business in Wales. This is an historic Bill and I am proud to commend it to the House."… language cannot be imposed on a people; it must be embraced voluntarily".
11.9 a.m.
My hon. Friends and I warmly and wholeheartedly welcome the Bill and I underline the felicitous way in which the right hon. Gentleman opened the debate. The Bill has already had a happy and quiet passage through another place. I well remember that it was my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph) who set up the Hughes Parry Committee when the Conservative Party was in office. It is right for the House to pay tribute to the three great Welshmen who sat on that Committee—Sir David Hughes Parry, the Chairman, Mr. Jones Williams and Professor Glanmor Williams—and we debated their Report in the Welsh Grand Committee in December, 1965.
I have said before, and I repeat, that I regret that the right hon. Member for Llanelly (Mr. James Griffiths) sat on the Report for as long as he did. There may have been reasons for that, but my hon. Friends and I would have welcomed to have seen this Bill on the Statute Book at the earliest possible time and, for his part, the Secretary of State has done his best in this respect. As I say, we on this side welcome the Bill. The only note of dissent that I intend to make is to ask the Secretary of State whether he will consider changing part of Clause 1. Whereas in what are called senior courts, which are more senior than magistrates' courts, prior notice of the desire to use the Welsh language must be given, for ordinary benches notice will not be given. I listened carefully to what the right hon. Gentleman said about this, but I did not quite agree with him when he said that more often than not, from his experience of magistrates' courts, those who came before the courts were almost always local people.In criminal cases.
From my experience, I do not think that is so. The right hon. Gentleman may have added reasons which he is prepared to give to explain why it is necessary that magistrates' courts should be treated differently, for instance, from county courts and other courts.
That was brought out fairly well by the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, when he said in another place that in Welsh-speaking areas there may well be no need to specify that prior notice must be given, but that in certain other areas, where the normal language is English, the rules of the court could specify that if a person wished to speak Welsh, he should give notice. I only say from my experience in working in a court in a predominantly English-speaking area, where some people can speak Welsh but where the language is seldom used in court, that it might be as well to stipulate that notice should be given in the same way as in the other courts. There should not be any difficulty provided that notice is given, because, obviously, interpreters are not difficult to find in the local schools. I merely put it to the House that this might be a sensible arrangement and that it would work. I strongly underline what the Secretary of State said when he gave it as his firm intention and the intention of his party that the future of Wales and its people should not be split on the issue of language. I heartily echo that view. I live right in the middle of Wales. If you were to put a pin in the middle of a map of Wales, Mr. Speaker, there you would find my home. I understand, therefore, perhaps as much as anybody the difficulties and the problems between North and South and the various differences which exist. For these reasons, I ask the Secretary of State to consider my suggestion and to see whether, during the later stages of the Bill, he might be prepared to change it to that extent. I do not intend to detain the House, certainly on a Monday morning. I simply wish to commend the Bill heartily from this side of the House and to tell the Secretary of State that we shall continue to be with him in the production of the Bill as we have been up to date.11.14 a.m.
I am grateful for the opportunity to take part in this debate, which is not only of great historical significance to Wales but is concerned with legislation which is almost unique in character and purpose in that it is dedicated to the preservation of a language.
As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has noted, there are many in Wales who think of 1967 as the 400th anniversary of the translation of the New Testament into Welsh by William Sales-bury. There are, indeed, many who wish that the event should have been formally acknowledged by the Government for the great and decisive contribution that it made to the preservation of the language at a time when pressure against its life was very severe. I am sure, however, that all who have a sense of history will acknowledge that the Bill constitutes a practical way of celebrating the 400th anniversary of William Salesbury's translation. It already seems likely that certain elements in Wales will scour the Bill with microscopic concentration to find faults for condemnation. I do not for one moment think that the Bill is perfect. It lacks a great deal in that there is not a general declaratory Clause of the equal validity of the language in all legal and public situations. Nevertheless, it is only fair to consider that there is now probably ten times—a hundred times—more bitterness felt and manifested in Wales with regard to the Welsh language when the Welsh Office is actively dealing with this question and seeking to safeguard its existence than there was in all the years of smug, silent complacency that preceded it. I should like to stress three factors which I believe to be relevant to the Bill. First, there is its legal and constitutional significance. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has reminded us, the Welsh language lost its full legal status in 1536 by Section 17 of the Act of Union; but in all probability in the many Anglicised boroughs in Wales the language had really lost its full status sometime after 1284. The position with regard to the Bill, therefore, is that in large measure it reinstates the status of the Welsh language. In fact, it creates for it a status which it has never hitherto enjoyed in modern times. Such Measures cannot but have an effect beyond the field of language. In the months preceding this event, I have had testimony from people in all parts of Wales who, in many cases by pure accidents of childhood and environment, cannot speak the Welsh language but who view with pride, this elevation of the language and the fuller status given thereby to the Welsh nation. However significant and constitutional aspects of the question might be, the legal status of the language represents but a small fragment of a pattern of circumstances which decides whether a language will survive or not. That brings me to my second point. As we have already been reminded, we cannot legislate for the survival of a language any more than Henry VIII could legislate for its extinction when he sought to abolish the language along with the other "sinister usages and customs" which differentiated the Welsh from his subjects in England and which, together with those customs and usages, he sought "utterly to extirp". That was the purpose which was given in the lengthy Preamble to the 1536 Act of Union. All that legislation can do in the context of a language is to create conditions which are either favourable or unfavourable to its existence. It can do no more. A language like nationhood itself lives essentially in the hearts or minds of its people. Such basic attitudes are determined not so much by legal but by social status. I believe that the condition of the continued existence of the Welsh language in the end is the actual status that it has in the hearths and in the homes of all the people of Wales, especially of those who do not at present speak the Welsh language. It is obvious that many of the motives and purposes behind the Bill cannot be furthered by legislation. The criticism has been made from time to time that although the Hughes Parry Report contains 31 recommendations, only four or five of them are implemented in the Bill. It is only fair to make the point that all but four or five of the recommendations of the Hughes Parry Report were administrative in character and effect. Therefore, it is no valid criticism to say that the Bill has failed to do that which it could not possibly achieve, in any event. I believe that the legislative provisions are most important not for their immediate practical effect, but for the new mentality which, I trust, will be created. The first attack on the language four centuries ago came in the courts of justice, and it is very appropriate that the reinstatement should also begin here. Under the Act of 1942 there was not given any absolute right to speak Welsh, and that right to speak it in any event was confined to parties or witnesses. This privilege of speaking Welsh was something which was given to one as compensation for an incomplete mastery of the English language and who would otherwise have been at a disadvantage had he to use the English tongue. The position under the Bill is that the Welsh language is given a situation of absolute right, not relying upon any charity whatsoever as far as the courts are concerned. I hope that the Bill will have very much wider effects. I hope that it will inspire every administrator, every official in central and local government, and everybody who has a function in or connections with Wales, to consider what part can be played by each and every one of them in the revival of the Welsh language. I again stress that this is basically a question of elevating the social status of the Welsh language. Clause 2 of the Bill empowers translations of official forms and documents to be made, as we have already heard. A point which has been made by the Secretary of State is that the main criterion in this connection in deciding whether or not a translation could be made should be the question of demand. I hope that he and the other Ministers concerned in the interpretation of this Bill will not limit their consideration merely to that of demand. I hope that those who are responsible for such translations will consider not only the demand which now exists but how it can be created and how they can themselves inspire such demand. Unless the Welsh language is associated with the status of officialdom then there can be no future for it. This is a campaign which must be waged at every level from the home to the factory, from the kindergarten to the Government Department. I was very glad to note that some months ago the Ministry of Education in Wales was granting £200,000 to undertake research in the next few years in the ways of teaching Welsh to children who do not at the moment possess the language I am quite certain that there is one point here which will be conceded by all hon. Members who wish to see the Welsh language survive, and that is that it can only survive by gaining new recruits from those who at the moment do not speak it; and a recruit can only be won by his or her own volition. Good will is the touchstone and determining factor in all this, but I believe that the Bill, when it becomes law, can be an inspiration to such endeavour. Unless, however, there is a good will and this militant crusading spirit for its preservation there is no future for Wales. Today, Welsh is spoken by 650,000 or one-quarter of the population. A very high preponderance of those 650,000 are over the age of 65. I am sure that hon. Members here this morning know the miserable statistics which show how the language has failed over the decades to recruit new speakers from amongst the young. Only a bold, crusading spirit can enable the Welsh language to survive. Dainty sympathies are of no avail in this connection. I believe that it was Edmund Burke who said:For the evil of the extinction of the Welsh language to take place it is necessary only for men of good will to mumble benevolences and do nothing concrete for saving it. Some may ask: why should this deliberate effort be indulged in? Why is it proper and necessary to save the Welsh language? Are there not too many languages in the world already? Are we not moving towards one world language which will cement humanity in a unified brotherhood? Would it not be magnanimous for the Welsh people to anticipate such an event and now to surrender their language? Indeed, it would be magnanimous, but I wonder where such magnanimity may be found? Do those who put forward such an argument propound such an argument in relation to any other nation or any part of any other nation? Unless and until such magnanimity is found among all nations of the world I can see no reason whatsoever why it should not be practised and exercised by the Welsh. I trust that in this debate there will be no hon. Member who will affect such feeble-mindedness in argument against he provision of the Bill. I come to my last point, that the case for preservation of the Welsh language rests upon a very broad base indeed. For a great number of people in Wales who speak the language it is the language of daily life and intercourse. For the many who do not speak the Welsh language it is still the traditional language of the Welsh nation, and there is a feeling of loyalty towards it. Appreciating that it is purely a matter of accident that those who speak it do speak it, I can claim no credit whatsoever for the fact that I speak Welsh, having been brought up, and living, in a home which is wholly and absolutely Welsh. There is no blame to be attached to anyone else who is deprived by circumstances of speaking the language. But I believe that there are many outside Wales who feel that the case for the Welsh language is founded on a very much broader principle, and it is this. Each language is unique; there is no language without its genius and grace. Each language known to humanity is a priceless and irreplaceable treasure, and the challenge which confronts the whole of humanity, therefore, when any language is based in jeopardy is the challenge of trusteeship, trusteeship of men of culture and civilised intelligence towards that language. I believe that it is right and proper to regard such a priceless and irreplaceable thing as a language exactly as the greatest treasures of art which have come from the hands of the painter or the sculptor. This was put very clearly by Dr. Johnson, when he said:"For evil to triumph it is only necessary for men of good will to do nothing."
It is on such grounds that I plead for generous support from all hon. Members 6n both sides of the House for the passage of the Bill, and for good will and chivalry in the interpretation of its provisions."I am horrified to learn of the death of another language."
11.30 a.m.
I am grateful for this opportunity of expressing my warm support of the Bill, which has been generally welcomed, and I also take the opportunity of congratulating the Government on its introduction. It is an achievement for which both this and the last Conservative Government can claim some credit, because the Hughes Parry Committee was appointed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph) in 1963.
We in the Welsh Parliamentary Party may also take some credit because the initial impetus came from there. I am glad to see the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport, the hon. Member for Aberavon (Mr. John Morris), here, because we would all pay tribute to the diligent research he made into this matter before the Welsh Parliamentary Party made its recommendation. We had two very valuable reports. The Hughes Parry Report is the best known, but the other is perhaps not so well remembered. This was the one by the Council for Wales and Monmouthshire on the State of the Welsh Language Today. It was a matter of great pleasure and pride throughout Wales that the Government were able to announce in December, 1965, that they could accept the main recommendations of the Hughes Parry Report. I suppose that the Hughes Parry Committee had three main courses to consider. It could have decided to leave things as they were, a state of affairs which would not have commended itself to the majority of Welshmen, whether Welsh speaking or not; it could have advocated some sort of bilingualism of the type, for example, existing in Belgium until fairly recently. This, ideally, is what many Welshman would like to see, but I believe that the Committee was right to reject that course because of the expense and administrative inconvenience it would entail. The third course, which the Committee adopted, was to accept the principle of equal validity of the two languages. This was accepted by the Government and is the basis of the Bill we are discussing today. I turn now to Clause 1 of the Bill. It was highly desirable that the provisions of the Welsh Courts Act, 1942, should be enlarged. I agree with what the Secretary of State said about it. No doubt it was a step forward and something for which we had to be grateful. It pointed the direction to a more equitable state of affairs, but it was designed to deal solely with the case of a person under a disadvantage when using the English language. As hon. Members who are fluent both in Welsh and English know, the Act has had a curious result in that they would not be entitled to give evidence in their native tongue. The Act was in the nature of a condescending statute for Wales. It was an irritant to national pride in many ways and it is right to make the point that some judges, in interpreting it, showed rather too nice a regard for the letter of the law. Clause 1 is intended to enable any person who wishes to do so to speak Welsh as a matter of right in legal proceedings in Wales and Monmouthshire and sensible provisions are made about prior notice with regard to interpretation. I do not agree with the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford (Mr. Gibson-Watt) about the necessity for prior notice for magistrates' courts. Experience shows that that is not necessary and the Government have been right to exclude it from the Bill. Clause 1 refers toThat is more widely drawn than Section 1 of the 1942 Act, which refers only to"… any party, witness or other person …"
I presume that the extension is deliberate and I would like an assurance that this expression includes "advocate". That may seem highly academic and a somewhat and point, but we have a Welsh proverb "Ysgol orau, ysgol profiad" which, being translated, means, "The best school is the school of experience." I have been given an instance of the importance of this point by a solicitor friend of mine who used to practise in a Welsh-speaking area of my constituency and practises now in Caernarvon. He once had a bizarre experience in a case concerning a client who was not fluent in English. All his discussions with the client before the hearing were in Welsh. At the county court, the judge, the registrar and the solicitor representing the opposing side were all, if not fluent in Welsh, at any rate able to understand it. The judge for some reason tried hard to persuade my friend's client to give evidence in English but he stood by his rights and insisted upon giving it in Welsh. He was, indeed, a classic example of the case to which the 1942 Act was intended to apply. The extraordinary result was that the client gave his evidence in Welsh, but the solicitor had to examine him in English. If we can have an assurance about the meaning of these words in the Bill, this sort of thing will be avoided in future. I note that Clause 1 repeals only Section 1 of the 1942 Act as well as part of the Schedule to the Pensions Appeal Tribunals Act, 1943. I suggest that, to give equal validity to the Welsh language in this connection some amendment should be made also to Section 3 (2) of that Act. This could be done by providing in appropriate cases, that a judge or chairman would be empowered to order that any part of the proceedings spoken or read in English should be translated into Welsh. That would be an eminently reasonable provision because the final word in the matter would be by the judge or chairman and this in itself would be sufficient safeguard against any frivolous Dr vexatious abuse of the provision. Indeed, most magistrates' clerks in strongly Welsh-speaking areas already act in the spirit of the amendment which I propose. Clause 2 will be generally welcome. It is desirable to remove doubt as to the validity of Welsh versions of forms. It is regrettable that many Government Departments have shown a tendency to spurn Welsh versions of forms. The Post Office and the Inland Revenue are among the principal offenders. The Inland Revenue argues that it is because the wording of the Income Tax Act 1952 is dubious, but that uncertainty can now be remedied. I hope that the Secretary of State will give us an assurance that Welsh-language forms will be given validity with the least possible delay. I had hoped to find time today to talk about the effect of Clause 4, but I may have an opportunity to deal with that at a later stage of the Bill. I hope that the criticisms I have raised have been constructive. They are on points of detail only. I regard the Bill as a sincere attempt by the Government to strengthen and dignify the Welsh language while, at the same time, paying due regard and respect for the rights of those Welshmen who do not speak it. I am tempted to wonder how much could have been achieved if such a Measure had been introduced a century, or even half a century, ago, when the Welsh language was in a much stronger position. Regrets, however, are pointless. We must now try and make up for the failures of past generations. This Bill is evidence of the desire not only of the Government but of all parties in this House to do all they can to foster the Welsh language and to wipe away forever those irritating anomalies and anachronisms and that inferior status from which it has suffered for centuries. As the Secretary of State said, this is an historic Bill and in passing it today we Welsh Members are achieving one of the most important things that we have been able to do for our country since we first assembled here more than 400 years ago."… any party or witness …"
11.40 a.m.
In an uncharacteristic display of immodesty, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales suggested—indeed, declared it to be his faith—that Welsh was the language of heaven. It is a view which I suspect that most of my constituents—many of whom are most certainly eligible for heaven, if it exists —will not share and I am certain that my right hon. Friend had no intention of making that witty and pungent aside in any way to embarrass most of my constituents when they reach, as they surely will, immortality.
If we look at the myths of heaven, or of Golden Ages, there is one feature of these myths which is bound to be relevant when we are discussing a Bill of this kind. I was brought up, as I believe I have mentioned before, to regard the number of languages which burden the world as a curse and not as a blessing, and there is the old story of the pride of man, symbolised in the Tower of Babel, which brought great vengeance upon those people replete with conceit. The great tower crumbled, and the men and women building it were lost in the confusion that resulted from the divisive consequences of so many languages. Every man has his prejudice and I have mine; a certain diffidence towards the notion that it is irrevocable that language must be the depository and the sole means of containing the wisdom of nations. Perhaps it is not surprising that someone representing a constituency such as mine, a Monmouthshire constituency, should declare his prejudice on an occasion like this. Monmouthshire has a large population. Indeed, Monmouthshire and Newport together—and it is necessary for Wales to be reminded of this occasionally—have a population approximately equivalent to all the populations put together of Anglesey, Caernarvonshire, Merionethshire, Denbighshire, Flintshire, Carmarthenshire, Radnor and Brecon. It is, therefore, important to realise that as 97 per cent. of the population of Monmouthshire do not speak Welsh, and not many of the remaining 3 per cent. would claim to speak Welsh with the fluency and pride with which it is spoken by many hon. Members here who represent other constituencies, we are, therefore, dealing in Monmouthshire with a large section of the Welsh community. No Bill which touches on the Welsh language should have the divisive effect which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has so clearly indicated it is not the Government's intention to create. It is with some pleasure that, speaking as the only Monmouthshire Member who seems likely to catch the eye of the Chair this morning, I can reassure the people of Monmouthshire that the Government, while presenting a Bill which gives due recognition to the Welsh language, have been scrupulous in seeing that it in no way affects the right of every Monmouthshire man and woman. I am pleased, as I am sure Monmouthshire will be, that the Government have totally eschewed some of the more extravagant recommendations which characterised the Hughes Parry Report. I am sure that Monmouthshire will welcome my right hon. Friend's statement which made it abundantly clear that the Government have no intention of allowing any preference to be given in any job or post in Wales as a consequence of a man or woman having the ability to speak Welsh in addition to English, and that all applications for posts will be dealt with on merit, and on merit alone. If the recommendations of the Hughes Parry Committee had been put into effect in their entirety, they would have resulted in a grave disadvantage to the young people of Monmouthshire.I am following my hon. Friend's argument very closely. Is he saying that the ability to speak Welsh should not, in certain circumstances, in itself constitute added merit? Does he not agree that the ability to speak Welsh in addition to the basic English language should, in certain circumstances, be recognised as an additional ability, in the same way as one recognises the ability to speak French or German?
The point that I am making, and which I understood my right hon. Friend was making, is that in rejecting the recommendations of the Hughes Parry Report, for example, the recommendation which included the notion that the Civil Service of Wales should have at its head people who speak Welsh, the Government are setting their face, as they should, against the idea that a young man in Monmouthshire who speaks English only should not have the right and the opportunity to be head of the Welsh Civil Service, to become a county court judge in Wales, or to become the chairman of a Welsh regional hospital committee. These things would not be possible if the Government had listened to the siren voices which were coming from the Hughes Parry Committee.
I think that Monmouthshire will welcome the Bill which, while it accords to the Welsh language the greatest respect to which it is entitled, does so without in any way lending aid to those people who seem to think that it is impossible for a person to be thoroughly Welsh unless he is Welsh speaking. This is not a figment of the imagination of people in Monmouthshire. Many in Monmouthshire are disturbed that such a view prevails. It was most unfortunate, for example, that among the evidence given to the Hughes Parry Committee was that of the B.B.C., who clearly stated that the Controller, the head of programmes, his planners, his information officers and his staff, are people who have to beWe must refuse to distinguish between thoroughbred Welshmen and so-called mongrel Welshmen. The people of Monmouthshire are as thoroughly Welsh, to take up the unfortunate term used by the B.B.C., as anybody who speaks Welsh in North Wales. It is important that such a pejorative attitude should not be given any approval in any official quarter. I hope that those who are genuinely concerned in making certain that the whole question of the language does not become a divisive issue in Wales will take care in the words they use, words which can often prove very offensive to people who are thoroughly identified with Wales a and who live in the great County of Monmouth. How offensive this language can sometimes be is indicated by the very understandable current reluctance of the Monmouthshire County Council to continue giving funds to the Welsh Eisteddfod. It is my hope, as I am sure it is the hope of most of the people of Monmouthshire, that those in the House who have given full support to the Bill appreciate that there is a need for a caveat, namely, that the Bill must never be used as a divisive technique in Wales. And I hope that that caveat will be noted in other places in Wales so that the day may come when those who have said that the Eisteddfod should become a genuine national festival to bind together the English-speaking and Welsh-speaking Welshmen will find some response. If the young people of South Wales and Monmouthshire who speak no Welsh are to become interested in the language, and to find a challenge in the realisation that one-quarter of the nation speaks a language of which they know nothing, it must be possible for them to come into contact with it on occasions such as the National Eisteddfod. There in such a bilingual Eisteddfod one could bind together a profound culture—an Anglo-Welsh culture that thrives in counties like Monmouthshire, together with the more traditional Welsh culture of which they hear much and know so little—so, Mr. Deputy Speaker, in no spirit of churlishness, but rather with a full acknowledgment of the value and wisdom of the Bill, and the reservations implicit in it, I am sure that I can speak on behalf of my constituents and, I believe, the whole of Monmouthshire, when I commend the Bill to the House."thoroughly Welsh to maintain close and effective contact with the public in Wales which the B.B.C. serves."
11.50 a.m.
I want to remind the House of the place which the Welsh language had for centuries in the life of Wales. This is how the matter was put by a Government publication in 1927 called Welsh in Education and Life. It said that
The language fell on evil days not because the Welsh people ceased to cherish it; indeed, one of the most remarkable things about the life and history of this island is the way in which the Welsh people have remained loyal to their language. It fell on evil days because the Government of a nation overwhelmingly bigger than Wales wanted to destroy Welsh nationhood and sought to assimilate the Welsh people into England. The language was proscribed and exiled from places where formerly it had had most honour, including the legal system. Every weapon in the armoury of the State was used against it. Recently these weapons have been strengthened by new techniques of immense power so that instead of succouring the life of Wales the only State that we have had in recent centuries has sought to destroy it. This is the background against which the present Measure must be viewed. Perhaps the most powerful of all the agencies of destruction was the education system imposed on Wales in 1870. Two generations of this viciously anti-Welsh system did more injury to Wales and her language than the efforts of previous centuries. In 1870 the proportion of Welsh-speaking people in Wales was between 80 per cent. and 90 per cent. By 1961 we know that the proportion had fallen to about 26 per cent. This was due mainly to the fact that the Welsh language had, for a long time, been completely excluded from the schools of Wales. Since the 1920s there has been an improvement in the system, but we have a long way to go and in the meantime the destruction has been immense. The exclusion of the Welsh language from the country's official and legal life was as thorough as its exclusion from the schools of Wales. Until the 1940s, if a Welshman wished to use his language in a court of law in Wales he had to have an interpreter, even where every person inside the court understood the language. More than that, he had to pay the interpreter. An Arab, a Greek or a Chinese in the courts of Wales—as I have seen—does not have to pay an interpreter, but until the 1940s a Welshman, speaking Welsh in his own courts, did. This necessity was abolished by the Welsh Courts Act of 1942. Even that Act did not give Welshmen a right to speak Welsh in the courts of his own land. He could do so only if he were under a disadvantage in speaking English. The present Bill goes some way towards removing the injustice suffered by Welshmen in this matter, but it does not go a great way forward. In fact, there is bitter disappointment in Wales about it. I am not personally disappointed, but that is because my expectations were not high. Disappointment in Wales, however, is all the greater because of the tremendous development in Welsh national consciousness during the last two years. If the Government had produced the Bill immediately after the Hughes Parry Report, more people would have been satisfied with it. But today, two years after the publication of the Report, the Measure lags a long way behind public opinion in Wales. One feature which has caused a great deal of adverse comment in Wales is the absence of a declaratory Clause. One of the main recommendations of the Hughes Parry Report was that"in the early ages, the laws of Wales were not written in Latin and translated into Welsh, but were necessarily and inevitably first written down in Welsh by the scholars whom Hywel Dda who died in about 1910 or some other law-giver summoned to make the code. Reading the different versions of the Welsh Laws, we are struck by the significant fact that here is no striving and straining to twist word and idiom to meet the punctilious demands of legal expression but that, on the contrary, the language in which the laws are written has ample reserves, and is more than adequate to its purpose. We find, in fact, that even the Laws show the exuberance and exultation of the artist just as truly as the Mabinogian do, and that the magnificence and majesty of the Welsh Codes are the fruit of a rich, ample and well ordered culture, among a people speaking and hearing a language which, when other modern tongues were regarded as despicable vernaculars, was exalted in its own home to a degree elsewhere unequalled. Those who drew up the Laws were, in the first instance, artificers of cunning Welsh, as jealous in guarding the ancient customs and precepts of the language as in conserving the usages and maxims of the common law; in short, it is clear that the jewel of Welsh life and culture, during the period of independence, was the Welsh language."
That would have put the position quite beyond doubt. We see, in that sentence, the phrase "Wales or Monmouthshire", which is perpetuated in the Bill. I agree with the hon. Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse) that the people of Monmouthshire are as thoroughly Welsh as the people of any other part of Wales. Why, then, perpetuate a phrase which seems to imply that Monmouthshire is not part of Wales? When the Bill becomes law Welshmen will be able, as of right, to speak Welsh in the courts of their own country, but what a commentary it is on the position of Britain in 1967 that this acknowledgment of an elementary human right should be regarded as a magnanimous act. Even here, the right does not go all the way. A Welshman still has no right to have his case tried entirely in the Welsh language, although our right to Welsh-language courts, in the name of justice, is as great as it is to Welsh language schools. Compare this situation with that which exists in Switzerland, where all four languages have national status. French is spoken by about 20 per cent. of the people—Welsh is spoken by 26 per cent. of Welsh people—and Italian is spoken by a far smaller percentage. French has complete equality with German in Switzerland. Romansch in Switzerland is spoken by only 40,000 people, although the number has been increasing steadily in recent generations. A student of Swiss affairs, Mr. Ioan Bowen Rees, writes this of Romansch:"there should be a clear, positive, legislative declaration of general application to the effect that any act, writing or thing done in Wales or Monmouthshire should have the like legal force as if it had been in English."
this is for a population of 40,000—"There are five distinct dialects. Even literary language has two versions, the Ladin of the Engadine and the Surselvisch of the Upper Rhine, while there have to be four versions of each Romansch primary school textbook"—
To appreciate that, we must remember that the canton has complete rights of legislation over all matters except a few reserved to the central Federal Government."yet the formal status of Welsh in official life is negligible compared with that of Romansch. … All cantonal laws are published in Romansch as well as in Italian and German."
where the national Eisteddfod is to be held next year—"In local government proper, each commune decides on its own official language. Thus in Camedan, a town about the size of Bala"—
I emphasise the next passage, because it shows that this is a matter not of need but of right:"the notices outside the town hall were in Romansch: ten miles further West such notices were in Italian. … In the Grisons an accused person who wishes to use Romansch is tried by a Romansch-speaking bench and prosecuted by a Romansch-speaking advocate. Even the indictment has to be in Romansch."
How different is the status of Welsh, which I may not speak in this Parliament, the only one which Wales has; I may not even take the oath in Welsh. But then, Switzerland is highly civilised and democratic. So is Yugoslavia, which is comparable, having six languages. These nations have a multi-national State which values diversity. Wales has a long way to go before her language enjoys the same status as the languages of these countries. Even after this Bill, English will be "more equal" than Welsh in Wales. Finally, I turn to other recommendations of the Hughes Parry Report. What steps are the Government taking to implement them, because they are essential to establishing the principle of equal validity? Will they establish a panel of interpreters? This is a difficult and highly-skilled profession; interpretation and translation cannot be left to simply anyone who speaks both languages. Will they establish a panel of translators? How many are employed now in the Welsh Office? Will a Welsh version of the Judges' Rules be prepared and distributed? Will the Government publish an adequate number of forms in Welsh or, better still, bilingually, and make them readily available, so that it is no more trouble to get a Welsh form than to get an English one. These forms should be available as of right. This should not be based on need but on the same right as the counterparts of the Welsh people enjoy in Switzerland and Yugoslavia. Will the Government use more Welsh in their public notices on buildings and vehicles all over Wales? It cannot but anger Welshmen when English Ministers who often know little of Wales say, as I have been told in answers to Questions, that they will use Welsh in this way if they think that it is "necessary", "appropriate" or where they are "satisfied that it is justified" or where there is "evidence of need". The principle seems to be that Whitehall always knows best and, of course, Whitehall decides, even on such matters as the language to be used by sub-post offices in rural areas where everybody uses Welsh for all purposes. Sub-postmasters in Wales cannot put up notices in Welsh unless there is one in English as well in lettering equally big. This is infuriating for a Welshman. Will the Government succour the language by using it constantly in their own diverse publications? Stationery Office bookshops have a wide range of books, but how few are in Welsh. Will the Government use it far more in their own advertisements? Over £6,350,000 was spent in the last year on Press advertising by the Government, but the evidence I have is that only £49 was spent on Welsh advertisements in the total of nearly 70 Welsh language newspapers. Finally, how well will the Government publicise the new rights of Welshmen—in the Press, on radio and on television? The liberty to speak one's own language anywhere in one's own country is a basic human liberty and it is slowly being established in Wales. However, since language is the greatest tradition of a nation, the Government have the duty to create the conditions in which it can develop and gain strength. One of the main conditions is to secure for Welsh equality of status with English—but we have a long way to go before that is achieved."Yet most Romansch-speaking people speak German fluently, in the way that most Welsh-speaking people speak English and although Romansch is spoken by only 0·9 per cent. of the population of Switzerland, it has national status and may be spoken in the National Federal Parliament of Switzerland."
12.6 p.m.
When I entered the Chamber with the intention of opposing the Bill, I felt like Daniel in the lions' den, because the House was filled with Welshmen, but, after listening to my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse), I realise that they are not all that unanimous among themselves.
The Bill is a backward step and one which I regret. The Welsh language can be spoken in courts at present by anyone who is disadvantaged by not being allowed to use it. The Bill seeks to allow anyone to use it if he desires. However, in a court case in a part of Wales where very few people understood Welsh, one awkward person who can speak English perfectly well could decide to delay or obstruct by electing to give evidence in Welsh, and this is plain nonsense—Is my hon. Friend suggesting that a Welsh-speaking Welshman who chose to use his own language, with which he might be more conversant than with English, is necessarily being awkward?
No, but I am suggesting that, if he fully understood English as well as Welsh, he could decide, because he was in a part of the country where it was not understood, to make things difficult and awkward by speaking in Welsh. The law already provides that, if there is any disadvantage, people can now choose to speak Welsh, so the Bill would leave the position wide open.
In Scotland, one is thought not to be a real Highlander unless one can speak Gaelic, but hardly anyone in Scotland can speak Gaelic, so I can understand that there might be a similar position in Wales, where one is not considered a 100 per cent. Welshman unless one can speak Welsh. I am puzzled about the Bill. The last subsection says:Surely, if an interpreter is employed in a court, someone has to pay. Who will do so? If not the public or those involved, who will? If official documents are to be printed in Welsh as well as in English, who will pay for that? Everything is in two languages in Brussels and someone has to pay. Packages sent to me from Montreal are printed in two languages, thus taking up twice as much space as would otherwise be necessary. I have been in India where four different languages are used on coins and where people cannot talk to each other, although they are all Indian, but have to get someone from another country to act as an interpreter. Why should we try to extend the use of Welsh? It has already been admitted, even by a rabid Welsh Nationalist, that only 26 per cent, of the people in Wales understand the language. The hon. Member for Carmarthen (Mr. Gwynfor Evans) complained of post offices using English as well as Welsh, but a post office is used by everyone and if three-quarters of the people in Wales, not to mention tourists or visitors, cannot understand Welsh, surely a post office of all places should use English as well as Welsh. One of my hon. Friends who knew that I was to oppose the Bill said that it showed feeble-mindedness. There is nothing feeble-minded about trying to get people to understand each other. The feeble-mindedness is in trying to bolster up a language which three-quarters of the people in Wales itself do not understand."Nothing in this Act shall impose any charge on the people or on public funds. …"
As a Welsh Member for a Scottish constituency, can I ask my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Doig) what he knows about Wales?
I know as much about Wales as my hon. Friend knows about Scotland.
Although teachers are scarce, qualified teachers cannot get teaching appointments in Wales if they cannot speak Welsh. That is the sort of situation which occurs when languages are multiplied. How many other workers going to Wales, perhaps to remote parts of Wales where Welsh is still spoken, find it difficult to accept a job because of the language problem, or find it difficult to get their children taught? This is the sort of problem which arises when we try to bolster up a language. If we believe in the international brotherhood of man, as we profess, we ought to aim at an international language which everyone can understand. That would be a sensible objective, and it is an objective to which we are being slowly but surely driven. In the Highlands of Scotland only old people now speak Gaelic, apart from one or two who think that it is the right thing to do, that it gives them prestige, but very few other people in Scotland understand it. This will be the situation in Wales where only 26 per cent. understand Welsh, many of them elderly. If things go on normally, fewer and fewer people will understand Welsh, so why should we try to bolster up this language? The natural thing to do is to let it die, as it will die unless we bolster it up. What is the purpose of saving it? Do we want people to talk freely to one another, or do the Welsh want to be able to talk to each other in a language which no one else can understand? That could cruse distrust. During the war in my little section we had a handful of Welsh people whom everyone distrusted because they could talk to each other in a language which the rest of us did not understand, and sometimes it was imagined that they were saying things about others. The misunderstandings are not a figment of my imagination because the Bill itself makes provision for them. Clause 3(2,a) says:Even the Bill admits that there are likely to be misunderstandings among so-called experts. Surely we should aim at an international language and not allow languages to continue if they serve no useful purpose. The Welsh language is slowly but surely being driven to the point when it looks like dying out, and it ought to be allowed to die out and not given an injection to revive it."to provide that in case of any discrepancy between an English and a Welsh text the English text shall prevail".
12.15 p.m.
Despite what my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Doig) has said, it is with great pleasure and with pride that I rise to wind up the debate. I remind my hon. Friend of what The Times said in an editorial on the morning of the publication of the Hughes Parry Report, 26th October, 1965:
It is because we consider the Welsh language to be precious that my right hon. Friend has introduced a Bill which, I am proud to say, is supported by a Labour Government. Hon. Members have mentioned the Welsh Courts Act, 1942. When that legislation was introduced by the then Home Secretary, one hon. Member said that he would have liked it to have been introduced by a Secretary of State for Wales. We have now marched forward and this morning a Secretary of State for Wales has had the privilege of moving the Second Reading of this Bill. While the 1942 Bill had legal limitations, this Bill is clear and precise and goes much further and establishes that Welsh can be regarded as an alternative language. I should like to express appreciation for the way in which the House has received the Bill and to acknowledge the reception given to it in another place and throughout the Principality. Tributes have rightly been paid to the Committee which produced the Report on the legal status of the language and I am glad to have this opportunity to add my tribute to Sir David Hughes Parry and his two colleagues, Mr. D. W. Jones-Williams and Professor Glanmor Williams. I readily acknowledge, as we were reminded by the hon. Member for Hereford (Mr. Gibson-Watt) that that Committee was originally set up by the then Minister for Welsh Affairs, the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph). However, as page 1 of the Report itself says, this was following representations by the Welsh Parliamentary Party, which had recommended the principle of equal validity. The hon. Member for Denbigh (Mr. Geraint Morgan), Treasurer of the Welsh Parliamentary Party, was good enough to acknowledge the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Mr. John Morris) and some of us remember the paper which he submitted in earlier years and the evidence to the Minister for Welsh Affairs on equal validity. The Welsh Parliamentary Party went further and even recommended who the chairman of the Committee should be. I mention these things to show quite clearly that Welsh Members can claim some credit for some of the work which has been done to bring the Bill into existence. In passing, I should like to acknowledge the excellent earlier Report on the Welsh language which was produced in 1963 by the Panel of the Council for Wales under the chairmanship of Professor Aaron. The opening paragraph of the Hughes Parry Report says:"When a language dies something irretrievably precious is lost not only to the nation, bat to the world."
In plain language, the Hughes Parry Report says that at last we should have some action. Action speaks louder than words and the action of my right hon. Friend this morning, in introducing this Bill, has been much louder than all the discussions which we have had throughout the years, and I should like to commend the manner in which he introduced the Bill in full detail. I do not know of any person, Welsh-speaking Welshman or non Welsh-speaking Welshman, who does not wish to see the Welsh language surviving in Wales. I will exempt the hon. Member for Dundee, West. There are historical reasons why some Welshmen speak Welsh and some do not, and these factors must be taken into account and accepted. Our task is to foster the growth of our language in ways which will not allow any linguistic differences to disrupt our national unity. We must also avoid any actions which might antagonise the non-Welsh-speaking majority in our country. I remind the House that the Bill will establish the legal position of the language in the eyes of the law. On the other hand, the status of the language in the eyes of our people, and of the world, depends on each and every one of us. Paragraph 355 of the Report of the Panel of the Council for Wales stated:"A number of reports and memoranda … have … been published. We would like to think that this is not going to be yet another inconclusive exposition of a complex historical—legal situation."
The hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Hooson), who has apologised for his absence, said, when we debated this matter in the Welsh Grand Committee, that the way in which this matter is interpreted must depend on commonsense and a civilised approach. That is our stand point. The hon. Member for Hereford fell below his usual standard when he criticised my right hon. Friend the former Secretary of State for the delay in introducing the Measure. The Bill may be short and small, but I assure him that a great deal of work has been involved in bringing it forward. The Bill propounds principles which have very wide applications, and extensive consultations have had to take place to ensure that it is drafted in such a way as to cover all eventualities. Pressure of other busi- ness has also precluded its inclusion in the legislative programme before now. Even so, it was introduced in the first place in the House of Lords because of pressure of time. The hon. Member for Hereford also took issue with Clause I. I assure him that there are difficulties here which would make it impossible for us to accede to his request. The position at present is that the Welsh Courts Act enables a person to speak Welsh in court without having to give notice. To now say that such a person should have to give notice would be to derogate from the right that already exists. Indeed, the evidence given to the Hughes Parry Committee shows that considerable use is made of the Welsh language in Welsh speaking areas, particularly in magistrates' courts, although requests for evidence to be given in Welsh are rare outside these areas. To hamper ones right to speak Welsh in the courts in these areas would not be justified, and the intention of the Government is clear from the Preamble to the Bill, which states that the Welsh language should be freely used by those who so desire in the hearing of legal proceedings in Wales and Monmouthshire. To restrict this right in magistrates' courts, where arrangements for interpretation can be readily made, would, in the Government's view, be unnecessary. The Bill gives the right to any man or woman to speak the Welsh language in legal proceedings in Wales and Monmouthshire, in the same terms as he or she has the right to speak English. The intention is clear and precise; namely, to offer the fundamental right to speak Welsh. The hon. Member for Denbigh questioned me about the phrase in Clause 1:"The survival and strength of a language primarily depend on the exercise of the general will of the community. If the community do not favour the use of the language, government and other institutions can do very little. Language cannot be imposed on a people; it must be embraced voluntarily."
He asked if that phrase included advocates. The answer is, "Yes". He also questioned me about Clause 3(2). The Welsh Courts Act, 1942, refers to all proceedings, and the House should note paragraph 208 of the Hughes Parry Report, which states:"… any party, witness or other person who desires to use it. …"
However, this does not affect the translation of oral evidence. As my right hon. Friend said, the object here is to indicate that if Welsh or English is spoken in the presence of those who do not understand the language being spoken, it must be translated. My hon. Friend the Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse) referred to the claim of my right hon. Friend that Welsh is the language of heaven. I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive the pride which we have for the Welsh language; although towards the end of his remarks he agreed the Bill showed a wise approach and appeared to come with us. I assure him that we approach this matter from a common sense point of view and that we have his comments in mind. The hon. Member for Carmarthen Mr. Gwynfor Evans) referred to bitterness in Wales, but I assure him that that has not been my experience. There may be some bitterness here and there, but there is certainly not a lot of it. The Bill has been well received through-Jut the Principality, and whatever may have happened in the past, the Government are proud of this Measure and I urge the hon. Gentleman to give us credit for what has been done and not of exaggerate any difficulties that may exist. The object of the Bill is also to enable Ministers to prescribe Welsh or English versions of forms. It is not intended that they should be required to so prescribe them. This follows the rejection of the idea of bilingualism by the Government. If Clause 2 were amended in the way that has been suggested, it would require an unmanageable flood of new forms to be introduced, and the majority of them would be unnecessary. During the course of its 1,500 years of history, the Welsh language has passed through many crises, each bringing us face to face with new challenges. There is a specific reason for its survival, and that is because it has proved to be the language of the ordinary people—Iaith y werin yw'r iaith Gymraeg—and it is because it has proved to be the language of the ordinary people that it will continue to survive and achieve, I hope, through the Bill, even greater glory and dignity than ever before. Gogoniant myw gaiff eto. A pharch yng Nghymru fydd. The Measure will not only remove a number of ancient injustices. It will also make for the more effective administration of justice in Wales and enhance the prestige of the courts."… great practical difficulties would arise and unnecessary expense be incurred if steps to keep records of trials, whether civil or criminal, in Welsh, were made obligatory."
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a second time.
Bill committed to Committee of the whole House.—[ Mr. Gourlay.]
Committee Tomorrow.
Welsh Language Money
Queen's Recommendation having been signified—
Resolved,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to make further provision with respect to the Welsh language, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of—(a) any expenses incurred under that Act by any Minister or Government department; and (b) any increase attributable to the provisions of that Act in the sums payable out of moneys so provided under any other enactment.—[Mr. Ifor Davies.]
Civil Defence
12.28 p.m.
I beg to move,
I would have hoped, having waited for two whole mornings for these and the following Regulations to be debated, that it might have been convenient for the House to have taken them without debate. However, I understand that the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) considers that we should debate them.That the Civil Defence (Public Protection) Regulations 1967, a draft of which was laid before this House on 22nd June, be approved.
I am sure that the right hon. Lady must think so, too.
I appreciate that this is an extremely important subject. Like me, the right hon. and learned Gentleman has spent two whole mornings waiting for them to be discussed.
The House will recall that on 14th December last my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary announced the Government's decisions about local authority civil defence and the Civil Defence Corps. He said then that, in future, local authority employees would be asked to play a bigger part in helping local authorities to carry out their civil defence functions. One of the main features of our civil defence preparation is the provision of an emergency system of control. Its purpose is, initially, to direct lifesaving operations—Adjournment
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[ Mr. Gourlay.]
Whereupon Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER suspended the Sitting till half-past Two o'clock, pursuant to Order.
Sitting resumed at 2.30 p.m.
Oral Answers To Questions
Oral Answers To Questions
I note that there are groupings of Questions which bring in some late numbered Questions. As I told the House once before, I cannot automatically allow supplementary questions to hon. Members whose Questions are very low on the Order Paper. I must endeavour to protect those who have put their Questions down earlier.
Suez Canal
1.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what steps he has taken to restore postal communications between the United Kingdom and British citizens trapped on ships in the Great Bitter Lake.
We have been in touch with the owners and understand that mail to and from the ships is now being received regularly.
In view of the renewed hostilities between Israeli and Egyptian forces in this area, would not the hon. Gentleman agree that it is imperative for the crews of these ships to be withdrawn, and that in any case they are suffering severe hardships because of the breakdown of the air conditioning plant and the shortage of water and food? Would it not be in the interests of the crews and their families for them to be brought back to Britain?
I have no reports of any firing nearer to the ships than at least five miles, and most of the firing reported has taken place much further away. I agree about the crews and the necessity to make sure that there their conditions are at least tolerable. We are in touch with the ship owners and have discussed with them relieving and replacing the crews.
Can the hon. Gentleman say what is the size of the ship which is blocking the Canal south of Bitter Lakes? Is it large or small?
I understand that there is a later Question about that.
4.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs on what evidence provided by the Egyptian authorities Her Majesty's Government accepted that the Suez Canal was closed contrary to Article 1 of the Convention of 1888.
The United Arab Republic authorities have publicly stated that the Canal was blocked by vessels sunk by Israeli action, but I have no other evidence to this effect. We have asked the U.A.R. authorities for information about the nature of the blockages. We have had no reply in spite of reminders. We have, however, other evidence which leaves no doubt that the Canal is physically blocked.
When this news was first heard the other day, did the Government make any effort by sending a non-military vessel through the Canal to see in fact what was happening?
No, Sir, we did not.
Does the right hon. Gentleman foresee any chance of the Canal being open to international shipping before 1968?
I could not possibly speculate about when the Canal will be open. I have later Questions about what we are doing about that. Obviously, our desire is to get the Canal open as soon as we can.
14.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will make a statement on the progress of his efforts to secure the re-opening of the Suez Canal.
36.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what steps he is now taking to ensure the re-opening of the Suez Canal.
37.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what steps he now proposes to take to ensure that the Suez Canal is recognised as an international waterway to which all nations should have free and unimpeded access.
41.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what action is being taken to secure the re-opening of the Suez Canal; and if he will make a statement.
87.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what progress has been made in re-opening the Suez Canal to the shipping of the nations.
As I told the House in the debate on 6th July, we are keeping in touch with other Governments who are interested in the Canal and are doing our best to get it opened as soon as we can. I regard the agreement of both sides to the stationing of United Nations observers in the Canal area as a useful first step towards this.—[Vol. 749, c. 2121.]
What estimate have the Government made of the time that will be required to clear the Canal once the will to do so is present among those on the spot?
I think that it is much more important to get to the point where the will to do it is present. The physical clearance, I imagine, will not take all that long.
While appreciating the steps taken immediately to reopen the Canal, what proposals has the Foreign Secretary for ensuring, once it has been reopened, that there is some form of international agreement to ensure unimpeded progress through it?
I do not think that that is something for me to ensure. It is something for the comity of nations to ensure. What we must concentrate on at the moment is finding the climate, the situation, in which we can get the Canal open.
When the Canal was closed 10 years ago, the whole world, including the right hon. Gentleman, reacted. Now nobody seems to worry. Why these double standards? Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether he expects the Canal to be opened before an Arab-Israeli treaty?
The hon. Gentleman is one of the greatest practitioners of double standards I have ever met. My business at the moment is to do what I can, in consultation with others, to get the Canal opened and to find our way through to a settlement of the problems in that area That I am doing.
Have the Government discussed with other friendly Governments the possibility of using as an alternative to the Suez Canal an overland route from Eilat to Ashtot?
That is a different question which I should like to see on the Order Paper.
Will the Foreign Secretary accept in future that a mere declaration by the Egyptian authorities in defiance of Article I of the 1888 Convention constitutes a closing of the Canal against international agreement?
The hon. Member is trying to take me far beyond where I should be at the moment. The right thing at the moment is to try to get the Canal opened and to try to get some other immediate problems solved, and then to try to work our way to a longer-term settlement in that area. To pronounce upon what should be part of the longer-term settlement at this point would be awfully silly.
Mr. Neil Marten.
Does the Foreign Secretary—
Order. I called the hon. Member to ask Question No. 16.
Question No. 16.
35.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what approaches he has made to the Government of the United Arab Republic about the clearing and reopening to shipping of the Suez Canal; and what assistance he has offered in the task of clearing the canal.
As the House knows, we have told the United Arab Republic authorities that it is intolerable that our ships should be blocked in the Suez Canal. With regard to the second part of the Question, Her Majesty's Government have offered no physical assistance towards clearing the Canal, nor have we been asked for it.
Will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind that we still have the largest merchant fleet in the world, with the exception of one fleet under a flag of convenience? Will he bear in mind, further, the exceptional hardship created for Malta where a very large percentage of the working population is employed in the dry dock?
Yes. I bear in mind very many matters. Ours is not the only merchant fleet badly affected. As a matter of fact, we are not as badly affected by it as we were ten years ago. Nevertheless, it is serious for us, but it is very serious for the U.A.R. who are losing very considerable quantities of foreign exchange as a result. I think that the question of opening the Canal is much more a political one than a physical one, and we are working on that basis.
Has my right hon. Friend been made aware of the statement which emanates from the recent Arab summit conference to the effect that no Israeli ship will be allowed to pass through the Suez Canal and that, if any dares to do so, she will be fired upon? Can we have an assurance from my right hon. Friend that, in any arrangement regarding the opening of the Canal to international shipping to which my right hon. Friend and Her Majesty's Government are parties, there will be no agreement which excludes Israeli shipping?
I read many speeches and statements from many quarters. My business at the moment, among other things, is to see what can be done to get the Canal open.
Despite the pledges about upholding the Constantinople Convention of 1888, have the Egyptian Government notified anyone that they would resist the clearing of the Canal under proper international auspices?
No. I do not think that that point has arisen. If we are all grown up, as I imagine we are in this House, we know that there are a number of problems to settle if we are to get the Canal open and, as the hon. Member for Dorset, West (Mr. Wingfield Digby) said, it is in our interests to get it open.
Aden
2.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will make a statement on the latest position in Aden.
56.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will make a statement on the situation in Aden.
59.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will make a statement on the latest position in Aden.
86.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will make a further statement about the situation in Aden.
89.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether any progress has been made in bringing together the Aden nationalist leaders and the Federal Ministers in a broad-based Government of South Arabia.
I shall later be answering separate Questions on the internal security situation and on constitutional advance. On the political front, Mr. Hussein Bayoomi, an Adeni and the present Federal Minister of National Guidance and Information, was charged by his colleagues on 5th July with the task of forming a provisional Government as the first holder of the office of Prime Minister to be introduced under the provisional South Arabian constitution. I understand he has been in touch with all elements of South Arabian opinion, but it is too early to say what Government will emerge.
I appreciate that reply. However, in face of the continued violence in Aden, which we all deplore, is there any possibility of direct negotiations with nationalist organisations and actual change in the status of the Federation? Can my right hon. Friend also look into the position of wounded British soldiers being closely questioned about Customs duties when they come back from Aden?
That second question is quite different; I should be glad to see it on the Order Paper. We are in touch, and I am sure that Mr. Hussein Bayoomi is in touch, with the various organisations which claim to represent the nationalist Arabs of South Arabia, but I would not like at this moment to comment further on that.
Does not my right hon. Friend agree that there would be a much greater likelihood of getting an affirmative reply from the nationalist organisations if, for example, the Government decided to increase the amount of the civil aid programme to South Arabia and Aden to something like that to be spent on military assistance over the next three years?
Frankly, no. I do not think that the two are connected.
Has Lord Caradon been able to arrange a meeting with Mr. Mackawee, and have there been meetings between him and the United Nations Mission?
I am sure that it would be very unwise for me at this moment to comment on who is consulting with whom.
Will any attempt be made to bring to punishment those Adeni mutineers guilty of murdering British soldiers?
That seems to be an altogether different question.
When my right hon. Friend says "We are in touch with the various organisations", does that represent a slight advance on anything he has been able to say previously? Can he say whether Mr. Mackawee is still in New York?
I understand that Mr. Mackawee is still in New York. What have just said was wholly in agreement with what I have said before.
18 and 69.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (1) what action he is taking to compensate British civilians injured in attacks by terrorists in Aden; and
(2) whether he will arrange for compensation to be paid to British civilians injured during civil disturbances in Aden.
There is no scheme in Aden for compensating persons, other than Government employees, for injuries caused by terrorist attack and I regret that it is not possible to introduce such a scheme.
Would not the right hon. Gentleman reconsider that decision? Ought there not to be such a scheme? Is he not aware that there have been some tragic cases, including one about which I have corresponded with his Department concerning a woman who has been paralysed by terrorist attacks? Would he not look at this again?
Yes, Sir. When I saw the question I did look into the position, and when I saw the details about the lady concerned, of course I was disturbed. The situation is that Government employees of all kinds are covered. The largest civilian employers have arrangements to cover their employees who are injured in such attacks. In the case of smaller firms, I strongly advise civilians working in any of these territories, where we do not have reciprocal arrangements for insurance facilities, to insure themselves.
I asked the Department whether we give advice in those cases, and I was told this morning, and given evidence, that in every case where we supply a passport for the first time, or on renewal, we give a book of advice to the person obtaining the passport, and this includes a section advising people of the risks involved in travel and advising them to insure, or to see that they are insured, against the risks, which include those about which the hon. Member is talking. In the Foreign Office, therefore, we take care to make sure that the attention of people is drawn to these risks. If they ignore that, there is nothing much that we can do about it.Is the Foreign Secretary aware that I doubt whether the House will accept that as a very satisfactory answer? Is it not a fact that these people are serving British interests at great risk to themselves and under the present arrangements there is no redress at all except by personal insurance against grave injury? Will the right hon. Gentleman look again at this matter with a view to making adequate arrangements to protect our nationals?
No; neither would the noble Lord were he the Minister. The commitment for the British taxpayer would be open-ended, not to say enormous. We do our proper duty, as did our predecessors, in drawing people's attention to the risk. Big employers take care of it. Others do not. Those who go to serve and to live in these areas should be advised to find out whether they are covered and, if they are not covered, they should take steps to cover themselves.
Are soldiers Government employees?
Oh, yes.
On a point of order. In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I beg to give notice that I will seek to raise the matter on the Adjournment.
40.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will make a statement on the internal security situation in Aden.
The situation in Aden, following the re-entry of British forces into the Crater district a fortnight ago, has been calmer and there has been a slight decrease in the number of terrorist incidents. The Aden Police, both armed and civil, are carrying out their proper functions and relations between them and the British security forces are back to normal.
Is not the confusion in Aden primarily caused by Her Majesty's Government's decision to hand over power without knowing to whom to hand it over? Can the right hon. Gentleman say in terms when security in Aden will be handed over to the Federal Government?
On the latter part of the hon. Gentleman's supplementary Question, I have nothing to add to what I said in the debate which we had the other day. On the first part of his Question, the hon. Gentleman could not be further from the truth.
Is my right hon. Friend aware of the opinion in Aden that a broad-based Government would have a better chance of being formed by someone who was not a former Federal Minister? Could he not employ the United Nations to form this Government?
There is the United Nations Mission, and we have been in complete touch with it all the way through. I think that what we are doing now is the right thing, and I hope that my hon. Friend will support Mr. Hussein Bayoomi in the efforts that he is now making.
Middle East
3.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what progress has been made towards a settlement in the Middle East including Israel and the Arab States.
8.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he will make a further statement on the situation in the Middle East.
15.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will make a further statement about the present situation in the Middle East.
55.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will make a statement on the situation in the Middle East.
58.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will make a further statement on the situation in the Middle East.
64.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what progress he has made in his efforts to secure a settlement between Israel and the Arab States.
As I have said, we believe that the primary responsibility for finding a lasting settlement in the Middle East rests upon the international community acting through the United Nations. Although none of the resolutions before the General Assembly secured the necessary majority there was an impressive consensus on the elements that should go into a settlement. Meanwhile, after incidents in the Suez Canal area on the 8th of July, Israel and the United Arab Republic have accepted the stationing of United Nations Truce Supervisory Organisation observers on both sides of the Suez Canal and this is now being put into effect.
In view of the latest outbreaks of fighting and the statement issued in Cairo yesterday by five Arab Prime Ministers, should not some action now be taken to mediate internationally and to find the basis for talks between the antagonists?
I would not read too much into the stories which we are getting about what is supposed to be going on, but I certainly agree that we must discuss with what the hon. Gentleman calls the antagonists. It is absolutely important to get the observers into position as soon as we can and to let them operate.
Is my right hon. Friend aware that there can be lasting peace in the Middle East only if the Arab States recognise the right of Israel to exist? What has he done in the past and what does he intend to do in future to bring about a different state of mind among the Arab leaders following their military failure?
If the situation were as simple as that, we could of course solve it overnight. There are problems either way. There is more than one way of settling the issue. As I have repeatedly said, there is not only an Israeli case, but there is an Arab case. We are concentrating on getting a situation in which we can move from a cease-fire to a consideration of a long-term settlement, and if my hon. Friend would support me on that, we might move faster than he thinks.
Does the right hon. Gentleman have any information which he can give the House about Russian arms supplies to the Arab countries in the last few weeks as regards both their quantity and quality?
No. I cannot give that kind of information, for obvious reasons. I still think that our obvious course is to concentrate on the policy which we are now following.
How many United Nations observers have been posted into the Suez Canal area? Does the right hon. Gentleman think that the number is sufficient to guard against any resumption of hostilities?
They are not there to guard against a resumption of hostilities—they are not a United Nations expeditionary force. They are there to observe and to warn and to alarm, and I think that there are enough of them.
7.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what representations he has made to the Governments of the kingdom of Jordan and of Israel as to the possibility of a federal administration of the west bank territory of Palestine previously annexed by Jordan and currently occupied by the Israeli army.
None, Sir.
Is my right hon. Friend aware that the original partition plan involved the idea of an independent Palestinian Arab State? Would he not agree that this may be one of the methods of solving this difficult problem, because some sort of confederation would be of enormous benefit, not only to Jordan, but also to the Israel and Palestinian Arab refugees?
If such an agreement were acceptable to the States concerned I see no reason why we should object to it, but I would not have thought that it is an argument which we should put forward.
Since my right hon. Friend has recently been saying that it is a principle of Her Majesty's Government that war should not lead to territorial gains, would my right hon. Friend explain how it is that apparently Her Majesty's Government recognise that the west bank of the Jordan is part of Jordan, the Gaza Strip part of Egypt, even though these, by international agreement, were supposed to have been part of the Palestinian Arab State?
It depends where one decides that history begins. I am certainly sure that the recent war should not result in territorial aggrandisement.
24.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what was the total cost of damage to British embassies and consulates abroad due to public disturbances during the recent Middle East crisis.
It has not yet been possible to conduct a detailed survey of some of the damaged buildings but the total is likely to exceed £120,000, of which about £80,000 is for property owned by Her Majesty's Government.
In view of the fact that this is becoming an increasingly popular form of protest in Asia and Africa, would it not be better to house our ambassadors in anonymous buildings in side streets rather like Members of Parliament working in their desk rooms?
What action is being taken to recover the moneys which have been lost as a result of this hooliganism?
We are in very close touch to make sure that this damage is repaired as soon as possible. To mention one example in which progress has been made, the Tunisian Government are already reinstating the Embassy in Tunis where damage is estimated to be in excess of £20,000.
25.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs w hat was the cost to Her Majesty's Government of arrangements made for the evacuation of United Kingdom subjects from the Middle East during the crisis of May-June.
The cost so far has been something over £107,000. This covers most of the expenditure but a number of bills are outstanding.
In view of the enormous sums we have spent on our military presence in the Middle East, which have led to a situation in which e are perhaps the most unpopular country there at the moment and in which we cannot protect our own subjects in time of crisis, what is the point of going on with a military presence in an area like that?
The important point arising from that question is that we did protect our subjects in a time of crisis and were able to make arrangements to evacuate them from territories where we thought there was real risk if they remained.
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that I was in Tunisia a few days before tourists were withdrawn? Was it not an error of judgment to bring back British tourists from Tunisia, particularly as the Government lifted their ban within a week of its being imposed?
I do not think it was an error of judgment, but there are very difficult problems in this sort of situation. What the Government have to do is not to spread alarm and despondency and unnecessarily encourage people to abandon their homes. On the other hand, we would be exposed to severe and proper criticism if we did not issue warning when we thought that warning was required.
Will my hon. Friend confirm that the foreign exchange earned by selling arms to the Middle East has been greater in amount than the loss due to the recent war, including the closing of the Canal and the oil ban—
Order. Questions must not be too wide of the Questions on the Order Paper.
26.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs how many countries severed their diplomatic relations with Great Britain during the period of the recent hostilities between Israel and Arab countries.
53.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs with which Arab countries, who had recently broken off diplomatic relations, those relations have since been restored.
There have been no further developments to report since my right hon. Friend the Minister of State's replies to my hon. Friend the Member for Kelvingrove (Dr. Miller) on 15th June and to the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Lewes (Sir T. Beamish) on 26th June, except that the formalities of the breach of diplomatic relations with the Sudan have now been completed.—[Vol. 748, c. 123; Vol. 749, c. 16.]
Can my hon. Friend tell us approximately how many of those countries have received economic aid from Britain in the past?
I am afraid not without notice.
Can the hon. Gentleman say how many of those countries there were, such as the Lebanon, whose ambassadors were withdrawn, but where diplomatic relations were not severed? For example, has there in any case been reciprocal withdrawal of ambassadors?
Yes, I think I am correct in saying that in all these instances, including the Lebanon, reciprocity has applied.
In view of the importance of building economic bridges, other than political ones, in the Middle East, will the Government take a lead in effective negotiations for the building of desalination plants, which could provide work for the refugees?
This is a most interesting suggestion, but I do not think it is directly related to the breaking off of diplomatic relations.
Would the hon. Gentleman undertake to publish in suitable form in respect of the countries which have severed diplomatic relations with Britain the amount of economic and financial aid which they are still drawing in this year—not in the past tense, as asked by his hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Mr. Marquand)?
Certainly we would seek to meet the wishes of the House in this matter.
33.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what steps he is now taking to secure compensation for the damage suffered by British subjects in Egypt, Syria and Jordan in recent weeks.
All British subjects evacuated under official arrangements from countries in the Middle East and North Africa, are being invited to inform the Foreign Office of any loss or damage to their property. Steps have also been taken to let those who left the areas under their own arrangements know how to notify their losses.
We have also taken appropriate action to reserve the rights of Her Majesty's Government to claim compensation on behalf of British subjects in respect of personal injury or loss or damage to their property.Is it the intention to make payments at once to those who have been forced to leave their homes and businesses through no fault of their own? Is it also the firm intention of the Government to obtain compensation from those countries whose action in spreading the lies which they spread about our Government's action caused the trouble?
We will certainly, when we have the details of the loss and damage, be taking every step that we can to make sure that proper compensation is effected for it. On the right hon. Gentleman's first point, of course, we have a great deal of sympathy, as has the House, for all those who suffer through no fault of their own. Although there were special circumstances, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, after the 1956 affair, it is not customary for the Government to make advances on account of possible compensation being received by owners in future from a foreign Government.
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that sympathy does not really go far enough and that we are extremely concerned about the inadequacy of the help given to the refugees who have come to this country? Will he, for instance, consider making to these people ex gratia loans repayable when compensation is paid from the Middle East?
I want to make it quite clear—I think my original Answer did so—that we are, of course, looking into this, and we are also in touch with everybody concerned. I do not think that they feel that in this respect they are being neglected. I agree that sympathy is not enough. As to ex gratia payments, I have made clear what has been the normal procedure about this. Certainly I will look into the matter, although detailed questions about the refugees who have already arrived here is a matter for the Home Secretary.
Would the Minister not agree that one of the more helpful things the United Nations could do would be to establish an international insurance compensation fund which could deal with this type of damage to persons as well as damage to property? The insurance fund could operate on the basis of contributions assessed not, as usual, on the wealth of the countries, but the liability of this type of incident taking place within their boundaries.
I think it would be wrong of me to give an immediate reply to that suggestion. It seems to me an interesting one. I will look into it and will write to the hon. Gentleman.
Nuclear Weapons (Non-Proliferation)
5.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what further discussions he has had with the United States and Russian Governments about a non-proliferation treaty and the explosion of a Chinese hydrogen bomb.
62.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether any further progress has been made with a nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
94.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will make a statement on the latest developments in the negotiations for a nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
My right hon. Friend has recently discussed the treaty with the American Secretary of State and there have been a series of East-West meetings on the subject. We believe that it should be possible to get a treaty on the table at Geneva in the near future. Although we have not discussed the Chinese bomb directly with the United States or the Soviet Union, our position is well known.
Does that mean that in the meantime the views of our non-nuclear N.A.T.O. allies have been fitted into the draft Treaty?
As I think the hon. Gentleman knows, discussions are going on the whole of the time. There are some very difficult problems to be overcome and our N.A.T.O. allies are involved.
To help overcome German resistance in Bonn, would the Government consider announcing their readiness to accept inspection on the same terms as is being demanded of the non-nuclear Powers?
We have made clear our views on inspection. Although I would concede the point made by my hon. Friend, that the Germans have had some reservations, there is a prospect that these may be overcome.
Are countries like Germany, Israel and India asking for absolute guarantees of their frontier before they will sign a separate treaty?
I do not think that the position is quite that at the moment, but discussions are going on. There is an attempt to move and this is an area in which there is a great deal of room for manoeuvre and scope for discussion and amendment, not only to try to meet the needs of the two main countries involved, inevitably the Soviet Union and the United States, but also countries like India and others mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman.
Government Reception (Invitations)
6.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, why invitations were issued in his name to Mr. Sam Russell and Mr. Lance Samson, care of the Labour Press Co-operative Society Limited, to attend a Government reception at Lancaster House on 7th June 1967, in view of the fact that neither has ever been employed by this co-operative society; and what steps he is taking to prevent such wastage of public funds.
The invitations referred to were for a reception for some of the British and overseas Press in London. Such receptions are arranged from time to time. These invitations were intended for two of the staff of the Morning Star but, owing to a clerical error, they were sent to the Morning News at 348 Gray's Inn Road, which at one time was also the address of the Labour Press Co-operative Society Limited.
The cost to public funds of sending these invitations was 8d. whereas the cost of answering this Parliamentary Question has been about £5.And it is £5 very well spent! Will the Foreign Secretary say how blunders of this kind occur? If nonexistent members of the Communist and the Labour Party are to be invited to Lancaster House junketings without proper checks, what has he got to say about the security aspects of it, among other things?
These communications went in sealed envelopes. They were neither forwarded to the addressee nor returned to the sender. It would be interesting to know how the hon. Gentleman knows what was inside them.
On a point of order. In view of the Foreign Secretary's answer I will immediately remit to him my file of correspondence, which he may publish.
Order. That is not a point of order.
United Nations Special Committee On Peace-Keeping
10.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will make a statement on the progress of the meetings of the United Nations Special Committee on Peace-keeping.
29.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what initiative he now intends to take to ensure the creation of an effective United Nations peace-keeping organisation.
82.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what progress has been made at the meetings of the United Nations Special Committee on Peace-keeping; and whether he will make a statement.
The Special Committee agreed only that its Mandate should be renewed. The General Assembly approved this proposal and the Committee is to report to the 22nd Session of the Assembly.
Lord Caradon set out the views of Her Majesty's Government at the Special United Nations Assembly on the 22nd May, to which I have nothing to add. In general, Her Majesty's Government will continue to advocate the practical proposals on United Nations peacekeeping which I outlined in my speech to the United Nations General Assembly on 11th October last.Given the fact that there has been no appreciable progress on this subject at all, either in the Peace-keeping Committee or in the General Assembly, for the last three to four years, has not the time come for the Government to get together with other Governments which support peace-keeping operations, especially those which have earmarked forces for this purpose to consider both their organisational and operational problems and the financing of these forces?
There is a Question later about the basis on which the peacekeeping force should operate, but I certainly agree with my hon. Friend that we must discuss, not only with friendly Governments, but with all Governments of the United Nations, the basis of peace-keeping operations.
The right hon. Gentleman will recollect the Prime Minister saying that certain units of Her Majesty's forces had been earmarked for a force to support the United Nations and in any case of need would be immediately ready. Can the Foreign Secretary say which they are and where they are?
Not without notice. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will put a Question down.
Which are they? Can the right hon. Gentleman say that?
I do not think that that question arises out of this at all. The Question on the Order Paper is about a statement on the progress of the meetings of the United Nations Special Committee on Peace-keeping. I have answered this and if the right hon. Gentleman has any question in mind I will be happy to answer it if he would put it down.
South-East Asia (Defence)
11.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what steps he has taken towards the establishment of a new defence organisation linking the nations of South-East Asia.
None, Sir, because the driving force and ultimate responsibility for such co-operation must come from the people of South-East Asia themselves.
Since S.E.A.T.O. has now become virtually a defunct organisation, at .d given the fact that it seems likely that Her Majesty's Government are about to make a statement concerning our own responsibilities in this part of the world, has not this now become an urgent matter? Since we have had a traditional responsibility in this part of the world, could we not play a positive role in encouraging the nations of this area to get together and establish an effective defence organisation of the indigenous peoples of the regions?
I do not think that there is a great deal between my hon. Friend and the Government on this, except that we would not accept his remarks about S.E.A.T.O., which we believe continues to serve the purpose for which it was originally established. The important thing is lo encourage the countries of the area to move in their own way, at their own speed, to provide for their collective security. It is possible that if we, or any other outside country, press too hard, it will be counter-productive.
If there is to be a substantial diminution in the British role in the Far East, surely there is an obligation, a rather urgent obligation upon us, to take some positive step to encourage the countries to reach defence arrangements on their own?
As I say, it depends very much on the speed at which the countries want to move. All that I would add is that having been very lately in that part of the world I am sure that it is right that we are encouraging countries to make their own arrangements if they can, but that we should not push them into arrangements that they prefer not to have in anticipation of the stage where they can co-operate together effectively.
Would it be wise to consider any new steps or any amended steps in this particular part of Asia without consulting China?
As I have said that we do not intend to take any special initiative, I do not think that that supplementary question arises.
Am I to understand that any defence cuts likely to be made are not likely to affect our obligations under S.E.A.T.O.?
I have nothing to add to the statement already made by the Secretary of State for Defence.
South Arabia
12.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in what terms he has informed the South Arabian Government that the British guarantee to protect South Arabia against external aggression is subject to the limitation that, should there be a prospect of major military operations, the United Kingdom could only act in co-operation with allies.
Her Majesty's Government's guarantee to the South Arabian Government does not contain such a proviso.
In that case, how is the guarantee meant to square with the dogmatic assumption of the 1966 Defence White Paper that Britain would not undertake major operations of war except in co-operation with allies? Has that principle been stood on its head or are we guaranteeing South Arabia against only a little attack and not against a big one?
The principle has not been stood on its head, nor does the other point arise. The guarantee which we are giving to the new State, when it comes into force, does not seem to us to conflict with what was said in the White Paper.
Since the main military external danger to South Arabia arises from the presence of Egyptian forces in the Yemen, will the right hon. Gentleman express to the Royalist Government of the Yemen, who are the Government whom he recognises, his satisfaction at the remarkable progress which they are making in expelling the Egyptian invaders?
I shall be happy to facilitate the conveyance of the right hon. Gentleman's views.
38.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what timetable he now envisages for the further constitutional steps in South Arabia.
The Federal Government published as a supplement to their Gazette on the 1st of july a draft law to provide a Provisional Constitution to replace the present Federal Constitution. Copies are in the Library of this House. It is the intention that the new Constitution, which will facilitate the formation of a broader Government, should come into effect as soon as possible, probably by next month.
As one of the constitutional proposals is the broadening of the base of South Arabian Government, has my right hon. Friend any information about whether negotiations have started between that Government and the various terrorist organisations?
I would not answer in quite those terms but, as I said earlier, Mr. Hussein Bayoomi is having consultations, and I think—at any rate I hope—that we are moving towards the formation of a broader Government.
Since the basis of the Government's policy is the formation of a broadly-based Government containing the nationalists and the somewhat more feudal sheikhdoms, can the Foreign Secretary say whether recent events in the Crater area have heightened his expectation of success or reduced it?
The fact that, at the end, the issue in the Crater area was got under control with arrangements between the police and the Army becoming normal again probably means that we are back to square one and does not detract from our hopes of arranging a broader-based Government.
Arab Refugees
13.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will summarise the help given by the United Kingdom to Arab refugees since Palestine was partitioned; what is his latest information about their numbers and whereabouts; and if he will take the initiative in the United Nations by proposing that a fresh and major effort is made to solve this problem in the context of an Arab-Israeli peace settlement.
Besides the emergency contribution to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and other emergency measures mentioned in my right hon. Friend the Minister of State's reply on 26th June to the hon. and gallant Gentleman, Her Majesty's Government has contributed over $95 million to the Agency since it was established in 1951. 1,300,000 refugees were registered with the Agency before the recent fighting and it is estimated that between 150,000 and 200,000 refugees have crossed from the East to the West bank of the Jordan following the recent hostilities. In addition there has been a substantial movement of refugees northwards into Syria from Israel occupied territory. In his speech at the General Assembly recently my right hon. Friend listed the problem of the refugees as the first requiring solution in a general settlement.—[Vol. 749, c. 16–17.]
Does the Under-Secretary agree that the Foreign Secretary's clear and welcome recognition of the need to improve Anglo-Arab relations whenever common ground exists and to take an important initiative to try to solve the Arab refugee problem should not be construed in any way whatever as contrary to the Israelis' legitimate interests?
I hope that it will be well understood outside the House that everybody here is very much concerned with the humanitarian problems, arising both from the recent fighting and from the conflict over a much longer period.
Is my hon. Friend aware that nothing would better facilitate the orderly return of the refugees from the East to the West bank than discussions between representatives of the two Governments? Will he therefore, on humanitarian grounds, urge the Jordanian Government to hold such discussions as the Israeli Government have asked for and indeed pleaded for?
There are Questions later on the Order Paper dealing with some of the larger issues involved. I would only ask the House to recognise that this is a highly complex problem and that we must approach it patiently in order to achieve the sort of humanitarian results we want to see.
Central Treaty Organisation (Ministerial Council Meeting)
16.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will make a statement on the Central Treaty Organisation Ministerial Council meeting recently held in London.
The meeting was not in the event held.
While recognising that the meeting was not held, I left the Question on the Order Paper so as to inquire why it was not held and when the right hon. Gentleman hopes that it will be held.
It will be held as soon as it seems to our allies and ourselves a ccnvenient moment to hold it.
Overseas Broadcasts
17.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will make arrangements for the construction of a ship-borne radio transmitter for British overseas broadcasts in areas such as the Middle East.
No, Sir. Broadcasting on the high seas would be a breach of the International Telecommunication Convention 1965 to which this country is a party.
The Question does not relate to the high seas. Was it not quite clear during the Israeli-Arab conflict that B.B.C. broadcasts entirely failed to get through to the people of Cairo? Would the hon. Gentleman look at that again?
Certainly. I am prepared at all times to consider the way in which our overseas broadcasting can be most effective, but it is only fair to say, on all the evidence we have, that, even if there were not this problem, conventional broadcasting at sea is less practicable and more expensive than broadcasting in other ways.
Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether it is right that the ship-borne transmitters on our ships in the Bitter Lakes should be subjected to the restrictions being imposed on them by the parties to the conflict there?
Without notice I cannot give a firm answer to that Question, which is different in its purpose from that which I have already answered.
Europe (Parliamentarians)
19.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he will provide improved facilities to assist consultation between British Members of Parliament and Members of Parliament in both the European Free Trade Association and the European Economic Community.
There are already frequent opportunities for consultation at the regular meetings of several European assemblies. Perhaps my hon. Friend would let me know if he has any particular point in mind.
Would not my right hon. Friend agree that the recent attitude of his Department to Members of Parliament wishing to visit the European Economic Commission in Brussels gives cause for great anxiety? Will he do something about this?
I could not possibly agree with my hon. Friend about that.
Could the right hon. Gentleman improve the facilities for consultation between the Members of Parliament who join these visits and Members of Parliament who do not, because no information whatever is ever forthcoming to this House?
The hon. Member is doing me an injustice. I give the House lots of information.
"Torrey Canyon" Incident (Discussions)
20.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he will make a statement following further international discussions about steps to avoid recurrence of the "Torrey Canyon" incident.
In the second half of June there were meetings of the Council, the Maritime Safety Committee and he new Legal Committee of the Inter-Governmental Maritime Consultative Organisation. They made good progress by setting out the programme for the 18 expert studies referred to by my right hon. Friend the Minister of State on 12th June and my right hon. Friend the Minister of State at the Board of Trade on 26th June.—[Vol. 748, c. 83; Vol. 749, c. 27.]
Would my hon. Friend like to tell the House about the arrest of the sister ship of the "Torrey Canyon", the "Lake Palourde", which apparently has taken place in Singapore?
Not at this moment.
Can we have an assurance from the Government that as these international consultations proceed the Sub-Committee on Science and Technology dealing with this matter will be kept informed?
Yes, I can give that undertaking.
European Economic Community
22.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what representations he has received from the Swedish Government about their special problem in the light of the majority of members of the European Free Trade Association joining the European Economic Community.
We are in continuous consultation with Sweden, as with all members of the European Free Trade Association, through official Council meetings in Geneva and through Ministerial meetings, the most recent of which took place in London on the 28th of April. As my hon. Friend will be aware, these meetings are confidential.
Is my right hon. Friend aware that those of us on this side of the House who are in favour of British entry to the Common Market are nevertheless anxious about adequate arrangements for E.F.T.A.? Would he agree to give an undertaking to keep in regular contact with the E.F.T.A. countries throughout the projected negotiations?
We have already given that undertaking. My hon. Friend must have seen the communiqué issued at the end of the last meeting which we had in London. We are observing that, and all our friends in E.F.T.A. understand that we are observing it.
42.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what plans he has for discussions with the West German Government about matters of common concern relating to Great Britain's application to join the Common Market.
We are, of course, in continuous touch with the Federal German Government. In addition, the Federal German Chancellor has accepted in principle the invitation of Her Majesty's Government to visit Britain at a mutually convenient date.
Bearing in mind the possibility of this country not entering the European Economic Community, will my right hon. Friend not consider the initiation of discussions with the West German Government with a view to entering into joint projects on the lines of the Franco-British Concord project?
That would be the wrong way to go about it. I bear in mind the possibility or probability of the entry of this country into the Common Market, and we should look upon our future arrangements in that way, as do the Federal German Government.
Passport Offices
23.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is satisfied that there are a sufficient number of passport offices to enable the issue of passports to the public without undue delay; and if he will make a statement.
Passports can now generally be issued within 10 days of the receipt of a correctly completed application form, as against about 16 days last year. New passport offices are being opened in the autumn at Newport, Monmouthshire and Peterborough to enable an efficient service to be maintained in the face of an increasing demand.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that reply. Would he agree that for people living in the area which serves my constituency it is very unsatisfactory that arrangements should be centred on London in terms of passport offices? Would he agree to open an additional office to serve south-east Essex?
Perhaps I may remind my hon. Friend that passport applications can be lodged at any one of over 1,000 offices of the Ministry of Labour, but certainly I will keep a close watch on the matter and if it seems desirable to meet the convenience of customers and the speedy issue of passports I will consider whether new offices should be established in his constituency and elsewhere.
27.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to what extent temporary staff are recruited in the summer months to deal with the peak demands for passports for holiday purposes.
The demand for passports increases from 7,000 a week in winter to about 36,000 during the summer months. The Passport Office, therefore, have to use a considerable number of temporary staff for routine clerical duties. The three passport offices had 283 such staff on 30th June.
Would my hon. Friend accept that this use of temporary staff is most welcome, and will he bear in mind the advantages of using more if necessary, if this will further reduce the time taken to issue passports?
Yes, certainly.
Is my hon. Friend aware that passport offices were set up at a time when the only means of travel overseas was by sea, and now that air transport is so very much used for overseas travel would he consider having passport offices in such places as Manchester, which has the largest provincial airport in the country?
That is an interesting suggestion, and one we will certainly take account of in considering where new offices might be located.
Anglo-Soviet Consultative Committee
28.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he will now announce the membership of the British side of the new Anglo-Soviet Consultative Committee.
There are a number of outstanding points in the Committee's terms of reference which will shortly be put to the Soviet Government. Once they have been agreed I hope we shall be able to announce the membership of the British Group.
Would my hon. Friend accept that these developments are a most welcome outcome of Mr. Kosygin's visit, and will he also accept that although there may have been some cooling off in Anglo-Soviet relations in some spheres every possible effort should be made to see that there is unimpeded progress in this sphere?
Yes. We are anxious to move as fast as we can, but I think the House will agree that all points of detail must be clearly settled so that there will be no misunderstandings at a later date.
Rhodesia (Oil)
30.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs how much oil has now reached Rhodesia via Laurenço Marques since the imposition of mandatory sanctions against Rhodesia.
As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs told the hon. Member for Cardigan (Mr. Elystan Morgan) on 27th January, I should prefer to say nothing which might reveal the extent of our knowledge of the régime's complicated and expensive methods of procurement.—[Vol. 739, c. 389.]
Will my hon. Friend not agree that this wilful sabotage of internationally agreed action to secure an acceptable solution of the Rhodesia problem is intolerable, and does he realise that he will receive the warm support of this side of the House for any action he regards as necessary to bring effective pressure to bear on the Portuguese Government?
I understand my hon. Friend's views, and, of course, they are very much in line with our own, but I think I ought to make it clear that it is for the Security Council itself to decide whether any particular State has failed to meet its obligations in accordance with Article 25 of the United Nations Charter.
Would it not be wise for the Government to call off this ridiculous farce of sanctions?
Indeed not. They are having effect, and we must do our best to make them even more effective.
Will the Government be prepared to bring pressure on the Portuguese Government for the possible establishment of a United Nations inspectorate in this part of the world for the physical control of sanctions?
I do not think that this is a matter for bilateral discussions. The United Nations has accepted the responsibility, and I think that that is the forum in which, in this respect, we ought to be seeking to work.
Will the hon. Gentleman not agree that in view of the fact that many of our trading partners, like the United States, are now clearly disregarding sanctions, it is quite improper to single out one?
I would not agree with that. I think the hon. Gentleman has a Question later on the Paper which deals with another aspect of this.
Will the Government propose to the United Nations that an inspectorate should be set up, as my hon. Friend proposed?
It is an interesting suggestion and we shall certainly look into it.
Well, then, does the Minister propose to use the Government's famous pressure on the French, the Greeks, the Germans, the Japanese?
And the United States.
We have made clear our position about this. We are continuing to work through the United Nations, as I have said, under Article 25, which is for special circumstances, and, of course, we are in close touch with friendly Governments with whom we have other working arrangements.
Peking (British Diplomatic Staff)
34.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what action he proposes to take with the Chinese Government to secure redress for the deliberate discourtesies and injuries inflicted on Her Majesty's Chargé d'Affaires in Peking and his staff.
I protested very strongly to the Acting Chinese Chargé d'Affaires in London, deploring the failure of the Chinese authorities to restrain the demonstrators or to give proper protection to the Office of our own Chargé d'Affaires, contrary to the accepted principles of relations between sovereign States. I also reserved our right to demand full compensation.
But has an apology not yet been received from the Chinese Government for this plain breach of the normal standards accepted by civilised countries, and did the Under-Secretary of State make it clear to the Chinese Chargé d'Affaires that instances of this sort, contrasting as they do with the dignity and courage of Her Majesty's representatives, do very serious harm to relations between the two countries?
I have spoken to the Chinese Chargé d'Affaires very much in those terms.
Is my hon. Friend aware that there are reports of further incidents this morning in which two members of the British Mission were pelted with tomatoes and suffered further humiliations? Is he satisfied that his protests are really strong enough?
I am satisfied that the protests are strong enough, but I greatly regret, as has been made clear in the House before by Foreign Office Ministers, that we have not had satisfactory replies. I am sure that everyone in the House will admire the way that our staff in Peking and previously in Shanghai have stood up to humiliating circumstances. I agree with my hon. Friend that these practices are totally out of keeping with the normal traditions of diplomatic relations.
Obviously one does not want to employ this kind of sanction, but will the hon. Gentleman keep in mind the possible withdrawal of our representatives from China if these offences go on much longer?
There are a number of possibilities, of which that is one. In some respects, what we must seek to do is to follow the example of our staffs in protesting strongly but making the most of a difficult situation if we believe that it is in our long-term interests to do so.
United Nations Committee Of Twenty-Four
39.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he will make a progress report about the activities of the United Nations Committee of 24.
The Committee of 24 concluded its African tour on the 21st of June and returned to New York, where it is due to meet early in August.
Meetings were held in Kinshasa, Kitwe and Dar-es-Salaam. Apart from hearing petitioners from the various nationalist movements of Southern Africa, the Committee adopted five resolutions. The proposed visits to Baghdad and Damascus did not take place, because of tie Middle East situation.Ought we to continue to give countenance to this expensive and counter-productive Committee, and would not some of the gentlemen who serve on it be better employed in bringing freedom to their own countries?
As far as the policy of the Government is concerned, we have made it clear that we intend to cooperate with the Committee as far as we can to ensure that our own policies are adequately explained and, where necessary, defended.
Libya
43.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he will make a statement on the Government's intentions with regard to the British base and military installations in Libya.
50.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he will make a statement on the official Libyan demand for the withdrawal of British Army and Royal Air Force defence units from Libya; and what arrangements he now proposes to make.
Her Majesty's Ambassador to Libya has discussed the question with members of the new Libyan Government and made it clear that it is Her Majesty's Government's declared policy not to attempt to maintain defence facilities in an independent country against its wishes. A special AngloLibyan committee is expected to meet shortly to discuss this question.
Does this mean that the Government are really getting ready to get out? Would not the Minister agree that to withdraw at this stage would present a real threat to the stability of the whole area, quite apart from the British interest, which is also not to be gainsaid and disregarded?
As I said in my original Answer, our declared policy is not to maintain defence facilities in an independent country against its wishes. I do not think there is any evidence that we should depart from this policy.
Will the hon. Gentleman bear in mind that both Malta and Gibraltar would welcome very much indeed the transference of the present defence units of the Royal Air Force and Army from Libya to former British Army and Air Force bases in Malta and Gibraltar? Why could not that be done, particularly to help Malta?
At the moment we are concerned with detailed negotiations which must take place with the Libyan Government before this move is completed.
South Africa (British Merchant Ships)
45.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what conversations he has had with the Government of South Africa about the refuelling of British merchant ships now using the Cape route in greatly increased numbers.
None, Sir.
Is not the hon. Gentleman aware of the increased importance of the Cape route with the closing of the Canal, because bunkering difficulties are bound to be experienced by our shipping and other shipping, and is the hon. Gentleman going to do nothing about it?
The arrangements for refuelling are, naturally, made through the normal commercial channels. I understand that there was some bunching of shipping in Capetown when the Canal was first closed, but this has since been cleared.
In view of that, do the Government realise the importance of cultivating good relations with the South African Government?
Complaint Of Privilege
Mr. Speaker, I beg to ask leave to raise a question of privilege of which I have given you notice, namely, the proceedings of the Conference of the Transport and General Workers' Union on Thursday last, 13th July, the result thereat, and the comment in support of that resolution as reported in the Evening News—it was, of course, reported in other newspapers, too—of that day.
It comes under the sub-heading:There is a main heading:"Cousins men to 'vet' Ministers."
but the heading with which I am concerned—[Interruption.]"Pop Pirates Walk Plank …"
Order. The hon. Member is submitting a very serious matter.
This is simply to register that the heading with which I am concerned is:
and perhaps I might read the article concerned. It said:"Cousins men to 'vet' Ministers",
I apologise for reading this. I understand that hon. Members have read it, but it is, nevertheless, necessary for me to read it again. The article went on to say:"The 26 Labour M.P.s sponsored by the Transport and General Workers Union can be 'vetted' by Frank Cousins men as the result of a decision taken at the union conference here today."
"There were cheers when a unanimous vote in favour of the resolution was announced after Mr. Cousins, general secretary, said it had the backing of the union executive.
When this Parliament ends, loyalty tests can be applied to the 26 M.P.s—they include some Ministers—and they can be asked to account for their actions.
Reason for today's decision is that some of the T.G.W.U. Members of Parliament backed the Government's wages policy in the teeth of union opposition.
The mover of the resolution, Mr. Len Burgess, a Midlands delegate, summed it up: 'You can't expect us to buy dog licences for dogs that bite us'.
The 26 are members of the union's Parliamentary Panel which will be reconstituted, with existing members having to apply for enrolment when the present Parliament ends.
These include the Foreign Secretary, Mr. George Brown.
At first it was thought that he had not been financially sponsored by the union since 1965, when £420 was given to his Belper (Derbyshire) constituency. But later it was learned that his constituency received £636 last year, although he is not included in the unions annual report listing sponsored M.P.s
Other financially sponsored members on the panel include Housing Minister, Mr. Anthony Greenwood, Public Works Minister, Mr. Reginald Prentice, Housing Ministry Parliamentary Secretary, Mr. Robert Mellish, Economic Affairs Parliamentary Secretary, Mr. Peter Shore and Government Chief Whip Mr. John Silkin.
Mr. Cousins, in his winding up speech, said they were asking M.P.s on their panel to report on their stewardship.
He made it clear that not all of them had voted against union policy. Some had done their best to get amendments to the Prices and Incomes Bill.
The T.G.W.U. chief revealed that he had the 'sadistic satisfaction' of asking some of their M.P.s who believed in union policy if they were going to resign with him when he left the Commons.
They replied that unlike him they had no jobs to go back to.
'But they could have given voice to their opinions', he went on. 'If they had, the Government might have had to look at the whole proposals in a different way'.
He went on to say that he did not accept that if you 'pay the piper you call the tune'. M.P.s have a right to think for themselves but if they had a conscience and could not support union policy they should say so.
'If they say they want to oppose you', declared Mr. Cousins 'don't send another letter to us asking us to send £600 to wage a campaign against us.
We do not want to tell them what to do, say or think. We want them to come and tell us why they believe the workers' pennies should be put in the kitty if the political side of their activities is different from what we feel', said Mr. Cousins.
I apologise for having read that, but I have done so quickly because I know that hon. Members have read it. As it should be, the House has always been jealous of the rights of individual Members. We are subject, it seems to me, and I think to most of us, only to those who elect us—Earlier Mr. Cousins had quelled a threatened revolt against the Government's incomes policy."
Order. The hon. Member is submitting to the Chair whether an article of which he complaints constitutes a prima facie breach of privilege. We cannot debate the issue yet.
I am in some difficulty about this—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."]—because there would appear to be variations in Rulings from the Chair on this matter. I have looked at Rulings on recent privilege cases. There was the case raised by the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock), who submitted—
Order. With respect to the hon. Member, he must address me on this case. He must not consider any others.
I am addressing you on this one, Mr. Speaker, but a similar matter was submitted by the hon. Member for Orpington, and he made a considerable case. I do not want to try to prejudge the issue. I am simply trying to put the case as I see it, and I ask that I be allowed to submit certain matters which I think are germane to it.
In that regard, I propose now to submit what has already been considered in the past by the Committee of Privileges, and I should like to quote two cases. Both these cases seem to confirm that where bodies pay Members to look after their interests, there must be limits to which such bodies may go in order to get absolute conformity from the Members concerned. The Committee seemed to take the view that influence is one thing, but coercion is quite another. The first case—On a point of order. Mr. Speaker, is not this submission out of order? I have read the report from which the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Mr. Kenneth Lewis) appeared to be quoting. I did so at about 2 o'clock on Thursday afternoon of last week. I understand that an hon. Member must take the first opportunity to raise a matter of this kind.
Order. This is a serious point of order. The simple answer is that the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford is taking the first opportunity that he has to raise it. It may have escaped the notice of the hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Alfred Morris) that the sitting of the House on Thursday lasted through Friday.
The first case is that of Mr. W. J. Brown and the Civil Service Clerical Association on 25th March, 1947. This case dealt with an expression on the part of Mr. Brown which was said to be at variance with the views of the Civil Service Clerical Association. No question of the rights of voting seemed to arise in that case. However, I want to quote from the Report of the Committee of Privileges on this matter. The second sentence in paragraph 13 says:
The last part of that quotation seems particularly important, to the extent that it relates to the question that J have put before the House."It would certainly be improper for a Member to enter into any arrangement fettering his complete independence as a Member of Parliament by undertaking to press some particular point of view on behalf of an outside interest, whether for reward or not. Equally, it might be a breach of privilege for an outside body to use the fact that a Member had entered into an agreement with it or was receiving payment from it as a means of exerting pressure upon that Member to follow a particular course of conduct in his capacity as a Member."
Order. With respect to the hon. Member—and I know how interested and troubled he is about this matter—[Interruption]. Order. The issue of privilege is always a very serious one. I had hoped that the hon. Member would remember that what he is doing at the moment is submitting a newspaper report which he suspects is a breach of privilege. On this the Chair will rule tomorrow whether it is a prima facie breach of privilege. I hope that the hon. Member will therefore make his submission briefly.
I will cut out some of what I was going to say arising out of that case, Mr. Speaker, and will go on to the second case, which is that of Mr. Robinson, the then Member for St. Helens, and the National Union of Distributive and Allied Workers, which union had requested the resignation of the Member because his views were at variance with those of the union.
With the greatest respect, Mr. Speaker, the hon. Member is surely not helping his own case. The breach of privilege in respect of which he is asking for a prima facie Ruling from you, Mr. Speaker, arises from the quotation which he has made from a newspaper report. All the other matters are for the Committee of Privileges to adjudicate on, if the matter goes to it. I do not agree that the Robinson case is on all fours—
Order. The right hon. Gentleman must not attempt, under the guise of raising a point of order, to debate the issue.
Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. The point that I am making is that, the hon. Member having read out the newspaper report, there is nothing further to be done than to leave the matter to the Chair.
The right hon. Member must leave the conduct of the Chair to the Chair.
In fairness to myself, I must point out that I took some advice on how I could develop my case in connection with this matter and I was given certain advice. I was told that I would be allowed to quote from precedents, and, as I have already said, I have looked at past cases. I assumed that I would be given the attention of the House in making the case that I am trying to make—
Order. I have been busy defending the rights of the hon. Member to speak. All that I am asking him to do, in the interests of the House and its business, is to speak briefly.
I will speak as briefly as I can within my ability to make my case, Mr. Speaker. I have referred to the case of the then hon. Member for St. Helens, which was brought before the Committee of Privileges on 23rd May, 1944. Paragraph 4 of the Report says:
I emphasise that—"While the payment to, or receipt by, a Member of money or the offer or acceptance of other advantage, for promoting or opposing a particular proceeding"—
I will now cut out most of the other things that I wanted to say, in deference to your Ruling, Mr. Speaker. Since the prices and incomes legislation is still before the House—a vote still has to take place on the recent Measure—and representations were made last Thursday, at the conference of the Union of Transport and General Workers, it seems that the action taken then was to influence Members of Parliament not just upon a general attitude but upon a vote. This, therefore, goes further than in either of the cases to which I have referred. Because of this, I ask you to rule that there is a prima facie case of breach of privilege here. I ask you to look into the matter."or measure, constitutes an undoubted breach of privilege, it has long been recognised that there are Members who receive financial assistance from associations of their constituents or from other bodies."
Will the hon. Member bring to me the newspaper of which he complains?
Copy of newspaper handed in.
The hon. Member brings to my notice an article in the Evening News and Star of Thursday, 13th July, 1967, the contents of which he has read to the House. I will give my Ruling tomorrow, in accordance with the usual custom, as to whether the matters that he complains of constitute a prima facie breach of privilege.
Further to that point—
Order. No conceivable point can arise. An hon. Member has submitted a matter of privilege and I have indicated that I will rule on it tomorrow. I would add that privilege is a very serious issue to raise from any point of view, and I hope that the House will always take it very seriously.
Rights And Liberties Of The Individual
3.49 p.m.
I beg to move,
On 3rd July, to a distinguished gathering a legal men and women, Lord Justice Salmon delivered an excellent address on the defence of liberty. I wish to quote only one sentence from what was said, namely:That this House, believing that traditional rights and liberties are being eroded, calls on Her Majesty's Government for a fundamental change in its administrative attitudes, its approach to legislation and its recent methods of government.
If Lord Justice Salmon had been speaking here or in another place, he would have needed only to change the word "law" to "Parliament". His sentence covers the points embodied in my Motion. For many reasons, the time has come for the House to discuss those facets of liberty. If you would ignore the use of the pronoun, Mr. Speaker, to me it means, "You have been warned". I understood that the Attorney-General was to reply to the debate and this gave me great pleasure, not only because he is a charming man but because he would be an appropriate Minister, but it has just occurred to me, although the Financial Secretary—who is to reply—may be surprised to hear that I will not mention finance or my pet subject of small fixed incomes, how difficult it is for this Government to distinguish between finance and democracy, so perhaps it is just as well that he is to reply. On the agenda of the next meeting in Malta in October of the Council of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, which is composed of Members of all parties and to which the House is very attached and devotes time and money, there is a sentence which I am sorry that I did not put in my Motion. The Association, which can hardly be called an instrument of Tory policy, is to discuss"If the law gives the Executive unrestricted power it can and will do as it likes."
Therefore, I have support from the law and from the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and its members. I hope that my hon. Friends will take part in the debate, and also my friends opposite, if I may call them that. This is not a political issue but one concerning Parliament, democracy and the people. The erosion of the rights of individuals was debated only a fortnight ago, but it is important to state how much one feels that the individual, who is supposed to be able to look to Parliament for protection, had his rights interfered with in that case by the Prime Minister. I refer, of course, to Colonel Lohan. In my long time in Parliament I can remember no Minister of either party, particularly not the Prime Minister—it was a pitiable experience to listen to it—having damaged the future and character of an individual to try to get himself out of a Parliamentary difficulty. Some of my colleagues would use stronger words, but I think that it was pitiable that a Prime Minister of this country, which is great, in spite of a Socialist Government, should take a line like this. Therefore, the Motion is right to say that individual rights can be and are being eroded. Regional government was started by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg), and, when this Government took office, they appointed Mr. Dan Smith, a prominent Socialist in the north of England, as Chairman of the Northern Economic Planning Council. The Thomson Press, which is not Tory-minded, drew attention to his difficult position in being known as a leading Socialist in the area. The object of regional Government is to do the best for the region, and if such a post were held by someone independent of politics, as it has to draw in both capital and labour, better progress might be made. However, Mr. Dan Smith was appointed and did not think himself inhibited in this way—" … the erosion of Parliamentary Government by the Executive."
The hon. Lady does not seem to realise that many of us came here under the impression that we would have a serious debate on matters of principle. She is going a long way to destroying the purpose of her Motion and to persuade hon. Members on this side to remind the House of 1963 and of 1956. I hope that she will now change the direction of her speech and get down to the major principles and matters involving Government and Parliament.
The hon. Gentleman will be delighted to know that I always love being interrupted, especially when the interruption is so irrelevant. In my part of the world, I argue my case as I like and I would be happy for hon. Members to argue theirs as they like. I will make my speech on my Motion as I like.
The Northern Economic Planning Council is not an elective, but a selective body, which is one of this Government's administrative actions which I deprecate. It would be better for democracy in matters like this if boards were not selected by the Government. Mr. Dan Smith suddenly made an interesting announcement:In that case, I wish that he would transfer himself to London, and I know that if he could do anything for the region in London, the region, irrespective of politics, would be very glad. I know that Mr. Dan Smith made this announcement in emphatic terms because in a short time the Minister of Transport is to announce that much more nationalisation, which is a threat to the interests of the people, is to take place. All our bus services are to be nationalised. The port of Newcastle is to be nationalised. Though Mr. Dan Smith is supposed to be the independent chairman of an important board, he has announced in no uncertain terms that he believes that Whitehall is right."The centre of power is Whitehall. This is where all the major decisions are taken. I firmly believe that the job of regional planning could be better done in London."
The Motion calls
I know that the hon. Lady is reluctant to have a debate face to face with Mr. Dan Smith on issues in the North-East. It is deplorable that in a debate on the rights of the individual the hon. Lady should attack Mr. Dan Smith in so many words when he does not have the right to reply."attention to the threat to the rights of the individual".
Mr. Dan Smith has had a wonderful chance in the Press, which supports him in the north of England. He has made his statement. I do not think he would expect—
Order. This is a very broad debate. I think, however, we might now move from Mr. Dan Smith.
I have been waiting for a long time to say what I want to say about Mr. Dan Smith. I intend to move away from him, but I want to answer the charge. Mr. Dan Smith has taken on a public position. Anybody in public life must stand up to public criticism. Mr. Dan Smith should stand up to public criticism in exactly the same way as I hope all hon. Members can.
The Land Commission Bill takes away the rights of property owners and householders, if the Government desire, through the Commission, to take powers to possess. There will be no opportunity for individuals—I emphasise the word "individuals" to show that I bring myself within the terms of the Motion—to appeal. This is a great threat to the rights of individuals. The Industrial Reorganisation Corporation Bill may be one of the reasons why the Financial Secretary is to answer the debate. This Bill by-passes Parliament, which is the centre of our democratic system, and gives the Government the right to acquire the controlling interest in any company which they desire to control. This is another threat to, and attack on, the rights of individuals. I am interested in the emphasis Treasury Ministers lay on private investment. I am proud of private enterprise and the contribution that it has made here and throughout the world. I am delighted when I hear Ministers talk about private investment, but the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation Bill can be a threat to private investment. What is the use of people investing their money in private companies if the Government, without coming to Parliament, can obtain a controlling interest in those companies? At the moment we see evidence of troubles arising from the nationalisation of British Railways. I cannot think that nationalisation has been a great succes financially. It is interesting that Treasury Ministers are laying emphasis on private investment at the same time as they are setting out to erode private interests by means of the controls they may impose on private companies. I come to the threat to local government. In my part of the world, though we made some progress at the last local elections, local government is, in the main, in the hands of the Labour Party. [Interruption.] It is all very well for hon. Members to snort. The attitude which has been adopted by the Secretary of State for Education and Science is a threat to local government. I am not arguing about the new arrangement with regard to the development of comprehenhive schools. That arises on other occasions. Sir William Alexander, Secretary of the Association of Education Committees, writing in Education, the official journal of the Association—he is certainly not a supporter of the Conservative Party; I have known him for many years; he has never supported the Conservative Party—states his views on the Secretary of State's decision as follows:In view of that clear statement by Sir William Alexander, I do not think that hon. Members can contest that we now appear to be moving into an era when the Government of the day will decide to interfere in the decisions taken by properly elected local education committees and local councils. This is a serious matter for the future of local government. I emphasise this, because it is important that the House should be well aware of what is going on. He made many other interesting comments, but time prevents me from quoting them. It is obvious that those who have for many years played a great part in building up our education system are perturbed about the circulars which the Minister of Education is sending out and are frightened about the way in which they will prevent local authorities from forming their plans for the future education of the children for whom they are responsible. The Financial Secretary will probably call in aid in support of the Government the fact that the Government recently introduced the Parliamentary Commissioner Act. Up to a point, I was delighted at the introduction of that legislation, but when one looks at the matter more closely one soon realises that the powers of the Parliamentary Commissioner are extremely limited indeed. It is pleasant to quote in support of one's case such a distinguished man as Lord Justice Salmon. He has paid great tribute to Sir Edmund Compton and I congratulate the Government—[Interruption.]—I congratulate them occasionally. I do not always tread one path; it is fun occasionally to stray along a different path—on having made this appointment. Lord Justice Salmon points out that the Parliamentary Commissioner's powers are so limited that he can deal with only a few pinpricks. For hon. Members who are interested, I will gladly make available the full text of Lord Justice Salmon's remarks about the appointment of the Commissioner. This all relates to what is known in legal terms as "Crown privilege". One of my hon. and learned Friends—occasionally one takes the advice of one's hon. Friends—said to me the other day, "If I were you, Irene, I would not get mixed up with Crown privilege because you do not know anything about it". That is true, I know nothing about it because I am not a lawyer. However, I have eyes and ears and am entitled to an opinion on the subject. The other day I asked the Prime Minister a Question about the access of the Parliamentary Commissioner to papers covered by Crown privilege and the right hon. Gentleman replied that there was no need for instructions to be given to Departments about papers held under Crown privilege because the Parliamentary Commissioner Act enabled the Commissioner, in cases in which he had power to adjudicate, to have access to such papers. I was delighted to hear that, but unfortunately the cases in which the Commissioner may adjudicate are so limited in number that it will be rare for him to need to call for these papers. Despite this, this is a break-through in Crown privilege. Although I was told not to get involved in the subject, I see no reason why I should not hold an opinion on the topic. That is why I support Lord Justice Salmon and what he said on this matter. This breach in Crown privilege, small though it is, has occurred as a result of the establishment of the Parliamentary Commissioner and I hope that this indicates that further consideration will be given to the responsibilities involved in this issue of Crown privilege. The Financial Secretary may be interested in the little bonne bouche I have kept to the end of my remarks, because my next subject comes within the responsibility of the Treasury. While I said that I am delighted that Sir Edmund Compton has been appointed Parliamentary Commissioner, I wish to raise a case with which he has no power to deal. This case was originally raised in an Adjournment debate by my hon. Friend the Member for Westbury (Mr. Walters), in which he cited the plight of a man who was his constituent. The man's wife happened to be a constituent of mine. It is the case of Alfred Newton. He and his brother were working in Special Operations Executive during the war. They were captured by the Germans, were grossly tortured and spent two years in Buchenwald. I am glad to say that both returned to this country, although one was in a very ill state and the other, about whom my hon. Friend spoke, was in not quite such a bad condition. While Alfred Newton was operating in Europe he had been released, under Defence Regulations, from the War Office. He received a signal stating that he was to be promoted from lieutenant to captain. After spending two years in Buchenwald and upon coming home—at which point everybody showered him with admiration for the way he had stood up to Nazi treatment—he wanted his captaincy registered. Although there were no records available, when my hon. Friend the Member for Westbury raised the matter in the House he was able to quote strong circumstantial evidence from Colonel Buckmaster, who was in command of the French Section of S.O.E., and his well-known personal assistant, Miss Vera Atkins. They confirmed that it was the intention of S.O.E. to recommend to the War Office that Alfred Newton be promoted to captain. Anybody who had even the slightest part to play in these matters during the war—and it was only a small part that I had to play—is aware that a great many of the signals which were sent from this country to various parts of Europe are unrecorded because many of them were burnt and there was no certainty about anything. Unfortunately, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, who replied to my hon. Friend's Adjournment debate, was not prepared to accept that Alfred Newton, who had returned to Britain covered with glory, was eligible to be raised from lieutenant to captain. It seems intolerable that there should be no sort of appeal in a case of this type and it emphasises the point I was making earlier, that if one passes legislation on matters of great moment to the individual without allowing a form of appeal, one is destroying something tremendously important in our national life. In his case, not only is there no appeal, but there is no possibility of looking at the papers, even if it would be possible to find them. If the Parliamentary Commissioner were entitled to inquire into cases of this kind, that would at least mean that an appeal would be possible. My experience of pensions committees, industrial injuries committees and all the machinery that has been established by Parliament over the years to protect the individual prom the Executive, leads me to believe that had the matter gone to a Ministry of Pensions committee the circumstantial evidence was so great that the case would have been accepted. Many of us have experience of those committees, and know that wherever possible they give the benefit of the doubt to the individual. I remember the tremendous speech made during the war by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for St. Marylebone when we were arguing about the establishment of machinery in the Ministry of Pensions to protect the interests of the individual. That machinery has been very well established I have mentioned just this one man who had done so much for his country but had his case disallowed because the only proof was word of mouth and circumstantial evidence. We were told that the signal in that case could not be implemented. I do not believe that the Under-Secretary of State was happy in that debate, and I am perfectly certain that the nigger in the woodpile was the Treasury. One rarely has the chance, when speaking here in the interests of individuals, of really hitting at the Treasury. I want to hit it often in these human cases. I do not argue now about the Treasury's economic policy, but about the human aspect, because I do not believe that at the very low level at which, up to a point, these cases are decided, the Department would have failed to have accepted the case presented by my hon. Friend the Member for Westbury. It is a most distressing and disturbing situation. It is more than unfortunate that in such a case, where there is no other right of appeal, the power of the Parliamentary Commissioner is so circumscribed that he is not allowed to judge evidence that should in the circumstances have been before him. We do a very good deal of talking in Parliament. I talk a good deal myself—sometimes I wish that I could talk a great deal more, but I do not think that the House would like that—but there are very many things going on under this Government that show that words alone will not preserve democracy. The only thing that will preserve democracy, and a free Parliament as we understand it and have understood throughout the centuries, is full consideration of the suggestions in the Motion. Perhaps the Government will pay some little attention to the points I have made, and to the anxieties which the development of their policies has caused in so many walks of life. This does not apply only to one section of the community—it goes right through it from top to bottom. I believe that the very best service the House of Commons could make in defence of democracy would be to see that the Government follow some of the lines set out in my Motion. I do not consider this to be a political issue but a Parliamentary issue, so I shall not ask for a Division. I simply register my Motion. I know that many hon. Members opposite share, at any rate, some of the anxieties I have expressed. If some of those anxieties ring a bell with them as they do with some of us on this side, I hope that the Motion will be accepted and placed on the record, and that those who govern our destinies will consider very carefully before thinking that the Executive should have more power to the detriment of the individual."The Secretary of State seems to be departing from the policy of persuasion to a policy of compulsion. The A.E.C. has consistently argued for nearly 20 years now that the problem of organisation of secondary education was properly a matter for each local education authority to determine for its own area. Nobody could reasonably take exception to the Secretary of State's making quite clear that the policy of the Government was to move towards comprehensive schools. This in itself did not deny freedom to local education authorities to decide how best to solve their problems. It is a matter for regret that the area of freedom in this matter would seem to be severely restricted by the present circular."
4.25 p.m.
I do not intend to follow the hon. Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) in her remarks about Dan Smith, except to say that Mr. Smith's achievements in the North-East are legend in many other parts of the country.
The hon. Lady is to be congratulated on initiating a very widely-ranging debate on the supremely important topic of the individual liberty of the citizen. All too often, hon. Members who become rather hot under the collar and work themselves into a great passion about taxation or economic matters give very scant attention to this vitally important subject. To me, individual freedom does not mean the freedom to prevent equality in education or to opt out of one's social responsibilities, particularly to the less well-off members of the community. Nor does it mean freedom to exploit one's neighbours which so often is the sort of freedom that hon. Members opposite are intent on preserving. Man does not live by bread alone, and that is why, as a Socialist, I have no time for the kind of Socialism that rides roughshod over individual rights and privileges. This debate is important because in the sort of unfair society supported by the other side of the House, the citizen cannot develop his individuality to the full. That is why I think that the philosophy on this side of the House is most compatible with individual freedom. The Government's record in this connection is far brighter than that of their predecessors—one remembers the cases of Enahoro and Soblen, and many others. Nevertheless, we have to concede that the Government's record in relation to individual freedom has been rather patchy. I welcome the appointment of the Parliamentary Commissioner, and I welcome, too, the Race Relations Act. The purpose of the one is to protect the individual against abuses by the Administration, and of the other to protect him against abuse and discrimination. Both are important advances in individual freedom. They do not go far enough, but they are valuable because they create a precedent, and the framework on which extended legislation can later be built. It is only when we get that extended legislation that we shall reap the full benefits of those Measures in terms of individual opportunity. In the lifetime of this Government we have had a great deal of private Members' legislation, often initiating valuable social reforms and relating to human attitudes—following protests, quite often, from less enlightened members of the community. Under the guidance of the Home Secretary, we have also seen a new look at the Home Office. This is apparent in a number of ways, not least in regard to deportation procedures. One sees a readiness in the Home Office under its present head to listen to protests and to correct longstanding abuses in our administrative procedure. As against those advances there have been retrograde steps, one of which was the decision on majority verdicts taken by the House when there was no free vote. I believe that individual hon. Members should have been able to decide that issue in terms of their individual consciences. Also on the debit side are the wide powers of arrest given under the Criminal Law Bill. One matter I want to raise which is of personal interest to a constituent is the conservatism of the Ministry of Defence in relation to a topic of vital importance to individual liberty—the problem of the teen-age Serviceman who very often has to spend a large part of his adult life in the Forces. One of my constituents recently, in desperation, after one attempt after another to free himself from this obligation, jumped ship at Mombasa, was absent without leave and is now serving a period of detention. I asked the Ministry of Defence whether the parents of this boy could see him at Southampton, where he is in detention. I also asked whether I could see the boy in lieu of that. But although the parents had not seen him for 14 months, they were unable to visit him during his period of detention. Such are the regulations that both my requests were refused. The sort of enlightened standards that we accept in civil life should gradually be permeating the Services as well. It is a scandalous situation in which a boy of 15 can sign away 12 to 15 years of his adult life without the opportunity to change his mind later. When I have raised this matter on a previous occasion, however, the hon. Lady the Member for Tynemouth saw nothing wrong in the system. She, the guardian of individual freedom this afternoon, thinks that there is nothing wrong with buys of that age signing away their adult lives. I find her attitude somewhat strange. These boys enter into a binding contract, which in civil life they would not be able to do until they were 21. Long-term Service contracts for teen-agers under the age of 18 should be ended and the contracts signed by those over the age of 18 should include a clause allowing them an option at the age of 21 to change their minds. We might also follow the example of certain Scandinavian countries and have a Parliamentary Commissioner dealing directly with Service matters. I want also to say something about the extension of the Public Order Act in the Race Relations Act. During the Committee stage of the Race Relations Act, I moved an Amendment, warning the Committee that the extension of the Public Order Act in the Race Relations Act without reference to the question of rice relations would mean that its impact would not be felt by those who were deliberately stimulating racial hatred but would probably be used against those protesting against the purveying of racial hatred. Only a short time afterwards, "Mandraks" in the Daily Telegraph pointed out that the first prosecution under the new Act was against persons who were protesting at a manifestation of racial discrimination. The same thing occurred again when a number of people including clergymen, were picketing a hairdresser's shop where discrimination was practised. In that case there was an acquittal. The warning we gave in moving that Amendment proved correct. When we come to the problem of political protest, we find that the laws of obstruction and Sessional Orders are being used to stop demonstrations and to harass demonstrators to an unwarranted degree. I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General will deal with this. All of us will agree that the law with regard to assembly and processions is in a state of disorder and quite unsatisfactory. Few people realise how limited are the fundamental rights of the citizen with regard to freedom of speech, assembly and the right of free procession. Much of this is purely at the whim of the local chief of police. There also seems increasingly to be an attitude of mind in the courts that demonstrating is itself a criminal offence. We have had examples of the magistrates at Marlborough Street court continually abusing their powers in order to keep accused persons in custody before their trial. There was an instance recently in which a person demonstrating over the Vietnam was was bound over to keep the peace for three months, although he had not at that stage been tried. This sort of thing flies in the face of the cardinal principle of British justice—that a man is presumed innocent until proved guilty. Another example of this kind of arbitrary behaviour was the remanding in custody of a number of persons nearly a year ago who shouted in a church prior to the Labour Party conference at Brighton. They also were protesting against the Vietnam war. I regard their action as foolish and as in bad taste in a place of worship, but from their point of view they perhaps regarded it as slightly in more bad taste to pour petrol and polystrene on children and set them alight, which is what napalm means in the Vietnam war. They were thus exerting a certain kind of protest. They were remanded in custody for a week before they were charged. This again was a case of prejudging the issue. In a case of that kind, where there was no question of intimidating witnesses or of failure to stand bail, it should not be refused. The whole problem of bail must be reviewed. Recently, I represented a man in what was then the Court of Criminal Appeal. He had been sentenced to nine months' imprisonment and had served five months when his appeal was heard. The court quashed his sentence but, he would only have had another month to go anyway. He had not been granted bail pending his appeal, although he had no previous convictions. The Criminal Appeal Act, passed by the present Government, should go a long way to remedy this sort of situation. The general reluctance to give bail, particularly in magistrates' courts, should be attacked vigorously by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. About 18,000 people who are subsequently not sentenced to any term of imprisonment are held in custody each year. That situation must be ended and I hope that the provisions of the Criminal Justice Act, although they do not go far enough in dealing with the question of bail, will go at least some way to doing so. One wants to see a set procedure whereby opposition to bail is accompanied by a sworn statement and genuine reasons why bail should not be given. There is far too much tendency, particularly by magistrates, to prejudge an issue and to decide that a man is guilty and therefore should be kept in custody rather than to look at the correct criteria for withholding bail. The man whom I represented before the Court of Criminal Appeal spent five months in prison. He had no previous convictions. He had a wife and four children who were left to fend for themselves during that period, but there was no question of compensation. The question of compensation where miscarriages of justice of this nature take place ought to be gone into a great deal further and there should be a far more generous attitude on behalf of the administrators. Happily, we have not yet reached the situation that occurs in one part of the United Kingdom—Northern Ireland, where under the Special Powers Act, a man can be detained at will without trial. That Act of Parliament goes further in many respects than the similar Act in South Africa. Only recently, the so-called Republican Clubs in Northern Ireland were banned and certain persons were taken into custody. Nothing was brought forward to substantiate any charge against these clubs or individuals. No evidence was produced and eventually they were freed. In a case of that kind, one would expect the Home Secretary of Northern Ireland to resign or to produce some evidence to show why these people were taken into custody. But I do not now wish to go into the whole question of civil liberties in Northern Ireland because I have already spoken on the subject in this House and my views are well known. I believe that it calls for a Royal Commission to investigate the lack of civil and religious liberty and the discrimination in that part of the United Kingdom. One further matter which I should like to raise concerns the procedures when immigrants or visitors come to this country. I understand that recently new instructions have been given to immigration officers at our seaports and airports. I should like to refer to one or two specific cases. There was the very disturbing case of the Swedish student, Barbara Erikson, which is very well known, but I know of the case of a Danish student who landed at Manchester Airport and did not have the documents required to take up a job here. He was offered accommodation for a holiday for a fortnight by a resident in Manchester, but, in spite of this, he was shipped back to Denmark the following day, having spent the night in the airport. That sort of attitude is not conducive to good relations with foreign countries or to stimulating the tourist trade, apart from the human suffering involved. I think that everyone saw the picture of the little Indian boy boarding the aeroplane having come to this country and being shipped away. I believe that there should be a right, when an administrative procedure is applied at a port, for some sort of appeal to a judicial body. When administrative procedures like this are so arbitrary there must be a right of appeal to protect the rights of the individual. I am told that there are still many cases of immigrants coming to this country, having received authority from British authorities overseas, and yet being turned back when they come. I should like some information about this from my right hon. Friend later. One final point I should like to raise in this perhaps rag-bag of examples of cases where individual freedom is at stake concerns the case of a person who loses his job because of some security question. It may be that the man has had some contact with some organisation or person which makes him a security risk. I have no objection, in the interests of national security and the nation's survival, to dealing in a proper way with a man who is a security risk. However, where a person is removed from a job in this way he ought to know the nature of the accusation against him. He ought to be confronted with it and have the right to defend himself. All along we have to be very careful to see that the correct principles of natural justice and of the right of a man to defend himself and know what are the charges against him—the procedures which we expect in an ordinary court of law—are applied when administrative decisions of this nature are made. All in all, I believe that the hon. Lady the Member for Tynemouth has cone this House a great service not in the speech she made, but in initiating a debate, the consequences of which perhaps she did not foresee when she put down the Motion, in which hon. Members will have the right—and it is an all too infrequent right—to raise many matters of grave and fundamental concern to the liberty of the individual. To my mind, a society which is concerned only with what is material and not with the freedom of the individual is not a society towards which we ought to be aspiring. I hope that many of my hon. Friends will take this opportunity to raise matters of vital importance to individual freedom which have not so far been raised.5.45 p.m.
The hon. Gentleman the Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Rose) raised a number of interesting fringe points, if he will not mind my calling them that, during this debate. I agreed with some and disagreed with others. I hope he will excuse me if I do not follow him into Northern Ireland or some of the other paths he trod, interesting as his points were. I want to make a much more fundamental speech, talking much more in principles than about particular things. I will make a speech which will be found by some hon. Members to be provocative and controversial, but I hope that it will be none the worse for that.
I fully recognise that, in spite of what I am about to say, there is a lot of common ground between both sides of the House—and thank heaven for it—where the protection of individual liberties and rights is concerned. That goes without saying, but it does not alter the fact that many on this side of the House are extremely critical of certain trends that we see at the moment and have seen during the last two and a half years. Ever since my very good hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) first entered this House, which was several years ago, she has been a doughty and undaunted champion of the rights of those who are unable to speak for themselves and she has never lost an opportunity of raising matters on their behalf. She has made her mark on Parliamentary issues by her fearless battle in support of genuine grievances against injustice and against the erosion of individual rights and liberties wherever she thinks she has seen them. I agree with the hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley that by raising this question today my hon. Friend has done the House a great service. I am only sorry that after the gruelling we had last week the House is thin today. I disagreed with only one thing that my hon. Friend said, and that was when she said that this was a Parliamentary matter and not a political one. With respect to my hon. Friend's great experience, I think that this is an extremely political matter and I shall make a political speech. It seems to me that the Government too often regard themselves as the master and not as the servant of the people. They sometimes treat individual liberty as a privilege and not as a right, and I shall be explaining what I mean by that. On this side of the House we have the urgent and inescapable duty to condemn any dangerous attitudes in these directions whenever we see them. It goes without saying that individual liberty is the first casualty in war. Nothing has been said about that yet. The Government, like any prudent householder, must insure against enemy aggression, and the defence of the country's vital interests at home and abroad must be the first charge on the taxpayers' pockets. I see the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Bellenger) sitting opposite. I know that he feels very strongly on this, and I have heard him say before in this House that the defence of the country comes first within what we can afford. The Government believe—and we shall know tomorrow whether this is an exaggeration or not—that they can safely slash defence costs. By demanding peace on the cheap, if that is what the Government are about to do—and they have already trended in that direction—they are putting the fundamental rights and liberties of the people at serious risk. I greatly fear that when we read the Defence White Paper tomorrow, we shall see that Socialist Party unity will again have been put before the national interest. I hope and pray that I am wrong in saying that. A country that puts soft living, greater affluence, and bigger and better social services before the maintenance of peace will quickly lose, and deserve to lose, its most precious rights and privileges. I should like to give the House a few examples of some of the ways in which the traditional individual rights and liberties have been eroded since the October, 1964, election. Individual liberty is put at risk, in my opinion, by a Government that assumes the right to interfere at will in the time-honoured process of collective bargaining. This is something about which hon. Members on both sides of the House are largely in agreement. Who was it who said recently in a B.B.C. "Election Forum" broadcast,No prizes are given for the answer, which is, of course, the Prime Minister. It is a slippery slope. It leads and has led during the last 12 months since the July measures to the retrospective breaking of contracts freely made and morally binding. The Government have set an extremely bad example by breaking contracts themselves, for instance, the contract into which they had entered with Service doctors and dentists and to which I myself drew attention in the House. This means that in many ways the Government have put expediency before the law and this trend leads inevitably and inexorably in the end, although not immediately, to the direction of labour. Anyone who doubts whether interference by the Government in collective bargaining leads to that in the end should ask the Czechs, the Poles, the Hungarians, or the Russians. That is what it has led to in those countries where, I am glad to say, a revolt against it is now going on. Like martial law, Government control of incomes is a crisis measure justified only in times of genuine and severe economic danger. I do not think that this is in any way a partisan view. Hon. Members will agree with me about that when they cast their minds back to last week—I forget which night it was, for we had so many of them—when the Government majority was down to 20 because a considerable number of hon. Members opposite were profoundly unhappy about the restrictions which the Government were placing on prices and incomes, because those hon. Members genuinely believed in collective bargaining. I am not making a partisan speech for the sake of making one. [Laughter.] Hon. Members opposite can laugh. I heard one say "Hear, hear", and agree with me while others giggled. This shows the difference in attitude between the factions of hon. Members opposite."Once you have the law prescribing wages you're on a very slippery slope"?
That is liberty.
It is liberty. The hon. Member for Croydon, South (Mr. Winnick), who has his foot up, has a perfect right to giggle.
The belief in the time-honoured phrase of the President of the Board of Trade of which many people are heartily sick, that the "gentleman in Whitehall knows best" is dangerous doctrine. The gentleman in Whitehall is no less fallible than the rest of us, and sometimes much more. He finds it convenient to demand conformity and to deprive the citizen of choice and to limit diversity and to crush individualism. My hon. Friend the Member for Tyne-mouth spoke of individual liberty in the context of nationalisation. Individual liberty is being eroded by the Government who have as their long-term aim —I quote from this remarkable document "Labour's Aims":"an expansion of common ownership substantial enough to give the community power over the commanding heights of the economy"
Hear, hear.
I knew that that would get some cheers, but what the devil it means I have not the faintest idea, and nor has any hon. Member opposite. If any hon. Member who follows me can explain it, I shall be delighted to hear the explanation, and so will the whole of this side of the House. It is a paraphrase of the remarkable sentence in the party's objects adopted in 1918 about securing
I understood that. What it meant was perfectly clear."for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof which may be possible, upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution, exchange …"
The hon. and gallant Gentleman is making progress.
Across the board nationalisation was the long-term aim of the party opposite, but I do not understand the remarkably woolly paraphrase o that 1918 paragraph.
It will come in time.
It will be very interesting to hear an hon. Member opposite explain which industries are on the list for nationalisation in the short term and the long term, because many people want to know and are entitled to know. It was Bertrand Russell, the great Socialist and great idealist, who wrote:
I could not agree more and I am glad to see some hon. Members opposite in agreement with me. The Labour Party is a most curious party, consisting of Social Democrats, with whom I have a great deal in common, and a Marxist wing which genuinely believes in the Marxist doctrine. The sooner they sort out their ideas between each other, the better. To return precisely to the subject of the Motion—I was led astray—State monopoly removes competition and individual choice. As State monopoly increases, it deprives a man of his right to change his job, of the right to negotiate his terms of employment and, in the end, of the right to strike. There is nobody who has studied State Socialism, if that is the right phrase—it is Bertrand Russell's phrase—who does not know perfectly well in his heart of hearts that across the board nationalisation means that all these things automatically go with it. This is undeniable. Individual rights are flouted by the Government's attempts, particularly in recent months, to coerce, sometimes to mislead and sometimes to bully the free Press. It was said by Junius in the 18th century—so far as I am aware, nobody knows who Junius was, but he wrote many wise things; my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) may want to intervene to tell us, but I doubt it—that:"the true ends of democracy are not achieved by state socialism".
We forget that at our peril. Liberty is restricted by a Government who take too great a share of a man's earnings or savings, so that they can spend that money as they think best. As taxes go up, freedom of choice and independence go down. We have seen taxes going up and up in the last two and a half years while freedom of choice has been eroded. The Government seem to be blinded by their egalitarianism. They squander public funds on universal benefits regardless of real need and subject helpless people to the imprisonment of poverty—[Laughter.] I am sorry that the hon. Member for Croydon, South finds it so very funny. These people are suffering poverty. There are many people in this country who suffer from poverty, and the situation is getting worse under the present Government, and this is not very funny."The liberty of the Press is that Palladium of all the civil, political and religious rights of an Englishman."
I was not laughing at the hon. and gallant Gentleman's example of people in hardship. I would be the last to laugh about such people. I am amused by the hon. and gallant Gentleman's general remarks, for he claimed earlier that he would make a non-political or non-party speech.
I said exactly the opposite. The hon. Gentleman is too busy giggling to listen. I said that I would make a political speech. I knew that the hon. Gentleman would not like it, but he does not have to listen. I said that there was one remark in the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Tyne-mouth with which I did not agree and that that was when she said that this was a matter for Parliament only and was not political. I think that it is very political and I am making a political speech. One of the reasons why I represent my constituency is that the electors there like my politics.
All of them?
A great many of them, yes. My majority has never been below 12,000, which is not bad.
Liberty is imperilled by a Government who ride roughshod over the views and wishes of locally-elected bodies. This was something touched upon by the hon. Lady the Member for Tynemouth. It is imperilled by a Government who take decisions without consulting local opinion or heeding expert, impartial advice. It is imperilled by a Government who take arbitrary decisions without publishing their reasons. There have been some fairly horrid examples of this recently. I have had one or two in my constituency, but because I do not want to take up too much of the time of the House, I will not go into details. I will simply state the general principle. Liberty is fettered by a Government who enact hasty and badly-drafted legislation, forcing it through Parliament with insufficient time for discussion and amendment. There have been some very bad examples of that in the last two and a half years. One which springs immediately to my mind is the way in which the Selective Employment Tax debate was subjected to the timetable Motion. Here my rights and liberties as well as my constituents' were being eroded. I put my name to eight Amendments out of heaven knows how many. All of those affected my constituency, basically and importantly. Only one was reached, because of the timetable Motion. This is an example, and I could give others to show what I mean by hasty and badly drafted legislation being forced through the House and getting on the Statute Book, so that no one knows what the devil it means. Then the individual suffers. The interpretation of legislation that is imprecise or over-complex places an intolerable burden upon the official who exercises power, and places the citizen at the mercy of too wide a discretion. Individual liberty is threatened when trade unions are allowed to deprive a man of his job, when they are allowed to interfere with the right of a man to work as hard as he wishes and to earn as much as he can. Individual liberty is threatened, too, when trade unions stand above the law and can with impunity oppress the individual.rose—
I would rather not give way. The hon. Gentleman may catch Mr. Speaker's eye, in which case I shall be interested in what he has to say.
Individual liberty is threatened when unions can coerce a man into supporting a particular brand of party politics, by insisting that he should contract out of a political levy rather than pay voluntarily. This is a threat to individual liberty, and the sooner that we get back to contracting in, when men are not forced to go to their shop steward and say that they will not pay to the Socialist Party, thus disclosing that they are not Socialists, the fairer it will be for all concerned. It might have quite a profound effect on the Socialist Party's finances. Individual liberty is threatened too when protection is given under the law, as in the 1965 Trades Disputes Act to anyone, trade union official, Communist agitator, unofficial strike leader, ordinary union member or just someone with a grudge who threatens a strike in breach of contract, in order to procure another man's dismissal. That is another threat to individual liberty and that was a very bad piece of legislation. I had wanted to say a word about the warning issued by the Transport and General Workers Union to its 26 sponsored Members of Parliament, to the effect that they risk losing the union's financial support if they do not back union policy—
On a point of order. Is it in order for the hon. and gallant Member to refer to a case which has already been submitted to Mr. Speaker for consideration as a breach of Parliamentary privilege?
I was about to rule the hon. and gallant Gentleman out of order in any case. This Motion is about the erosion of traditional rights and liberties and Government action in the matter.
You are right, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and I am sorry that I mentioned the subject. It was in my notes, and I had not re-read them. The moment I saw it—I was in mid-sentence—I was about to mention this subject without putting any pros and cons and find my way into the next paragraph by saying that I did not intend to speak about it at all. It is the last thing that I would do since Mr. Speaker is to rule tomorrow.
When trade unions abuse their powers and fail to distinguish between the national interest—[Interruption.]Order. I do not want to prevent the hon. and gallant Gentleman from achieving his intention of being provocative, or other hon. Members from enjoying the speech, but I hope that they will not carry on a conversation.
I very much hope that you are right, Sir, in thinking that hon. Members are enjoying the speech. I am. When trade unions abuse their powers and fail to distinguish between the national interest and their own sectional interest, individual liberty is threatened.
Liberty is in danger when a Government, by gerrymandering, interferes with the statutory rights of the people of London to hold local elections in the London boroughs. It may be that the Financial Secretary, when he replies to the debate will not wish to comment in any detail on some of the points that I have made. Maybe he will be wiser not to do so, but I should like to ask him one specific question on the subject of gerrymandering. Could the attitude of the Government towards the London borough elections be a pointer to the way in which the Government intend to treat the reports of the Boundary Commissions which will be laid before Parliament in about two years' time and which, constitutionally, should be acted upon without delay? May I have the assurance from the hon. Gentleman that after these reports have been laid, there will be no avoidable delay whatever in acting upon them? I cannot help saying that I am a little suspicious and feel that what happened in the London Boroughs might be a horrid pointer to something much larger and much more serious. My hon. Friend the Member for Tyne-mouth spoke of education. It is surely a fundamental right of parents to spend their own money as they think fit, to give their children the best education that they can afford. A Government who disregard parental choice, as this Government are doing, and seek to impose a standardised system of education contrary to the views and wishes of parents, children and educational authorities, fly in the face of this basic right.Would the hon. and gallant Gentleman agree that it would be logical, if parents had the right to spend their money as they liked on education, that no tax concessions whatever should be made in respect of private education?
I would certainly not go so far as to say that. There are some circumstances in which tax concessions make a great deal of sense. I am talking about parental choice. I am very much in favour of the direct grant schools, which are very fine, in between the comprehensive system and the State system on the one hand, and the private schools on the other.
Would the hon. and gallant Gentleman tell the House what parental choice the parent has who does not have the means?
Parents who have not got the means have one of the finest State educational systems in the world at their disposal. [Interruption.] This is egalitarianism coming out. What the hon. Gentleman has to realise is the truth of what was said by a famous headmaster recently
If the attitude of the party opposite—this egalitarian attitude—is "Because everyone cannot have it, then no one can have it", we are in for a great deal of trouble. That is a fair paraphrase of what the hon. Gentleman said."It would be quite easy to make all schools equally bad, but impossible to make them all equally good."
rose—
I do not wish to give way again.
Order. May I remind the House that many hon. Members wish to speak in the debate, which must close at seven o'clock.
I am sorry not to give way again, as I should much enjoy doing so, but I do not think it fair to take up too much of the time of the House. I know that what I am saying is controversial and I know that it is political. It is deliberately controversial and deliberately political. It may be that some hon. Members opposite would wish to comment on some of the points which I have made and which I believe to be fair.
May I mention one more basic right of the individual—the right to expect that a political party's electoral promises will be honest and realistic. A party which knowingly issues a false prospectus in an attempt to win an election is guilty of political fraud. It is surely a basic right of every man to be certain that a political party will make its promises in good faith and will honour them if it can. That, I think, is non-controversial. But this is controversial: when a party leader promises. as the Prime Minister did in 1964, that there will be "no general increase in taxation" during the period of the next Parliament—and perhaps the Financial Secretary would like to comment on that. I see that he is yawning, which is a pity, because I should not have thought that the imposition of another £1,000 million in taxation on the backs of the British taxpayers is anything very much to yawn about. I hope that he will be good enough to reply on this point at any rate. He looks very bored.indicated assent.
I see that he is bored by my speech. It explains quite a lot if he does not think that this matters very much. I remind him that the Prime Minister said that there will be "no general increase in taxation" during the period of the next Parliament. What happened? Taxation has increased by £1,000 million in the last two-and-a-half years. The Financial Secretary nodded assent when I said that he was bored. Presumably his yawn arises out of the fact that the Government have it very much in mind to reduce taxation to the level at which they found it in October, 1964, and that, therefore, I am making an unfair point. If that is so, it is something well worth hearing.
To take a smaller point but no less important, under the same heading of promises being given in good faith and not honoured, I remind him of the pledge about public service pensions. I corresponded with him about it in November, 1964. He knows that I feel very strongly about it, and I still have the letters on the subject. I dare say he will remember the correspondence on the subject of public service and Armed Forces pensions, a subject in which my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth has taken an immense interest ever since she has been in the House. Just before the 1964 General Election the Prime Minister gave a pledge that he wouldThat is unequivocal. In a word, it means what is known as "parity". Where is it? Practically nothing has been done. This section of the community, the Armed Forces pensioners—and the same applies in a rather different way to public service pensioners—feel that they have been betrayed. They deserve better. I hope that in his reply to the debate the Financial Secretary will tell us what has happened to that pledge. I could keep the House up all night by listing the broken promises and broken pledges. The individual has the absolute right, surely, to insist that when a party issues its election manifesto, it means what it says and will do its best to carry out its promises. I feel that by playing fast and loose with the electorate the Government have deprived many people of the opportunity to make a choice in good faith. To sum up, the rights and liberties of the individual are, in my view, not safe the hands of a Government who are so cocksure and so lacking in modesty, a Government who think that they know all the answers, a Government who think that they can ride roughshod over the reeds of the individual, always, of course, in the name of the "public interest", of the "good of the community", of "social justice" or of the ideals of what is called the Movement, with a capital "M". A meddlesome, high-handed Government, wedded to old-fashioned dogma and activated by class jealousies can too easily destroy the will of a people to solve their own problems and to learn from their own mistakes. Such a Government can blunt inventiveness and self-reliance, and they can blunt our sturdy sense of adventure. We would do well to mark and learn the following words of Milton:"take the first opportunity to raise the pensions of retired Service people to what they would have been had a man retired upon the latest scale".
"And what more oft in nations grown corrupt
And by their vices brought to servitude,
Than to love bondage more than liberty,
Socialism, as I see it, in the ultimate offers "bondage with ease". It promises fair shares for all, freedom from anxiety, universal affluence, greater reward for less effort, the all-embracing care of a benevolent State and peace on the cheap. It offers life on the never-never. But it leads only to bondage, never to ease. This is a "hippy" Government which offers "pot" for the people. To misquote Karl Marx outrageously, "Socialism is the opium of the people". Liberty is never the soft option. It is strenuous and tough. After two major wars a country is inclined to turn to what appears to be the easier, softer way. But nearly three years in opposition have given me and many of my hon. Friends on this side of the House the opportunity to watch from the sidelines the beginning of a slide down what many of us think is the slippery Socialist slope. Today's debate serves as a timely warning to the Government that they should and must act as the servants and not the masters of the people. It should remind us all, in and out of Parliament, that individual rights and liberties have been and are being eroded by this Government. Let us have "strenuous liberty" with all its responsibilities, all its untidiness, all its anomalies—yes, all its injustices, all its anxieties and all its inevitable risks. It is the only option, unless Britain is to become a nation in decline.Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty."
5.18 p.m.
I think that I can say that my hon. and right hon. Friends have thoroughly enjoyed the speech of the hon. and gallant Member for Lewes (Sir T. Beamish). For a moment I thought that I was back in the 19th century, because that was about the time at which such a speech might well have been made. If I may say so without disrespect to the hon. and gallant Member, it was the cry of an ancient Tory who did not recognise that this is 1967 and that things have changed.
I am glad that he disagreed with the hon. Lady the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) in her interpretation of whether this was a political issue. With respect to her, although she claimed that it was non-political, much of the content and many of her remarks were political. When she first announced the Motion I hoped that we should have a sensible discussion about the rights and liberties of the individual in modern society. Instead, both from the hon. Lady and from the hon. and gallant Gentleman we have had a somewhat turgid and totally erroneous piece about liberty and rights and the way in which they are supposed to have been curbed by this Government. We also had from the hon. Lady, and I was glad of it, a pat on the back for the Ombudsman and a long, sustained attack on an individual who has neither the right nor the liberty to answer that attack in this Chamber. Not only are these accusations both turgid and erroneous, but they are also hypocritical. The party opposite has no right whatever to claim that rights and liberties are being eroded under this Government when we look, for example, at their record from 1951 to 1964. What right have they to talk about rights and liberties when it was they who deported Chief Enahoro? The hon. Lady complained about the treatment of Parliament by this Government. I wonder if she still supports her Government's actions over Suez in 1956—Yes, I do.
I am glad to hear that. They obviously misled this House and therefore interfered with the rights and liberties of individual Members of Parliament. If she is happy about that perhaps she can square it with her Motion, but I am afraid I cannot.
We can look at the climate of society under the Conservatives and see how far rights and liberties were sustained. How many rights and how much liberty had the tenant under the 1957 Rent Act. There was a typical example of Tory legislation. It certainly had an element of liberty—liberty for the landlord to exploit his tenant to the full. We may look at the position of old people under the party opposite. We find their rights to a comfortable retirement and their liberty to enjoy it was circumscribed by low pensions and inadequate benefits. We can consider the position of people who were sick. Their rights and liberties were hardly helped by being taxed for being ill through the imposition of prescription charges. One of the most important aspects of rights and liberties is surely that children should be allowed to develop their talents to the full. The separatism that existed—indeed, it still exists but we are changing it—in secondary education, particularly, meant quite certainly that children were not able to develop their talents to the full. This was, and still is, a hallmark of Conservative educational policy based on a system of privilege. In answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Rose) the hon. and gallant Member proved this up to the hilt. Conservative hon. Members complain loudly about the decline of Parliament and the increasing power of the Executive, but we heard nothing from the benches opposite about this when they were in power. What did they do to try to make certain that the power of the Executive did not become too great? It is not a new phenomenon but, as I shall try to show, my hon. and right hon. Friends have begun to tackle this problem. In the Conservative record I can think of only one occasion when they took an action which one could argue helped the rights and liberties of the individual. That was when they passed the Tribunals and Inquiries Act, 1958. Even then it was the result of a bad attack of conscience resulting from the Crichel Down case and the setting up of the Franks Committee. It is an impertinence therefore for the hon. Lady to put forward such a Motion in the light of such a record. Before turning to examine the three criteria in the Motion, I ask the House to consider the hon. Lady's use of the term:She gave no indication in her speech of what she meant by "traditional rights". I suggest, therefore, that she is in no position to know whether those rights are being eroded or not. The use of the word "traditional" is in itself difficult to sustain. However much philosophers throughout the centuries have disagreed about the true meaning of liberty and rights, they would recognise that any such consideration of values must be related to the society of the day. Even natural law theorists would argue that the law of the State or the country should be part of the law which a citizen has to obey. In our country I doubt if even the hon. Lady would argue that the rights and liberty of people to draw social benefits from the State would sap their moral fibre, but that is what her party's predecessors talked about 50 years ago when these sort of social benefits were put forward. They were opposed to them on the basis of right and liberty. We must look at these rights and liberties in terms of society today. One cannot simply talk of traditional values, although these of course are very important. In reality the hon. Lady and the hon. and gallant Member rested their case on the distaste they have—I understand it—for the State intervening in the affairs of individuals. It was this which the hon. Lady, wrongly in my view, ascribed to being against the rights and liberties of the individual. But even her own party is in some difficulty, because she and they must accept that over a large field of action State intervention increases the liberty of the individual. That is why the party opposite find it difficult sometimes to make up their minds about certain measures which the State takes over a period of time. The members of her party are also hampered in not understanding the nature of the problem by a considerable ignorance of how a large number of people in this country live. That explains the antagonism of Conservatives to the introduction of social benefits throughout the last two centuries and their belief that there is a settled order of society. Here we are hitting at the crux of the differences between the parties, particularly on a Motion such as this. It seems that the traditional Disraelian concept of society still goes through the whole attitude of the party opposite. On the one hand, there are the "natural leaders" to whom the people look for guidance and governance, and on the other hand society is organic and therefore there are ties of mutual obligation between the classes. There is therefore a necessity on those natural leaders not to allow the common people to fall below a certain level. Here is the real difference between us. It is because this Labour Government, and the Labour Government of 1945 to 1951 have been breaking down this erroneous attitude of society, this totally out-of-date Disraelian concept of society, and in its place recognising the rights and liberties of all the people and not certain privileged sections, that we have this Motion this afternoon. Now I turn to the three criteria on which the hon. Lady based her criticism of the Government. She complained, first, of the Government's administrative attitude. I am glad that she recognised that one of the most fundamental and far-reaching changes which this Government have introduced, albeit tentatively and in a limited sense, is that of the Parliamentary Commissioner. The right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) has talked of it as "a big swizz". I am glad that the hon. Lady differed from her Front Bench about that. She recognised that this is a fundamental change which, one hopes, will be increased in scope over the years. For the first time in our constitutional history we have an independent officer of this House who is able to inquire into fields of administrative action and, as the hon. Lady pointed out, questions of Crown privilege. These are things which this individual can inquire into to see whether or not there is an injustice."traditional rights and liberties are being eroded".
I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman in his flow of words, but I do so since he has referred to me. He may, perhaps, recollect that the cheerful schoolboy expression he referred to was directed precisely to the refusal of the Government to accept an Amendment which was being pressed from this side and which ultimately they were driven by their own supporters to make in the Bill.
My memory may be slightly at a loss, but I remember that the right hon. and learned Gentleman in his speech on Second Reading of the Bill talked about it as being totally and completely unnecessary. If now he is suggesting to the House that he slightly amended his attitude to the point which was being considered I am glad to welcome him to our ranks, because I am sure that that will have an effect on some of his hon. Friends.
Going on from the Parliamentary Commissioner, I would suggest that the Government's attitude to planning procedures shows the Government's concern for the individual and their concern to see that the individual gets a reasonable and fair hearing of any injustice which he might have. There was the vital point concerning Members of Parliament in this House, the question of telephone tapping, which went on under the party opposite but was discontinued under this Government.While he is on that point, perhaps the hon. Gentleman would kindly explain to the House why it is that Members of Parliament should gratuitously be given this immunity by the Prime Minister acting without reference to anybody else. Members of the public are, presumably, denied it. Why should we not be treated as other men are?
It is nice to hear that. I am glad to hear the hon. Member talk in those terms. Do I take it that he feels about privilege in this House that nothing is to be changed? For a rather wider answer to his question I would refer him to the very good answers which the Prime Minister gave, and which satisfied at least this side of the House.
In the wider sense I would suggest that the Government in their administrative attitudes have looked at problems such as health and education, thereby, in my view, increasing individual liberty. On the one hand, I would suggest that the abolition of prescription charges has ended an iniquitous tax on the sick. In education, I would argue that Circular 10/65 increases very much the individual rights and liberties of the individual and will ensure that our children will have the opportunity to develop their talents to the full. To consider the hon. Lady's second criterion of criticism, the Government's approach to legislation, I believe that, again, she is totally mistaken. This Government have increased individual liberty and rights—for example, in the field of race relations through the Race Relations Act, and in housing through the Rent Act, and in other Measures such as the Social Security Acts. As to her last criterion, that the recent methods of Government by my right hon. Friends have been at fault, I find this the most incredible of all. Here she is objecting to the power of the Executive, and yet this Government have introduced Select Committees which are designed to probe the actions of the Government in a way which Members of the opposite party never introduced, and that she herself should be objecting to that I find even more surprising because she herself was a member of the Select Committee on Procedure which recommended that those Select Committees should be set up.Perhaps, when he is going back into history, the hon. Gentleman would remember that it was the Conservative Government who introduced the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries and sought to bring the House of Commons in touch with the nationalised industries. We always make progress in this direction, but this Government are pressed by a lot of people to do things, and sometimes they do and sometimes they do not.
I am delighted to accept that on occasions the Conservative Government, when pressed hard enough, did make a little progress, and I am only sorry they took so long over it on most occasions.
Therefore, on each of the criteria put forward by the hon. Lady in her Motion, I would say that the record of this Government is one to be proud of, and that this is a hypocritical Motion which should be rejected. I end on this point, that when we talk about the rights and liberties of the individual I believe that there are two other criteria as well as those advanced by the hon. Lady. First, the Government must not be afraid to govern strongly and to intervene on matters affecting the population as a whole, always accepting that, in doing so, they are sensitive to the needs and to the activities of the population, and set up their administrative machinery in such a way that where injustice occurs they are able quickly and successfully to right it. Secondly, I suggest that the Government must so arrange their legislative programme and their administrative acts that they provide a climate of opportunity in which the individual can realise to the full his rights and freedoms in relation to the society of the day. I believe that by both those criteria, as well as the others advanced by the hon. Lady, this Government have a record of which they can be proud.5.26 p.m.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) on having raised this subject in the House and drawn attention to the erosion of individual liberty. This can happen as government as a whole becomes more complicated, if a watch—a vigilant watch—is not kept. But it can happen all the more when the Government of the day seek to intervene increasingly in the national life of the country and seek to control, or to take over, an increasingly large part of the nation's everyday business. Hon. and right hon. Members on both sides of the House will agree, I believe, that most of the grievances which come to them from their constituents are concerned with administrative action, decisions which have been taken administratively by the Government, or by local government.
I am one of those who welcome the Parliamentary Commissioner, the Ombudsman, in so far as he may be able to help with these problems. My complaint, which is shared, I believe, by many of my hon. Friends, is that the Parliamentary Commissioner has only a very limited scope in which he can work. I wish him well, and I will watch very carefully and with great interest what happenst in the cases which are referred to him, but it must be remembered that he cannot deal with cases affecting the nationalised industries, or local government, or the police, and that there are limitations on the arear of central Government with which he can deal. This is still not understood largely in the country, I believe. It is an interesting reflection that so far in all the cases which my constituents have raised by correspondence with me and where they have suggested that they were appropriate for the new Parliamentary Commissioner to investigate they have all been about subjects which are not eligible to be put to him. This is because they have involved the nationalised industries or local government. That is my experience, and I see hon. Members nodding, so I guess that they also have had similar experience. With all the best efforts of the Parliamentary Commissioner, with the most searching and assiduous investigations, I believe that he will be able to deal with only a very small part of the whole question. I am glad that the problems arising from administrative action were exposed by the Franks Committee some time ago and that it was recognised that administrative decisions very often could be taken in good faith in which the rights of individuals were suppressed or affected adversely without their having any remedy. Progress has been made procedurally during the last ten years as a result, and I welcome it. Steps have been taken to ensure that there are proper rights of appeal and that account is taken of the position of individuals. I want now to turn to a general point concerning taxation, and I am glad that the Financial Secretary is sitting on the Front Bench. Very high taxation raised to pay for increasing Government expenditure, besides being damaging to effort and incentive, also detracts from the freedom of the individual, because it means that he has less and less choice. More of his life will be decided by the State because it is paid for by the State. According to Press reports, the Chancellor of the Exchequer is beginning to realise the first point, about effort and incentive and the need for investment, but I hope that the Government as a whole will recognise the second point in a society which we hope increasingly, as prosperity and affluence spread, will be ready to take on more individual and family responsibilty. We on this side of the House regard the family and the individual as the basis of our society. Sometimes the party opposite appears to subscribe to that as well. If individuals work hard and are rewarded for the skills which they contribute to the community, they expect to earn higher incomes. Higher incomes attract progressively higher taxation, and that is accepted, providing that it is not punitively higher taxation. If the individual is not selfish or self-indulgent, usually he is keen to use his money to help his children, and, if we support the concept of the family as the basic social unit, we must expect him to do that. In that connection, I agree with what my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Lewes (Sir T. Beamish) said about education. If such an individual is prepared to add his contribution to the country's schools in money terms, in addition to the contribution which he has made to the State system through the taxes which he pays, should the Government prevent him from doing so? I put that question in answer to the hon. Member for Middleton and Prestwich (Mr. Coe). I believe that he should not be so prevented. Should he be told, instead, to buy another television set or a second motorcar which perhaps he does not want—if he is someone earning more and more money because of the brains, skill and hard work which he contributes to the nation's life? I think that it was the late Hugh Gaitskell who, when this controversy was being considered some nine or ten years ago, said something to the effect that, if a man was fully paid up in rates and taxes, one could not prohibit him from spending some of the rest of his money on the commendable subject of education. Hon. Gentleman opposite must bear this in mind, because I believe that we live in a society which progressively will want to take on more responsibility for its own individual and family decisions over the next ten, twenty or thirty years. I want now to mention a group of individuals spread throughout the country whose position sometimes is precarious. They are the disabled who do not work because they cannot work. Hon. Gentlemen on both sides will have heard from the Disabled Income Group, known as D.I.G., and will be aware in general of the problem. I believe that we have individuals in our society who, because of their disability, find themselves without a great many rights and freedoms. In the first place, there seems to be no register to record them. Because they have not worked, they do not appear on any of the National Insurance rolls. Because identity cards were done away with some years ago after the war, there is no way of identifying them in that way. They appear on the electoral rolls, presumably, but they are not earmarked in any way to show that they are disabled. I suggest to the Government that this is a group for which a great deal more needs to be done, and I am very glad to see the Minister without Portfolio nodding his assent. In this connection, I do not necessarily want replies today, because I have a Question down about it. I want simply to draw attention to the problem. They must be identified, because there is no register to record them. This would not be overwhelmingly difficult, because I am sure that doctors, district nurses, Queen's Nurses and others could provide most of the information. However, so far, the Government do not appear to have got down to the task. Once they have been identified, the community could do a great deal to help them by way of social services. I am glad to say that there are a lot of young people who, if they are encouraged, are prepared to undertake social services at home as well as going on voluntary service overseas. This is the kind of job in which they and others who wish to help tactfully could usefully do. I agree, too, with what my hon. and gallant friend said about the Trade Dis- putes Act, 1965. It was indefensible for the Government to have brought in legislation to legalise the victimisation which can take place of an individual in his employment and threaten him with the loss of his job. One further matter which has not been touched on so far in this debate is the problem of eavesdropping with technical devices. Here I do not blame the Government, because it is a new problem. A great deal has been said in the House about telephone tapping. However, someone speaking on the telephone knows that he is talking to another party who may be miles away. Lines can become crossed, with the best will in the world, and the conversation may be overheard unintentionally, quite apart from the risk of a third party listening intentionally. But if that is thought to be reprehensible, it is even more reprehensible to use electronic or other devices to eavesdrop on ordinary conversations or business discussions, unless it is being done for the security of the State under special regulations authorised by the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Scotland. I accept that, of course. I am objecting to the use of eavesdropping devices by firms or individuals as a means of infringing the privacy of others. I hope that the Government will address themselves to the problem, because it could be yet another major incursion into the freedom and rights of the individual.5.50 p.m.
I am glad that the hon. Member for Moray and Nairn (Mr. G. Campbell) ended his speech on the note that he did, because this is the matter to which I wish to address my remarks, this discussion, but before I do so perhaps I ought to make some general observations about the nature of this debate, which I regard as of great importance.
I remember in the formative years of my political judgment reading a Penguin by the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) about the case for Conservatism. I am happy to say that it did not persuade me to any degree, but the opening chapter of that little book was one in which he put his basic political beliefs within the framework of the Christian approach to politics, and I confess that it influenced me considerably. I am afraid that the right hon. and learned Gentleman fell into error, however, both in estimating the nature of the Christian approach to politics, and in applying it to the rest of his book. I agree with the right hon. and learned Gentleman that the basic approach to politics for anybody who accepts the Christian faith is to understand how one fits in the individual within the rights and obligations which he takes on himself as a member of the community. Where I think the right hon. and learned Gentleman fell into error was in not recognising that even within the Christian religion the emphasis is laid on the true fulfilment of the individual within the community about him, that in saving his life he has first to lose it for others. It is in this connection that we sit on different sides of the House, because it is impossible to talk about the liberty of the individual without recognising that he is a member of a community, that other members of the community also have liberties which have to be safeguarded, and that the real argument a bout liberty in a democratic society is where to draw the line, what is the balance. Total liberty is rightly known as anarchy, simply because if there is unrestricted, unfettered liberty, other people will ultimately suffer. What we have to argue is where the line should be drawn. It may be that hon. Members on the benches opposite would tend to draw the line towards one extreme, while those on these benches would draw it to the other, but it has always seemed to be nonsense to talk of a fundamental division of principle on this subject between the two major parties when one is really talking about a different gradation of the scale, and what one is arguing about is how to control the irresponsible use of power. I accept that Governments can be guilty of an irresponsible use of power, but it seems to me that within a democracy like ours there is a check on the irresponsible use by the Government of their power, by reason of the House of Commons itself, because every attempt to interfere with the liberty of the individual can be debated in this Chamber. It is true that there are all kinds of devices for controlling the discussion, but on one can say that when it comes to a question of the fundamental liberties of the subject this House is not aware of its power and does not use it satisfactorily. The hon. Lady the Member for Tyne-mouth (Dame Irene Ward) drew attention to a number of Measures passed by this Government which she said were incursions into the liberty of the subject, but every one of them was debated at length on the Floor of the House. Perhaps they were not debated at as great length as she would have wished, but there was, nevertheless, a check, and there is a continuing one. Written into every piece of legislation there is some kind of right of appeal against any withdrawal of any of the rights of the subject, because it is of the nature of Government legislation in this country, whether by the party opposite, or by this party, or by any other, that the liberty of the individual is safeguarded by some kind of approval procedure. What worries me is the irresponsible use of power by those who have it outside the House and outside the Government.rose—
I have only a few more minutes in which to conclude my speech.
Order. I think that if the hon. Member were to pursue that argument he would get outside the realm of Government action in the matter.
With respect, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I wish, first, to put myself within the ambit of the short title of the Motion, and, secondly, within that part of it which calls for a fundamental change by the Government in its approach to legislation, and it is in relation to this that I propose to make my comments.
It seems to me that there is a need for a fundamental change of attitude by the Government towards the kind of legislation which I am about to suggest. I am referring to legislation to deal with the irresponsible use of power by people outside the House for all kinds of incursions into privacy, and it is for this reason that I begin my speech by welcoming the point made by the hon. Member for Moray and Nairn. It seems to me that the real threat to liberty in our highly complicated, civilised, modern society, is the invasion of privacy by all who have the apparatus to do so without in any way trespassing on the property of the person, which is about the only right that the English citizen has to defend. This incursion into privacy is carried out by all kinds of technical devices, by little darts that can be shot into the window frame to overhear what is going on in the room, by long-distance lenses on cameras, by all kinds of wire tapping devices, telephone tapping devices, and so on. There is an increasing range of means by which the private citizen is having his liberty invaded, because it is his privacy which is being invaded, and it is for this reason that I ask the Government to consider legislation to deal with this. I spent a good deal of my weekend at a seminar in Oxford where this subject was discussed by the Law Commission and by a number of distinguished people from the law, from television and broadcasting, and from the Press. It became clear that there was a real need to safeguard the inner recesses of the human life within this modern society, which apparently was not necessary in the primitive society in which our common law was developed. It is not difficult to think of all kinds of ways in which a right of privacy would guarantee the liberty of the subject. I propose to give only one example. When I introduced a Bill about this matter some time ago, a lady wrote to me. Her husband, who was a police officer, had had an affair with another woman. A reporter from one of the national dailies went to see her to ask about it. She told him that she had forgiven her husband, that he had come back to live with her, that they wanted to forget it, and that they did not want to make any comment to the Press. The following day this national newspaper carried a story about the love life of a detective. The result was that that couple's child, who was at school, was approached. He was chastised by the other children, and eventually the family had to leave the district. How were they guaranteed their liberty? How were they guaranteed the right to follow their own lives as they wished? That is an example of the irresponsible use of the enormous power of a national newspaper merely to increase its circulation, and it seems to me that there is an obvious need for some guarantee of the liberty of the individual in this sense. This liberty must, of course, be limited by the right of national newspapers, and indeed the B.B.C. and the I.T.V. to comment on matters of legitimate public interest. The balance has to be kept, but at the moment the scales are weighted heavily in favour of the bastions of power, of the Press and television, and of other invaders of privacy, and too little is being done to defend the real life of the individual. If family and personal life is the root of our society, and I accept that it is, it has to be guaranteed, and I therefore ask that, as the result of the discussions in this place and elsewhere about the liberty of the individual, the Government should give further thought to introducing a Bill within the lifetime of this Parliament to deal with this matter.6.0 p.m.
It would have been virtually impossible either for the right hon. Gentleman who is to reply or myself to prepare himself for this debate. It seems to have been quite the widest that we have held on any subject since the debate on the Queen's Speech at the beginning of the Parliamentary Session—wider than the debates on the Consolidated Fund, because here, as the hon. Member for York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon) was able to say in his brief and not wholly unsuccessful brush with the Chair—the subject of legislation is delicately alluded to.
I must tell the right hon. and learned Gentleman that I was hoping that he would relate his remarks to the whole content of the Motion, which is also related to Government action.
That is what I was about to do, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am very grateful to the hon. Member for bringing the debate back to a fairly philosophic note upon which it can find its termination.
The Motion is, of course, capable of the strongly partisan interpretation put upon it respectively by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Lewes (Sir T. Beamish) and the hon. Member for Middleton and Prestwich (Mr. Coe). They both interpreted the Motion in a purely partisan sense. This is a mistake, although it is a quite legitimate interpretation to put upon the words of the Motion, which call for a change of attitude on the part of Her Majesty's Government. Both my hon. and gallant Friend and the hon. Member for Middleton and Prestwich assumed from that that the only change called for was a change in their peculiar and individual party approach to political problems, but there is nothing in the Motion which limits discussion to that. On the contrary, sometimes it is more helpful to consider what changes are necessary in the common assumptions underlying our policies than to consider what changes are necessary in our individual approaches.Much of my speech was partisan, but if the right hon. and learned Gentleman reads the Motion he will see that reference is made to liberties being eroded. It claims that the Government must change their mind. I cannot help assuming that this is an attack upon the Government.
That is precisely what I am not agreeing with, although I agreed with much of the criticism of the Government which came from my hon. and gallant Friend. The terms of the Motion do not altogether give colour to that interpretation, because the rights of the subject may be eroded as much by the common assumptions underlying the approach to legislation or administration on the part of both parties as it can by their individual approaches. Sometimes, in its approach to problems, the House makes the mistake of thinking that we have proved something when we have not—for instance, in the case of prison escapes, by totting up the number of prison escapes which took place under a Labour Government and the number which took place under a Conservative Government and saying that one is slightly better or worse than the other, according to which set of figures one chooses.
This is not the correct approach to political problems, because whether we are dealing with our economic situation or this subject, in our more reflective moments we would probably admit that we are faced with a common set of problems and though we do not offer a common set of solutions, neither set of Governments for many years—perhaps even going back to the Liberal Government of 1911—has wholly succeeded in solving the problems, either in the economic or legislative field, about which our debates often take place. One of the reasons which make the speeches of my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) so exciting and stimulating is that although he arrives at highly controversial solutions he almost always attacks the common assumptions of Government policy over a period of years which transcends any exclusively partisan Administration. I want to consider the Motion from that point of view, in the light of the speeches which have been made. Despite the partisan approach we are all conscious that a problem exists. I do not suppose that anybody who has represented a democratic constituency for any length of time—my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward), who chose this Motion so well, is one of a dwindling number of hon. Members who were elected a good time before I was; I believe it was in 1931—doubts that the individual is constantly aware of the danger of being obliterated by the group. I use the word "group" deliberately, because, although the most powerful group in the country, and the most ruthless, in some ways, besides being the most numerous is undoubtedly Government, local and central, as is implied by the Motion, as the hon. Member for York and other hon. Members have emphasised it is not only Government, local and central, by which the individual finds himself threatened; it is by all sorts of other groups. It is environment—Stansted Airport, for example; it is neighbourhood, or the processes of publicity—the right of privacy, for example; it is the desire to obliterate the individual's right to educate his own children, which has been mentioned by many hon. Members. Hon. Members opposite appear to have forgotten the clear and unequivocal statement in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which this country is a signatory (and here I am quoting textually) that parents have a prior right to choose the education to be given to their children. I wonder whether hon. Members opposite want us to disavow our adherence to the Declaration of Human Rights or its European equivalent. These are all matters of which individuals are acutely and constantly aware. There are the great monolithic corporations, referred to by hon. Members opposite. There are the trade unions, referred to by several of my hon. Friends. They are all groups in relation to which the individual finds that his individual personality is in danger of being oppressed. It is foolish to pretend that we have not a fundamental problem of modern society to discuss, whichever Government happen to be in power and whatever set of political principles we choose to adopt. I accept the view put forward by the hon. Member for York to the effect that although, in this House and, even more so, on political platforms, we tend to present political philosophies in terms of dialectic confrontation, the truth is that public opinion is a continuum and that the problem is not which of two alternative sets of principles should be applied, to the exclusion of the other, but exactly where the line is to be drawn or—perhaps better—exactly what proportion of a number of ingredients in a political pudding a political party should choose to put, in any given recipe, in any given situation. It is a question of degree to a greater extent than the political parties are willing to accept. I pass to a number of general principles which must necessarily be, as all political principles are, highly controversial, but are not necessarily in a partisan sense. The great contribution of the West and particularly of this country to political philosophy has been the realisation that the old-fashioned confrontation between liberty and authority is an unreal dilemma. The key to both lies in the conception of law, which means in practice two things which we are apt to forget—first, something which must be interpreted by someone other than the Executive, an independent judiciary, and, second, surely, something which has a certain moral content. Therefore, I differed from the hon. Member for Middleton and Prestwich because he seemed to despise the enthusiast for the natural law. This is not the time to entertain political philosophy, but the moment that law ceases to have an intelligible moral content, at any rate one which the general population are prepared to accept, at that moment it begins to encroach on individual liberty—I did not despise natural law but merely suggested that even its advocates accepted that part of it was part of the law of the community at that moment. We are at one on this.
If I did wrong to the hon. Gentleman, I apologise, as I did not intend to antagonise a potential and unexpected ally.
We are apt to talk as though democracy was simply majority rule. Of course it means that the executive Government and the legislature has to correspond to the votes of the electorate, but it does not entitle them to do what they want. The essence of democracy lies much more in the rights which it gives to individuals and minorities than in the authority which it confers on majorities. This is something which legislatures, even our own, are in danger of forgetting. After all, the nation is composed of individuals and minorities, and we are all minorities of one at some stage in our lives. When I heard the hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Rose) say how wrong it was for the individual to exploit society, I was a little surprised and disturbed that he did not add as a rider that it is equally wrong, and perhaps worse, for society to exploit the individual. It is at this point that some of us on this side feel that the party opposite lay too little emphasis on the right of an individual with unusual gifts, proclivities, qualifications or skills to be rewarded fully in accordance with his ability. We are not impressed simply by the supposed predominance of public over private interest, or general statements of philosophy to that effect, into thinking that the present rates of taxation or facilities for education or rewards in terms of recognition and social respect given to particular skills and qualifications are adequate or justly regarded by many of their hon. Friends. I want now to turn to a consideration of liberty as a diffusion of power. If one starts from the cliché attributed—I believe rightly, though unascertainably—to the historian Lord Acton that:one must inevitably conclude that the doctrine of the founders of the American Constitution, that liberty is marked by the diffusion of power, is the true doctrine. When we say that a Government should not have power, we are not necessarily or of ourselves attacking a particular set of men or attributing to them despotic inclinations. The truth is that no set of men is fit to govern any other and that any set of people—as my hon. Friend said in quoting from Lord Salmon's speech to "Justice"—given absolute power will use it wrongly and as they choose. By that criterion of the diffusion of power, how far is this a free society? When one posed this question in the House 20 or 30 years ago, the objection was made, "Political democracy is all right, but we must have economic freedom too—not merely the freedcm to starve." So be it. If political freedom consists in the diffusion of political power, economic freedom must consist in the diffusion of economic power, that is, property. This is inescapable, and a political system which concentrates all economic power in the hands of the central or Governmental organisations is jut as disruptive of human liberty of the individual and minority groups as a political system which concentrates political power in the hands of a central Government. Part of the answer to this problem lies in the fact that this country, as distinct from many other democracies, is hopelessly over-centralised. We do not have fixed Parliaments. The right of dissolution rests with the Executive and it is worth noting that a reigning Government has been beaten only twice since 1945, that is, since the polls were introduced and their choice was based on objective knowledge and not an interior hunch—and then only by majorities of less than 10. We are thus in great danger of concentrating political power. We have no written constitution. This Parliament could easily support an elective dictatorship, and in fact has done so in our time, throughout the war, when it prolonged even its own life—a House of Commons of which I was a Member. It is, therefore, worth asking how far power should be diffused. Is there any evidence that we are concentrating power too much? I think that there is. Unlike the United States, France, Germany and even Soviet Russia, this country has never had anything between the extremely powerful Executive and legislature in Whitehall and the borough or county borough. We ask, for example, why Welsh Nationalists are elected to this House or Scottish Nationalists acquire an increasing vote. Surely it is not that those two fellow nations of ours have a double dose of original sin—everybody knows that they have—but there may be more reason in what they do than we think. Can it not be that everybody knows that business in this House is so congested and its power so heavily concentrated that local and regional issues are not adequately discussed in it? I was glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth referred to regional government. I do not want to get bogged down in a discussion on Mr. Dan Smith, with whom I had friendly relations during my tour of duty in the North-East. However, I believe that throughout the country there is a whole congeries of problems which can be solved only by decentralisation. We have no reasonable alternative to the present system of local taxation known as rates, because local income tax cannot be concentrated on local government units as small as the county borough or the county. If we are asked why this country has never solved its second Chamber problem, it is because there is no other basis of representation but the single Member constituency representing, on the average, 50,000 voters. If we are asked why there is so much disturbance in regions where employment is less full than in others—the development areas—it is largely because they do not like to go to Whitehall. When they do go to Whitehall, each separate department of local government goes to a different central Government Department. The education committee goes straight up to Curzon Street to the Department of Education and Science. It never goes across the way to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government. If they discussed these matters regionally, as up to a point they do in Scotland at St. Andrew's House, they would find a much better form of regional planning than they have already. I think that the hon. Member for Blackley was momentarily out of order in what he said about Northern Ireland, due, perhaps, to inattention on the part of the Chair. May I merely make this observation about what he failed to say. No one could deplore more than I do religious discrimination of any kind, but in considering the constitutional status of Northern Ireland we ought to remember once in a while that this country is a federation in which only one federal member has been articulated. The rest of the country—Scotland, England, Wales—has a unitary legislature, with a Government which is omni-competent. In one small province we have begun to make a federation. Putting aside for a moment the subject which causes heat and emotion, it is working extremely well. If we are to consider human liberty in this country, one of the most important things we must consider is whether we are not over-centralised politically. Are we not also over-centralised economically? Several of my hon. Friends spoke about the nationalised industries, the great corporations. The hon. Member for Middleton and Prestwich asked why we had not denationalised them. There are two possible points to be discussed. There is the question whether a nationalised corporation is per se as efficient economically as a privately-run industry, a question which we debate in other contexts. What we must ask ourselves in this context is whether a national institution—the national corporations—is, in effect, the best way to run publicly-owned industry where we are to have publicly-owned industry. Are we quite sure, for instance, that the railways are better run as a single corporation than they were broken-up into regional corporations, when privately owned? Let us forget for a moment the ownership of the equity. Are we so sure that after 20 years we are doing such an efficient job as we could do if the system were more decentralised? Is this so of other transport undertakings or of the mining industry? If we are seeking to establish the rights of minorities to diffuse economic and political power, ought we not to consider afresh whether, every time we are faced with an economic problem of any sort, hon. Members on one side should demand a relatively small private corporation and hon. Members on the other should universally drift towards a national corporation in which all the problems are placed in a single set of laps? I do not think that this is the correct way of doing it. As I want to leave time for the Financial Secretary to reply, I want to say only this in conclusion. Some hon. Members on both sides tend to think of individual liberty as a kind of luxury which we can afford only when times are good. I believe that this is a profound error, whatever political philosophy one adopts, because the true individual liberty is the distinctive contribution of the West to human philosophy. In the whole history of mankind, it is practically only in the last three centuries that its implications have been accepted. One can see, starting from the Renaissance, and particularly during the 17th century, gradually dawning in every field of human activity, the belief that people are more efficient if they are allowed to work out their destinies and destinations for themselves. It was true in the development of the physical sciences. It was true in the development of political institutions, in which the House first came to the fore in international affairs. It was true in the development of religious thought. It has been true in the efflorescence of the arts and of the humanities. Once that tradition were abandoned, it would be found that this country would lose the efflorescence, the richness, and the variety of a free society. Here I am not preaching at the party opposite, because I believe that hon. Members opposite agree with me. I think that, if they crossed the Iron Curtain, they would see what happens when a belief in individual liberty is abandoned. I am not foolish enough to think that all Communists are the enemies of mankind. But what I know is that, when the frontier into Communist society is crossed, one sees a general impoverishment which is not recompensed by the constant reiteration of the duty to observe a public benefit as distinct from individual advantage. I believe that freedom is something which works. It is a necessity for human society which cannot be abandoned. And liberty under the law is the banner under which the West must move."Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely",
6.27 p.m.
The subject of this debate raises a great theme. The right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg), in beginning his remarks, said that this was, perhaps, the widest debate there had been since the debate on the Loyal Address. I have had to reply to at least two such debates previously which have ranged equally widely, on Private Members' Motions on a Friday.
May I explain to the House why it is I and not my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General who is replying? When originally the hon. Lady the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) said that she wishedit seemed to be a matter for the Attorney-General, but when the hon. Lady tabled her full Motion and raised the question of the Government's fundamental"To call attention to the threat to the rights of the individual"
the matter once again fell into the lap of the Treasury as being that final residuary body which is supposed to be responsible for matters of machinery and government; and it fell to me to reply to the debate. Before turning to some of the more particular points which have been made, I refer to the closing remarks of the right hon. and learned Gentleman only in order to say how entirely and absolutely I agree with him. It is my belief that, if this country ever loses its pas- sionate love of liberty, it will cease to occupy the place in the world that we believe that it holds and that we want it to continue to hold. As the right hon. and learned Gentleman said, there is a real problem, and we know it, because in recent generations and recent decades, we have come to realise that it is not enough to secure political freedom, that we must get greater social and economic justice. We have constructed enormously complicated machines of government at every level—central government and local government. This raises real problems about how we should continue to safeguard, and make a reality of, individual liberty. These are the great things that are raised by the Motion. In so far as the Motion is intended to be critical of the Government, I must reject it and state the reasons why. I am in some difficulty because I must reply to a debate which is violently partisan, as contributed by some hon. Members, and avowedly non-partisan, as contributed by others. Reference has been generously made to the fact that the Labour Government introduced the Parliamentary Commissioner legislation. This has been an attempt by the Government—in fulfilling one of our election pledges, I remind the hon. and gallant Member for Lewes (Sir T. Beamish]—to introduce a machinery which will afford protection to the individual against what appears to him to be oppressive administrative action; something which the courts are not an apt tribunal to decide and which they do not have the powers to investigate, but powers with which we have clothed the Parliamentary Commissioner. Certain hon. Gentlemen opposite have poured scorn on the Parliamentary Commissioner legislation and have said that it will prove to be a mouse of a Measure. We will see. We deliberately introduced the Measure in a limited sphere, and modestly so, because it is an experiment and we want to see how it works. However, we took power in this legislation to extend it considerably; and we will see, when we receive the reports of the Parliamentary Commissioner, and when they have been studied by the Select Committee which we have set up. whether we think it right to extend it and, if so, how far. I thought that the most telling point made by the hon. Lady the Member for Tynemouth was her reference to the Alfred Newton case, which was debated in an Adjournment debate on 5th June last. I will merely mention in this connection that this matter could not be investigated by the Parliamentary Commissioner because it was outside the scope of the Measure which established his post. This is one of the matters which could be brought within his purview by an order if, in time, that is thought to be right. Another important theme has been the question of how to increase the power of Parliament to scrutinise and control the acts of the Executive—again, a theme which is a favourite with hon. Gentlemen opposite in their speeches, but about which they did virtually nothing when they were in office. We, on the other hand, have initiated considerable changes in our procedure here in the House, particularly in regard to the setting up of specialist committees to give a real and powerful instrument to hon. Members to scrutinise the work of Departments, if they wish to do so, and enable them to get at the facts and information from which they can form an adequate judgment of the policy and administrative decisions that have been made by the Government. Therefore, my first retort to the general charge is that we have shown ourselves, by the actions we have taken, to be alive to the existence of the problems and to their importance. The hon. Lady the Member for Tyne-mouth began her remarks, rather unfortunately, by a reference to the case of Colonel Lohan. I say "unfortunately" because only a few days ago a public appeal was made on his behalf by the General Secretary of the Institution of Professional Civil Servants, Mr. McCall, who is acting for him before the Helsby Inquiry, saying that he wished that this subject should be taken out of the public and political arena until the inquiry has been completed. He stated that he had confidence in the procedure and he asked for the Committee to be allowed to proceed without the matter receiving continuing public debate. I am sorry that the hon. Lady did not respond to that appeal. I propose to do so."administrative attitudes, its approach to legislation and its recent methods of government"
I never saw it.
I accept the hon. Lady's explanation. She says she did not see it. I am sure that, had she seen it, she would have honoured it.
The hon. Lady then raised what she chose to call the question of regional government in relation to the Regional Economic Planning Councils. She complained that they are selected and not elected. Her error in this respect is in calling it "regional government". It is not regional government and it does not pretend or claim to be. We have central government, with regional policies, and the purpose of these councils is to act as advisory bodies to the central Government. They are bodies comprised of people chosen because of their particular abilities to advise the Government on the problems of particular regions. The right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone made a strong appeal that we should move towards regional government, properly called, as a means of reducing the centralisation which is taking place in our government machine. I remind him that it is to the present Government that he must turn for action in this matter and not to his own party. This is something which hon. Gentlemen opposite have been preaching about for years, but it fell to us to set up the Royal Commissions which are now looking into the whole machinery of local government and are inquiring precisely into these problems of regional government with a view to putting recommendations before the Government.The hon. and learned Gentleman is not quite right. When I was in the North-East I formed what I believed to be, and intended to be, the nucleus there which the present Government have taken over; and if ever regional government comes to that part of the country it will be found that something to take over already existed and that it owes its existence personally to me.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman can take credit for the action which he took in the North-East and which we have continued, but it was not regional government and he knows it. Nor did the Government of which he was a member take any step at all to try to go towards regional government or to find how practically there could be any alteration in the regional government structure. Why was that so? The answer is because of the well known timidity of hon. Gentlemen opposite in grasping awkward political nettles, of which this is certainly one. It is one which we consider to be of sufficient importance that we must stop talking about it and take action.
The hon. Lady the Member for Tyne-mouth referred to the Land Commission and complained that there was no opportunity for the individual to have any machinery of appeal under the Act which set up the Commission. She made only a general allegation and I can answer it with only a general denial. Similarly, she suggested that the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation was a sort of bogey by which we might try to intimidate people into thinking that this was a means of backdoor nationalisation which would enable the Corporation to acquire a controlling interest in any company. Perhaps one might expect the hon. Lady to try to make that sort of point in her weekend speeches. It is not the sort of point which one would expect her to make in a serious debate in the House. As she no doubt knows, the Corporation acts by agreement. What has been the first result we have seen? It has been to help bring about an agreement between Elliott Automation and English Electric which will, we believe, help to preserve for this country one of the really key units in our automation and computer industry. To try to suggest that this body is some new bogey which the Government have invented to deprive individuals or companies of their liberty is too fantastic to merit serious argument.I do not want to tempt the Financial Secretary along other paths, but it would be interesting if he were to examine what has happened as a result of the Government's latest shipbuilding industry legislation, with its power to make payments by equity shares which subsequently find their way into the purview of the Minister of Technology—what I would call nationalisation by the backdoor, if it works that way. I do not accept the hon. and learned Gentleman's argument any more than probably he accepts mine.
I think that we shall have to remain at loggerheads, each unable to persuade the other.
The hon. Lady next spoke of what she called the threat to local government, referring to a quotation from Sir William Alexander in relation to comprehensive schools which suggested that the area of freedom of local authorities was being severely restricted by the present Circular—the Circular, I assume, on comprehensive education. The fact is that the vast majority of local authorities have responded readily to the Circular, including very many local authorities which are Conservative controlled—Readily?
Yes, readily. So far, 83 schemes submitted by local education authorities under the Circular have been approved; 40 are under consideration by the Department, and 24 are in preparation but not yet submitted. Eleven schemes only have been rejected as not complying with the principles of the Circular, and four local authorities only have declined to submit a scheme. That shows what enormous progress has been made, on a voluntary basis and by co-operation, without the compulsion suggested by the hon. Lady and the threat to local government implicit in that suggestion.
If a local education authority does not comply voluntarily, what happens? Does it get its money?
We must wait and see what the next stages are. I am pointing out that what has been happening has been the working out of a great number of schemes by agreement between local authorities and the Ministry; and that a great many of those bodies are Conservative-controlled local authorities.
The hon. Lady's final point related to Crown privilege, a matter on which there has been growing interest recently, in particular as a result, I think, of two rather divergent decisions of the Court of Appeal. I understand that the later of those decisions is now going on appeal to the House of Lords which, as a result of new procedure, will be free to review the whole subject afresh and give us an authoritative statement on the existing law of Crown privilege, as to which there is some doubt. The question of Crown privilege has also been referred to the Law Reform Committee, whose report is expected shortly. Quite clearly, therefore, until we receive the authoritative statement on the present law and until we receive the recommendations of the Law Reform Committee it would be premature for us to take any action. But, as the hon. Lady rightly points out, when we passed the Parliamentary Commissioner Bill, although the committee of Justice had recommended that the Crown should have the right to claim privilege as against the Commissioner, we rejected that recommendation and gave him full access to all documents. This does not provide a solution for the courts, because a quite different situation arises there. The Commissioner and his staff are subject to the Official Secrets Act, and there is power to prevent further republication by them of sensitive material which they are able to study in their investigations. Nevertheless, that is certainly a problem into which we are looking. My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Rose) advanced a number of extremely interesting detailed points, and those points to which I do not reply I will refer in particular to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General. He spoke of teen-age recruitment to the Services, and I would here remind him that my hon. Friend the Minister of Defence for Administration has told the House that he is studying this whole question, and his review also, to some extent, depends on the outcome of the review by the Lord Chancellor's Committee on the age of majority. My hon. Friend the Member for Blackley referred also to immigration procedures. A departmental committee on immigration appeals was set up by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary in February of last year, and I understand that its report is expected about the end of this month. The hon. and gallant Member for Lewes made an avowedly political speech, although for one moment he forgot himself and suggested that he was being non-partisan. He said that he spoke for his constituents: I think that I am not being unjust if I say that he gave me the impression that he was also speaking to his constituents. I felt that a lot of what he said was designed for a report in the local Press. I detected, as I thought, some illogicality in his speech. He began, as a means of attacking the prices and incomes policy, by making a passionate plea for the free right of collective bargaining, but when a few minutes later he attacked the trade unions themselves he stated a principle that I should have thought was an admirable defence of the Government's prices and incomes policy, that principle being that when trade unions fail to distinguish between the national interest and their own sectional interests, individual liberty is threatened. The hon. and gallant Member trotted out a lot of traditional Conservative slogans designed to frighten the electorate into thinking that the Labour Government have some vast octopus of power which is quite insensitive to the rights or liberties of the individual. He challenged me on the question of increases in taxation since we came into power. I thought that an unusual piece if impertinence, since he must know perfectly well that the reason for those taxation increases was the need to deal with an economic situation which was—[HON. MEMBERS: "Not again!"]—1eft to us as a result of the most cowardly action by his Government. It was perfectly obvious to the previous Government by the spring of 1964 that we were heading for a serious economic situation which needed drastic action at once. They neither had the courage to go to the country so that there could be elected a Government which would take that action nor the courage to take action before the election. They allowed things to drift on and to drift on until, at the last moment, they went to the country hoping that they would be able to scrape home with a majority again—rose—
No, I shall not give way again to the hon. and gallant Member. He spoke at great length and other hon. Members have raised points that, perhaps, are more worthy of a reply.
The hon. and gallant Gentleman referred to public services and Armed Forces pensions and suggested that we as a party had given a pledge of parity. We never did anything of the sort—Oh.
If the hon. and gallant Member likes to write to me, and send me the quotation and its context, I will be glad to receive it.
My hon. Friend the Member for Middleton and Prestwich (Mr. Coe) made, if I may say so, a most telling speech exposing the hollowness and hypocrisy of the hon. and gallant Member's speech. It was the hon. Member for Moray and Nairn (Mr. G. Campbell) who first changed the tone of the debate, and raised more serious issues including, in particular, the point, taken up by my hon. Friend the Member for York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon), of the right of privacy. This is a subject that has given great concern to many people, and I can assure the House that it was receiving the Government's attention. I know that my night hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor takes a particular interest in the subject. He sent an observer to the conference that was held in Stockholm recently under the auspices of the International Commission of Jurists, because interest in this problem is not at all confined to this country. Perhaps I could end by reminding the House of a few other steps we have taken since being in Government in securing and defending individual rights. Some eighteen months ago, we went a great deal further than our predecessors in relation to the European Convention on Human Rights. We accepted that part of it which gives the individual the right to petition the European Commission alleging a violation by his own Government of any of the rights set forth in the Convention. Indeed, only last week, my right hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General was in Strasbourg arguing before the Commission the case of two Commonwealth citizens, residents in this country, who claimed that they had been unlawfully denied the right to bring in members of their families who live with them. Another case, reported in The Times on Thursday, concerned certain debenture holders in a steel company who claimed that the Iron and Steel Act had deprived them of the peaceful enjoyment of their possessions, contrary to the protocol of the Convention. Before any hon. Member opposite gets too excited, I would add that the Commission declared the application to be manifestly ill-founded. Apart from the Parliamentary Commissioner Act, some of my hon. Friends have referred to the Tribunals and Inquiries Act, 1966, which extends the inquiries and hearings over which the Council on Tribunals has jurisdiction under the 1958 Act and for which rules of procedure may be made under the 1966 Measure. My hon. Friend the Member for Blackley referred to the provisions of the Criminal Justice Act imposing restrictions on the refusal of bail. This is also a subject on which there has been widespread feeling in many quarters recently. Reference has also been made to the Protection from Eviction Act, now incorporated in the Rent Act, 1965, which means that no longer can anyone be evicted from his home without a court order. That apart, of course, there is also the much wider security of tenure granted to the tenants under the Rent Act. Planning appeals have not been referred to in the debate but many people have felt for a long time that the administrative procedures in relation to such appeals are too cumbersome, too centralised and subject to too much delay. In the White Paper published last month, the Government set out the new procedure, which we propose to introduce by legislation, whereby delegation will be made to selected inspectors with the power to issue decisions on planning appeals. We can achieve a considerable improvement not only in speeding up administration but in making people feel that the decision has been taken by someone before whom they have been able to appear themselves and argue their case and who has heard the witnesses they have chosen to call. The Race Relations Act is another Measure to which reference has been made and is another example of steps we have taken to safeguard individual rights. Finally, as I have said, we have been seeking, under the guidance of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, to feel our way towards adapting our own Parliamentary procedure in order to strengthen and restore the power of Parliament in relation to the Executive.As my hon. and learned Friend is making a catalogue of these not only achievements but also proposals, would he also be willing to include the setting up of a Select Committee to make a thorough review of the privileges of Members of Parliament?
It is not for me but for the House to decide what Select Committees it sets up. There is, of course, the Select Committee of Privileges.
What the hon. and learned Member for Dulwich, (Mr. S. C. Silkin) was trying to say was that this Committee was some achievement of the Government—and, indeed, of the House—of which he himself is already Chairman and which is already sitting.
If that is the meaning, then I have misunderstood my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dulwich.
I conclude that, whether it be in the detailed criticisms which hon. Members opposite have attempted to make or in more general charges, the criticisms have failed to be made out. But the hon. Lady the Member for Tynemouth said at the outset that she was not intending to press the Motion to a Division. I am glad of that, because I think that we can perhaps end the debate on the note struck by the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone, in agreeing that there is a continuing and real problem here and one which we all owe a great debt to our constituents to keep always in the forefront of our minds in order to ensure, when we develop the administrative procedures necessary to give effect to our policies, that we build into them the safeguards and machinery for protecting the rights and liberties of the individual.6.57 p.m.
By the end of her speech I think that the hon. Lady the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) had convinced me that the writers of "South Pacific" were right—"There is nothing like a Dame." Her speech had nothing to do with personal liberty but was devoted to a very personalised attack on Mr. Dan Smith, and I hope that Mr. Smith takes an opportunity in other quarters to answer that attack.
We also had the hon. and gallant Member for Lewes (Sir T. Beamish) showing his unique quality of making a trite speech sound trite. If any hon. Member wanted convincing that the backwoodsmen were still with us, he should have heard that speech or should at least read it in HANSARD. The question of personal liberty is essentially one of trying to keep a balance, and through much of their legislation the Government have attempted to correct the balance. For example, until the Leasehold Reform Bill, the liberty has been all on one side—the landlord's. Before the Rent Act, liberty again was on one side. We have given people more freedom through the abolition of prescription charges. No one would want anyone to take the liberty, as it were, of being ill but at least we have removed that restriction on treatment. It seems strange that every time we have impositions or restrictions, as it were, designed to improve the lot of the majority, right hon. and hon. Members opposite hoot and jeer. Last week provided a good example. The 70 m.p.h. speed limit is necessary to cut down the carnage on our roads, but right hon. and hon. Members opposite were content to jeer and to talk about more restrictions. This is an absolutely necessary restriction and is no infringement on the liberty of the individual. The hon. and gallant Member for Lewes also mentioned poltical levies. That is no responsibility of the Government but I remind him that, on the other side, shareholders are to get more liberty. Companies will have to show where they are paying their political contributions. At least trade unionists know about their political levy and where it is being paid. They know, too, whether they are paying it or not. The Government are now going to increase the liberty of the individual shareholder. In future, he will know whether the company in which he holds his shares is paying a political levy, and where. That is another liberty that we are giving to the individual. The hon. and gallant Gentleman also spoke about public monopoly. The scandal in this country is private monopoly, which can put men out of business. We have seen examples of that in the tyre industry, in which a monopoly took away the liberty of individuals to sell tyres. We have seen how private monopoly works in the manufacture of detergents. I also remind the House that the question of the Sachsenshausen victims has been before us for 22 years and now the Government are doing something about it.rose—
I cannot give way now. The hon. Member for Moray and Nairn (Mr. G. Campbell) mention the Disabled Income Group. It is an anomaly but it is not eroding the liberty of the individual.
It being Seven o'clock, the Proceedings on the Motion lapse, pursuant to Standing Order No. 5 (Precedence of Government business).
Prices And Incomes Act 1966 (Part Ii)
7.0 p.m.
I beg to move,
The draft of an Order in Council, the Prices and Incomes Act, 1966 (Commencement of Part II) Order 1967, was laid before both Houses on 20th June, 1967. It provides for Part II of the 1966 Act to come into force for a period of 12 months from 12th August, 1967. Under the provisions of Section 6 of the 1966 Act the Order requires the approval of both Houses of Parliament. I understand that the other place approved it the other day, and I now move that this House approves the Order. The Order is complementary to the new Act, and our discussions of that Act involved us to a considerable degree in reference to Part 11 of the 1966 Act. Those discussions, which were somewhat protracted, took place as recently as last week. Therefore, many of the provisions of Part II will be fresh in the minds of hon. Members, but perhaps I could mention one or two of the chief ones. Part II deals with notifications and standstills. Sections 7 and 14 make it possible for the Government, by Order, to require notification of proposed increases in prices of goods or, indeed, charges for services and of awards or settlements. The Government are then allowed 30 days after notification of such a proposed increase to consider it in the light of the criteria for changes in prices and incomes. If within that period it is decided to refer the matter to the National Board for Prices and Incomes the proposed increase must not be implemented until either the Board has reported or until three months have elapsed from the date of the reference, whichever is the earlier. Sections 8 and 15 make it possible to impose standstills in cases involving a proposed price or pay increase which is referred to the Board but where prior notification has not been required under Sections 7 or 14. Under Section 16 it is an offence for an employer to implement an award or settlement during a standstill period. It is also an offence to take industrial action with a view to compelling an employer to act in breach of the standstill. It is important to note that the activation of Part II does not establish a system of compulsory notification. It provides the power for this to be done, but, before notification becomes compulsory in any section of industry, an Order must be made under Sections 7, 12, 13 or 14, as the case may be. The Government have made it abundantly clear on a great many occasions that their intention is to continue to rely to the fullest extent possible on the existing voluntary notification arrangements, but once Part II is in force it will be possible for the Government to impose standstills by direction under Sections 8 and 15 in cases referred to the National Board for Prices and Incomes, whether or not there has been prior notification. However, it is our sincere hope that in practice the parties concerned with particular price increases, awards or settlements referred to the Board will be prepared to defer their implementation on a voluntary basis and so make the use of these powers and the complementary powers of the 1967 Act unnecessary. In view of the wide acceptance of the voluntary nature of this undertaking we are entitled to believe that we have a great deal of support from both sides of industry and that it is not a wild hope that there will still be a continuation of the voluntary arrangements which we have seen up to now. Section 6 of the 1966 Act requires that before a draft Order in Council to activate Part II is laid before Parliament,That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Prices and Incomes Act 1966 (Commencement of Part II) Order 1967 be made in the form of the draft laid before this House on 20th June.
The Government have, accordingly consulted with the T.U.C. and the C.B.I. I confess that in neither case did we achieve full agreement, though to interpret this in any way as meaning any breakdown in joint co-operation in the running of the prices and incomes policy would be very wide of the mark. I take this opportunity to pay my very sincere tribute—and, I am sure, that of my right hon. Friend the First Secretary—to both organisations for the excellent co-operation that we have received from them. The reason why we decided to go ahead with the 1967 Act and, indeed, with the activation of Part II of the 1966 Act was because, in our view, to move directly from the period of standstill and severe restraint, backed by the pretty wide powers of Part IV, to complete reliance on a voluntary system would, perhaps, place too sudden and maybe an unjustifiable strain on the voluntary arrangements and might well prejudice their ultimate success. We believe that these very limited statutory powers will be an encouragement to the vast majority who accept the need for voluntary restraint because they mean that others will not be able to take advantage of their acceptance. The Government attach the greatest possible importance to the T.U.C's plans for the vetting of wage claims, and we hope to continue to work in very close consultation and co-operation with both the T.U.C. and the C.B.I. in the development of an effective policy on a voluntary basis. Our experience has shown that the objectives of both bodies and the Government in this matter are absolutely identical. The objectives are that the policy should be directed in the best interests of the community as a whole. While there may be differences of emphasis in relation to the means of achieving these objectives, there is certainly no difference as to what the objectives are."… the Secretary of State … shall first consult with such organisations or bodies … which appear to him to represent to any substantial extent the interests of those particularly concerned with the Order."
Does my right hon. Friend mean by cooperation with the C.B.I. and the T.U.C. that, as under Part IV, before the Government take any action under any of these Sections between 7 and 22 they will get the agreement of either of these bodies if they are so affected?
I am not saying that we will always obtain their agreement; but we will consult with both parties, as we have all the way through. It is not necessary to get agreement, but I give the undertaking that we will consult with them, as we have in the past. I invite my hon. Friend the Member for Salford, West (Mr. Orme) to remember that there has been no opposition from either the T.U.C. or the C.B.I. to any of the Orders which have been made.
Perhaps one can best answer the arguments about the alleged differences which are supposed to exist between the Government approach and that of the T.U.C. by quoting from the speech of Mr. George Woodcock at the Conference of the Executive Committees of Affiliated Organisations on 2nd March, this year. After pointing to the demands made on Governments for safety measures and for health and education and so on in industry, Mr. Woodcock said:In the light of that, it is obvious that there has been a gross exaggeration of the differences between the two bodies. As I have said, the objectives are identical and it is on that basis that we have this wholehearted co-operation from the T.U.C. in the evolution of the policy. It is not very difficult to understand why responsible people such as Mr. Woodcock take that view. Considering the chaos which now obtains in collective bargaining in industry, it is no wonder that he himself said in the course of that speech that it was an unregulated jungle of wage negotiations, and he was absolutely right. The alternative to tack-1ing this problem by the activation of Part II is to leave free collective bargaining in the chaotic condition described. The question is, therefore, how do we tackle the problem. I have tried to show that there is no difference about what we want to achieve and that it is how we achieve it with which the House is now concerned. Over the months we have developed our ideas and we have placed them before the House. The Official Opposition has consistently opposed and voted against them. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] I am glad to hear that murmur of approval."It is not therefore surprising in my view that with all these responsibilities the Government also want to have an interest in wages. I do not consider this to be wrong on the part of the Government or vicious at all. I think it is natural, necessary and inevitable that they should want to be in on this question of wages. I believe they must be in on this question of wages. We are not trying to keep them out altogether. We must cooperate with Governments these days."
And the "unofficial Opposition".
The right hon. Gentleman is wrong about that; they have not voted against them.
It is the duty of those who consider themselves to be the alternative Government to place before the country their alternatives to what they are opposing. So far, the Tories have sat astride a fence so broad that some will probably be bow legged for the rest of this Parliament. They can hardly argue that their views are known, because the only ideas which they have ever annunciated have turned out to be dismal failures when they have attempted to put them into operation. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition recently made a major economic policy speech, but made no attempt to answer this cardinal question. I should therefore like to ask whether the Opposition accept the concept outlined in his article in The Times by the right hon. Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling) on 15th June.
I hesitate to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman, but he is widening the debate considerably. We are debating whether Part II shall be activated.
I take the point, Mr. Speaker. I am striving to show that although the Government's policies have been opposed by the Official Opposition, we are still trying to discover what they would substitute for them in the unfortunate event of their being able to defeat this Motion. I am trying to find whether on those very few occasions when their spokesmen have said anything on the subject those statements have constituted the policies which they would pursue as an alternative to that which the Government are pursuing. However, I will not continue with that. They may have thrown the right hon. Member for Barnet overboard and be in favour of the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr.Powell), who thinks that it is poison to have this kind of policy. In order to arrive at the conclusion and in the new Tory democracy, perhaps it would be a good thing if they allowed one right hon. Gentleman to open for their side and another to wind up so that the Tories could decide between them.
In the course of our discussions, there was criticism of the retrospective effect which this legislation undoubtedly has. None of us likes retrospective legislation on principle, but what might be called the purity of that argument emerged a little stained when in the early hours of 11th July my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General pointed out that the Wireless Telegraphy (Validation of Charges) Act, 1954, not only had retrospective effect of the type contained in this Bill—We are getting very wide of the Bill. We are discussing whether to put Part II into operation.
I was trying to discuss what is contained in Part II of the 1966 Act, Mr. Speaker, but if that is widening the debate, I shall not continue. The provisions of Sections 1, 2 and 3 and the Schedule of the Act are designed temporarily to supplement the provisions of Part II of the 1966 Act.
After wide differences, the House reached conclusions which placed the 1967 Act on the Statute Book. It is now necessary during this period when the Government are tapering off the legislative powers which they have possessed that we should retain these minor powers of delay for a further period. In this, we have the support of the vast majority of thinking people among trade unions, employers and the public in general. If it were believed that at this stage we could risk going from a period of standstill and severe restraint without having this kind of power, neither my right hon. Friend nor I would ask the House to give us such power. When one looks back on the uncertainties and the understandable fears of some hon. Members when Part IV was activated and the fact that none of the dire predictions then made has come about, surely it is not asking too much for the House to give us now the powers which I have described and which are minor in comparison with Part IV, because this is the period in which there is the tapering-off process from the more severe legislative power which we then possessed. In these circumstances, Mr. Speaker, I would have thought that it was right and proper to ask the House to agree to the activation of Part II of the 1966 Act.7.20 p.m.
It is becoming a rather dreary business hearing Ministers trying to explain the purposes and practices of their prices and incomes policy. We have heard it over and over again, and frankly it becomes less convincing every time we hear it. I also find it a rather sad affair to hear it explained by the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. After his long career in the trade union movement, and the part that he has played as a Member of this House in the trade union group of the Labour Party, to have to hear him explaining the development of a policy which is not only anathema to the trade union movement, but which is in the long run incompatible with it, is a very sad affair.
We oppose this Order, just as we opposed the 1966 Prices and Incomes Act, just as we opposed the 1967 Act, with which we have just dealt, and just as we shall oppose the 1968 Bill which this Government will inevitably introduce, and as we shall also oppose the inevitable repetition of this Order in a year's time to extend Part II for a further 12 months. No one can doubt the inevitability at least of another debate of this kind in twelve months' time. The Government made that absolutely clear in the debate on Clause 6 in the 1967 Bill in Committee a week or two ago. The right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues on the Front Bench keep talking about things like tapering off, about this being one stage in a move to a fully voluntary, or sometimes just a voluntary system. Frankly we do not believe it, nor do many people on either side of industry. We are sure that the truth really came out in the speech made a little while ago by the Leader of the House in Shropshire. We are in no doubt that the Chancellor of the Duchy knows this too. Indeed he gave the whole game away when winding up the debate on the Second Reading of the 1967 Bill.and this Order is part and parcel of this legislation—"Unless there is legislation"—
said the right hon. Gentleman"of the type we are indicating here"—
I interrupted the right hon. Gentleman and asked what would happen in a year's time, and whether that protection would not still be needed. I asked what about all the unions not affiliated to the T.U.C. which would not therefore be subject to the vetting procedure. How would they be taken care of in a year's time? By his utter failure to answer that question, quite apart from any other aspect of the Government's policy, it is quite clear that next year we shall be concerned with more compulsion. Perhaps it will be of a different kind, a bit more compulsion in one respect, a bit less in another—but in a year's time there will be more compulsion. This voluntary system, to which the Government claim to be moving, is just not viable for reasons which I shall mention. When the right hon. Gentleman talks so enthusiastically, as he did just now, about the wholehearted co-operation of T.U.C., about the reliance on the T.U.C. vetting procedure, I think that either he is misleading the House—and I do not really believe that he means to do that—or he has now been so long in Government Ministries in Whitehall that he no longer knows what is happen-in industry. If one is in industry one knows that, tar from an increasing acceptance of this policy, there are growing doubts about its efficacy, on both sides of industry. There are certainly growing doubts among employers who went a long way with the Government in their policies a year or so ago, and there is certainly growing hostility among trade unions. Of that there is no doubt. This hostility, although it is now expressed in its very natural human terms of a strong dislike of forgoing, in the short run, wage increases which the unions' bargaining power might otherwise achieve, is in my experience beginning to go much deeper, because more and more trade unionists at every level are at last beginning to wake up to the fact that the sort of policy on which the Government are embarked is in the long run incompatible with free trade unionism as we have known it. Leading members of the Government, notably the Leader of the House and the right hon. Lady the Minister of Transport, have made clear in public speeches within the last year that Socialist planning must include planning of incomes. I believe that that is the truth. But the planning of incomes by the centre—"those who are not affiliated to the T.U.C. will have an enormous advantage in that they would not be subjected to that vetting procedure."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 13th July 1967; Vol 727, c. 433.]
Order. The right hon. Gentleman must really come to the Order now.
This Order is about the central planning of incomes and one of the reasons why we resist it is our belief that the central planning of incomes is incompatible with a free society and with free trade unions. We oppose this Order on general grounds of principle such as those I have been mentioning, and on more particular grounds.
First, we object to it because the incidence of this policy has now been shown to be both capricious and unfair. The Government's arguments keep calling in aid the principles of fairness and universality. In practice neither of those principles is honoured. Tens of thousands of decisions have to be taken every year about prices and incomes, and no adequate surveillance is possible or attempted by the Government under the policy that they are adopting, or is envisaged in this Order. No confidence has been given to this House, or to industry, that the Government are competent or able to spot strategic cases for reference to the Board. What is it they are after? My hon. Friend the Member for Worthing (Mr. Higgins) has asked this on many occasions. Is it the strong whom the Government are seeking to attack or the weak? In recent months it seems to be more and more the case of the little group of relatively weak people who are singled out for knocking on the head—a few dozen here, a few hundred there. The Board, which is an essential part of the instrument envisaged in this Order, can only deal with 20 or 30 references a year, out of the hundreds of thousands of prices and incomes decisions. If we put too much pressure on the Board to accept more references than it can properly do, we shall get more and more shallow reports, and, quite apart from any objections one may have in principle, there is this added objection in practice. We feel that the prices side of the policy in particular is a sham. Many hon. Members opposite feel the same. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, West (Mr. Iain Macleod) has said, the Government are "conning" their supporters on this subject. This policy cannot be an effective control over prices. We do not believe that the Government genuinely intend it to be. They have brought it in simply to "con" certain gullible people, but that gullibility is rapidly coming to an end. We oppose this Order on one other particular ground. I could mention many others but I will content myself with this one further example. It is that Part II of the 1966 Act, which this Order brings into operation, contains that notorious Section 16(4) which we debated in the early hours of the morning last week. This is the Section imposing penal sanctions on trade unions for doing what is only the normal business and the proper duty of trade unions. As we said on that occasion, we on this side of the House will never vote for an Act or Order which involves the bringing into force of penal sanctions of that kind. Entirely different considerations apply when one comes to placing civil liabilities on people. But not penal sanctions. For that reason, if for no other, we should vote against the Order. May I refer to some of the more general grounds on which we oppose the Order? Part II of the Act of last year cannot be looked at on its own, for it is part and parcel of the whole of the Government's ill-chosen and ineffective attempts to promote statutory control of incomes and, as such, we reject it on principle absolutely. It will not work and it is not fair. One of the tragedies of the position in which the Government have placed us is that if only we could start with a clean sheet, there are many people both inside and outside the House who believe that there is a role in which some agency could inquire and report in a way which might influence these affairs and lead to a more orderly and more effective system of free collective bargaining than has existed in the past. But the possible benefits of this system have been destroyed by the Government plunging into this folly and launching an attempt at detailed statutory control which is not fair, which will not work and which is extremely capricious in so far as it does work. The right hon. Gentleman asked us what we should put in place of this Order if we opposed it. I made it clear on the Second Reading of the recent Prices and Incomes Bill that we thought that a five-pronged economic and industrial policy should be implemented instead of the Order, one of the parts of which was a fundamental reform of the whole legal framework of industrial relations. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition recently referred to that theme in a very powerful way. I made it clear in that context, which would get the economic tide running in the right direction instead of in the wrong direction, that there was a marginal but nonetheless constructive role for some agency to inquire and to report and also a marginal but nevertheless a constructive and useful role for both the C.B.I. and the T.U.C. A Government must have an incomes and a prices policy, but if we are to have freedom rather than a policy involving more and more detailed central control, then the Government's policy for prices and incomes must be one operating on the general level of prices and incomes and not an attempt to rub out every little measle spot which appears on the surface of the economy, because there will always be too many measle spots to rub out even if it were a desirable process in itself. The essential of such an alternative policy, which would be much better than the Order, is an economy driven by the twin forces of incentive and competition and working within a proper legal framework for industrial relations. Provided that those are right, then we need to have agencies only to deal with the exception rather than the rule. On the prices side, where competition fails because of too much dominance of the market, we have the Monopolies Commission and the Restrictive Trade Practices Act, and these must always be kept up-to-date and used vigorously, perhaps more vigorously than in the past. On the incomes side, one sees the need for an agency perhaps to inquire into cases in which there appears to be undue market dominance on the part of those with the power to negotiate and to some extent to fix incomes. If one begins to look at an inquiry agency as a parallel to the Monopolies Commission, one begins to go to the root of the matter in a free economy. But this is a policy entirely different from that of half-baked detailed statutory controls on which the Government are embarked. We are satisfied that the Government's present incomes policy will not work. We are convinced, moreover, that it has taken on an unstable equilibrium which involves either too much compulsion or not enough. It will have to lead either to more statutory controls, which we believe is the inevitable direction in which the Government are moving, whatever they may wish, or back to a dependence on free collective bargaining. We in the Conservative Opposition uncompromisingly stand for the latter choice, in spite of the difficulties and of the admitted past failures. I shall no doubt be told that this is a return to free-for-all, that phrase which has been made one of the dirty phrases of modern jargon. But surely freedom for all is what Britain's history has all been about. Freedom within the law is at the heart of the British tradition. If we have been wrong in this respect, it has not been through freedom, I suggest, but perhaps because the framework of law within which this freedom has been exercised has not been as perfect as it should have been and has been in urgent need of modernisation. That is why, among other policies, we are talking about the reform of the legal framework of industrial relations. In our view, therefore, we must not go forward in this country on the road of a statutory incomes and prices policy. In the end it will not lead to the economic results desired. And much more, we believe, than economic efficiency is at stake, because the centralised planning of incomes is incompatible with the continuation of free trade unions and collective bargaining. In our belief trade unions and employers' organisations, independent of the State, are still the hallmark of freedom in an industrial country. Conversely, trade unions and employers' organisations which become agents of the State and instruments of State-organised central planning of wages, lead, however unintended the result may be, to an authoritarian society. Equally, we agree that we cannot go back to exactly what we had before. The only alternative which we see—and we believe that it can be an effective alternative—is to apply vigorously the five-point package policy which I described on Second Reading of the recent Prices and Incomes Bill and which my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition has been propounding in public—a five-prong policy in which one vital element must be wholesale reform of industrial relations law. In asking the House to oppose the Order, I make a special appeal to hon. Members opposite who are life-long trade unionists to think very carefully about this alternative, because the proposals which we put forward in place of this Order are in no way anti-trade union in intent or in effect. Whatever may be the intent of the Government's policies, they are inevitably anti-trade union in efect and will be seen more and more to be anti-trade union as they develop. Our policy would propose new obligations and responsibilities for employers—Order. The right hon. Gentleman cannot pursue alternative policy in detail.
I bow to your Ruling, Mr. Speaker.
Let me say, in conclusion, that our policy of a new framework of law within which the freedom of trade unions can be operated is the only viable alternative to this Order. It is the policy for which we stand, because in conjunction with the other main policies I have referred to, it would make possible the continuation of free collective bargaining —and free collective bargaining is the essential function on which free trade unionism in the West has been based, All the powers and almost all the other functions of the trade unions stem from that. The policy on which the Government have embarked will destroy this freedom if it is allowed to go on. As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition said as long ago as 15th January last year,As The Times said in a leading article on 5th July last year:"This is a downward road ending in severe restrictions of individual freedom and of the proper role of the trade unions."
Unless we can get something like a fast and stable rate of growth and have freedom, we shall not prosper economically and our free society will not Survive. That is why we oppose this Order and everything else to do with this Government's prices and incomes policy."In the long run these [inflationary] forces can be controlled by the statutory control of incomes or regulations in other fields only at the cost of putting the economy in a straitjacket which itself is the greatest deterrent to a fast and stable rate of growth."
7.40 p.m.
I do not intend to follow the central theme on which the right hon. Member for Mitcham (Mr. R. Carr) finished, first because that would be out of order, and secondly because I could not disagree with him more.
Implementation of this Order is the end of a long journey for a great number of hon. Members. Many of my hon. Friends and I have been unwilling passengers on this journey. We set off in the euphoria of the prices, incomes and productivity statement a long time ago. We seem to be finishing, at least this stage of the prices and incomes debate which will bring implementation of this Order, with much less enthusiasm for the Government's policy. The attendance in the House tonight seems to bear that out. I have a great deal of personal affection for my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. We have disagreed and will appear to continue to disagree on the Government's policy, but I think he recognises that there is genuine sincerity on our side and we have never doubted that there is on the Government side. I do not want to say very much, because we have said it not once but possibly three times in the many debates on prices and incomes policy. What I am concerned about is what the Government hope to achieve through implementation of this Order. My right hon. Friend referred to the T.U.C. and its 22nd March conference. He quoted what George Woodcock said about collective bargaining and about the Government having to have a policy in relation to wages. At that conference, at the same time that the executive endorsed the policy, George Woodcock opposed the legislation and the implementation of Part II. We should remember that. Those of us on this side of the House who are concerned about the legislation find Section 16 in Part II particularly repulsive for trade unions and trade unionism. We find it so because in our mixed economy the Government will not get the co-operation of those who provide the means of production and wealth by coercion, but only by persuasion and by proving that what they are doing is in the interests not only of themselves but of the country as a whole. Our criticism is that the Government have made this the central theme of their economic policy, but prices and incomes policy as it stands is not a central economic theme. I am not in a position to expound the alternatives this evening. My hon. Friends and I will be saying something later in the week about what we think a Socialist alternative economic policy should be. This Order and its provisions are only playing with the situation. There are many thousands of claims made yearly, factory by factory, from the workshop floor. As my right hon. Friend knows, because of his experience in the A.E.U. at Metropolitan Vickers, Trafford Park, where he was a distinguished works convenor and took part daily in works negotiations, this cannot be dealt with by legislation. It is physically impossible. We have to allow the trade unions to carry out their rightful duty to maintain, or try to maintain, the level of their members' incomes. Many of us believe that it is not a question of what is needed is a wage freeze and retarding wages; in many sections low wages are bedevilling production and productivity. I see that my right hon. Friend agrees. Unfortunately this policy has become synonymous with a wage freeze under Part IV. My right hon. Friend is trying to shake free from that, but unfortunately that is the position. If we remain in a situation in which legislation such as this is maintained and take a sledge hammer to crack a nut, we shall not achieve what we are setting out to do. Strengthening of Part II, which is to be done by the new Order, involves, as my right hon. Friend said, provisions which are not small provisions. We have lengthened the provisions in Part II of the Act which we passed last July. The delaying powers are now up to seven months. They can be taxed by penal legislation. My hon. Friends and I feel unable to support this Order. The whole emphasis of this policy and its philosophy are opposed to what we stand for. While we respect those who have introduced it believing that it is correct, we believe that it is not correct. It does not have the permissive support of the trade union movement. Union after union is going on record as opposed to the implementation of Part II and any extension of the legislation. This, I believe, will be confirmed at the T.U.C. and the Labour Party conferences later this year. Although it is not possible on this occasion to discuss alternatives—the two Front Bench spokesmen had difficulty expounding their views because of this—it seems that we are looking at this matter negatively if we do not put forward alternative views. It has not got to be the central theme of our economy today. Many of my hon. Friends have been concerned about two specific issues. One is prices and the other is the position of lower-paid workers. We have a fiasco on prices. There was one Order under the last Part II on prices and 13 Orders on wages. I do not think that there is anything here to suggest that we are restricting price increases. The C.B.I. gave a very dusty answer to the proposal for co-operation. On the question of lower-paid workers the hon. Member for Oswestry (Mr. Biffen) quoted figures from the engineering industry. He showed how the ditlerential has widened between labourers and skilled workers in engineering. This has taken place during the period of freeze, yet it was said that this policy would narrow that gap and assist de lower-paid workers. That is not so and we could give many instances in which the policy has lamentably failed. My right hon. Friend the First Secretary and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy say that this is to support the voluntary system, that they do not want compulsion—and that we have got a voluntary system but it is not yet completely voluntary because it would not be possible to work a voluntary system without some encasement of legislative power. This, to me, is just double-Dutch. One cannot have the English language distorted more. It is either voluntary or it is not. Of course, we are moving into a phase where the T.U.C. is going to operate its own system. But the Government will be backed with powers which they can implement if they so desire. Among my hon. Friends there are differences of opinion, because a prices and incomes policy is not an easy thing to work out, and how one operates a voluntary system is open to judgment—whether, for instance, it is possible to have other measures for the redistribution of income and so on. However, I think it would be far simpler if the Government were to move directly into the voluntary period and allow the T.U.C. to work along the lines which it suggested. Much of the system will have to be amended; much fresh thinking will have to go into this. That does not mean that the Government will have stepped out of the wages sphere; it does not mean that the Government are moving away from it—because, as I said, there are many ways of getting a policy for incomes and profits and prices; and the Government have legislative powers in many spheres and not just this one of Part II. I feel that this proposal will not assist making the new policy which the Government desire to see. I think that the Act is a bad one. I thought so from the beginning and I think so now that we have seen it on the Statute Book. For the reasons I have explained already, I feel unable to support this proposal when it is put to the vote tonight.7.52 p.m.
I agree with the hon. Gentleman the Member for Salford, West (Mr. Orme) that it was pretty cool of the Chancellor of the Duchy to invoke Mr. George Woodcock's support for this Order which he is bringing forward tonight. The legislation activated by this Order was described by Mr. George Woodcock as a bauble or plaything. If the right hon. Gentleman thinks that is the best commendation he can get for this he has a very bad case. "Bauble or plaything" is a derogatory term, not one of praise. If this is the best he can find, all I can say is he is scraping the bottom of the barrel.
The hon. Gentleman the Member for Salford, West, from the depths of his knowledge, said there was mounting hostility to the Act and to the policy in the trade union movement. Of course, every time the Chancellor of the Duchy talks about it it is not surprising that the hostility mounts. What did he say today? He referred to the system of wage negotiations which has been built up in this country, and which is sometimes regarded with pride all over the world, as a chaotic condition of collective bar-gaining—A jungle.
A jungle. Whatever it may be it is something which the Government say they are going to revive in 12 months' time.
No.
Well, if the Chancellor thinks that this bauble or plaything will have such a deep educative effect that the whole system of collective bargaining in 12 months' time is removed out of the chaos which has existed before and that a very perfect machine will emerge, all I can tell him is that he is just living in a dream world.
If this Act does ever expire and none other replaces it, of course things will go back very much to where they were a year ago, to the system of collective bargaining which he described as a jungle or chaos, and if collective bargaining is a jungle or chaos, how does he describe individual bargaining, which accounts for a very large percentage of the wage claims all over the country? As my right hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham (Mr. R. Carr) said, once the Act is removed, once there is no longer any legal control that the Government say there will not be—or they assume there will not be—in 12 months' time, then if there is a voluntary system and restraint worked by the T.U.C., those who are not under the control of the T.U.C.—and they Are a very large number of people—will have an enormous preference. Then they will not have to go through any system of vetting, either voluntary or partly voluntary. They will go through no such net at all once the Act is removed. Therefore, as I say, every time the Chancellor of the Duchy speaks he must arouse great suspicions, I should have thought, mongst individual trade unions and in the T.U.C., every time he denigrates the system of collective bargaining which he and his colleagues found when they came in to Government. I have only three questions I should like to ask the First Secretary tonight, and the first is this. Will he do what the Chancellor of the Duchy, despite the many requests to him, has always failed to do, and that is, tell us a little more about the vetting system—if it is already working, and how it is to work with the T.U.C.? Is it the intention of the Government to use legislative sanctions and powers only for those people, who having been to the T.U.C. and been rejected, nevertheless threaten to go, or in fact go ahead? Is that the way he thinks it is going to work? Or does he intend to use the long-stop for the purposes only of those people who do not go through the T.U.C. at all, either because they are not members or because they do not choose to operate the vetting system? What does he see as the relationship in practice between the voluntary system and the powers he is taking tonight? Is it merely to deal with the rogue elephants of the T.U.C.—those who having been through the system find their membership perhaps rejecting the advice of the T.U.C. which has been handed back to them by their own leaders? Or is it really parallel instead of additional to the T.U.C.that is to say, to deal with those people who are not susceptible to the vetting system at all? That is my first question. My second question is this. There have appeared reports in the Press in the last 48 hours that the Secretary of State or the other appropriate Ministers propose under the relevant Section of Part II of the 1966 Act as amended, to make orders in the near future. Does he intend to rely mainly on such orders, or does he intend to rely on what I was bold enough to describe as the "pounce-back"? That is to say, does he propose to operate without orders under Section 2 of the amending legislation of 1967? He must have in his mind some policy about which of those two streams of powers he proposes to rely on. He told me late one night that the C.B.I., and, I think, the T.U.C., were not in favour of firing off orders in all directions, and that is why he included Section 2 of the 1967 Act, but Press reports in the last 48 hours or so indicate the contrary, and I think we ought to know how he proposes to operate this, in view of the contradiction I have mentioned. My third question is to ask the First Secretary what obligations he puts upon arbitrators other than Mr. Aubrey Jones who are conducting arbitrations such as that being held by Sir George Honeyman and his two colleagues at the moment with the National Union of Teachers? When we were in power, we produced a White Paper in which we said that independent arbitrators should take into account not only the relative strengths of the parties before them but the national interest as well, for that we were bitterly attacked by the party opposite. That seems to be a very small egg to have laid, when the Government today are doing far more; yet we hear much less about gross interference with the system of arbitration, with its independence and with the feeling that it can be relied upon, which were the complaints hurled at us when we, published our White Paper. Is that still the case? Are the arbitrators scattered up and down our industrial and professional life, other than the National Board for Prices and Incomes, to take into account the criteria now enshrined in the 1966 Act, which have been changed more than once and may be Changed again? Are these arbitrators to take them into account and, indeed, are they to be guided by them exclusively? The situation will become worse if Mr. Aubrey Jones and his Board are to be guided exclusively by these criteria whereas the statutory, semi-statutory and sometime unofficial arbitrations which are a feature of our labour relations are entitled to stray outside them. What is the relationship between the two systems? I hope that the Secretary of State will say a word about it. Finally, I know that it is difficult to say in advance, but I think that we are entitled to know a little more about his method of selecting cases, whether they be of prices or awards. There is a phrase about economic significance, which means nothing. There is the suggestion which my right hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham made in his powerful speech when he said that the selection system seemed to be pouncing upon the weak rather than the strong in recent months. We should like to know a little more, although I appreciate that it is difficult to prophesy. In similar circumstances when the then Attorney-General for the United States, Mr. Robert Jackson, was asked how he selected cases to be judged by the courts under the Sherman and Clayton Acts, he said that he chose them for "political reasons" and asked "What other reasons do you suggest?" If one analyses that, there is quite a strong argument for saying that, ultimately, in the fullest sense of the word "political" there can be no other system of choice for people who have this great power of selection as the First Secretary has in this case. On what sort of principles does he intend to select cases? Is it those who really have a significance in the economic life of our country or is it those who may be quite small and relatively unimportant but who have made a great show of being contumacious in opposing the Government and who have perhaps paraded their opposition, which they are entitled to do, but who are now being selected by the Government to show who is master? Since we are activating this part of the Act and since we have discussed almost ad nauseam the principles under the Act it would be interesting to hear the First Secretary's replies to my questions and refreshing to have some new thought and new information brought to bear upon the problems of its administration.8.5 p.m.
Having listened to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster opening the debate, I feel particularly concerned about the application of this Order. He spent much of his time in charging this party with inconsistency, and he asked us what we should do in the future. Surely there is a contradiction here. As I understand it, the whole case of the Government is that this is a running-down Order and that, once it comes to an end, the Government will have no more hand in prices and incomes control. How, then, can he ask us what we should do and what is our plan?
He must mean what is our plan when we take over government in 1969 or 1970. He must imply that in 1969 or 1970 the state of the country will be such that we shall need some prices and incomes policy and that if the Labour Party wins the next election it will continue a prices and incomes policy of its own, presumably based on the 1966 Act and a series of Orders similar to that which we are considering tonight, What is it to be? Do right hon. Gentlemen on the Front Bench opposite really mean that this Order brings the Act to an end and that once the powers run out in 12 months' time there will be no more such Orders? If that is the case, why ask us what is our alternative? It has no meaning. I suggest seriously that the Government are not being fair or honest with this House or with the country. If their argument has any meaning at all, they must intend to continue a prices and incomes policy. The First Secretary will remember that I took part in earlier debates on the subject, and I asked him clearly what was to be the norm next year when the Government's present policy comes to an end. I asked him, too, who was to decide the norm. The Minister did not reply. In the quieter atmosphere of tonight's debate when he has plenty of opportunity to answer, I repeat my questions. If he fails to reply, I can only assume that he intends, but is afraid to say so, to continue to interfere with prices and incomes policy when this Act runs out and that the Government shall fix the norm in future. What does this mean? The Chancellor of the Duchy told us tonight that, once this Order runs out, the T.U.C. and the C.B.I. will be left to work out their incomes policy amicably together. What happens if the Government disagrees with a figure fixed by the C.B.I. and the T.U.C.? Will they have to revert to the figure fixed by the Government? Is that what the Government want us to believe, or will the Government continue to run the country and decide what increase in prices and incomes are to be allowed in future? If that is so, I suggest that they say so straight away and tell us how, in cases such as the one which I have cited where there is disagreement between the T.U.C. the C.B.I. and the Government, the Government are to have their way and what their sanctions will be? What powers will they have to enforce any ideas that they may have as to the correct increase in wages and prices which should be allowed in any succeeding period? I believe that these are vital questions. I want to restrict my contribution to these points to make sure that I have replies to them, because what the country wants to know is the policy for the future. A great deal of play has been made in the debate so far on the effect of this Statutory Instrument in bringing the scope of the Government's interference with prices and incomes to an end. I should like some clear answers from the First Secretary when he comes to reply to the debate. Does he intend, and does his Department intend, after 1968 still to have a hand in the fixing and regulating of prices and incomes? There is one small technical point which I would like to raise in relation to the application of the Act and this Order to Northern Ireland. Section 36 extended the Act to Northern Ireland with the proviso thatThat provision has caused some anxiety in my constituency. The Minister will remember a recent Order in respect of certain members of A.S.S.E.T. who were employed by Messrs. Harland and Woolf, and that following the Court of Appeal decision in the Thorn Electrical Industries case the Order was annulled. There was some doubt about whether the Order had ever been correctly made, and whether the former provisions properly applied to Northern Ireland. I would like the Minister to deal with this, and to assure us that the Order now before the House does not suffer from the defect from which the former Order suffered, or was suspected to suffer. We never found out just what was the case, because the Order was annulled and no clear reason was ever given for its annulment. Was the reason for its annulment the decision in the Thorn Electrical Industries case? If not, is the Secretary of State sure that there will not be the same weaknesses in this Order, and in Part II of the Act which it invokes, as there were in the Orders which have applied during the last year? With regard to the two Court of Appeal decisions, are the Government sure that there are no loopholes in Part II of the Act? Have they considered this carefully? They assured the House a year ago that the provisions of the Act would apply, and would be certain, and yet we have seen from the decisions in the Court of Appeal that there was a series of loopholes in the provisions. What action have the Government taken both on this point and on the point which I have raised about Northern Ireland?"the Parliament of Northern Ireland shall have the same power to pass Acts with respect to any matter as they would have had if this Act had not been passed and, in the event of any inconsistency between any Act of the Parliament of Northern Ireland duly passed after the passing of this Act and any provision of this Act, the Act of the Parliament of Northern Ireland shall, in Northern Ireland, prevail."
8.13 p.m.
I do not want to detain the House for long. I want to make one or two observations about the Order. I think that what I have to say is important, particularly as the Trades Union Congress, at the Conference of Executives which was held earlier this year, made it clear that it saw no reason either for Part IV of the Act to continue, or for Part II to be activated. I assume that the T.U.C. is a body of which we should take note, but it seems to me that the Government have chosen deliberately to ignore the opinions of the executive committees which met under the leadership of the General Council of the T.U.C. It is regrettable that the Government decided that it was essential to bring in the Act, and particularly that Part II is being activated.
We are told that it is essential to have these compulsory powers because, arising out of them, we shall ultimately get a voluntary system. I would like the House to reflect on that view for a few moments. The Government's view is that we need compulsion to get a voluntary agreement. This is a remarkable philosophy. I have always thought that to get a voluntary agreement two sides voluntarily enter into an agreement together, that they decide on each side to give up part of their sovereignty, as it were, and make a voluntary agreement which is acceptable to them both. But here we have this strange philosophy, which is to replace the previous idea, that one gets a voluntary agreement by saying there must first be compulsion on the part of one side. That philosophy is remarkable, particularly as the T.U.C. made it clear through the meeting of the joint executives that it would from then onwards introduce a voluntary system for wage retraint. If I remember rightly, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister referred to the decision of the joint executives as an historic occasion, yet, despite that assurance, the Government have found it necessary to introduce these compulsory powers and to have what is known as a long-stop. That, too, is rather strange language to use in relation to the trade union movement. I thought that the problem here was to try to put our economy right, but in any case some long stops are not worth a light. They miss every ball that comes their way. I wonder whether this will happen with this long stop. If the people concerned are not members of a trade union and there is a bit of fast bowling, what will happen to the ball? I do not think that this is the kind of language which should be used. We have heard talk about concerning ourselves with the rogue elephants in the trade union movement. I always thought that a rogue elephant union would be a monstrous one, rather like the elephant itself, which trampled everything before it. Who are the rogue elephants about which we have been talking? They are the white collar workers, the members of smaller trade unions, such as A.S.S.E.T. These are the people who have been turned into rogue elephants, not the Transport and General Workers' Union, not the Municipal and General Workers, not the A.E.U., or even my union. It is A.S.S.E.T. and the smaller white collar unions who have become the rogue elephants of the trade union movement. This is very strange terminology to use, because once the T.U.C. decided that it was going to introduce a voluntary system, its moral authority would be sufficient to keep any trade union in line. Which trade union would want to go out into the wilderness if it had once been an essential part of the machinery of the T.U.C.? I cannot see any trade union, A.S.S.E.T. or any other, walking out of the T.U.C. once the moral authority of the T.U.C. had been asserted. We are not giving the T.U.C. a chance. What the Government are really saying is, "We believe that you are right. We know that you believe that you will introduce a voluntary system, but we will bring in troops at the rear to make sure". It reminds me of a very interesting situation that I read about many years ago. In 1794 in the City of Liverpool occurred one of the earliest recorded strikes in the trade union movement. The joiners decided to go on strike. I believe they were asking for ½d. a day, or some ridiculously small sum. The mayor called them in and said, "Can I have your assurance that you will not create any disturbance?" and this fine upstanding body of carpenters and joiners of Liverpool said, "Certainly we will give you that assurance. No trouble at all." The mayor then wrote to the Home Secretary telling him that he had got this assurance from the joiners of Liverpool but that, nevertheless, he would be very grateful if the Home Secretary would order a troop of Scots Greys into Warrington just to make certain. I have a feeling that that is what the Government are doing here. The Trades Union Congress has said, "We are prepared to operate a voluntary system. There will be no trouble. We will deal with the problems within our own ranks." The Government have said, "Fine. Nevertheless, we will introduce a new Prices and Incomes Measure and activate Part II to make certain that you carry out your words." This does not lead the average trade unionist to have any great trust in the word of the Government. The whole thing is absolutely irrelevant in this situation. I have been told, "I do not know why you lads are putting up a fight. You have won. The Bill does not mean anything." If the Bill does not mean anything, do not introduce it. Why waste the time of the House? Why have lengthy discussions, going on through two nights, if the Bill does not mean anything? We shall have to see whether it means anything when it becomes operative. My fundamental objection is much more important. I have always believed that the trade union movement must remain free to organise collective bargaining at all times, irrespective of the Government or the character of the State. I have always been very critical of the so-called rôle of the trade unions in the Communist countries. They have ended up not with the job of negotiating wages and conditions but as productivity agents and welfare agents. They do not have the functions of trade unions in this or any other democratic country. To me this is the fundamental objection to the activation of Part II. Clause 16 contains the penal provisions which will operate against honest-to-God trade unions. I object to this activation, because in my opinion it is a fundamental attack on the character and position of our free trade union movement. I do not object to a wages and prices policy, but I believe in a voluntary system and I always have done. I no more believe in the jungle of the so-called free collective bargaining of the kind mentioned by my right hon. Friend than he does. How can a busman increase his productivity? Does he speed up his bus so that it goes at over 30 miles an hour? Does he cut down the time at bus stops so that the poor old lady who puts her hand up falls flat on her face because the bus moves off too quickly? It is not possible to measure the productivity of the busmen. Can we measure the productivity of the nurse in the hospital? Are we to judge it by the number of corpses she has to deal with each day? What about the firemen, who never go on strike? They have a social conscience, and are therefore at the bottom of the scale. They do not use their power to improve their wages and conditions. There are sections in the trade union and working class movements which have been left at the bottom of the scale, quite wrongly, and it is the responsibility of every trade unionist to help them up the ladder. It may mean that some of the higher paid workers, at a certain time, will have to hold back, in order that the others may be helped. That is quite reasonable and logical.Does the hon. Member draw any conclusion from the fact that every group of workers that he has mentioned is in the public sector and is employed by various public authorities?
I have always regretted the fact that it is much more difficult to negotiate with a public authority than with a private employer. In the case of the public authority it is not always easy to find the boss to negotiate with. I can give plenty of examples. When I was a federation shop steward at Bromborough power station I could see any private employer, but if I wanted to see the electricity authority man I had to fill in three forms and wait a fortnight. I have never suggested that everything is right with the public sector, but that is not to say that I should not like to see it extended. I want it to be improved.
The voluntary system is the right one. We must accept that a wages policy is correct, but I object to those Clauses in the Bill which will be activated by this Order. This is a very serious Measure. We are told that it is an advance on what we had before. Basically it is not a wage freeze any more, but the punitive provisions remain. That is my objection I have objected to them all the way through, and I am sure that my right hon. Friends will not expect me to support them in the Lobby tonight.8.28 p.m.
I have a great deal of sympathy with many of the points made by the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer). One very important point that he made concerned the complete practical unreality of this sort of legislation. It will not work out in the way in which right hon. Gentlemen opposite think it will. It is important that we should ask, as my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Darwen (Mr. Fletcher-Cooke) asked, whether it is the Government's view that there is chaos in collective bargaining. If they believe that there is chaos now, what are they doing to make certain that there is none in future? Up to now, the policy has led to greater chaos. We would agree that it is better to settle industrial disputes by sensible discussion with arbitrators who will listen to both sides and make a decision which both sides will accept, but the operation of the policy has militated against arbitration.
I have asked a number of simple questions of the Minister of Labour since the policy began—for instance, whether an arbitration court's decision under the Industrial Courts Act which was contrary to the decision of the Board would be allowed. I have never had an answer to this question and can only assume that, if the Board disagreed with the award of an arbitration court, that decision would be set aside. If so, industrial relations are becoming more chaotic, because those in dispute see that there is no hope in arbitration because a decision could be set aside if the Board disagreed, and realise that they must show their muscles more than they have been doing. The hon. Gentleman asked how there can be more voluntary agreements when compulsion is operating. The right hon. Gentleman said that the Government support T.U.C. vetting, as I think we all would, but if they then act like a sergeant-major, calling for three volunteers with the words, "You, you and you", they cannot expect the T.U.C. to be wholehearted in its attitude towards vetting or any of its members to take notice of the system. The right hon. Gentleman said that they will consult the T.U.C. and the C.B.I., but that the Government's view must prevail in the event of disagreement, so it is no good twisting the English language by talking about support for voluntary negotiation when things like the Order remain. The wrong approach is being taken. The right hon. Gentleman cannot escape from this by asking for our alternative. It has been pointed out that we have alternatives, but, even with the 1966 Act and its form amended by the 1967 Act, the basic structure of negotiations has not changed. In other words, it is hoped that when this system tapers off the chaos will magically disappear and everyone in industry will be a good boy and talk amiably and that no one will press his claim too hard. This is a pipe dream. Either the Government are a crowd of nitwits hoping to put off the evil day when they find that the world has changed, or they are applying Socialism, which means that no group should decide on its remuneration in its own way by voluntary agreement with employers, and that, under Socialism, a central Board should decide the rate according to each person's or each group's service to the community. Instead of being a Front Bench of nitwits, I believe that they are laying the foundation stones for a national wage-fixing organisation. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said that the Order is the tapering off of legislative powers, but it brings into operation Part II of the Act, which was a Bill in existence at the last General Election. Therefore, it has been in existence for a long time. It was only because of the statement of 20th July that Part IV was added to the Bill and was used for the first period of 12 months. Only because Part IV was introduced was Part II left on one side until now. Therefore, it stretches our credibility too far to believe that tonight the Government are asking for minor powers in comparison with Part IV. The Government created a monster last July. They now say that they have slain that monster and are replacing it with a much smaller one. They say that we should not complain too much because they have killed the larger monster. This is rather like putting up Aunt Sallies merely to knock them down again. On practicability, I give only as an example the type of people who will not be caught by Part II. To talk of rogue elephants and of catching all those who will not carry out the terms of voluntary agreements is to ignore a section of the employed population who will not be caught by Part II. Four million employees operate under payment by result. The White Paper clearly shows them to be outside the ambit of the ratio-decidendi, because a group of men who increase their earnings by increasing their effort under payment by result cannot be caught by Part II and thus would never be taken before the Board. In the average engineering establishment there are groups of people who are on payment by result and whose machines are serviced by skilled tool-fitters, electricians, and so on, who could come under Part II so that any increase in their income would have to be referred to the Board. The fact that one group of people—that is, payment by result workers—will still be able to go on increasing their earnings will, with the passage of time, create greater discrepancies, particularly between the higher-paid worker and the lower-paid worker. The Order does not tackle that problem, nor the problem which exists in many industries which are short of skilled men. There will be greater disincentives to young men to enter trades as toolfitters, electricians and so on when they see that the gap between the worker on payment by results and the skilled person is widening still further. What sort of Order can we expect in July, 1968? From what I have said it is obvious that a miracle is unlikely. We cannot expect that suddenly everyone will change his attitude to enable the Government to take different action. Section 16(4) of the Act is the heart of the matter—the basic principle about whether one agrees with the right of a person or group of persons to withdraw their labour if they are in dispute with their employer and feel that there is no other way of solving it. We in this country have always accepted that an individual has the right, subject to any contractual obligations he may have entered into, to leave his employer and go to a new one. Yet if this Order is passed we will be saying that while a worker in certain circumstances has the right to leave his employer's service, should he do so in conjunction with one or more other employees he will be in breach of the law and can be fined up to £100. It has been said, "We need not worry too much about this because even if trade unionists were taken to court and fined £100 they would refuse to pay and everyone would soon forget all about it". If that is so, why does Section 45 of the Criminal Justice Act provide ways and means to ensure that if they are fined £100 and refuse to pay, magistrates can impose attachment of wages orders whereby that money can be deducted from their wages week by week according to their circumstances and means? There is something sinister in this part of the Measure, for it ensures that if the Government operate under Part II, there will be ways and means of ensuring that any employee who refuses to pay his fine may have an attachment order imposed on him. It is not just a question of saying that this operation will not work, that the Government are merely flexing their muscles and do not intend to take action if people step out of line. There may be many cases of people stepping out of line, or of it being thought that they have stepped out of line, when all that they are really doing is attempting to keep themselves level with other groups of workers who are not caught in the net of Part II. If this legislation were to affect every employee in Britain, perhaps it would not be so bad—although it would still be breaching certain fundamental principles which are cherished —but to apply Part II to only certain sections of the community is bound to lead to greater disparity. One also has to question the ability of the Prices and Incomes Board to give a genuine and proper decision on any applications. My hon. Friend the Member for Oswestry in the past has pointed out, and it has generally been agreed, that the Board cannot carry out all investigations by itself but has to farm out a number to consultants and various other bodies. If that is so, he should have been told at some time or other who the consultants were. So far, we have not been told. It is, therefore, still questionable whether the ability of the Board is such that employees will be able to rely completely on its judgment on a wage claim as being infallible. The Order has hung about for 18 months, since when we have had Part IV of the Act in operation, and I believe that it would be much better if it were taken away again. If the right hon. Gentleman believes that there is chaos in collective bargaining, he should put a wet towel round his head and get down to finding an answer. The Order will not do anything to help the chaos he says there is in collective bargaining. All it can do is make the position worse. I ask him to take the Order away, and think the whole thing over again. If he is not prepared to do that, I will certainly vote against it.8.47 p.m.
I believe the Order to be necessary, and I am not dissuaded from that view by the speeches, reasonable though they were, of some of my hon. Friends, nor by those from the other side of the Chamber. I believe that some of my hon. Friends' remarks added strength to the view that the Order is necessary. For example, a good deal of reference has perfectly rightly been made to the new "vetting" procedure that the T.U.C. has adopted. I am not convinced that that is an argument against the Order. I wonder whether this important change in the attitude of the T.U.C. would have come about but for the Government's earlier action, and some of the powers the Government have acquired in the past.
It is certainly very much to be welcomed that the T.U.C. should have gathered together this extra authority, and I am sure that many of my hon. Friends, whatever may be their view of the Order, will hope with me that that authority would be further increased. I am by no means convinced that the moderate powers that the Government seek to retain under the Act and by this Order will in any way weaken the T.U.C. movement to greater authority. Indeed, I hope that it will be possible for its authority to be strengthened in some of the discussions that will inevitably take place over the succeeding period of twelve months. One of my hon. Friends made some fun, quite legitimately, of the phrase, which is perhaps not very apt, of "rogue elephant" in connection with some groups that may get out of line, as it were, in trade union negotiations. But he will know as well as anyone that the new powers within both the trade union movement and the professional world tend to arise very often in quite small groups. It is not the case today that power necessarily lies with the greatest numbers. I accept the criticism of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) that the phrase is not particularly apt, because surely we know that in the period we are passing through the greatest difficulties are likely to arise in the relationship between the community and sometimes very small groups holding particular skills which are important and give them power as compared with very much larger groups of the relatively unskilled. This is something to which we must pay a great deal of regard. The problem is bound to increase in the period ahead. There is a good deal of evidence of that. Again, I believe that this is an argument for the need to examine claims very carefully as to their social validity and their effect upon other groups of workers. Surely this is bound to be true of prices as well. I well understand my hon. Friend's feelings—indeed, I share them—about the inability of Governments not only in this country but in almost every country to establish effective control over price movements. But I do not want to throw away the possibility, however modest, of some control of price movements in this country that seems to me to be offered by the Order and the processes under Part II of the Act. I believe that it is not the question of the number of Orders which may come before the House that we need to consider but to what extent there has been value in prior notification of price increases and what action has been taken about them by the Government Departments concerned. Though we may be quite dissatisfied and feel that not enough has been done—and I share the feeling strongly—I do not want to throw away the modest powers that are there. Unless I am convinced that there are more effective powers—and no one has suggested that there are—that can be put in their place and which would work more effectively, I must say that I want to see these powers retained.Would the hon. Gentleman want these powers to be thrown away in a year's time, which is what the Government are claiming?
No. I think that the Government are possibly hoping to continue the discussions held over the last 12 months. [Laughter.] Hon. Members opposite may laugh, but they made such a mess of the whole thing that they are the last people entitled to make any comment about the situation. We have had from them precious little indication of alternatives. I do not blame them for not putting any tonight, because this is not the right occasion, but neither have they made any adequate offer of views on more relevant occasions when those views would have been extremely valuable. One must judge by practice, and their practice was not one to give us any encouragement.
However weak we may think these powers to be, I believe them to be valuable and that it is of vital importance that the Government should continue the discussions to elaborate, if possible, more effective measures in future, certainly based, if that is possible, upon the voluntary systems which seem to be beginning to develop and which were not in evidence 12 months ago. A year ago, who could have suggested that it was likely that the T.U.C. would be able to introduce the valuable measure that it has? I look forward to further developments along those lines, increasing the authority of the T.U.C. and enabling it to tackle the subject on a wider basis than the very narrow one that it has up to now been able to accept. Sir Edward Brown (Bath): The hon. Gentleman has spoken three times about the increased authority of the T.U.C. Will he come to the point in paragraphs (a) and (b) of Section 16(4) of the 1966 Act, which I should think will be very distressing to the T.U.C. with their increased authority? They talk about penal sanc- tions. I trust the hon. Gentleman knows what the sanctions are. Does he think that this will increase the T.U.C.'s prestige?I do not know that it does, but I do not regard it as an unusual provision to find in Acts. I can understand my hon. Friends making such play, but I am surprised at hon. Members opposite making such play with a provision that is commonly found in legislation.
While I am not suggesting that I welcome the penal provisions, I regard the general provisions of this Order as sufficiently important to regard it as right that we should go ahead with it. There is no evidence up to now that the Measures taken by Her Majesty's Government have impeded the discussions that the trade union movement has welcomed and wants to see—rather the reverse. Therefore, I am hopeful that in the next twelve months we shall see the trade union movement playing a wider and more authoritative part than the narrow one in which it has been engaged up to now. I hope it will see in this its great future and opportunity.8.57 p.m.
The hon. Member for Salford, West (Mr. Orme), in his interesting speech, suggested that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was perhaps speaking double Dutch. I think that if we could ever accuse the Chancellor of the Duchy of speaking double-Dutch, having heard the hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop) we must call it treble-Turkish or something of that order. I was amazed and staggered to hear a Member of this House, particularly from the benches opposite, talking about this Order introducing moderate powers which were not unusual. If he would care to look at Section 16(4) of the Act he will see that it says, that if any trade union or other person threatens or even talks to another person about the possibility of holding a strike or some form of industrial action, he will be fined £100, and presumably, if the fine is not paid, sent to gaol.
He said that these powers were included in other Acts. I should like to know where else in the legislation of the United Kingdom we have a threat to send someone to prison for talking about increased wages with another person. This is what the powers in the Act which we are activating by this Order provide. I am amazed to find any Member of a democratic House of Commons saying that these are moderate powers when someone can be sent to prison for talking about a wage increase. The hon. Gentleman may rightly say that the Government have no intention of activating these powers, that they will not do so because is will not come to that, but this is Part II which we are activating and they are powers which the Government can use if they wish. When we were first considering standstill the one question constantly asked from this side of the House was the question put by the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer): "What do we do at the end of the standstill?". Several of my hon. Friends put forward the answer, which has proved to be correct, "We are to have more standstills." The tragedy of this Order is that it has confirmed the position which we suggested would be the case a year ago: that the moment one starts on this slippery slope towards compulsion and Government control of wages, there is no way back unless we are to have some form of explosion. Certainly there is no way back for the Government when we have a stagnant economy, a national cake which is not growing. The tragedy of tonight is that we are carrying on this nonsense for another period of time and it is obvious that we will have to go forward again after this period is over. What is more worrying is that the longer we have these powers of compulsion and the longer we have standstill, the more certain we are to continue on the path so clearly spelled out by the hon. Member for Walton, which is to move into a situation in which increasingly the Government will control wages in the economy, while the trade unions, those great democratic institutions, will simply have the job of serving on productivity and planning committees. That process has already begun. More and more the time of trade union officials is taken by serving on committees, on consultative councils, on planning authorities and productivity committees, all the jobs which have no executive authority. If this process carries on for many more years, we shall completely leave the system in which trade unions were democratic voluntary organisations looking after the conditions of their members. In putting forward this legislation, and even in proposing this Order, the Government claim to have support of the majority of people in this country, of the majority of those who think in terms of wage negotiations, voluntary restraint and so on. Where is the Government's support tonight? The Government have managed to find one back-bencher out of more than 300, the hon. Member for South Shields to support the Order. Tonight two of their own back-benchers have bitterly opposed them, and there have been many more in the course of previous debates on this subject. Not one hon. Member from this side of the House has supported them and not even one Liberal. So we have the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster putting forward a policy completely rejected by most hon. Members on either side of the House and for which there has been no enthusiasm whatever. I appeal to the Government to take back the Order, because the longer we have Orders like this coming before us, the more difficult it will be for the Government to get off the slippery slope which leads to more compulsion and Government determination of wages. What are the basic objections to the Order? First, not only will it destroy the T.U.C.'s voluntary effort to restrain wages but it might lead to trade unions becoming simply a meaningless shambles because they do not have a job to do. That is what the Government's policy is leading us to. We object to it because it undermines the trade union movement and the T.U.C.'s voluntary effort to bring about a voluntary system of wage control. Secondly, at a time when it is more and more important that we should look for ways to improve labour relations, the Order will, if anything, lead to their deterioration. There are many things which need to be done. Having been involved in labour relations in shipyards on the Clyde for a number of years, I know that the main trouble in wage negotiations is simply that of delay. There are often delays in dealing with justifiable claims and that can cause a great deal of trouble. There was also the basic trouble that those able to shout loudest or to make the maximum trouble at the most difficult period were apparently those to get the largest increases in wages. There are legislative steps which could be taken to improve their situation, but this Order and the Act from which it stems will not help in that direction. Thirdly, we know that the roots of the prices and incomes policy is productivity, and there is nothing in the Order to help to improve productivity, to make the national cake any larger. Most of all, the tragedy of the Government's economic policy is that it has stopped growth. It has interfered with the natural free movements of the economy which lead to the successful utilisation of labour. A prices and incomes freeze can lead only to the hoarding of labour in industries which do not require and cannot use it immediately, while starving newer and growing industries of the labour which they can afford, industries which can make a generous contribution to the national effort. In these circumstances, the Order will certainly not improve productivity. If anything, it will mean one more bit of stagnation, the stagnation to which we have become accustomed under the present Government, and that stagnation is relevant to our consideration of the Order, because if the national cake does not grow, there is less to share. The plain fact is that one will not get harmony in labour relations, or satisfaction in any way, unless there are wage increases to go round. If the national cake does not grow these will not be there. The fourth reason why we object to the Order, and a very vital one, is that raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Sir E. Brown), in his splendid interjection which largely demolished the speech of the hon. Member for South Shields. This was to do with the question of the compulsory powers. Believing in democracy, we cannot, under any circumstances, agree to the kind of powers contained in Section 16(4) of the 1966 Act. They are intolerable powers, and it is no defence for the Government to say that they probably will not be used. If the Government are insisting on going ahead with this Order they should at least take some legislative means of removing these penal sanctions from the Bill. They are something that we and most people in the trade union movement would not accept under any circumstances. If the Government insist on going ahead with this Order and carrying forward the standstill powers, can they give us an assurance that some of the lessons which they should have learned over the previous 12 months have been learned? First of all there is this matter, which affects my own constituency and Scotland as a whole, of the "game reserve" to which the hon. Member for Walton referred. He talked of the "rogue elephants" who come forward from time to time to upset the Government's policies. We have a substantial game reserve in Scotland and we have quite a few rogue elephants. They have not been the strong, large unions, but very small bands of responsible people. First of all we had the local government officers in Scotland, and then we had the electricians. This sane, sensible policy, as the Government claimed, when implemented, had the result, on some building sites, that electricians employed by Scottish employers were paid 1s. an hour less than electricians theoretically employed by English employers—an utter nonsense if ever there was one. It is quite clear that under this Order the same problem would arise. Have the Government taken any steps to remove these blatant injustices which came about under the previous Order? It is obvious that something should be done, and I can assure the Government that if under this Order we have repeated, under any circumstances, the blatant injustices of the N.A.L.G.O. and the electricians' pay award in Scotland, then there will be very real trouble from this side, as well as from the other side of the House. Secondly, will the Government ensure in the prices side of this standstill, that more effective means will be used to restraint inflation in the public sector? It has been quite alarming that many price increases which have largely undermined the Government's policy have been in the public sector. There have been substantial price rises in electricity, coal, gas and in other areas. The Government may claim, as the Secretary of State for Scotland has actually claimed, believe it or not, that the Government's powers held up increases. All that happened was that by postponing the increases for a limited period of time the rate of deficit of the nationalised industries was increased, and here was a greater increase in the price of the commodity when that was possible. The result has been, certainly in Scotland and I imagine that my English colleagues will have had the same experience, that in the public sector there have been very substantial increases. I hope that the Government will take steps to make sure that this power is spread equally, and applied fairly through all sectors of the economy, and if prices are held up for some period, then the same financial discipline will apply in the public sector as in the private sector. Basically, unless we get growth in our economy, unless the national cake grows, unless the Government will create the circumstances in which the people can solve the economic problems of the nation by their own efforts, through incentive and encouragement, we will carry on with this rather dull facade of Orders and further restrictions, and more and more we will head towards a chaotic situation, back to the jungle to which reference has already been made. I suggest that those who challenge us to state an alternative should look at the powers in Clause 16(4) and should bear in mind that for 13 years, when the Conservative Party were in power, they increased the standard of living of the average person more than in the previous half century and achieved all this great growth and great economic Leap forward without using any of the compulsory powers which will be introduced by the Order. That is a record of success which brought prosperity to all the people of the country—even those in the country areas. It was achieved without compulsion. I suggest that the Government should turn their minds away from compulsion and back to the policies which brought growth and prosperity to our nation in the past.9.11 p.m.
We ought not to let some of the concluding remarks of the hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Edward M. Taylor) go unanswered from this side of the House, even though we are critics of the Government's prices and incomes policy—although not critics of attempts to move towards a prices and incomes policy. When we are asked to believe in the great prosperity brought to the working people by the Conservative Party when they were in power, it is pertinent to point to the enormous balance-of-payments deficit with which the present Government have had to grapple since they have been in power. That is why a prices and incomes policy—without necessarily committing ourselves to this Measure and this Order—is so necessary.
The working people, including the trade union movement and all those unions affiliated to the T.U.C., well understand that they do not want illusory wage increases which are swallowed up by the rising cost of living. By and large the trade union movement has accepted the necessity of a prices and incomes policy. But what the movement is so sceptical about—as it has said through the T.U.C.—is that when the Government in the present difficult economic circumstances are trying to exercise this control, it will react against the interests of those who work by hand and by brain and react in the interests of those who manipulate prices and those who live on distributed profits. That is what the argument is all about. The hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Mawby) pointed out that in the kind of economy which we have at present there must be a free association of workers, on the one hand, and of employers, on the other, and that any interference in that process in any fundamental way must gum up the wheels of production. That is what the T.U.C. and Mr. George Woodcock, in particular, have been pointing out. It is no consolation for many of us on this side of the House, having observed the 13 years of wasted Tory rule, to say that we are now reaching a period of 15 years of wasted rule. We want to advance from the present position. It has been said that the debate this evening is somewhat lopsided because nearly all speakers have been critical of the Government's policy, but hon. Members opposite have also accepted that the traffic in the debate has been three-way and that there are fundamental differences between hon. Members on this side of the House and hon. Members opposite. I did not intend originally to take part in the debate—although I have spoken previously on wages Orders which have come before the House—until my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop)—who is not here at the moment—made his contribution. He made a plea in support of the Government but he had to acknowledge that the trade union movement is absolutely opposed to the present sort of compulsory reserve powers the Government are taking to themselves by this Order. These points have been made adequately by previous participants in the debate from this side of the House. They are critical of the Government in demonstrating the illogicality of this kind of voluntary-compulsory system which exists under the Act and in the Order now going through the House. In the final analysis the operation of compulsory policies means either fines on trade unionists and others who contravene the Act or imprisonment. No one on the Government Front Bench has yet spelled out the circumstances under which those fines or that imprisonment are likely to be applied. We know of the whole nature of our movement that if there is injustice associated with wage claims which get workers so steamed up that they feel that they must fight in the event of a worker or a shop steward being imprisoned this is not the end of the struggle. We cannot imprison thousands of workers should the circumstances arise. It therefore follows that if a proportion is put up in which it is said that the Government are not likely to use these powers they become laughable and should not be on the Statute Book. I return to the theme of the acceptance by the working people of the country represented by the trade union movement and mainly by hon. and right hon. Members on this side of the House of genuine ideas for a positive incomes policy. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. This Act and the Order that we are discussing have to be set against our experience of the past year or so. I remember arguing on behalf of S.O.G.A.T., the Society of Graphical and Allied Trades, when it was demonstrated that because of a freeze as distinct from the provisions of the new Act, this was the greatest injustice against trade unionists and collective bargaining. No doubt it will be pointed out in reply by my right hon. Friend the First Secretary of State and Secretary of State for Economic Affairs that there have to be provisions made against "rogue elephants", and that the T.U.C. does not account for the whole working force. Less than half the workers are enrolled in trade unions affiliated to the Trade Unions Congress. A large number of unions are outside affiliated membership. I say very seriously to my right hon. Friend that on the minds of people considering this matter inside and outside this House there is the consideration of what has gone before. There has been no real approval of individual bargaining. In cases where the skilled worker or technician is in great demand by an employer it sometimes has been possible to move from one floor to another in order to achieve a wage increase. There have been thousands of cases of price movements for commodities and of individuals trying to get what they can from employers. Can we blame them? This exercise is psychological. I ask the Government to let it enter their minds more freely that what they have been doing to the trade union movement should cause them to learn lessons accordingly. Why should not a highly-skilled technical worker go to an employer and get what he can provided it does not lead to inflation or increased commodity prices? The steam with which this kind of thing goes forward in industry is the motive force for higher productivity. The whole question of stifling trade unionists in this way cannot be divorced from the standstill by the lack of growth in the economy, because it is psychological. Hon. and right hon. Members do not have to take my word for it. They have only to look at the recent local election results and by-election results, which are a clear writing on the wall. It seems to me that in this policy everyone loves the Government except the voters. I hope the Government have taken due note, and have taken due warning from this. Think what it means to a worker in the future, if, as a result of going through the tortuous process of long-winded negotiations, a wage award is made, and he then finds that it is stood still by the Government. As I said in the debate the other night—in the early hours of the morning—when seeking to support a Clause concerning pensions, trying to see that the standstill in wages—Order. We cannot have the Committee stage again. The hon. Member must come to the Order.
What I am trying hard to do along, with apologies, is to show the psychological effect of this. I think the point will have been taken by the Government. I wanted to relate to this what has gone before, but I accept what you say, Mr. Speaker, that I cannot do this in an exhaustive kind of way by referring to all the Amendments which we sought to put forward to the Bill. I sought to explain that this is the thinking of the average worker in the trade union at present, and what it will be in the future when we activate Part II. I ask my right hon. Friends to consider very seriously the words I am using, because many hon. Members, at any rate on this side of the House, know that I have had very long experience of the British trade union movement as a whole, not only one part of it. Those people are our kind of people, and so it is necessary to step very gingerly in the future in the operation of Part II. I believe that the Government will step gingerly. In fact, I think they will step so gingerly they will not operate it at all. It is because I think it unnecessary in the present setting that I shall not support it in the Lobby tonight.
9.22 p.m.
I am sure that the whole House has listened with pleasure to the hon. Member for Southall (Mr. Bidwell) preaching his archetypal Socialism. Indeed, if I may say so without offence to him, I would regard him as a sort of Neanderthal Socialist, whose ideas have little relevance to the issues which face us. But I am bound to say that with a great deal of what he had to say on this particular issue of the compulsory powers which the Government are taking against trade unions we on this side of the House agree.
I must express astonishment at hearing the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster congratulating himself and the whole Government for bringing forward this Order, not on the ground that the powers which it contains are necessary, though he did say that, but on the ground principally that it represents a retreat from the position which the Government found themselves forced to take up almost exactly a year ago when they instituted Part IV of the 1966 Act. At that time, the House will remember, the Prime Minister went to America and, talking in New York, announced that the Government were taking powers which no other peace-time Government had ever taken in history. That is the position from which the Government are now retreating, and it really is a bit naïve that they should congratulate themselves in the House tonight that they are no longer adhering to those dictatorial powers of unprecedented severity which they thought it right to take a year ago. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said that he thought that the powers over prices and incomes would be tapered off, and he congratulated himself that this was part of the process. However, nothing that I have heard from either side of the House—and we await with interest to hear what the First Secretary has to say—has convinced me that the tapering off will not be a lengthy period. I regard it as highly probable that we shall be facing comparable legislation this time next year. It is becoming increasingly difficult for the Government to find people prepared to expound the case for this legislation. We have heard only one back-bench speaker from the other side of the House in favour of it. However, listening to the case being expounded, I am impressed more and more by the credibility gap. The Government and their spokesmen who attempt to propound the case for the Act and for the Order which we are discussing seem to carry less and less credibility as they go. From time to time, a Government will find themselves implementing a policy which they have difficulty in persuading their followers and the country at large to accept. Such cases fall into two distinct categories. There are those policies which a Government adopt and which, by sheer force of argument and logic over the weeks and months in which the legislation is before the House and in which speeches are made in the country, people gradually come to see the point of and come to accept and understand. An example not so far removed from the subject which we are discussing was the legislation introduced by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition when he was President of the Board of Trade dealing with resale price maintenance. It was highly unpopular, not least among members of his own party. Over the weeks and months in which the case was argued, most people came to see in the end that he was talking sense and that it was in the interests of the country. Indeed, most of the price reductions over the last two or three years owe far more to that piece of legislation than to any Measure introduced by the present Government. That is one sort. The other sort, to which the right hon. Gentleman's arguments tonight were addressed, is where, as the weeks, months and, in this case, the years proceed, credibility diminishes and the arguments appear more hollow and unreal. The Prime Minister has been described as leading a Walter Mitty existence, where his actions are governed increasingly by the figments of his own imagination rather than by any reality that he sees about him. As we discuss the prices and incomes legislation and the many Orders which have been introduced under it, it becomes apparent that the Prime Minister is served by a large number of mini-Mittys sitting on the Treasury Bench who are wallowing increasingly in self-delusion about what they hope to achieve. Very often, I feel that the arguments would be put just as affectively if, instead of these Mittys, we had the machine standing at the Dispatch Box going "Topoketa, topoketa"—Order, I am enjoying this, but the hon. Gentleman must now come to the Order.
I apologise, Mr. Speaker, but the arguments which we have heard in support of the legislation are so thin and unconvincing that one is driven to protest.
Most of the discussion this evening has been about the impact of Part II of the 1966 Act, which the Order activates, on wages and trade union negotiations. I do not want to add anything to them except to enforce wholeheartedly what my hon. Friends have said about the over-weaning nature of the powers which the Government are taking and to repeat that they are acting in the wrong direction. They are intended to take action which will result in trades unions carrying out the activities which it is their primary function to perform. Instead, if it is felt that these institutions are tending to act against the national interest, they will deal with the whole legal structure and framework within which they operate. I want, now, to say a few words about the impact of the Order and of Part II of the Act on prices, because I am extremely unclear about how the Government intend to operate this part of the Act in relation to prices. In the White Paper of last February we were told what the policy was to be when the period of severe restraint ended. In paragraph 8 of Command 3235 we were told that the original voluntary early warning system was to end on 30th June, on the date when the period of severe restraint ended, and yet it seems clear—I do not begin to profess to be as assiduous a student of this legislation as many of my hon. Friends who have sat through many nights of debate can claim to be—that Section 7 of the 1966 Act is apt, when activated as it will be by this Order, to implement the statutory early warning system. The question which the Government must answer, and to which there has been virtually no reference during the debate, is: What are the products, what is the range of goods and services, in respect of which this statutory early warning system is to operate? We are told that for the moment these are still under consideration between the Government and trade associations, but this is not good enough for the House. Under this Order the Government are taking power to implement a Section of an Act which is intended to operate in respect of economically significant products, yet this House has not been given a single indication of the products, the goods, and services in respect of which these powers are to be used. In the original early warning White Paper, Cmnd. 2808, we had substantial lists of products which were to be subject to the early warning system. There were long lists of food products, industrial equipment, consumer durables, shoes, clothes, industrial materials, and all sort of things, for which notification of price increases was intended to be made. Some of these were extremely vague and perhaps I might speak about two materials in the list of which I have some personal knowledge. Here I must declare an interest, because I am a director of a plastics company. Two of the materials mentioned were PVC and polyethylene. These come in a variety of forms. Under the voluntary system—and this is really the point that I wish to make—though it was in many ways unsatisfactory, in the last resort it did not really matter if the description of goods in respect of which early warning was hoped for by the Government was not entirely specific, because manufacturers could, if they wished, either make up their minds themselves about whether they considered their case ought to go for early warning, or they could consult a Government Department to get that Department's interpretation of what the White Paper was supposed to mean. That sort of thing is acceptable, though only just so, in a voluntary early warning system. When we come to a statutory early warning system, when, we come to the provisions of an Act which are backed legal sanctions, by penalties, by fines, we, have to be very much more specific, and it is in the effort to be specific about prices and incomes legislation, that the Government have all along run on to their most dangerous rocks and have found that the policy has scarcely managed to stay afloat. There is an infinite variety of prices, and there should, therefore, be infinite flexibility. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) has said that the market system is the most sensitive, most perfect computer, of them all, and in many respects he is right. If the Government are seeking to interfere with the market system as it applies to prices not only are they likely to do grave damage to the system as a whole; they will find it extremely difficult to operate at all effectively within the law. If we take away from an industrialist his right to determine his own prices in the light of market conditions we take away from him one of the cardinal features of running any business. The House is entitled to have from the First Secretary an explanation—which we have not had from the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster—how Part II, as activated by the Order, will operate in respect to prices. Many industrialists outside the House will study his answer with acute interest. In his Budget statement the Chancellor of the Exchequer said that he had no wish to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. It must be remembered that the vast majority of enterprises to which this legislation and its control over prices will apply will be those geese whom the Chancellor hopes to continue to lay, for him—I believe that he was talking merely of taxation and revenue—golden eggs. If these geese are to continue to operate in the national interest, whether laying golden eggs for the Chancellor or anything else, they must be free to operate in the market and in conditions that allow them to manage their businesses with the maximum flexibility. This includes flexibility in pricing. If the Government are now to take statutory powers to interfere with the price mechanism whereby businesses determine the prices of their goods and services they will be continuing down this very slippery slope. The First Secretary and his colleague the Chancellor will find that so far from laying golden eggs these geese will increasingly lay china eggs, and right hon. Gentlemen will find that they will not be able to sell their china eggs anywhere else in the world.9.37 p.m.
I want to begin with an apology to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and to my right hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham (Mr. R. Carr) for the fact that I was unable to hear their opening speeches because of a prior commitment which I was obliged to fulfil. The whole timing of prices and incomes legislation has to some extent become a matter of speculation and personal inconvenience. I make this point because it is one of the courtesies of the House—which I try to observe as much as possible—to hear the opening speeches in a debate of as much significance as this.
I hope that I shall not be regarded as presumptuous when I say that I have lived with debates on prices and incomes legislation for so long that I have a fairly good working knowledge of what will have been said by both Front Bench speakers. I shall confine my remarks to three aspects of the Order. The first relates to the way in which the National Board for Prices and Incomes shall be used—which, in substance, arises from Section 8 of the Prices and Incomes Act, 1966, which will be activated by the Order. My subsequent remarks will concern the relations between the Board and the Government, and to some extent these turn on Sections 8 and 9. Thirdly, I want to consider the whole concept of Part II as providing a kind of long-stop for the arrangements which are currently being conducted by the T.U.C. concerning wage vetting. These apply to the whole of Part II of the Prices and Incomes Act 1966. The hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop) spoke sturdily in the Government's defence in what was a memorable contribution, not least because he was the only supporter of the Government on their own benches who has spoken. He said that this legislation was not extraordinary and that we were making a meal of it. In Committee, when we debated what is now Section 6 of the 1966 Act, under which the Order is activated, this is what Mr. Frank Cousins thought of these powers:That is not my answer to the hon. Member but that of the Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union, under the most ideal circumstances—when we were debating the very powers which we are now invoking. I will not tempt the House to think that commentary he would make on the speech by the Leader of the House in Shrewsbury last week. How will the Prices and Incomes Board proceed? Because the Government have used it as their sole regulatory device, there is bound to be a fascinating degree of political sensitivity in what is chosen for it. This is important because, as Part II clearly defines, only the Government may refer any items to the Board. One case which demonstrates the Board's totally unreal and intolerable task is shown in a Written Answer which I received on 20th June to a Question asking the Minister of Health for his plans to refer to the Board the salaries of nurses and midwives. It said:"This proposal, however, is more rigid than anything there is anywhere else in the world outside the totalitarian societies. I do not easily reconcile the idea that we have probably the most advanced trade union movement in the world and yet the most restrictive Governmental edict as to what it can or cannot do."—OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee B, 2nd August, 1966; c. 268.]
Since that date, a reference has been made. This is a matter of great political sensitivity, touching on one of the most complex aspects of the determination of incomes, namely, the element of vocation. I should be out of order in debating this subject, but I want only to argue that for Mr. Aubrey Jones to conduct this survey will require time, skill and resources on a considerable scale. Do we think that the Board, the sole regulatory power that the Government have for their policy under Part II, is capable of producing the kind of decisions which will be widely accepted as fair and reasonable and which will command respect, respect not only within the law which is being invoked this evening, but respect of such moral significance that it will be widely observed by practically everyone so that there is no need to have universal, legal intervention? The powers sought under Part II and the constant references made in Part II to the rôle that the Board shall play must remind us that the Board is limited in the number of its members and is having to sub-contract its jobs to firms of consultants. A little further information has come to light to reveal the sham and inadequacy of Part II. We do not know, because it is the Government's policy not to reveal it, who are the consultants employed by the Board for its surveys or what fees are paid. In one sense it is more important to know the size of the fees paid than the names of the consultants, because the size of fee would at least afford some measure of the amount of work which has gone into determining the information and filling in the background to enable the Board to adjudicate on the virtue or otherwise of a certain income or a certain price. We know from an Answer to myself concerning the reference on bank charges that that inquiry was conducted by Booz, Allen. We know from the text of the report on newsprint that that survey was conducted by an American firm. At least two of the reports have been done by overseas consultants. When I asked the First Secretary what had"It is proposed to refer the pay of Nurses and Midwives to the National Board for Prices and Incomes in accordance with the recommendation of the Nurses and Midwives Whitley Council as soon as possible."—cannot do."—OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing c. 253.]
and how much to foreign companies, the answer was—I give it to the nearest £1,000—£154,000 and £6,000 respectively. There are about 30 references in which the surveys might conceivably have been done by British firms of consultants, but I leave that on one side. Six thousand pounds was paid to consultants to assist Mr. Aubrey Jones in the preparation of reports on newsprint and on bank charges. We know the sheer staggering monumental width of judgment that Mr. Aubrey Jones felt empowered to make on bank charges. It is nice to know that all that was bought for less than £6,000, because out of the £6,000 had to come the cost of that study and perhaps others. These points have real significance, especially for hon. Members opposite, because if, as a result of Part II, legislation is to be passed concerning the determination of incomes, every hon. Member opposite will want to believe that the subject has been thoroughly and comprehensively studied and will not be just a politically convenient, patched up job. That assurance can be provided, at least in part, only if we have some assurance as to how much has been spent on preparing the statistical and other informa- tion which is relevant to the production of a report. Yet this basic information has always been denied to the House. In considering the relationship between the Government and the Board, an extraordinary thing happened a few days ago on which the House should reflect. On 24th May I received a Press Notice from the Department of Economic Affairs headed:"been the expenditure of the National Board for Prices and Incomes on management consultants and outside accountants in the preparation of reports; and how much of this had been paid to British"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 6th July, 1967; Vol. 749, c. 276.]
It stated:"Reference to the National Board for Prices and Incomes of the Prices of Fletton and Non-fletton Bricks".
I thought—and I imagine most hon. Members thought—that that meant that the prices of bricks would be held under the standstill arrangements. Imagine my surprise—I put my emotion at no higher a pitch—when I read in The Times Business Supplement at the end of last week:"A general increase in brick prices could have a significant effect on costs, especially of the building trade. The First Secretary and the Minister of Public Building and Works therefore consider it desirable that the proposed increases of the prices of fletton and non-fletton producers should be subject to independent investigation by the National Board for Prices and Incomes. Accordingly, in pursuance of their powers …"
The article stated:"Brick rise a life-saver".
What has happened to the Board and the reference made on 24th May? I intend to see that Mr. Clive Jenkins and Mr. Frank Cousins hear about this, because the fact that a reference may be made to the Board and that before the Board has reported the Government may say, "You can put up your prices", is, I suspect, very big news indeed. I may have got all this completely wrong. I would be the first to concede that everything may be altered as a result of our passing this Order and that the reference of brick prices was entirely politically motivated—that the Government knew that a black market was developing in brick prices and conceded the realism of the situation by allowing a price increase. As a result of activating Section 6 of the Act, could a situation arise in which the Government, having referred a price or income to the Board, could then say, in advance of that reference being adjudicated and published by the Board, "We will permit an increase"? This is what the House and people like Mr. Clive Jenkins want to know."The National Coal Board is to raise the price of their bricks by 3 per cent. This follows the concession announced by the Ministry of Public Building and Works yesterday, that brick manufacturers may put their prices up by 3 per cent. provided they are able to justify the increase. The N.C.B. is the country's biggest producer of non-fletton bricks, over 600 m. a year. The Ministry's concession represents a personal triumph for Kenneth Timperley, director of Clay Industries, who described the interim increase as 'a lifesaver'."
Does the hon. Gentleman accept 100 per cent. the policy of Frank Cousins and Clive Jenkins?
I can answer that with brevity and clarity: "No"—and if I were to explain the reasons to the hon. Gentleman I would soon be called to order. However, there will be many occasions when we can debate this issue at length.
The development of the long-stop theory is a fascinating matter indeed. I recall many occasions when "Mr. Extras" has been the top scorer. It is no great sign of sophistication to be talking in the language of long-stops. Indeed, if the Government were more subtle they would be talking of deep third man. Be that as it may, at least it is not a miliary metaphor or the physician's metaphor. None the less, it is not a very helpful metaphor, because the idea is that this legislation provides a long-stop—some good soul who is prepared to pick up the ball before it goes over the boundary and scores four runs. The idea is that as the T.U.C. cannot quite do it this year we must have this provision, but we had the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) devastatingly destroy the whole basis of the argument. In charity, I put a few questions to find out how the long-stop principle would be put into operation. This also was a Question for the Joint Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Labour, without whom no prices and incomes debate would be complete as he has struggled manfully time and again over the Part IV Orders. I ask him if heThe Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour replied:"… will state how many wage claims, the number of workers involved and the average percentage claimed increase in income is covered by applications that have been notified to him as having passed the Trades Union Congress vetting committee; and what is the corresponding information on salary claims."
It does not provide a statistical basis. May be it was a complicated and long question but it was a vital question, because it is the question around which the whole debate revolves. If it cannot be answered, it is not a policy of long stop at all but of the Government trying to pretend to know about things of which they have no knowledge and that they can do things about which they are totally ineffectual. I end, pretty well as I began, with another quotation from Mr. Frank Cousins. I know that it will please hon. Members opposite below the Gangway. It was in the same debate but none the less it was a very pertinent and shrewd comment—"My information about the work of the vetting committee of the T.U.C. does not provide a basis for the statistical comparisons for which the hon. Member asks."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 5th July, 1967; Vol. 749, c. 269.]
I intervene only to say that if the hon. Member goes on like this he will qualify as a fully sponsored member of the Transport and General Workers' Union.
Mr. Speaker has rightly reminded us that privilege is a serious thing and I could not again follow that intervention.
Mr. Cousins said:That is a message that I believe is of special significance to the intellectuals who now occupy the Treasury Bench because, in invoking this Order, they are making immense strides of intervention into the industrial and commercial practice of the country. Indeed their cheer leader has now arrived, if only to endorse my comments. Therefore, although the Government will win the vote this evening—they will win by a modest majority, but they will win—it will be no ordinary vote. It will be a high symbolic occasion, an occasion when the planners have triumphed over the unions, but it will be a Pyrrhic victory for the planners, because I do not believe, however ambitious and however arrogant may be the intellectual view of politics, that it contains the essential ingredient of common sense or, indeed, of efficiency. Therefore, we will depend on the saving grace of inefficiency to rescue us from the Government's ambitions in their prices and incomes policy."I have said that we must have a method of ensuring there is a growth of the economy and an improvement in the standard of living. The place to get this is not in Parliament. One cannot do this in Parliament. The complex problems of industrial relations and understanding between the two sides of industry cannot be solved unless one is working in industry."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee B, 2nd August, 1966; c. 267.]
10.0 p.m.
I am glad that the First Secretary of State is to make a brief reply to this debate on a Motion for an affirmative Order which will activate Part II of the Prices and Incomes Act. We now have things the right way round. We have passed the Act and it and the 1966 Act will be read together as the Prices and Incomes Act, 1966–67. Now we are taking the Order. The Leader of the House, now known as the "Medicine Man" of the Labour Party, set out to enschool us in a slightly different procedure, but following the precedent of Part IV, it is much better that we should have had a special debate after the Act itself is on the Statute Book.
The House will remember that Part IV was apostrophised by the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) as the only Act he can remember recommended to the House on the ground that it was not going to be used. But exactly the same thing can be said about Part II. We were told a year ago that it was a precautionary measure. We thought we knew better and, indeed, tonight proved that we did. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster today talked again in terms of the long stop, which has been demolished effectively by my hon. Friend the Member for Oswestry (Mr. Biffen). The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster told us that the Government have had consultations—as they were bound to do by the Act—with the C.B.I. and the T.U.C. before the Order was made. That is certainly accurate, but the First Secretary of State will also agree that both the C.B.I. and the T.U.C. did not want this Order any more than they wanted Part IV, and this activation of Part II has very few friends. I was surprised by one point, and perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will take it up. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster told us that neither the C.B.I. nor the T.U.C. had objected to any of the Orders made. My impression certainly was that the C.B.I. fiercely objected to the Order about laundry prices, and I recall the Director-General of the C.B.I. saying that it felt absolutely betrayed by what had been done. Perhaps he was using that phrase in the narrower sense in relation to wages. Our attitude to Part II is straightforward. We were against the original Part II and á fortiori are against the strengthened Part II whose implementation concerns us tonight. This is a policy for prices and incomes. During the passage of the Act, there was an attempt to insert words about productivity. As my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Edward M. Taylor) has said, there is nothing in it which trenches upon productivity at all. I have heard the view expressed that the part of the Act dealing with prices is a bluff. One hon. Member opposite, during the passage of the Act, said that at one and the same time the provisions in relation to prices in Part II could not be both bluff and dangerous nonsense. I disagree. They are as they stand bluff, because as has been made clear from the solitary Order on laundries, the Government do not really intend to use these provisions; but they would be dangerous nonsense if the Government thought that they could use them and by doing so have the slightest influence upon individual prices. We are asked, then, for the powers under Part II to control wages, and that is really the heart of the matter. It has been established in long debates that the Bill, although it does not seek to be, is in effect, anti-trade union. It has been accepted that many incomes are left untouched by the Bill. It has been proven now that, far from bringing any benefit to the lower-paid workers, if anything, it operates against their interests. I hope very much that the First Secretary will take up the points made in an excellent speech by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Darwen (Mr. Fletcher-Cooke) in relation to arbitration. Lastly, as the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) made absolutely clear—and this, after all, is legislation in relation to control of wages, which no Government have contemplated before—the T.U.C. was against it. There is another provision in Part II which I have not heard commented on tonight, Clause 12, which relates to dividends. This is somewhat strange as dividends are somewhat emotive as a subject for debate in this House. According to Clause 12, the intention to increase dividends must be notified within seven days of the directors' decision and the increase is to be measured by reference to an earlier year which will be prescribed by the Secretary of State. The curious point about Clause 12, as I read it—perhaps the First Secretary can confirm this—is that there is no power to prevent or to delay dividend increases even in cases which have been referred, under Part I, to the Prices and Incomes Board. If we look at the possible form of reference, which would come under Clause 2 of the Act, it is astonishingly wide. Leaving out unimportant subsection (1) words:Then it goes on to the magnificent coda of subsection (2), which starts off:"The Secretary of State … may refer to the Board any question relating to wages, salaries or other forms of incomes, or to prices, charges or other sums payable under transactions of any description relating to any form of property or rights or to services of any description or to returns on capital invested in any form of property, including company dividends …".
That, no doubt, is sweet music to hon. Members opposite, but they are appalling words to find in a Statute passed by the House of Commons and which we are now asked to activate. If I am right about dividends, and I think I am, there is no power to do anything about them. So what is the point of the Clause? There is no need for the Clause because, as anybody who has had anything to do with a company knows, an alteration in the dividend, or even the same dividend, for that matter, is notified not within seven days but within hours. All this information, for any company of any importance, is known literally at once. If the First Secretary of State is chasing tiny little companies, then Clause 12 is even less important than one thinks. There is nothing about productivity in Part II, or in the rest of the Act. What there is about prices is meaningless, as was shown in the saga about brick prices given by my hon. Friend the Member for Oswestry. What there is about dividends is meaningless and unnecessary. All this flummery is in order that the Secretary of State may have power to control wages. The rest is window dressing, and we all know it. What there is about dividends is window dressing; what there is about prices is window dressing; productivity is not mentioned; it is the power to control wages that interests the Secretary of State, and that is what we shall be deciding tonight. But I hope that when, as no doubt, his docile majority gives him this power tonight, the Secretary of State will be careful in its use. I hope that he will remember Part IV and what happened in the Thorn and other cases with the definition of Section 29. He will remember—he acknowledged it the other day—that I brought these cases forward in October and he claimed, or complained, that I had not made a similar point when the Bill was going through in July. Of course, in July I did not know to what use Part IV was to be put. We were virtually assured that it would not be used at all, and until the Thorn case arose we did not know exactly what sort of interpretation was to be put on the words which the House of Commons had passed. The reality of the matter is that the legal advice of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir J. Hobson), the former Attorney-General, was right and the legal advice of the present Attorney-General was wrong. That will surprise nobody. It was also a fact, however unlikely the alliance, that the hon. Member for Penistone (Mr. Mendelson) and I were right and the First Secretary and the Parliamentary Secretary, who is the First Secretary's leg man—and a jolly good one he is, too—were wrong. If we give this authority to the First Secretary, I hope that when we have these debates it will just occur to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour that this time he might be wrong. I should like the thought just to flash across his mind for a moment, because we debated in all these Orders for night after night and four out of nine had to be annulled. I am not myself lacking in confidence—I rather like it as an attribute—but I must say that the Parliamentary Secretary sometimes leaves me breathless. He will remember that Lord Melbourne said:"A question referred to the Board under subsection (1) above may be framed in any way whatsoever…".
When the time comes to debate all these Motions under Part II, I hope that there is just the possibility of a glimmer of a thought that the interpretations given to us from the Treasury Bench might conceivably be wrong. What use are the Government to make of this power when they have won it tonight? If they are to try and make it effective, which I believe to be an impossible task, they will have to put Orders before the House by the thousand. We know that they cannot do that, if only because of the intake which can be absorbed by the Prices and Incomes Board. But I tell the First Secretary something else: we will put down a Prayer against every Order which the right hon. Gentleman introduces. That will limit his folly as happened with the Orders under Part IV. If he goes on and tries to make the hundreds or thousands of Orders which will be necessary, no other business will be transacted in the House of Commons next Session and we will have a remarkably short Gracious Speech which will say that no legislation is contemplated because all the time will be taken up by praying to annul prices and incomes Orders. That is a fair and, the First Secretary will agree, amiable warning. We do not like this, and we will take Parliamentary opportunities to oppose it wherever we can. If, and I think that this is the much more likely course of the two, if this legislation is to be ineffective, then it is just one more bluff, and it will remain in terrorem for people, as an indication of the Government's wishes. We have seen this happen in each of the last three years. We have seen it in the prices and incomes measure which came forward this year, last year and the year before. We have seen Cabinet Ministers training their batteries on each other rather than on us, and we see their faithful supporters behind them, if they have any, with their staffs in their hands and their loins girt, ready to make one more feast of their own words as soon as the First Secretary comes to the Box to order them to do so. This Bill has very little support indeed. There has been only one speech, from the hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop) supporting it, and he was probably corralled by the Whips into speaking in this debate."I wish that I was as cocksure of anything as Tom Macaulay is of everything."
Far from it.
Anyway, the only voice raised from the other side in support of this Bill was the hon. Member. The position is simply that we know that the T.U.C. and C.B.I. are against it. The Chancellor of the Duchy, as was pointed out by his hon. Friend the Member for Salford, West (Mr. Orme), was somewhat selective in his quotations from Mr. George Woodcock.
As I understand it, Mr. Woodcock's attitude towards this Bill is one of contempt. He calls it a bauble, and no conceivable support can be looked for in that quarter. As we saw, the majority shrank from the nominal 100 or so down to 20. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy asked, if we were to vote against this, as we shall, what we would put in its place. My right hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham (Mr. R. Carr) answered this without getting out of order, or without getting much out of order, and I endorse what he says. The immediate point before us is that we are concerned not with a voluntary policy, which I have said many times can play a part but which should not play a primary part in our economic management, but with whether to give authority to the Government to activate a strengthened Part II. As far as I can tell, every single one of my hon. and right hon. Friends is against that particular proposition. When I say that we on this side of the House are against the statutory incomes policy, unlike the Prime Minister, we mean it. The right hon. Gentleman said at the time of the election that we would be on a slippery slope—we all know the quotation so well—that the Government were not thinking of it. This is the end of the road, and the majority of the Government's supporters will go into the Lobby in a comparatively short time now to support something which was quite rightly condemned by the Prime Minister at election time about a year ago. The question before the House is: Do we have a statutory form of incomes policy, do we activate Part II? We for our part will have none of it. We have opposed it at every stage, we will oppose it tonight, and we will oppose in due course each and probably all of the Orders made under it.Before my right hon. Friend sits down, could he answer one question? He has mentioned that there was a lack of support for this legislation on the benches opposite. Has he noticed that there are twice as many Tories on our side as there are Socialists opposite? Is that because they are so thick-skulled that they do not understand what we are talking about?
Order. Interventions ought always to be worth while, especially after a right hon. Member has sat down.
rose—
Order. The hon. and gallant Gentleman can intervene again when Mr. Speaker has sat down.
If I may continue my intervention, leaving out the fact that the Opposition are thick-skulled, is it a fact that the Opposition are so lukewarm about this legislation that they cannot bother to attend the debate?
10.21 p.m.
I hope that I may begin by reminding the House of the speech of the right hon. Member for Mitcham (Mr. R. Carr) in opening the debate. It is the more important to do so since so few of his hon. Friends had the advantage of hearing it—not even the hon. and gallant Member for Knutsford (Sir W. Bromley-Davenport).
It was an important speech, because he laid down in it the proposition that it would be desirable to have what he called a more orderly system of collective bargaining than we have at present. He meant, I take it, that the system of collective bargaining as it now works is not perfect and that it should have more order and reason in it. So far we are agreed. He said, further, that for this purpose there ought to be an agency. I suppose that he would have used the word "board" but for his deference to his hon. Friend the Member for Oswestry (Mr. Biffen). This agency would inquire into prices and incomes so that the more orderly collective bargaining could proceed with knowledge. He further said that in this more orderly process both the T.U.C. and the C.B.I. have a part to play. Are we to understand that during the whole process, with the agency, the T.U.C. and the C.B.I. expressing their views, the Government are to remain silent, not expressing an opinion at all throughout the proceedings? Was that the right hon. Gentleman's view?I do not think that I should be in order to repeat it, but if the right hon. Gentleman read the speech which I made on Second Reading of the Bill he would find that question precisely answered.
I am sorry that the right hon. Gentleman will not remind me what his answer was.
Let us suppose that the right hon. Gentleman does not think that the Government should remain silent throughout the whole of these proceedings. I think that that is his view—that the Government also would have some responsi- bilities and duties in this matter. If I am wrong, I hope that he will correct me. It is established that the right hon. Gentleman takes the view that there ought to be a more orderly process of collective bargaining, with an agency presumably comparable with the National Board for Prices and Incomes, and the T.U.C., the C.B.I. and the Government interested in the process, and that this would lead to an improvement in the methods of collective bargaining. He also takes the view that that should operate entirely without statutory powers. This would presumably be a more orderly system of collective bargaining, but nonetheless voluntary, although at the same time useful. With all this—since this is the view of the right hon. Gentleman and the Conservative Party—I agree. In that case why did he express in his speech today the view that a voluntary prices and incomes policy was not viable? This cleavage of opinion has appeared throughout the speeches of the Conservative Party.I said that the Government idea of a voluntary policy was not viable. I said that if we take the five-pronged measure which I recommended to the House on behalf or the Opposition, which included a wholesale review of the law relating to industrial relations, in the context of that five-pronged policy a voluntary system was viable.
That was not quite the argument the right hon. Genleman was putting forward. He was arguing—[Interruption.]
Order. Noise does not help at any time. It help even less from those who have not heard the debate.
The right hon. Gentleman's argument was that the Government would be driven back to compulsion because the voluntary policy was not viable. That was inconsistent with what he had argued in the rest of his speech. Similarly, the hon. and learned Member for Darwen (Mr. Fletcher-Cooke) argued that at the end of the year when all compulsory powers have gone we shall go back to what we had two years ago, but that surely means that he takes the view that all the effort now being made by the T.U.C. to provide us with what his right hon. Friend told us was more orderly collective bargaining will have had no effect during that period.
I do not know how many hon. Members opposite share that view, that what the T.U.C. is doing is useless. The Government do not take that view. I believe that in the last 12 months and in the 12 months to come, the work being done by the T.U.C. to build up a vetting system will be of great value in providing us with what the right hon. Gentleman called a more orderly system of collective bargaining. That is why I expressed both the hope and belief that at the end of this 12 months the last remnant of statutory power can disappear and we should be able to work then a fully voluntary policy. The argument that that cannot be done is based on the assumption, which the hon. and learned Member for Darwen makes, that the work now being done by the T.U.C. is useless. That again is not in line with the views expressed by his right hon. Friend and certainly not in line with the, at times, almost fulsome if not perhaps altogether sincere praise of the trade union movement which we had from the benches opposite during this debate. The right hon. Member for Mitcham has just said that all would be well if we introduced the Tory five-pronged policy. A number of references were made to this. Since they got past the Chair, I think I might be able to spend just a few minutes commenting on these Tory alternatives. What they are saying to us is, "Don't have your statutory powers." Some of them go further. The hon. Member for Oswestry says, "Don't have your Prices and Incomes Board." The hon. and learned Member for Darwen says, "The T.U.C. vetting machinery is no good. What we want"—this oft-repeated, vague phrase—"is to bring the trade union movement within the legal framework." No one defined it more precisely than that. I will tell the House what it means. It means reversing the important principle enshrined in the 1906 Trade Disputes Act and returning trade unions to the system before the Taff Vale judgment making a trade union liable in law to damages for torts in breach of contract committed by any of its members. If hon. and right hon. Members opposite say that is not what that vague phrase means, they have had nearly four hours during the debate to make themselves a little clearer. I trust that if there are any of my hon. Friends—I should not think it very likely—who have been at all impressed by the pro-trade union attitude adopted by the party opposite tonight they will take notice of what is actually proposed. I notice with interest that no hon. or right hon. Member opposite disputes that this is what in fact this vague phrase means.Without disputing this for a moment, may I ask whether the right hon. Gentleman can mention one other modern industrial country whose trade union structure is on the same basis as ours? We are the odd country out.
I am glad to have that confirmation from the hon. Gentleman opposite that this is in fact what they are proposing. I draw this to the attention of my hon. Friends. If they do not think, some of them, that the action we are taking at the present time is wise, I think they will notice the alternative which has been repeatedly dangled before them, and this is the more unfortunate because, surely, what is necessary, as was said by my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop), is that the influence and authority of the trade union movement and the working of its vetting machinery should grow in prestige during the coming 12 months.
It was argued that by introducing this Order we may be hindering that process. Neither my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, nor I, nor anyone, has denied that the trade union movement does not like our introducing this Order, but I say also that they have made it very clear indeed that they are not going to let that disagreement inhibit their attempts to make the vetting machinery a success. But if they are now to be told by a party which wants to be the alternative Government that there is going to be this very serious alteration of trade union law, is it suggested that that is going to help the trade union movement to grow in authority and deal with difficult questions of wages affecting the unions which belong to the T.U.C.? What, then, is at issue in this Order? It is argued that the powers now possessed by the Government, now until 11th August this year, should be reduced. Despite some of the dramatic pictures drawn—on both sides—of what might happen under these powers, it was not disputed—my right hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) accepted—that this represents a reduction in the amount of statutory power which the Government now have. It is important to notice that, in view of some of the comments made about penal sanctions. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Edward M. Taylor) argued that if two trade unionists met together to talk about a rise in wages they could be prosecuted under the Act. If he will look at what Section 16 says he will see that that is a feat of imagination on his part. The words could not possibly bear that interpretation. There has got to be an attempt to induce or compel an employer to raise wages contrary to an Order which has been made. Hon. Members may say—I understand the feelings of those who do say this—that they do not want the power even to that extent. But even that extent is a totally different picture from the one drawn by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Cathcart. It is reasonable in this connection to look at what in fact has happened. There has been no prosecution under the Act. There has been only a very limited number of Orders under the Act. Every Order respecting wages was the subject, before it was made, of consultation with representatives of the T.U.C., and in no case did they raise any objection to it. That is the reality of what has happened, and I think that trade unionists and the country as a whole are likely to look more at that reality than at the nightmares and imaginations conjured by hon. Gentlemen opposite.Would the First Secretary not agree that under the powers it is wholly possible, if they are implemented, for two people to be sent to prison for discussing a wage rise? What is the point of justifying the powers by saying they have not been used and will not be? If they are not for use, why bring them in at all?
I certainly deny that people can be prosecuted merely because they have discussed wages. If the hon. Gentleman will look at the Section he will see that the action has to be of a kind which is intended to get an employer to, or to put on employer in a position where he must, break the law. Two people merely coming together to talk about raising wages could not possibly come within that definition, and I think that it is relevant to draw attention to what has happened, because it might be said that it is the Government's intention to try to interpret their powers as fully and as harshly as possible. What has happened in the past is relevant evidence to judge whether there is any truth in a charge of that kind.
Let me say a little more about how the past powers have been used, because it is relevant to help the House to judge in what spirit the Government approach their present powers. Here, I want to take up some of the points made about the past use of the powers by my hon. Friend the Member for Salford, West (Mr. Orme), who described what had been done about prices as a "fiasco". The right hon. Member for Enfield, West (Mr. Iain Macleod), in search of further words, used "bluff", and another word which escapes me at the moment. Let us look at what has happened. It was made clear—[Interruption.] I am sorry that the hon. and gallant Member for Knutsford is sleepy—No, not sleepy. I am bored.
I quite understand that a subject affecting the welfare and rights of working people would be tedious to the hon. and gallant Gentleman—
It is not the subject that bores me. It is the manner in which the right hon. Gentleman, well known to be one of the biggest bores in the House, presents it.
At least the hon. and gallant Gentleman has come to listen to me, which is more than he did when his right hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham opened the debate from his own side.
I have been patient and good-mannered in listening to the right hon. Gentleman. I apologise, but I could not conceal my boredom and, as I can no longer conceal it, I will leave the Chamber.
It serves my right hon. Friend right for giving way to the hon. and gallant Gentleman.
I should have thought that the withdrawal of the hon. and gallant Member for Knutsford was, on the whole, an advantage to the House. I may say that if ever again I am able to achieve a like result by a speech, I shall certainly seize the opportunity.
However, if I may take up this question of prices, it was made clear to the country at the time that the freeze was introduced that there would be some rises in prices. During the whole 12 months, the rise in prices has been in the neighbourhood of 2½ per cent., as I have told the House on more than one occasion. The greater part of that occurred in the first six months of the freeze—that is, the last six months of last year. The movement during the latter part of the freeze—the first six months of this year—has been that, while movements of both wage rates and prices have been small, during that period the movement of wage rates has been slightly ahead of the movement of prices, reversing the situation at the end of last year. Moreover, if one looks at the many applications which there were last summer or autumn to raise the prices of commodities of considerable importance, such as bread, flour, chocolate, milk, fruit and vegetables, all were held back as a result of the Government's policy, and in my judgment it would have been more difficult to do that if there had been no Part IV powers in operation. I cannot, therefore, accept my hon. Friend's judgment that the use of the powers, or the presence of the powers, towards prices was a mere fiasco. Nor can it be said, despite one example produced by one hon. Gentleman opposite, that the policy has not operated in a way helpful to lower-paid workers. This year there have been increases affecting about 2 million workers, the majority of whom got the increase by virtue of the lower-paid worker criteria. Nor can it be said that the policy has worked in a way unfriendly to productivity. Indeed, the very fact that one of the ways in which an increase could be justified was by making a productivity agreement is one reason why the number of productivity agreements made, tested, and approved has risen steadily during these 12 months. The right hon. Gentleman said that there was nothing about productivity in the Bill. He is really too old a Parliamentary hand to use that one, because he knows, and we argued this out some nights ago, that it is an integral part of the Bill that the power can be used only in accordance with the recommendations of the Board, or, to speak more exactly, that the powers cannot be used more harshly than the recommendation of the Board. Further, in doing its work the Board is required to pay attention to productivity as one of the criteria. Therefore, the whole working of the powers under this Bill has implicit in it the encouragement of productivity agreements, and this is apparent to anyone who takes the trouble to read not only the Act itself, but the other legislation with which it has to be construed. I must, therefore, reject the contention of the hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Mawby) that this is making collective bargaining more chaotic. On the contrary, it is introducing a greater element of stability in prices. It is helping the lower-paid worker. It is encouraging productivity agreements. It is forging a stronger link between an increase in productivity and an increase in income, and this is a movement towards the more orderly collective bargaining which the right hon. Member for Mitcham said at the outset was what we wanted.Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will put the matter into its proper perspective. Would he not agree that the increase in the number of workers affected by productivity agreements has brought the total up to only 1 million, which is a very small percentage of the total number of people employed in this country?
I am not asserting that the whole task is done. What I am saying is that the operation of the policy caused these things to move in the right direction, and I therefore reject the hon. Gentleman's contention that we were making collective bargaining more chaotic. His view cannot be supported by the facts.
I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Salford, West that it is not the Government's contention that prices and incomes policy is the central theme of economic policy. Indeed, I hold very strongly, and I have said it more than once, that it would always be an error in economic policy to lay too much stress on any one of the several instruments which are available to the Government. I think that the reason why we have talked so much about it is that we have been so much involved with it in the House, but the amount of time something takes up in the House is not, by itself, a complete measure of its importance compared with other things that we do not argue at such length. I agree that measures which help to promote greater efficiency in industry, which give people incentives, which help to reduce the burden of overseas expenditure, are all things which play a great part in economic policy, but I cannot pursue this theme further now, because it happens to be the part of prices and incomes policy in overall economic policy with which the business tonight is concerned. I have spoken of the past working of the policy. There are a number of questions about how the Government see their handling of the matter when the Bill is law, and Part II of the Act is in operation. The hon. Member for Belfast, East (Mr. McMaster) asked whether we were sure that there were no loopholes. He can be quite sure that the point raised by the Court of Appeal judgment is fully and satisfactorily dealt with in the new Act; that we have most carefully examined what other possible loopholes there may be and that, as far as a layman may venture an opinion of what courts of law may do in the future, I believe that this Act is foolproof. The other question concerned the operation of the Bill in Northern Ireland. Both this Act and the 1966 Act were prepared in full consultation with the Northern Ireland Government. The Government of the United Kingdom and the Government of Northern Ireland have agreed that the national prices and incomes policy should apply to the whole or the United Kingdom. The hon. and learned Member for Darwen asked whether there would be a large number of Orders requiring compulsory notification. I can set his mind at rest about what he has been reading in the newspapers recently. The position is that—as I have earlier told the House—following the discussions we have had with industry it will not be necessary to make a large number of Orders about notification. We expect, and have every reason to expect, the co-operation of industry and voluntary notifications. As to the list of things to which notification is to apply—to which subject the hon. Member for Wanstead and Woodford (Mr. Patrick Jenkin) referred—as was made clear in Committee, in due course we shall publish a list, revised in comparison with the list to be found in Cmnd. 2808. I must tell the right hon. Member for Enfield, West that his prospect of praying against thousands of orders next Session will not be fulfilled. Possibly that news will be gratifying to him and many of his supporters. The hon. and learned Member for Darwen also asked about the position of arbitrators. That question is covered in paragraph 21 of Cmnd. 3235, which states clearly that the criteria to which the Board works should also be observed by arbitrators, independent review bodies, and statutory wage fixing bodies. That seems the logical way of handling the matter. The hon. and learned Member also asked about the method of selection of what might be referred to the Board. Both in Committee and on Report we went over this question. I can again give the example I gave in Committee. I was arguing that the phrase "a price of economic significance" has a meaning. I was interested to notice that shortly afterwards an hon. Member had argued that the phrase "of economic significance" was meaningless, either he or one of his hon. Friends was using it with great emphasis. This is a matter of common sense. The possibility of a rise in the price of bread is a matter of economic significance. As I had to point out in reply to a Question put by one of my hon. Friends some months ago, an increase in the subscription to the Glasgow Conservative Club is not of economic significance.Can the right hon. Gentleman possibly say that of all price increases over the last year the increases in laundry prices were of the greatest economic significance?
At no time did I use the phrase "greatest economic significance". But they had economic significance, in that they affected individuals, hospitals and schools. It would have been quite wrong to behave as if the prices of laundry and cleaning were not of economic significance.
I shall be delighted the fewer references there are, but the point is not on notification, on which I take what the right hon. Gentleman said, but on the number of references. To put it the other way around, how many references does he think the Board can sustain in a year?
I was dealing with references. I had proceeded from notification Orders to how one selects what should be referred. I will not give offhand a numerical estimate, but I believe a selection can be made within the Board's compass and sufficiently representative of the economic scene to be effective in carrying out the policy. I must reject the suggestion that we have selected the weak rather than the strong. The error is that bargaining strength is not necessarily determined by the number of people involved, which might be small, but a settlement or a price increase might occupy such a position in the economy or be fraught with such possible repercussions as to make it of economic significance.
As to how the Government's use of powers fit in with the T.U.C.'s actions, a decision whether to refer to the Board or to take action under the Statute after it has reported must be the Government's, and the decisions of the T.U.C. vetting committee and the opinions of the C.B.I. on prices—though these are much less formalised—would have to be seriously considered by the Government, but there would be no complete delegation of Government powers to any other group. The right hon. Member asked whether the Government could allow an increase while it was being considered by the Board. The Statute makes it clear that the Government could consent to an increase if they felt it right, and provides that they may make a lesser use of their powers than a Board recommendation would suggest. Finally—
On a point of order. How many "finallys" do we need before the matter is final?
That is up to the Minister and is not a matter for the Chair.
I am replying to the points of hon. Gentlemen oposite, who were here during the debate, and do not see why I should be prevented from doing so by their hon. Friends who were not.
A full discussion of the fixing of the norm would go beyond the limits of the Order but the Government's aim has been to get away from the extreme powers of Part IV to a voluntary and orderly system, which I take to be the objective of the right hon. Member for Mitcham. Such a system requires joint consultation periodically between management, unions and Government to try to agree what they think should be—and I prefer to use this phrase—a minimum increase in income in the coming 12 months, and also to agree, if possible, the reasons or criteria why any particular group should have more than that minimum. It would indeed be over-optimistic to assume that that agreement would always and instantaneously be reached, and the situation might occur when the Government would have to express, and hold to, their view; and that, I believe, would be right. But as speedily as we can get to a system where there are no statutory powers at all, then that would not be a question of the Government imposing a view, but putting forward a view for the country to judge. In the end these matters will not be decided by Statute or even by vetting committees or arguments. What happens in the sphere of prices and incomes will, in the end, be decided by what progress is made by the nation in increasing the productivity of human labour.rose—
I will not give way.
Give way.
I must conclude my remarks.
These matters of prices and incomes have their place—and an important place it is—in economic policy. They cannot, by themselves, solve the whole problem, but the nearer we can get to what the tight hon. Member for Enfield, West spoke of as more orderly collective bargaining—the nearer we can get to basing the principles that govern people's
Division No. 471.]
| AYES
| [10.58 p.m.
|
| Abse, Leo | Grey, Charles (Durham) | O'Malley, Brian |
| Alldritt, Walter | Griffiths, David (Rother Valley) | Oram, Albert E. |
| Allen, Scholefield | Hamilton, James (Botnwell) | Oswald, Thomas |
| Armstrong, Ernest | Harper, Joseph | Owen, Dr. David (Plymouth, S'tn) |
| Ashley, Jack | Harrison, Walter (Wakefield) | Owen, Will (Morpeth) |
| Atkins, Ronald (Preston, N.) | Haseldine, Norman | Page, Derek (King's Lynn) |
| Bacon, Rt. Hn. Alice | Hattersley, Roy | Parker, John (Dagenham) |
| Bagier, Gordon A. T. | Hazed, Bert | Parkyn, Brian (Bedford) |
| Baxter, William | Henig, Stanley | Pearson, Arthur (Pontypridd) |
| Beaney, Alan | Herbison, Rt. Hn. Margaret | Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred |
| Bence, Cyril | Hooley, Frank | Pentland, Norman |
| Bonn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood | Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas | Prentice, Rt. Hn. R. E. |
| Binns, John | Howarth, Harry (Wellingborough) | Price, Thomas (Westhoughton) |
| Blackburn, F. | Howarth, Robert (Bolton, E.) | Randall, Harry |
| Blenkinsop, Arthur | Howie, W. | Reee, Merlyn |
| Boardman, H. | Hoy, James | Reynolds, G. W. |
| Bottomley, Rt. Hn. Arthur | Huckfield, L. | Richard, Ivor |
| Bowden, Rt. Hn. Herbert | Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.) | Roberts, Albert (Normanton) |
| Boyden, James | Hunter, Adam | Roberts, Gwilym (Bedfordshire, S.) |
| Braddock, Mrs. E. M. | Hynd, John | Robinson, W. O. J. (Walth'stow, E.) |
| Bradley, Tom | Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill) | Roebuck, Roy |
| Bray, Dr. Jeremy | Jackson, Colin (B'h'se & Spenb'gh) | Rogers, George (Kensington, N.) |
| Brooks, Edwin | Jay, Rt. Hn. Douglas | Rose, Paul |
| Broughton, Dr. A. D. D. | Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford) | Ross, Rt. Hn. William |
| Brown, Rt. Hn. George (Belper) | Johnson, James (K'ston-on-Hull, W.) | Rowland, Christopher (Meriden) |
| Brown, Bob (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne, W.) | Jones, Dan (Burnley) | Shaw, Arnold (Ilford, S.) |
| Brown, R. W. (Shoreditch & F'bury) | Jones, Rt. Hn. Sir Elwyn (W. Ham, S.) | Sheldon, Robert |
| Buchan, Norman | Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham) | Shore, Peter (Stepney) |
| Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.) | Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, West) | Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford) |
| Carmichael, Neil | Judd, Frank | Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich) |
| Carter-Jones, Lewis | Kelley, Richard | Skeffington, Arthur |
| Castle, Rt. Hn. Barbara | Kenyon, Clifford | Slater, Joseph |
| Coe, Denis | Lawson, George | Small, William |
| Coleman, Donald | Leadbitter, Ted | Snow, Julian |
| Concannon, J. D. | Ledger, Ron | Spriggs, Leslie |
| Conlan, Bernard | Lee, Rt. Hn. Frederick (Newton) | Steele, Thomas (Dunbartonshire, W.) |
| Crawshaw, Richard | Lewis, Ron (Carlisle) | Stewart, Rt. Hn. Michael |
| Cronin, John | Lipton, Marcus | Stonehouse, John |
| Crossman, Rt. Hn. Richard | Lomas, Kenneth | Summerskill, Hn. Dr. Shirley |
| Davidson, Arthur (Accrington) | Loughlin, Charles | Swingler, Stephen |
| Davies, Dr. Ernest (Stretford) | Lyon, Alexander W. (York) | Symonds, J. B. |
| Davies, G. Elfed (Rhondda, E.) | McBride, Neil | Taverne, Dick |
| Davies, Ednyfed Hudson (Conway) | McCann, John | Tinn, James |
| Davies, Harold (Leek) | MacColl, James | Urwin, T. W. |
| Davies, Ifor (Gower) | Macdonald, A. H. | Varley, Erie C. |
| de Freitas, Rt. Hn. Sir Geoffrey | McGuire, Michael | Wainwright, Edwin (Dearne Valley) |
| Dell, Edmund | ||
| Dewar, Donald | Mackenzie, Gregor (Ruthcrglen) | Walden, Brian (All Saints) |
| Dobson, Ray | Mackie, John | Walker, Harold (Doncaster) |
| Doig, Peter | Mackintosh, John P. | Wallace, George |
| Donnelly, Desmond | Maclennan, Robert | Watkins, David (Consett) |
| Dunnett, Jack | MacPherson, Malcolm | Weitzman, David |
| Dunwoody, Mrs. Gwyneth (Exeter) | Mallalieu, J.P.W.(Huddersfield, E.) | Wellbeloved, James |
| Dunwoody, Dr. John (F'th & C'b'e) | Mason, Roy | Wells, William (Walsall, N.) |
| Eadie, Alex | Mellish, Robert | Whitlock, William |
| English, Michael | Millan, Bruce | Wilkins, W. A. |
| Ennals, David | Miller, Dr. M. S. | Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.) |
| Ensor, David | Milne, Edward (Blyth) | Williams, Alan Lee (Hornchurch) |
| Evans, Albert (Islington, S.W.) | Mitchell, R. C. (S'th'pton, Test) | Williams, Clifford (Abertillery) |
| Evans, Ioan L. (Birm'h'm, Yardley) | Moonman, Eric | Williams, Mrs. Shirley (Hitchin) |
| Fernyhough, E. | Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire) | Wilson, Rt. Hn. Harold (Huyton) |
| Finch, Harold | Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe) | Wilson, William (Coventry, S.) |
| Foley, Maurice | Morris, John (Aberavon) | Winterbottom, R. E. |
| Foot, Sir Dingle (Ipswich) | Moyle, Roland | Woodburn, Rt. Hn. A. |
| Fowler, Gerry | Murray, Albert | Woof, Robert |
| Freeson, Reginald | Neal, Harold | Yates, Victor |
| Garrett, W. E. | Noel-Baker, Rt. Hn. Philip (Derby, S.) | |
| Ginsburg, David | Oakes, Gordon | TELLERS FOR THE AYES: |
| Gregory, Arnold | Ogden, Eric | Mr. Alan Fitch and |
| Mr. Charles R. Morris. |
incomes on justice and common sense—that in itself will be of great help in increasing the productivity on which everything, in the end, depends.
Question put:—
The House divided: Ayes 202, Noes 146.
NOES
| ||
| Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead) | Gower, Raymond | Onslow, Cranley |
| Atkins, Humphrey (M't'n & M'd'n) | Grant, Anthony | Osborn, John (Hallam) |
| Balniel, Lord | Gresham Cooke, R. | Page, Graham (Crosby) |
| Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Got. & Fhm) | Grieve, Percy | Page, John (Harrow, w.) |
| Berry, Hn. Anthony | Grimond, Rt. Hn. J. | Pardoe, John |
| Biffen, John | Gurden, Harold | Peel, John |
| Biggs-Davison, John | Hawkins, Paul | Pereival, Ian |
| Birch, Rt. Hn. Nigel | Heald, Rt. Hn. Sir Lionel | Peyton, John |
| Blaker, Peter | Heath, Rt. Hn. Edward | Pink, R. Bonner |
| Body, Richard | Heseltine, Michael | Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch |
| Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hn. John | Higgins, Terence L. | Prior, J. M. L. |
| Brinton, Sir Tatton | Hiley, Joseph | Pym, Francis |
| Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. Sir Walter | Hirst, Geoffrey | Ridley, Hn. Nicholas |
| Brown, Sir Edward (Bath) | Holland, Philip | Ridsdale, Julian |
| Bruce-Gardyne, J. | Hooson, Emlyn | Rippon, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey |
| Bryan, Paul | Hordern, Peter | Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey) |
| Buck, Antony (Colchester) | Hornby, Richard | Royle, Anthony |
| Burden, F. A. | Howell, David (Guildford) | Russell, Sir Ronald |
| Carlisle, Mark | Hunt, John | Scott, Nicholas |
| Carr, Rt. Hn. Robert | Hutchison, Michael Clark | Sharpies, Richard |
| Cary, Sir Robert | Iremonger, T. L. | Shaw, Michael (Sc'b'gh & Whitby) |
| Channon, H. P. C. | Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford) | Sinclair, Sir George |
| Clark, Henry | Jennings, J. C. (Burton) | Steel, David (Roxburgh) |
| Clegg, Walter | Johnston, Russell (Inverness) | Stodart, Anthony |
| Cooke, Robert | Joseph, Rt. Hn. Sir Keith | Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir M. (Ripon) |
| Cooper-Key, Sir Neill | Kaberry, Sir Donald | Summers, Sir Spencer |
| Cordle, John | King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.) | Tapsell, Peter |
| Costain, A. P. | Knight, Mrs. Jill | Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne) |
| Craddock, Sir Beresford (Spelthorne) | Lambton, Viscount | Taylor, Edward M.(G'gow, Cathcart) |
| Crosthwaite-Eyre, Sir Oliver | Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry | Taylor, Frank (Moss Side) |
| Crouch, David | Lubbock, Eric | Teeling, Sir William |
| Crowder, F. P. | McAdden, Sir Stephen | Thatcher, Mrs. Margaret |
| Currie, G. B. H. | MacArthur, Ian | Tilney, John |
| Dance, James | Maclean, Sir Fitzroy | Turton, Rt. Hn. R. H. |
| Davidson, James (Aberdeenshire, W.) | Macleod, Rt. Hn. Iain | van Straubenzee, W. R. |
| d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry | McMaster, Stanley | Vaughan-Morgan, Rt. Hn. Sir John |
| Dean, Paul (Somerset, N.) | Maude, Angus | Wainwright, Richard (Colne Valley) |
| Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F. (Ashford) | Maudling, Rt. Hn. Reginald | Walker, Peter (Worcester) |
| Doughty, Charles | Mawby, Ray | Walker-Smith, Rt. Hn. Sir Derek |
| du Cann, Rt. Hn. Edward | Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J. | Wall, Patrick |
| Eden, Sir John | Maydon, Lt.-Cmdr. S. L. C. | Ward, Dame Irene |
| Elliott, R.W. (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne, N.) | Mills, Stratton (Belfast, N.) | Wells, John (Maldstone) |
| Errington, Sir Eric | Miscampbell, Norman | Whitelaw, Rt. Hn. William |
| Eyre, Reginald | Mitchell, David (Basingstoke) | Wills, Sir Gerald (Bridgwater) |
| Fisher, Nigel | Monro, Hector | Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro) |
| Fletcher-Cooke, Charles | More, Jasper | Wright, Esmond |
| Galbraith, Hon. T. G. | Morrison, Charles (Devizes) | |
| Gibson-Watt, David | Munro-Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh | TELLERS FOR THE NOES: |
| Glover, Sir Douglas | Murton, Oscar | Mr. Timothy Kitson and |
| Glyn, Sir Richard | Nabarro, Sir Gerald | Mr. Bernard Weatberill. |
Resolved,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Prices and Incomes Act 1966 (Commencement of Part II) Order 1967 be made in the form of the draft laid before this House on 20th June.
Address to be presented by Privy Councillors or Members of Her Majesty's Household.
Referendum
Deferred proceeding resumed:
Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER, pursuant to Order ( Sittings of the House ( Morning Sittings)), put forthwith the Question,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide for a referendum to be held with a general election.
Question negatived.
Adjournment
Resolved, That this House do now adjourn.—[ Mr. Harper.]
Adjourned accordingly at eight minutes past Eleven o'clock.