I should like more information about the sums to be spent from the Civil Contingencies Fund. What is a civil contingency? For example, is the expenditure of £200,000 on the proposed investiture of the Prince of Wales a civil contingency, and, if so, am I justified in supporting that expenditure?

I am interested in the reduction of public expenditure. I believe that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has been perfectly justified in demanding that we scrutinise every item of public expenditure because of the serious financial state of the country. Therefore, if I am asked to approve of a Civil Contingencies Fund which includes the money for the investiture of the Prince of Wales, this is the time and opportunity to object, because I do not believe that that can be described as a civil contingency. At a time when we are engaged in reducing public expenditure on school meals, school milk, and innumerable other—

Order. The hon. Gentleman can ask quite properly for an explanation, but he cannot go into detail, because money approved under the Clause will have to be approved under Votes presented to the House. He will then be able to examine them in great detail, but not now.

Then may I have an assurance from my right hon. Friend that the £200,000, which I think to be a grossly unjustified expenditure at present, is included in this Civil Contingencies Fund. If so, am not I entitled to oppose it?

The short answer to my hon. Friend is that the proposal in the Clause does not affect a single Estimate, except, perhaps, to the extent that it would postpone it. If any payment were made out of the Civil Contingencies Fund in advance of its coming before the House on an Estimate, that payment might be considered a little later by the House than if it had first come on an Estimate. I am glad to say that the nature of the amount and its purpose are not for consideration this morning.

I should like an assurance that this sum is not to be included. It is quite reasonable—

Order. I cannot allow the hon. Gentleman to pursue this line. He will have an opportunity on the Vote to discuss whether that should be carried. We are now concerned only with the total sum.

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

Not many points have arisen since we had the Second Reading, and therefore it may be more convenient if I listen to what hon. Members have to say and do my best to reply at the end, if I am privileged to catch your eye again, Mr. Speaker.

I am very grateful to the Chief Secretary for taking that line. There are one or two things we want to talk about, although he gave the Bill a very good airing last Friday, and several of my hon. Friends will have points to pursue.

There is one provision in particular that I want to invite the Chief Secretary to think about again, or at least to reassure us about. I refer to the provision in Clause 3 under which the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation is empowered to diversify its borrowing sources, particularly to enter the Eurocurrency market. In his Second Reading speech the Chief Secretary spoke with some enthusiasm about that provision and more especially about the Eurocurrency market, of which he said that it:

"…is helpful to the City and the country. We want to encourage that market…"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 8th November, 1968; Vol. 772, c. 1242.]

I question that approach. The Eurocurrency market, into which the Government will encourage the I.R.C. to dip its ladle under Clause 3, deals principally in United States dollars, which are deposited in banks outside the United States, most of those banks being in Europe, The British banks, as the right hon. Gentleman pointed out, have the lion's share of this market.

It is necessary to consider the circumstances in which these expatriate funds are drawn to London, and conversely—and more important—the circumstances in which they might fly hotfoot from London. On the possibility of flight from London in particular I have some modest doubts about the provisions in Clause 3.

These expatriate funds come to London for two reasons. The first relates to the margin between borrowing and lending in London as compared with New York, for example. In general, London banks pay one more for deposits and charge less for loans than New York banks. Hence it pays one to come to London whether one is a borrower or a lender. Now this is where the rub comes, under the provisions of Clause 3. U.S. dollars which come to London and enter the Eurodollar market are not switched into sterling, and thus made available to the Chief Secretary and the I.R.C., unless the holders can have some assurance that there will not in the meanwhile be a fluctuation in the exchange rate and consequently a possibility of their suffering loss.

Order, I shall not interrupt the hon. Gentleman again, but this would have been more appropriate on the Question, That the Clause stand part of the Bill.

I apologise, Mr. Speaker. I thought that it was for the convenience of the House that we should cover this matter in its wider aspect on Third Reading, and I shall be very brief.

Order. I assure the hon. Gentleman that I do not seek to cramp him any way.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The risks that attaches to Eurodollars when switched into sterling means that they will nearly all be covered forward in the forward exchange market. The point about the London market is that the margin between borrowing and lending is sufficiently wide to enable them to bear the cost of covering themselves forward. Therefore, Eurodollars used by the I.R.C., for example, after being switched into sterling will nearly all have involved a collateral forward sale of sterling in the forward exchange market. This gives rise to the peculiar situation, described by Mr. A. T. K. Grant in his book "The Machinery of Finance", that:

"Eurodollars thus become the equivalent of foreign owned sterling with an exchange guarantee."

The guarantee arises because of the nature of the forward exchange market. But that market is only what it is because the Bank of England, acting for the right hon. Gentleman, is committed in practice to supporting it. In a world edgy about sterling, the Chief Secretary cannot allow the forward exchange market to stand at too great a discount as far as sterling is concerned, so he must inevitably support it. That means that Eurodollars which flow into London for purposes such as he provides for in Clause 3, for the use of the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation, for example, and which are naturally covered forward, may actually generate an outflow of official reserves in support of the forward exchange market, thereby causing an additional strain on the central reserves.

Is not this rather an Alice in Wonderland sequence for the Chief Secretary to be promoting in a Treasury Bill? By encouraging the use of Eurodollars he may be necessitating the support of the forward market with official funds. Incidentally, the facility which will be encouraged under the Clause—the use of Eurodollars drawn to London—proves to be more advantageous to holders of Eurodollars than to official holders of sterling. The exchange guarantee to which I referred, which is inherent in the forward exchange market, is more advantageous than the provisions made by the Government under the Basle facility, where holders of sterling do not have the same complete guarantee as is available for Eurodollar holders in the forward exchange market. This seems rather bizarre to say the least.

The burden on the reserves in supporting sterling forward in the forward exchange market is already appreciable, and I myself doubt the wisdom of providing this facility for a Government agency, or shall I say a semi-official agency, the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation, which may well have the effect of increasing the strain on the central reserves.

But the burden of supporting the forward exchange market is as nothing compared with the situation which would arise if there were a sharp, volatile movement of Eurodollars away from London. I believe the reserves are quite inadequate to contemplate a major flight of Eurodollars from London with any sort of equanimity at all.

The Government have thus to pay the price of keeping Eurodollars in the London market, and that is, to keep the internal exchange rates very high. This is a form of bondage. Does the right hon. Gentleman seriously want to promote, under this Bill, measures which will increase this bondage by having to continue to keep interest rates very high in order to obviate the possibility of a switch of Eurodollars? He knows that the rate today in Paris for domestic money is 9 per cent. This is the sort of rate which may tend to increase the bidding up of internal exchange rates in the different centres.

Anything which in present circumstances encourages Eurodollars to come to London, and particularly such encouragement by a Government agency, must in some measure be suspect. I would remind the right hon. Gentleman that the scale of funds in Eurodollars is really substantial, something like 800 million United States dollars net liability for the United Kingdom. It may well be more. I should also remind him that France, Germany, Switzerland, to name only three European countries, actually prohibit the use by domestic users, official or private, of expatriate funds in this way by prohibiting payment of interest on foreign-owned time deposits.

I do not want to rule out the possibility that the right hon. Gentleman is beginning a wise course here, but I want him to reassure us very firmly that the encouragement through this Bill of a semi-official body to promote an influx of Eurodollars into London, switching into sterling, thereby necessitating their forward cover, is really in the best interests of the country at the present time, particularly of our reserves.

May I say that what I was pointing out just now was that it is more convenient to the House that, if there are objections to a Clause in a Bill, the objections are expressed when the Clause is being debated.

I, too, would like to take up Clause 3. As I read it, I do not think it restricts the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation to the Eurodollar market, important though that is. As it is drafted, the I.R.C., can get its funds in

"currencies other than sterling, whether temporarily or otherwise than by temporary loan, whether by the issue of securities or otherwise"

though no doubt it does that with an eye on the Eurodollar market. It empowers the I.R.C. to borrow or raise money by way of loan or equity anywhere, as I understand it, in the world.

The Chief Secretary made an astonishing claim for this on Second Reading when he said:

"The borrowing of non-sterling currency can only strengthen the nation's reserves…."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 8th November, 1968; Vol. 772, c. 1227.]

Let us carry that to its logical conclusion. The more we borrow the stronger our reserves become. Is that right? Does the Chief Secretary really uphold that doctrine? Certainly it looks as though it is being pursued, because in the last four years we have borrowed over £3,000 million worth. If the Government think this is strengthening the reserves, why do they not borrow considerably more? It is really a rather remarkable doctrine that the more we borrow of non-sterling currency the better our reserves are. This cannot be right, and I do not think it is right that the Chief Secretary should continue on record with this extraordinary statement.

It is necessary, I know, that we should borrow from abroad, because our rate of capital formation in this country is now so lamentable, and the right hon. Gentleman is quite right when he says that private business and some of the nationalised industries either can or are obliged to borrow non-sterling currencies because there are simply not funds by way of capital formation available here. Owing to the policy of the right hon. Gentleman's Department, with its massive weight of taxation, and owing to the insatiable demands of the nationalised industries, the rate of capital formation is very low. By reason of that it is necessary to go to other countries to try to borrow some of the capital which they have formed. For that reason it is sometimes cheaper to do that, but that is nothing to encourage or to be proud of, as the Chief Secretary, in his speech on Second Reading, seemed to think. That is a confession of the failure of our financial system to produce the funds here by the savings we need.

I would not, in these lamentable circumstances in which we are living, deny the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation the same cover as have the other concerns which were mentioned, but to say that this is a cause of rejoicing, that the borrowing of non-sterling currencies can only strengthen the reserves, and to adopt the philosophy of Dr. Pangloss, as the Chief Secretary did on Second Reading—that somehow this is a great blow for freedom and this is a great strengthening of the British financial position—is really to stand finance on its head.

Would the hon. and learned Gentleman tell me where I made the statement that this is a great blow for freedom?

I cannot quote the ipsissima verba on that by any means, but any fair reading of the right hon. Gentleman's speech is that it is of tremendous optimism and an encouragement to borrow non-sterling currencies, and it struck me as being very out of place, because I regard it as a cause of shame, not encouragement, that we cannot produce from our domestic reserves the money we need.

I apologise to the Chief Secretary and to the House that I was not able to be here last Friday for Second Reading. I shall try to make my intervention now all the briefer for that reason, but I must say that I feel disappointed that since this Bill, we still find a considerable lack of clarity of Government intentions in the areas of policy which the Bill covers.

Let me illustrate this by reference to the three main Clauses. Clause 1, dealing with the increase in the capital available to the Civil Contingencies Fund, as the Chief Secretary explained on Second Reading, is designed to restore flexibility and to bring the financial machinery up to date, but I think it is a fact that there is no sign that the administrative machinery for dealing with civil emergencies is being brought similarly up to date. There was a debate on this last Tuesday, after the Second Reading of this Bill, and I have no intention of going over that ground again, except to say that it was only by inches that, in September, my own constituency escaped serious damage by flooding, and there were many areas in East Anglia which did suffer damage and inconvenience. I wish that the Government would show greater awareness of the widespread feeling—

Order. This is not the Second Reading debate. We can only discuss now what is in the Bill.

I shall not pursue the subject further, except to register my disappointment.

Clause 2 deals with new machinery for passing on a share of the revenue from off-shore gas and oil exploration and exploitation to the Governments of Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man. I am glad to see the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Power here, because he will be aware of the anxiety among many hon. Members about whether we may be unnecessarily restricting the revenue which will become so payable to the Government of the United Kingdom and the other Governments if the structure of beach prices for natural gas is set too low, since the result of that would be that exploration of additional marginal off-shore areas in the North Sea and the Irish Sea might be unduly discouraged. This would not merely restrict the revenues payable as a result of exploration and eventual development but, more seriously, might limit the addition to our long-term economic strength which all of us believe lies under the sea. I hope that the Chief Secretary will celebrate the passage of the Bill by having further discussion with his colleagues in the Ministry of Power on this very important point.

Under Clause 3, we are going to give the I.R.C. slightly more financial flexibility. But it is sad that the Government have given no sign yet of responding to the dissatisfaction felt in many quarters about the future rôle of the I.R.C. in other directions. I am sure that I would be out of order if I spoke about the multiplication of Ministries in Whitehall, where it is clear that there are too many cooks spoiling the economic broth.

Order. The hon. Gentleman has already ruled himself out of order.

In relation to Clause 3, there is genuine danger of some kind of confusion developing between the operations of the I.R.C., the Monopolies Commission and the Prices and Incomes Board. There is genuine uncertainty in industry and elsewhere about what the rôles are to be for these three bodies. We have just heard of the slight extension of the Prices and Incomes Board and I shall not further allude to that, but I ask the Government to consider this matter seriously.

The Chief Secretary has this last opportunity on the Bill to make clear the intentions of the Government for the I.R.C. When we want clarification of Government policy, I am not sure that we would go to the Secretary of State for Economic Affairs for it, but I nevertheless ask the Government to take the next opportunity available to tell us more of their intentions for the I.R.C., the Monopolies Commission and the Prices and Incomes Board in the organisation and structure of industry.

Order. They will not be able to do it in this debate.

I am glad to have had this opportunity of registering misgivings under each of the three heads to which the Bill relates.

I am grateful to the Opposition for the welcome they have given to the Third Reading. We have had three speeches from hon. Members opposite. Each of them was interesting and highly relevant, of course, to what is contained in the Bill. I am grateful to them. The main debate has centred on Clause 3. I point out to the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mr. Lane) in particular that it does not relate to the powers of the I.R.C. except to the extent of giving an additional flexibility in its borrowing powers. As you rightly said, Mr. Speaker, all I am entitled to discuss is that variation in its borrowing powers.

The hon. Member for Barkston Ash (Mr. Alison) widened the discussion somewhat and asked, as did his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Darwen (Mr. Fletcher-Cooke), whether some remarks I made on Second Reading were wholly accurate. First, there is the simple point as to whether borrowing on the Euro-currency market increases the reserves. We normally talk of gold and dollar reserves, and if gold or dollars are added to the reserves, the total becomes to that extent the larger. That is the sole and simple justification I would make of my statement.

It was suggested that I was unduly encouraging this market. I do not know whether hon. Members really meant to say that, but what I certainly meant to convey on Second Reading was that I thought it a useful market. I have no doubt that I am supported by a large section of the City in my view that it should have the chance to develop and that the Government should not restrict it—and the Government do not propose to do so. We look kindly upon this market. It is a useful market and brings income to a number of people in the City. It brings additional sources of useful investment and no problems of a kind that ordinary investment by a foreigner of funds in this country does not bring.

I repeat that borrowing by the I.R.C. on the Euro-currency market does not add to the central Government's borrowing requirements. It is beneficial in many respects and it is not damaging at all. Perhaps I may go on for one further sentence. I do so with hesitation but only to put this matter into context.

The present difficulty arises from an imbalance in assets and liabilities of this country, not in the total. Assets are much greater than liabilities. The difficulty arises from the illiquid nature of our assets and the liquid nature of many of our liabilities, and there is a disproportion. That disproportion is reduced to the extent that the I.R.C. exercises the powers in the Clause in borrowing on the Euro-currency market.

Is it not the case that funds flowing into the Euro-dollar market are not the same as ordinary foreign investment in this country in factories, etc.? Such ordinary foreign investment will not flow out again but the Eurodollar is "hot" money and surely leads to necessary support on the forward exchange market and to an outflow of funds.

I repeat that this market produces no more difficulties than the investment of foreign funds. Of course, its funds are largely retained in their own currency and not as sterling. That is their nature. But I repeat that there is no problem in that sense and, as far as the I.R.C. and this Clause are concerned—if I may be so dogmatic as to refer to the Clause and the Bill—all we are saying is that there exists a market, perhaps good or bad or one to commend or criticise, and that, since every financial intermediary of a similar nature to the I.R.C. has the power and the right to borrow on that market, so should the I.R.C.

I cannot see, therefore, why I should recommend to the House that we should tell the I.R.C., an independent body, "But you shall not have the power to borrow on that market". It would be as ridiculous as to say that it could borrow from any of the big banks except the Midland Bank. It would be unwise and against the wishes of the I.R.C. itself to limit its borrowing powers in this way and we do not seek to do so.

All I can say in reply to the hon. Member for Cambridge without risking your displeasure, Mr. Speaker, is that I have taken careful note of what he said. Perhaps I can improve the situation by saying that I have taken careful and sympathetic note.

With that, I hope that the House will now be good enough to give the Bill its Third Reading.

A remark by my hon. Friend the Member for North Fylde (Mr. Clegg), on Second Reading, struck a sympathetic note with me. It was when he asked for a simple explanation of the Clause. It is by no means clear, until one looks up the 1962 Act, that one is told that Section 2 of that Act is to cease operating, which may lead one to think that, apart from Section 2, things are to go on very much as they were. Section 2 applied the Act only to vessels over 80 ft. and authorised the basic and special rates and set out percentage reductions in the basic rates, and so by a complicated chain of negatives and double negatives, which often seem to me to form the white and red corpuscles of Parliamentary draftsmen, we find all those features of the fishing subsidies brought to an end.

It would probably be realistic to say that there is a general welcome for the termination of the percentage cut in grant each year, and if that were all the Clause did it would be very different. But it removes the authority to pay basic and special grants although it still provides power to pay a subsidy and we must, therefore, satisfy ourselves about the quality of the subsidy which is to succeed those which are to go.

The right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has told us with great consistency that the new arrangements are to be based on a new principle, that of the most subsidy going to the most efficient. He could not have been more explicit when he said:

"The purpose of the discussions with the industry will be to find the best way of distributing the total sum to individual vessels so as to encourage efficiency of production."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 8th July, 1968; Vol. 767, c. 57.]

On Second Reading, with what I thought was one of my most winning smiles, I remarked that I thought that it was a good thing to link Government aid to productivity. When I made that remark, the right hon. Gentleman nodded approval and, thus encouraged, I went on to say that I welcomed the principle of the proposal. All the thanks I got for that from the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland when he wound up the debate was a rebuke for the sullenness of my speech, and I was somewhat puzzled and dismayed to see that the right hon. Gentleman nodded at that remark, too.

If efficiency is to be the basis, how is it to be assessed? The Government's thoughts are on the value-added formula. I do not know whether the details are yet concluded, but, even if they are, I would certainly not wish to examine them in detail now, because all this will come under the scheme which we shall want to think about hard, because it will probably be a complicated formula.

However, on the broad principle of value-added, one take the gross earnings, the value of the catch, and deducts some of the expenses, but one does not deduct either the crew's wages or the depreciation of the vessel. This, therefore, excludes one very substantial item, wages, which in all businesses has almost as big an influence on efficiency and in the assessment of efficiency as any other factor.

I can well see that, particularly with the disasters of earlier this year in mind, a dilemma faces all those who discuss this matter. By all means let us reduce manpower in most industries, but if by reducing manpower we start the under-manning of fishing vessels, one gets on the horns of a considerable dilemma.

The Under-Secretary may well say something this morning which will reduce my misgivings, but, from what we have been told hitherto of what is in the Government's mind, it seems that there cannot be as much incentive as there should be to install, say, gutting machines, or to mechanise generally, and, if there is not that incentive, this is not the way in which to encourage efficiency.

If gross earnings, the value of the catch, are taken and from that are deducted expenses other than wages and depreciation and I do not say how likely this is, but it is within reasonable probability there could be a situation in which over a period of assessment two boats could get catches which were virtually identical in value, one boat being thoroughly modernised with all the latest labour-saving productivity-boosting equipment, and the other much more conventional.

Assuming that their gross earnings are the same, their net profits will be quite different, but the value-added formula does not deal with net profits and each of the boats would attract the same subsidy, because the only two items of expenditure in which they would differ would be excluded from the calculations. If this is to be the basis of the new system, I do not understand how the right hon. Gentleman can continue to claim that efficiency is to be the dominating factor.

Surely efficiency is assessed by such things as the time that a vessel spends at sea, the time it is actually fishing, the rate of catch over a given period, often calculated as per 100 hours, the rate of catch per man abroad and the catch of saleable fish brought in.

All these factors would probably be taken into account in trying to assess efficiency of one vessel against another. The only table in the White Fish Authority, of which I am aware, concerns the third suggestion that I made, namely, the rate of catch per 100 hours. In Appendix 3 of the 1968 Report there is a breakdown of the catch per 100 hours of trawling of the English trawlers fishing distant waters, the motor trawlers fishing near and middle waters in England and Wales, and the trawlers in Scotland. Looking at the pattern of those figures over the period given, 1960 to 1967, there is no question who has the biggest improvement in the rate of fishing per 100 hours. The Scottish fleet stands unchallenged on that formula.

We have no tables giving the other possible points for examination which I suggested. Therefore, I cannot do more than speculate. But, from the figures referred to by the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Dewar) on Second Reading, figures worked out and submitted to the hon. Gentleman by the Scottish Trawlers Federation, unless the Government either have thought again or will think again, the Scottish fleet, while it will draw more subsidy than before, will lose 2 or 3 per cent. of the share that it had in the subsidy drawn by the United Kingdom fleet as a whole over the last few years.

I do not wish to provoke clash between my hon. Friends and myself or between the Minister and the Under-Secretary. I hope that justice will be done and that the hon. Gentleman will be able to tell us a bit more. If efficiency is to be the yardstick for measuring the new subsidy, from what we have heard so far about the plans, difficult though they are—and I accept that to work this out with meticulous accuracy would probably be asking the impossible—the instrument is that little bit blunt in the meantime. I hope, therefore, that the hon. Gentleman will be able to tell us that in the days that have followed since Second Reading the instrument has had a slightly more cutting edge placed upon it.

That is the main burden of my remarks on this Clause, but I should like to raise a point for clarification about sub-section (4). I do not think that I am infringing upon your tolerance, Mr. Irving. Although an Amendment was ruled out of order, I think it is proper for me to raise this matter on the Clause.

This is entirely in order.

I wonder whether we should leave uncorrected the hon. Gentleman's predictions about the basis of the Scottish subsidy level. I wonder whether this is based, to an extent, on assumptions that past characteristics, including aspects such as special subsidies, will necessarily prevail in future—in other words, whether the assumptions will differ. However blunt the hon. Gentleman regards the instrument, it is nevertheless based on efficiency, however crudely.

The new concept would tend to assist the Scottish fishing industry if the hon. Gentleman's argument on efficiency based on his own reasoning is borne out. It would seem better, rather than say that this will necessarily be detrimental to the Scottish fishing industry, to say that, on the whole, it would appear possibly to benefit it. At any rate, we ought to see how it works in practice. We cannot predict that the assumptions on which it has been based so far will be those on which it will be based in future.

I accept that we are in the realms of speculation. The Scottish Trawlers Federation has said that if these figures had been applied over the last three years, and if things happen in the next three years as in the last three years, its calculations show that it will be down. It will be better off concerning total subsidy, but that will apply to all sectors. There is more global subsidy going to the whole fleet.

The point I make—and I am sure the hon. Gentleman has not lost sight of it—is that if the Scottish fleet can claim at least as good a record of efficiency—and I hope that I have demonstrated that on at least one score it can be argued that it has shown itself more brilliant than others—it will not be any worse off than hitherto.

12.15 p.m.

Turning to subsection (4), when the Minister replies I hope that he will explain, because I find it slightly confusing, where the Home Secretary fits in regarding fishing responsibilities in Northern Ireland. Why does he not feature here where we are dealing with an extension in applications for the grants, which we welcome? The hon. Gentleman will probably say that the Home Secretary does not feature in Clause 1 because he did not appear in the comparable section of the 1962 Act. But what puzzles me is that Section 20 of the 1951 Act specifically laid down that the powers and the duties of the White Fish Authority could be extended to cover Northern Ireland—they did not so cover it at that time—and, if they were so extended, the Secretary of State's responsibility for sea fishing there would be added to the list of Ministers. What has happened to him?

Northern Ireland has been brought in. There is now a separate Committee of the White Fish Authority for Scotland and Northern Ireland. I was tempted to put down an Amendment, which you, Mr. Irving, would clearly have ruled out of order, which would have removed the Northern Ireland interests from the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and given them to the Secretary of State for Scotland. Considering that Joint Committee, I think it would have been a much tidier way of administering it. But, as I am known to be saying that I think that the Secretary of State for Scotland has too much on his plate already, I thought that the hon. Gentleman would tax me with illogicality if I embarked upon that course.

The Home Secretary comes into the picture when restrictions on fishing, landings and licensing of boats are involved and when fishing limits arise. The right hon. Gentleman appears to be left out when grants and levies are discussed. This seems rather anomalous in view of the quite important part which I have known him play in agricultural price review negotiations.

Next—and this was the subject of the Amendment that was ruled out of order—what is the particular implication of the words

"the Secretary of State concerned with the sea fishing industry in Scotland."?

Surely there can be no other Secretary of State concerned than the Secretary of State for Scotland. I imagine that there would be the most fearful ructions in Hamilton, and possibly elsewhere, if any other Secretary of State were allowed to be concerned with fishing interests in Scotland. It would clarify the matter if it were made perfectly clear that the only Secretary of State concerned is the Secretary of State for Scotland. I should have thought that he was the only Secretary of State it could be. I should be very glad to have an explanation from the Parliamentary Secretary on this matter.

I will not be the judge of what is sweet and what is sour. I find it is a little difficult in replying to the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (Mr. Stodart), who said that he did not want to go into the Clause meticulously and then posed about 20 questions. There will be a difference of opinion about what is and what is not "meticulous". My job is to try to clear up some of the issues which the hon. Gentleman raised.

In replying to the Second Reading debate, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland said that we would try to meet the desire of right hon. and hon. Members to know in some detail what will go into the new subsidy scheme for the deep sea fleet. The hon. Gentleman repeated the request this morning, and I thought that it might be for the convenience of the Committee if I were now to outline the way in which my right hon. Friends intend to exercise the powers available to them once the Clause becomes law.

Very properly, we did not feel able to make an announcement until we had given full consideration to the views of the British and Scottish Trawlers Federations and to those which the Transport and General Workers Union put to us very recently. My right hon. Friends the Minister of Agriculture and the Secretary of State for Scotland have now decided what provisions to make in the scheme which they will lay as soon as possible after the Bill has been given the Royal Assent. Hon. Members are aware that the scheme will then require an affirmative Resolution.

Apart from administrative details, there will be two provisions of substance. The first will give statutory effect to the formula which my right hon. Friend announced on 8th July for calculating the deep sea subsidy payable in a year. I need not repeat the details. I wished only to make it clear that the formula for adjusting the basic £2 million by reference to the operating profits of the industry will form part of the scheme.

The second matter concerns the way in which the total will be distributed. As my right hon. Friend explained in introducing the Bill, the main factor which we will take into account is the added value attributable to each vessel—that is, the net contribution which the combined efforts of owners and crew have made to the economy after meeting the cost of the goods and services which they have used in the process. If we were to measure relative efficiency in a different way—for example, by using profits alone as the yardstick—the subsidy would put pressure on owners to maximise profits by economising on labour costs as well as on other costs. We did not believe that that would be right, particularly at a time when, as the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West said, great concern is rightly being shown for trawler safety.

The scheme will, therefore, provide for added value to be calculated by taking the earnings from fishing and subtracting all operating costs except two—the cost of sea-going labour, to which I have referred, and the cost of training men employed on the vessels. We think that this training cost can be distinguished in principle from other non-labour costs. There is as yet no industry-wide scheme for making training the collective responsibility of employers in the industry. It could, therefore, be that a progressive employer spends money on training men but his competitor later reaps the commercial benefit.

We propose—and this is in line with what both trawler federations as well as the union have suggested—that an owner who incurs training costs should not have his added value reduced by the amount of these costs. In other words, labour costs and training costs will be treated in exactly the same way and neither will reduce an owner's added value.

That is how we propose to start. However, I agree that this is a new and untried method of distribution. It should encourage investment expenditure which shows promise of increasing added value while discouraging costs which reduce it. We shall watch what actually happens very closely, and my right hon. Friends undertake that after a year's experience we shall look, with the industry, at every item in the calculation, whether of earnings or costs, to see whether the scheme is having the effects for which we hope and which we anticipate. I hope that that takes the Committee a good step forward concerning the scheme.

May I say how much we welcome the hon. Gentleman's announcement that training costs will be included in the scheme? May I also ask him—I am sorry; I have forgotten what I wished to ask. However, I welcome the scheme, because it is agreed by the industry.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I liked the question which he did not put; it saves me a bit of trouble.

The purpose of the wording in Clause 1 is to make it clear which Secretary of State will discharge the functions of the office of Secretary of State. The Secretary of State has functions under many Acts, and it is common form, in an Act with two separate functions of the office, to refer to the Secretaries of State concerned in this way. I am advised that the wording of the Amendment certainly would not have been apt for this purpose since there is a limited statutory application. For that reason, even if the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West had had the privilege of moving an Amendment, I should have had to advise the Committee to vote against it.

My hon. Friend I am sure knows as well as I do that for a long time there have been discussions about the possibility of setting up a training board. The White Fish Authority has concerned itself with this matter. If we find in future that the arrangements on the owners' side are not as adequate as we would wish, would my hon. Friend consider setting up a statutory board or doing something from the Government's point of view? This is a very important matter.

Yes, it is very important; I would not want to underestimate it. But I cannot give any pledge when discussing this Clause. We have gone a fair way in saying what will happen if expense of this kind is undertaken. The question of setting up a board, as in the agricultural industry and other industries, would have to be raised on another occasion.

I welcome, and I am sure that all the people in Hull concerned welcome, the provisions made for training in the proposed scheme. This is perhaps one thing which has been most lacking in the industry, and to include a training provision as an exemption under the scheme is a tremendous step forward. I hope that as a result—and I am sure that I speak for the Transport and General Workers Union on this point—there will be increased emphasis placed on training facilities within the industry. Because of the unique system of promotion, and so on, only by having a properly skilled and trained fleet, can we improve the quality of the entrant and get the skill and ability needed for an efficient fleet using the most modern techniques. A second proposal which I particularly like is that after a year's experience the situation will be reviewed. I congratulate my right hon. and hon. Friends, in their discussions with the employers and the unions, on saying that in a novel scheme like this it is essential that an opportunity is provided to try it out for a time, to see where we are going and to ascertain what progress is being made. Particularly is this so when, having got rid of the albatross that we had under the old scheme, under which definite arrangements were made every year for grants and the rest, we are able to take stock and see where the industry is going.

12.30 p.m.

I would like to know how this is to be done. Will it be in the form of a new draft Order every year? Will there be simply a general discussion in our annual fishing debate? How will the flexibility of the situation arise so that we can look at progress as it develops? In particular, because of the way in which the productivity and efficiency grant is to be worked, will Parliament have laid before it sufficient detail of what is happening to individual vessels and companies to see the operation of the grant? The amount of information that we are given in this way will obviously be of considerable importance when one considers how the scheme is working and how the companies are operating.

On Second Reading, I expressed fears that perhaps the scheme might encourage the retention of older vessels. Certainly, as a result of the yearly review, we will be able to see whether things work out as I feared might be the case.

In referring to what we said on Second Reading, I tend to disagree with what has been said from the benches opposite about wages being outside the formula. Because of the safety factor, that is extremely important. There are already within the industry too many pressures at work to take a risk. There is a great feeling that ships are, if anything, undermanned because of the hours the fishermen work when making the catch. We are to get the final report of the Holland-Martin Committee, and all this will have to be borne in mind when considering the way that the scheme works.

I sincerely welcome the details which have been given today. I hope that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary will be able to indicate the method of future discussion after six years and the amount of information that Parliament will receive. I really welcome the provisions about training. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, West (Mr. James Johnson) said in his intervention, I hope that we can see this as a start towards getting the proper sort of training that we want in the industry, because it is becoming increasingly skilled and competitive and higher and higher standards are needed.

I cannot speak for the Transport and General Workers Union or for the Scottish vessel owners, about whom we have had an eloquent plea. I wish to refer to the quality of men coming to the fleet, because from conversations on the fish dock at Hull I know that the officials of the union are worried about the quality of some of the intake.

It is important to get the training scheme off the stocks and into action as quickly as possible. Unless we get men of good calibre coming into the fleet, any discussions about how much fish we catch and the quality of saleable fish will go by the board. I therefore emphasise again to my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary the great importance of the calibre and content of the intake to the fleet, because without the requisite fishermen we will have no fish.

Having recovered from my delight at the Minister's statement, I have also recovered my memory. I wanted to take up a point which has been mentioned by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) about our annual debate on the Order and on the Bill after it is in operation.

I understand that the Clause and the Bill will last for three years, including this year. We are told in the Explanatory Memorandum that the position will be reviewed in 1970, that the Bill will probably continue for another two years and the review will include the question of the added value formula which the Minister has this morning explained.

I understand that an Order will be laid fairly soon bringing the Bill into effect. Will it be necessary to have an Order each year? Under the old system, we had to have a different subsidy scheme each year. This time, I understand, except for the inshore vessels, an annual Order will not be required. Therefore, the chances are that we will not have a debate covering the distant water vessels until 1970, when it is promised as part of the review. This matter was mentioned on Second Reading. Can the Minister clarify the position?

The question of training is very important. All I can say today is that it is not the responsibility of either the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food or the Scottish Office, but is the responsibility of another Department. I have no doubt that what my hon. Friends have said today will be drawn to the attention of that Department, because that is the one which would have to be responsible if a training scheme were introduced.

As to whether we should have a new Order each year, hon. Members are asking me to anticipate how the first 12 months will work. This I simply cannot do. If at the end of the year it proved that changes had to be made, I would think that an amending Order would have to be introduced. That would give the House an opportunity of discussing the matter.

It would be difficult to disclose the profits of every vessel. When firms give their returns, they give them in confidence to the Department and it would be difficult to disclose the trading accounts of every firm and make them public property. However, I assure my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) that we will give all the information that it is reasonably possible for us to provide.

I hope that with these assurances and explanations we might now have the Clause.

The Clause extends the scope of subsidies to products of white fish and herring and to the transhipment of white fish and herring and their respective products. We welcome the Clause. I understand that it will assist important developments pioneered by the White Fish Authority in boxing at sea and the transference of fish at sea. It presumably covers the landing of fish products from possible future factory ships. Is it also intended to give assistance towards industrial fishing by British vessels?

The purpose of my intervention is to ask a question on the Explanatory Memorandum which states:

"Although clause 2 gives rise to a potential increase in expenditure, no additional expenditure is likely to arise in practice, since it is not intended to make a subsidy scheme which would materially extend the class of fishing activities hitherto covered by such schemes."

Can the Minister explain how the Clause will be applied if it is not to incur additional expenditure? It extends the scope of the Bill to products, and I would think that a certain amount of additional expenditure might be incurred.

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman welcomes this change. It was made to meet certain needs within the industry and we have gone out of our way to make it possible. It is true that there is some difficulty about the definition of fish. That is being considered. We said that if the industry was to do this it ought not to be penalised.

I beg to move Amendment No. 2, in page 4, line 4, leave out subsection (6).

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that this is a probing Amendment. This subsection has a very close relationship with subsection (2), which places a restriction on the levy on products. Subsection (2) tells us, to paraphrase it, that the levy on products must not exceed the amount which would be produced by a 2d. levy on every stone of white fish used to produce one stone of the product in question. Therefore, if we take as an example, four stone of white fish to produce one stone of fishmeal—I daresay that fishmeal is one of the products under consideration here—I presume that the levy on fishmeal could not be more than 8d. per stone?

If we return to subsection (6), hitherto parts of white fish have been regarded as white fish. This goes back to Section 19 of the 1951 Act. Now we are told that parts of white fish shall be treated as products of white fish and not white fish—a highly illuminating remark. This is where we run up against some difficulty. Further down page 4, at line 22, we are told that the word "products" has the same meaning as in Part I of the Sea Fish Industry Act, 1951. We are also so directed in Section 19 of this Act.

I have read through the 1951 Act three times in a determined effort to find the definition of the word "products" and I cannot find it anywhere. I find it mentioned only once in the whole of the Act. This is in Section 19 under the definition of processing, where it says:

"'processing' (in relation to fish) includes preserving or preparing fish, or manufacturing products from fish, by any method for human or animal consumption."

There is not a word as to what a fish product is. If the hon. Gentleman can give me the reference in the Act I will be delighted to apologise. If it does not feature in the Act, then in the later stages of this Bill it might be as well to make an Amendment.

Let us take a hypothetical case about the treatment of parts of white fish. If frozen fillets were treated in this way—and at the moment frozen fillets are regarded as white fish not as products—would there be an advantage in levying them as products? I do not know. I knew beforehand the relevant amounts of fish needed to make fishmeal, but I do not know the answer to the fillets question. If it were to take over a stone and a half or two stone of fresh fish to make a stone of frozen fillets, I can certainly see the point of this subsection. If I am wrong, perhaps the hon. Gentleman can tell us what is the object here.

Perhaps I can assist the hon. Gentleman in the complex sea in which he has been swimming for the last few minutes. One has to look at the Amendment and its possible effect. This would be to exclude from Clause 4 the possibility of levying parts of white fish, for example, fillets, at any different rate from whole white fish. Approximately two stones of whole white fish are needed to make a stone of fillets. It would not be equitable for any future levy regulations to ignore this. Such regulations are required to be published by the White Fish Authority in draft, and objectors could expect to see that the rate proposed was no higher than the whole fish content of the fillets justified on a reasonable view.

Ministers jointly consider these regulations and any objections, before confirming them, and the confirming order is subject to the negative Resolution procedure.

It is not an argument to say that fillets from British vessels should not be at risk of a higher levy on landing than whole fish. The larger quantity of whole fish required to provide a given quantity of fillets has already been explained.

In addition, an increasing proportion of foreign landings is in the form of fillets. In 1967, the imports of frozen fillets totalled 37,000 tons, against 5,000 tons landed from British vessels. At the least it should be open to consider that parts of fish should be treated as products in the light of arguments for and against a particular rate for a specific product. The power contained in subsection (6) should remain available to us.

As to the hon. Member's other point, the definition of "products" was added to the 1951 Act by an Amendment, in the 1962 Sea Fish Industry Act. I would refer the hon. Member to Paragraph 9 of the Third Schedule. These are the complexities with which we are involved, but when one looks at them carefully, they are reasonably simple.

I thought it was too good to be true that I might have discovered a drafting error. This is one of the difficulties one encounters although one is trying to do one's best. We are referred to the 1951 Act, and I cannot see why the draftsmen should not, so as to help us, say that it was amended by the 1962 Act. It would have saved me a lot of reading. I am gratified to discover that my interpretation of the subsection was roughly correct, although it was as well to have that on record and to have the reasons for it.

I am grateful to the Minister. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

The Clause authorises the White Fish Authority to double their present levy, which will bring in about £1 million compared with the present £500,000. As the Minister told us on Second Reading, the original White Fish Authority levy was fixed as long ago as 1951. The Minister also said that he would have to authorise any increase and that it could be prayed against in the House. There cannot be any objection to that procedure. But it also allows a levy to be charged on all white fish landed, which I assume includes imports, and it includes white fish products, which I imagine includes fish meal. I hope that that is so. It would be a considerable encouragement to British vessels which are participating in industrial fishing. I understand that this year we are importing about £30 million worth of fish meal and that only one-fifth of the total requirements of this country are from the products of British catchers.

In this respect there is one point which I should like to put to the Minister which is worrying the inshore fishermen. Industrial fishing now will be permitted by the Immature Sea Fish Order, and I understand that it will attract subsidy if carried out by vessels over 80 ft. in length—in other words, the deep water fleet. The inshore vessels will have to pay a possible future levy which may be imposed under Clause 4 but they will. I understand, get no subsidy if they go in for industrial fishing, which I understand, is particularly appropriate for purse seine nets. Why is that so? This is a matter which is worrying the inshore fishermen around all our coasts.

The Clause refers to the White Fish Authority. On Second Reading, as reported in column 917 of the OFFICIAL REPORT, the Minister said that he wished to pay a tribute to the work of the Industrial Development Unit of the White Fish Authority. We on this side of the Committee would like to join in that tribute. He said that commercial development would be financed as to 50 per cent. from Government sources and as to 50 per cent. from the levy which we are discussing. He also said that in his view this form of development should be expanded and here, too, I support his views. It is extremely important.

This brings me to the Research and Development Progress Report of the White Fish Authority, published this year. It is a booklet of interest to all hon. Members who are concerned about the industry. It is only five years since the White Fish Authority started a development unit, and both sides of the Committee will agree that they have made a very good job of it. The Report points out that the White Fish Authority proceed under three different categories—first, to improve the facilities and catching capacity of the vessels; secondly, to improve handling, processing and distribution; and thirdly, to consider any future resources.

May I briefly refer to some of the main issues? In connection with improved efficiency the Report points to such diverse improvements as net drums, warp tension meters and facilities for introducing unmanned engine rooms in future trawlers. In connection with handling there is a reference to boxing at sea and the transfer of catches at sea. Those will be particularly important for the future of the industry. In connection with future development there is a reference not only to the exploration of the South Atlantic but also to research into unexploited species of fish which are not today relished by the British housewife, who has memories of wartime snoek, but which could probably be good edible fish.

The most important research for the future is in fish farming. I believe that Committee would like to encourage the White Fish Authority in any future research in that direction. Just as in agriculture we have gone from hunting to producing, so we must do the same in fishing. I am sure that we offer our congratulations to Sir Frederick Brundrett and his colleagues. I would add that the fact that there is a field for expansion in research and development is recognised by the industry. The White Fish Authority are not altogether popular in all sections of the industry, but the industry agrees that they are doing a very good job in this field, and it is one which should have the wholehearted support of all those interested in fishing.

On Second Reading, as reported in c. 917 of the OFFICIAL REPORT, the Minister spoke of a wide range of other functions of the White Fish Authority. One could mention promotion marketing, quality control—which is very important—and the promotion of industrial fishing; and the White Fish Authority would even like to take over some of the administration of the fish docks. In other words, there are those in the Authority who want to see it expand into a Commission rather than an Authority.

I hope that the Minister will recognise publicly that there is a need for investigation into the future of the White Fish Authority. Suggestions have been made by the Fisheries Sub-Committee of the Select Committee, of which the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, West (Mr. James Johnson) was chairman. I hope that he will catch your eye, Mr. Gourlay, later in the debate. I am sure that I carry his support when I speak of the need for some such investigation. I see from today's Order Paper that the Select Committee on Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has been given a reprieve and that in their wisdom the Government have decided to extend the life of that Committee from 31st December this year until 28th February next year. I hope very much that it will be possible for the Sub-Committee on Fisheries to go ahead with some such investigation, which I hope will have the support of the Ministry.

Many problems are involved. Do we need a White Fish Authority and a Herring Industry Board? There is also the question of statutory minimum prices and of industrial fishing. I must not develop these issues in much detail in Committee, but I have said enough for the Minister to appreciate that there are hon. Members on both sides of the Committee who sincerely believe that these problems should be looked into now, because though the White Fish Authority are doing an excellent job in research and development, it may be that they could do an even better job if they were given more powers. If it is decided not to give them these powers then there might be good cause for not spending all this money and for not raising the levy to maintaoin a White Fish Authority which many hon. Members believe is not an authority.

I should be grateful to the Minister if, in his reply, he would at least confirm that he acknowledges that many hon. Members feel that there is a need for an investigation into the future of the White Fish Authority. Although we support him in the Clause giving that Authority the possibility of raising further finance to develop their activities in the future, we believe that the whole of the activities and scope of the Authority should be looked into in considerable detail in the immediate future.

This is not a time or place for detailed comments about an outside body. I know that you, Mr. Gourlay, would soon stop me if I went into them, but, since I have been mentioned, and the Select Committee has been mentioned, I wish to make a short comment. I quote Fishing News which, in today's issue, commenting on this Clause, says:

"Equally important, the statement by the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food that the Government wished to see an expansion of the research and development work of the White Fish Authority shows that efforts will be maintained to provide British fishermen with advanced catching, handling and processing techniques so necessary in a modern fishing industry."

I yield to no one in my appreciation of the value of the work done by the White Fish Authority in this way, but I must confirm what was said by the hon. Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) about comment inside the industry on the value over the whole field of the work in the context of the levy. We have either to abolish any body of this nature, or, if it is handicapped by lack of finance, we must give it the chance to show its worth. Therefore, I welcome giving the Authority this extra finance.

I have said a word or two to the Chairman of the Select Committee on Agriculture about the continuation of its existence. I hope that the powers-that-be will use their good offices to ensure that those of us interested in fisheries will be able to continue this work. Good work is being done by the White Fish Authority and we could perhaps suggest that it could be multiplied and made even better than it has been in the last year or two.

I wish to make one general point and one particular point. The general point relates to the inclusion of the Clause in the Bill. The Bill is primarily designed to assist the deep sea fishing industry. I heartily support that object, but for that reason it does not have any connection with the inshore fleet. The only effect, therefore, on inshore fishing will be the impact of the 100 per cent. increase in the levy on the catch imposed by the White Fish Authority.

It would be beyond human nature for any man in the inshore fishing fleet not to feel that this is liable to be unfair. Therefore, we must be very much aware of the possibility of that feeling in the industry. My hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) and the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, West (Mr. James Johnson) have borne witness to this.

There is much feeling in the industry about the value of these boards related to the work of the individual skipper or fisherman. There is sometimes a doubt in their minds, but there is absolutely no doubt in the mind of anyone connected with the industry about the effect of the levy. It has an onerous effect and, as a result of the Bill, it will have a doubly onerous effect.

It is paradoxical that the philosophy of the Bill is that efficiency is to be rewarded, but to he

"that hath more shall be given."

That is an ancient doctrine with some highly venerable antecedents, but in the Bill there is a qualification. It is that the man who has also a deep sea fishing boat and the inshore fleet gets nothing. Those in the inshore fleet are very efficient—they work hard and make money—but ther reward is a 100 per cent. increase in the levy.

My particular point relates to the fact that, in spite of the increase in the levy which the catch will now have to bear, there is the ambivalence about the inshore fishing fleet that it does not necessarily get the operating subsidy. For example, a constituent of mine has for the last few weeks sought to catch Norwegian pout. He has bought nets and gear especially for that purpose and his boat is a highly efficient modern boat equipped for all kinds of industrial fishing. For the last three weeks his catch has borne a levy of £150 and he has not received any operating subsidy. I hope that we shall hear the reasons for that from the Government either today or later. If the law we are passing today is to be of one kind for the big ships and another kind for the small ships, I do not want anything of it.

The Clause, in subsection (8), refers to the herring fishing industry. It seems that the Herring Industry Board will get more money for fishmeal. In that case the Board should reconsider its services to fishermen engaged in this part of the industry. I believe that last year a levy on herring caught for fishmeal was as much as 3s. 6d. a cran. At the price obtained, that was totally uneconomic and as a result quotas were imposed. We are going towards increasing production, but when there is a great amount of herring quotas are instantly put on and that gear is wasted.

If there is to be a development of herring for fishmeal markets, I do not want our fishermen to be left out. I should like to have more explanation from the Government, particularly about whether there is any reconsideration of policy concerning fishmeal.

I make one comment about the inshore fleet being penalised. The inshore fleet has done better in the past year or two than has the deep sea fishing fleet. It has many advantages such as closeness to the market and the 12-mile limit, but I do not want to start a fight between the deep sea and the inshore sections. I want to consider the increase in the levy made by the White Fish Authority. This is tremendously important. There is the possibility, and indeed the hope of the Government, of making it more efficient, more productivity-conscious and able to do all the splendid things which hon. Members today have welcomed about the White Fish Authority. This links up most importantly with the provision announced today, in relation to the training scheme, for excluding training from costs.

One of the criticisms which have been made in the past is that as a result of research and development there has been a reluctance by certain parts of the industry to take advantage of developments pioneered by the White Fish Authority to see that people are trained. Therefore if we can strengthen the Authority by making an increased amount of money available and also ensure that more respect and attention is paid to its findings by the industry as a whole and by some gearing of the scheme which has been announced—if acceptance of the findings of the Authority in terms of efficiency and productivity means that they can extend by their researches through this increased levy—it will be more than welcome.

I support what my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, West (Mr. James Johnson) said. There has been and is continuing criticism of the Authority in the industry. This provision, if properly used, gives the Authority a chance to show that the criticisms are ill-founded and that the Authority has an important place in the industry as a whole.

I am in no sense replying to the debate, but I should like to make an intervention on the points raised by the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire, East (Mr. Wolrige-Gordon). I find his intervention slightly curious. I understand the reason for it and I know the situation he described as it affects his constituents—a firm and a boat I know.

When we are talking about a 100 per cent. increase in the levy, to which the hon. Gentleman referred several times, we are referring to 1d. increase. It is not quite so dramatic when one refers to 1d.

Does that apply to the Secretary of State at the D.E.P. as well?

We had better not cast our net too wide in this debate. We should stick to the subject of fish.

This is discretionary. We are not saying that it will increase by this amount. This merely gives the power to do so to the Authority.

It was contended that we should not bring in a levy and a subsidy in the one Bill. This is where the hon. Gentleman argued that unfairness existed. There is every reason why the Clause should be in the Bill. The two things either affect one another or they do not.

I want to deal with the point about the inshore fleet. It was said that those who have will get and that this is a deep sea Bill. This is not so. There are references throughout the Bill to the inshore fleet. Clause 1(3) extends the period of subsidy by one year and gives assurance of subsidy for this period to the inshore fleet. Clause 2 provides for a subsidy for trans-shipment, an operation in which the inshore fleet engages to a great extent. So, in addition to the announcement we made earlier this year, the inshore men are included in the Bill. Clause 5 will apply to the inshore fleet and benefit it in the general policing problems—incidents, accidents, and so on. Both in that aspect and in the subsidy aspect the inshore fleet is included.

The Under-Secretary will not deny, though, that a great proportion of the increase in the subsidy which is now to be available for the fishing fleet—about £2 million-is to go to the deep sea fleet.

The hon. Gentleman is looking at the levy/subsidy aspect. This is the basis of the argument. There is, therefore, every reason why the levy should be included here. We have dealt with this aspect, and it is a difficult problem. We recognise that the newest and most exciting part of the Bill refers to deep sea fish, but the other aspect is included. We made a statement about it. The hon. Gentleman must not keep repeating this.

One difficulty is that the hon. Gentleman tends to see the White Fish Authority as an organ of Government. The two things are separate. The levy is to enable the general functioning of the Authority to continue. This helps all the fishermen. The current subsidy scheme precludes payment of white fish subsidy on species of fish not normally sold for human consumption. This is because we have always regarded the purpose of the subsidy as being to encourage fishing for human consumption. Subsidy is not paid on species of fish not normally sold for human consumption and which are used in industrial production. The hon. Gentleman will know about the 10 per cent. rule which has been introduced.

1.15 p.m.

It would involve a change in the statutory position if we were to bring about a change. Therefore, we are reviewing this position about other species not normally sold for human consumption. They are being brought in under the 10 per cent. rule. We intend to consider what further changes should be made in this respect, which will go some way to meet the hon. Gentleman's problem. I cannot go further into this at present. The assurance that this will be reviewed is the important thing.

We have had complaints on the question of the levy for a long time. It is a general regulation which will be brought in by this Authority subject to the approval of the Ministers rather than being directly introduced by the Authority.

With this explanation I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be content that the relationship between the two is under review on the subsidy side.

How long will the review take?

I cannot, especially at short notice, answer that. It is a complex problem.

Perhaps I may be permitted to reply briefly to some of the United Kingdom aspects of the discussion. The debate demonstrates how well representatives of the three countries of this island can work together, given the opportunity.

The Clause restores the possible maximum for the white fish levy to its 1951 value in real terms by substituting 2d. for 1d. It also permits both the White Fish Authority and the Herring Industry Board to propose measures increasing the coverage of their levies and increasing their income. All these are enabling powers. Any revised rate which either body may propose to charge for any description of fish or fish products will have to be given effect in the way provided for in existing legislation.

For white fish this will require the Authority to make regulations which do not take effect unless confirmed by Ministers after they have considered any objections which may be raised. The confirming Order is subject to the negative Resolution procedure. For herring the Board can make rules, but again only with the approval of Ministers, who must similarly consider any objections.

The new maximum limit of white fish general levy is likely to be sufficient for some time. But so that it could, if necessary, be altered more readily than by a Bill, as at present, the Clause enables Ministers to increase the new figure of 2d. by Order, subject to the affirmative Resolution of both Houses of Parliament. So again there is the opportunity for debate in the House. The maximum rate of the herring industry levy is not prescribed by the relevant legislation and there is no need for an amendment here.

The powers in the Clause are being taken both to ensure that the two statutory bodies have adequate financial resources, particularly for research and development, and also to enable the burden of providing these resources to be spread fairly.

I was glad to hear reference made to the importance of research. These references underline the tribute I paid on Second Reading to the Industrial Development Unit of the Authority. In paying tribute to the Unit, of course, we are paying tribute to the White Fish Authority, because this is part of its work. I entirely agree that its importance should not be underestimated if the industry is to go forward, to be modernised, to be streamlined, to be fully efficient, to make a contribution to the economy, to give good service, and to give proper employment to those who work in it. For all those reasons, it is appropriate that we should in due course make more money available to the Authority.

It may be appropriate to remind the Committee that at present the Authority obtains its general levy income from landings of whole fish and fillets, including imports. The present rate on landings, since 1963, has been 1d. a stone, which is the maximum. This bears less hardly on fillets, whether produced on British vessels or imported, than on whole fish, as each stone of the former represents about double the quantity of whole fish. It bears more hardly on condemned fish or fish which cannot be sold and is converted into fishmeal than on landings or imports of fishmeal or other fish products which pay no levy.

The way in which the powers provided under this important Clause should be used will depend on what case is made for additional expenditure by the two bodies and for any alteration in the arrangements where the present incidence of levy is uneven. The bodies have to make an adequate case, and Ministers will have to consider any proposals in the light of the objections, if any, made to them, and, as regards imports, in the light also of any considerations of commercial policy.

There has been a good deal of discussion directed to the White Fish Authority itself. The object of the Clause is to strengthen the Authority by giving it the opportunity to ask for additional resources. It would be wrong at this stage to undermine the confidence and authority of the White Fish Authority. I am anxious that the Authority should now, under the new régime, have a chance to work in a period of greater stability. I take this opportunity to wish it well over the next few years and to hope that the new policy which we are now launching will give it the opportunity and the confidence to do the job for which it was set up.

Questions have been raised concerning the imposition of levy on any new category of product. This is a matter which we shall have to consider in the light of any proposal by the White Fish Authority and any objection to it.

There have been references also to the Select Committee, which has done a good deal of work and published what I thought was an interesting Report from its Sub-Committee. However, the manner in which the Select Committee carries out its work and plans its programme is a matter for the Committee, and it would be more than my life is worth if I started interfering. All I can do is wish it well in its future studies.

My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State at the Scottish Office has replied on the question of inshore subsidy, but I think that it would be as well if I dealt with the point, too. The inshore subsidy comes up for consideration annually, and the question of covering industrial fishing arises then. We are dealing now with the deep-sea fishing industry. It is the deep-sea fishing industry which has been undergoing considerable difficulties for reasons of which we are all aware. The inshore section has done very much better and is dealt with differently, but it is certainly not neglected by the Government. I assure the hon. Gentleman the Member for Aberdeenshire, East (Mr. Wolrige-Gordon) that we shall be looking very carefully at the progress of the inshore fishing industry as well.

On Second Reading, I raised with my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland the question whether the provision in the last line of subsection (1) covered inflatable life rafts as well. I am grateful to him for the attention which he paid to my inquiry. His answer was "No", but I understand the reason, in that there is sufficient provision under the Merchant Shipping Acts. The Board of Trade is at present, following the report of the "St. Romanus" inquiry, actively engaged in trying to find a satisfactory system for dealing with inflatable life rafts in this connection. I thank my hon. Friend for the courtesy and attention which he gave to my inquiry.

I beg to move Amendment No. 4, in page 6, line 28, after 'forfeiture', insert 'or destruction'. I assure the Minister that this also is merely a probing Amendment. Why is he so tough in Scotland? In the event of a contravention in England, the person convicted is to forfeit any fish or fishing gear found aboard the boat, but in Scotland he not only forfeits the fishing gear but it may be destroyed or otherwise disposed of. Why are the regulations different in that respect?

Perhaps it would not be out of order to ask in this connection whether there is any chance of reaching an international agreement on a scale of punishments for offences of this kind. We now have agreements about policing, mesh sizes and so on. If we could have an international agreement which gave a rough and ready guide on punishments, it would be of value for the industry.

We have just had a little discussion on the Front Bench about who should answer, having regard to the way the Amendment is worded. However, as the hon. Gentleman spoke to the Scottish aspect of the question, although the Amendment was phrased to amend the law relating to England, I have opted to reply.

I readily understand that the difference in phraseology in subsection (5) has prompted the hon. Gentleman to ask his question, but I am glad to tell him that the answer is straightforward. I am advised that for England and Wales the point is fully covered by Section 115 of the Magistrates' Courts Act, 1952. No doubt, hon. Members have been reading the Fisheries Acts so assiduously over the past few days that they have turned their minds to the Magistrates' Courts Act of 1952.

The 1952 Act enables a court in England, if forfeiture is ordered, to direct that the forfeited articles shall be sold or otherwise disposed of in such manner as it may prescribe, and destruction could be ordered in appropriate cases. In cases when the prosecutor seeks forfeiture, it is normal to give the court his view on how the catch or gear should be disposed of—for example, he could seek destruction of a net with illegal meshes—and the court will usually agree.

The Magistrates' Courts Act, 1952, does not apply to Scotland. This was the reason for the specific reference to destruction or disposal in subsection 5(c).

I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman for treating so courteously a mere Sassenach who dares to interfere in Scottish affairs. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

I follow what was said a moment ago by my hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) about the need for a measure of uniformity in penalties. My question is to ask how the figure of £500 was arrived at. Although I do not necessarily agree with the penalties in other countries, there is a very wide variation. Compared with penalties elsewhere, that in subsection (5) is light. In England, Wales and Scotland the penalty can be £500, plus forfeiture, plus destruction. But in the Daily Telegraph this morning I read of a skipper from Fleetwood convicted of illegal fishing within the Iceland limits, and the penalty was £2,850 fine, two months' imprisonment and complete confiscation.

I do not say that that is right, but, if that is the sort of thing that our skippers must put up with if they go over the borderline, is not £500 here very much child's play? In view of that, do the Government think that the sentences are adequate?

I shall not comment on the case to which the hon. Gentleman referred because something might follow from it, and therefore it would not be right for me to do so. Nor will I argue the different circumstances as to the type of vessels involved in the offence. There is a great difference between a distant water vessel and one that is inshore.

We have brought the penalty much more up to date. In Committee on another Bill we were harangued at length about being a little too vindictive in the penalties we introduced. But there is no satisfactory way of measuring a penalty; one makes it what one thinks will meet the offence. We have now increased it pretty substantially, and I hope that we shall convey to the courts that we hope to deter potential offenders. We hope that the penalties imposed on those found guilty will reflect the feelings of the House.

The hon. Gentleman seemed to differentiate between a fine on a distant water trawler operating in Iceland waters and one on an inshore vessel. But this is the penalty to which a vessel from Iceland might be subject. It does not affect our inshore vessels. I dare say that I should be careful, because the matter may be sub judice, but, while I believe that the penalty I have quoted is excessively savage, compared with it the penalty that we are introducing is child's play.

I do not want to underestimate the matter, because it is important to our industry. But the hon. Gentleman has already said that in the case overseas the penalty was savage. One cannot make a comparison with what one regards as savage and then say that we may therefore be underestimating what we should do. I agree that we want to deter trespassers, and we have made provision to do it in this way. I do not differ from the hon. Gentleman about the savagery of some penalties imposed overseas, which certainly do not meet with my approval.

Does my hon. Friend agree that the real problem is not the size of the fine or the degree of the penalty but the efficiency of the policing? This particularly applies on the Yorkshire coast, where there is a great deal of trespassing by foreign vessels coming inshore.

There is a lot in my hon. Friend's argument. If skippers know that they are being adequately policed, that is a deterrent. They must be shown that it will not be worth while to trespass because in addition to the fines we have the right to impose forfeiture. That is a great deterrent, which is perhaps even more important than the fines.

The next Amendment is amendment No. 5, with which I suggest that we discuss Amendment No. 6, in page 7, line 1, leave out ' on full pay' and Amendment No. 7, in page 7, line 3, leave out 'command or'.

I beg to move Amendment No. 5, in page 6, line 45, leave out 'other than' and insert 'including'.

The three Amendments have one thing in common. From what the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) has just said, I hope that I shall have his approval, because they are designed to make policing more efficient and to speed up the process of intercepting poachers. When I was in the position occupied by the hon. Member for Renfrew, West (Mr. Buchan), time and again I received reports of incidents, with protection vessels often not arriving in time.

A fishery officer may want to board a vessel and go through the equipment and documents. But, first, he must get to sea and stop the vessel. A protection vessel is not always out on the high seas. I remember occasions when the protection vessel was tied up at Stornoway and had to get away into the Minch when there was report of a foreign vessel. That often included one from Fleetwood, which, so I was informed, was also regarded as foreign.

Accordingly, it is undesirable to limit the type of person who may be qualified to act as a fishery officer. Why should not an assistant fishery officer be allowed to act in that capacity? Under subsection 1(d), first or second officers of the fishery protection service are allowed to do so; it is not necessary for an officer to be at the very top under that provision. In subsection (1)(f) three grades of the coastguard service are admitted, and in subsection (2) the appropriate Minister is allowed to appoint any person. Amendment No. 5 would do nothing but increase efficiency by allowing an assistant fishery officer as well as officers of the sea-fishery inspectorate to act.

On Amendment No. 6, it seems to me to be slightly absurd that one should have to go to the trouble of finding out whether a commissioned officer, possibly struggling into his trousers in the middle of the night, is on full pay. If he is on half pay he cannot act. This kind of thing makes a nonsense of the Clause.

Subsection (1) (c) is much more sensible. It does not require the person in command of an aircraft or hovercraft to be a commissioned officer. This is obviously because very often the person in command is a sergeant pilot. If he is regarded as perfectly adequate to do the job, why differentiate between the services?

What is the subtle difference between a person "in command" of an aircraft and a person "in charge" of an aircraft? It could be said that if the commanding officer has gone for lunch he has left somebody in charge of the aircraft, and that person could well be anybody at the station at which the machine was based. But whoever that person is, he is regarded as being perfectly suitable to act as a sea-fishery officer.

I agree with the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, North that we have to make policing as proficient as it can possibly be. These Amendments are designed to give people who are perfectly worthy of having it in emergency—and it usually is an emergency—responsibility to act, and it is in that spirit that I move the Amendment.

I shall take each Amendment in turn, but I should like to reverse the order, although I shall start with Amendment No. 5.

I can understand why this Amendment should be proposed. The difficulty is that at present the grade "assistant fishery officer" is one which we have in Scotland and not in England, where part of the duties are carried out by junior clerical and scientific staff, and the Amendment would, therefore, have effect only in Scotland. In a sense, the grade is a training grade in Scotland. It is a fairly junior grade. If the powers were conferred as proposed those officers would not be likely to be required to exercise them; they would not be likely to be on the scene of the operation, for they are shore-based officers. The main point, however, is that this is a junior grade and a training grade, and I hope that, on reconsideration, the hon. Gentleman will withdraw that Amendment.

There is one other point we might keep in mind, and that is that here we are dealing with fairly important international matters which are involved, and that is an additional reason for keeping this part of the Clause as it is.

I come now to Amendment No. 7. I suppose that it is based on the debatable assumption that the person for the time being in charge of an aircraft or hovercraft is in command of it. I am not very sure about this. The person in command is exercising his powers as a fishery officer, but some other person may be at the controls. The Amendment could lead to difficulty—for example, the commander of the hovercraft, were one of the crew in charge of the craft, could not then order the offending fishing vessel to stop for inspection.

I know that hon. Members very often talk about draftsmen's dreams and I think that this Amendment may be a dream, which we would not want to become a reality, for we do not want there to be any doubt as to who is in command—or in charge—or any doubt as to his powers. I hope that the Committee will reject that Amendment.

That gives me my reason for leaving Amendment No. 6 to the last. I take the point put by the hon. Member and I am happy to accept it. I have had it confirmed by the Ministry of Defence that an officer would be on reduced pay only if he had been dismissed his ship. All commissioned officers serving in naval vessels are on full pay. I am sure that the entire Committee will concur in accepting that Amendment.

Obviously, this is a good bargain. In view of all that the hon. Gentleman has said, I shall waste no more time on the other Amendments. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

I want to ask a question. Actions taken by a fishery officer may lead to an action in court and charges laid for offences under Clauses 5, 6, 7 and 10. It is not very long since there was an action of this kind in the sheriff court at Lerwick. That action failed because of the lack of corroborative evidence. My question—and I think it is of some substance—is: are fishery officers being made aware, because, if not, I think it is important that they should be, of the need to have evidence corroborated if any action they are taking is likely to end in a Scottish court, that being the nearest convenient court to the scene of the offence committed?

In England, as I understand, the need for corroboration is certainly not as important as it is in the Scottish courts. It would, therefore, seem to me that in the light of the Lerwick incident fishery officers must be made fully aware of the need to get corroboration in any action they take.

The point is well taken. The law on corroboration is different as between Scotland and England. I know the case to which the hon. Gentleman refers. I will certainly take up his point. It may be that the case itself may have had an educative effect in illustrating the need to instruct non-Scottish officers in Scotland as to their duties, but I will look into this and consider whether we are doing everything possible to give full advice and instruction on this matter.

I have one question, whether or not a warrant of distress is exactly the same thing as, the precise equivalent to, poinding. I am well aware, all Scottish Members are, of what poinding is. I am not certain what a warrant of distress involves.

To this legal problem which has been raised I shall certainly give my undivided attention, and let the hon. Gentleman know.

I beg to move Amendment No. 9, in page 11, line 32, to leave out from 'compensation' to 'and' in line 39.

This is another legal matter, and it is one of some substance. The Clause deals with the question of civil claims arising out of the committing of any of the statutory offences mentioned. The individual right to proceed by ordinary action is preserved by subsection (4). The first two lines of subsection (2)(c) are entirely unobjectionable. There is nothing to which I take exception in that. But what follows allows a report, un-sworn and uncorroborated, to be regarded not only as evidence but as conclusive evidence of the loss sustained—subject, of course, to the direction of the sheriff.

It is not accurate to say that there are no occasions on which reports of this kind are admissible as evidence, but it is true that the circumstances are very peculiar when there are. Certainly, affidavits, which are sworn statements, have been admissible in place of oral evidence as proof of damages in collisions at sea and generally in Admiralty and commercial cases.

I refer the hon. Gentleman to the rules of the Court of Session. Paragraph 152 says:

"In any admiralty or commercial cause the Court may accept as evidence affidavits. Where, in the opinion of the Court, any affidavit produced is insufficient to enable the question at issue to be disposed of, the party lodging the same may be called upon to lodge a supplementary affidavit, or, where the circumstances reasonably permit, to prove the relevant facts by the ordinary rules of evidence."

Paragraph 135 defines what is an Admiralty cause. It lists 16 of them. None is anything like what is specified in this Clause or arises from what we are discussing.

The proposal in the Clause which we wish to omit goes very much further than this by substituting a mere report by someone for a sworn affidavit. When the Scottish Standing Committee discussed Section 9 of the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Scotland) Act, 1968, we learned that it did away with the need for corroboration in actions for damages for personal injuries. I draw the hon. Gentleman's attention to the fact that this Clause deals not only with personal injuries, however, but includes damage to property as well.

Our concern is that one cannot cross-examine over an affidavit or a report. There are already sound reasons for admitting the affidavit in special circumstances, but none for going further than that. The Clause as drafted breaks new ground in relation to corroboration of evidence, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be able to assure us either that the Government accept the Amendment or that they will give serious reconsideration to this aspect.

I understand the difficulty and appreciate why the hon. Gentleman has moved this Amendment. I draw his attention to Clause 11, which says:

"In any civil or criminal proceedings a written statement purporting to be a report made by a British or foreign sea-fishery officer on matters ascertained in the course of exercising his powers under section 9 above for the purposes of enforcing the provisions of any convention mentioned in that section shall be admissible as evidence to the like extent as oral evidence to the like effect by that officer."

No objection has been taken to that provision.

But, apart from the importance of Clause 11, there is the question of cross-examination. I want to look for a moment at the general argument. The hon. Gentleman suggests that a report of this nature will be conclusive evidence. It will be nothing of the sort. We are simply saying that such a report may be considered as evidence. The Clause allows its admissibility. It is not in itself sufficient to prove a case, since that is a matter for the sheriff to decide. The Clause merely states that the report may be admissible and may be sufficient if the court decides so. That is quite different from saying that the report "shall" be conclusive.

The court need not accept the evidence of the report. On the other hand, the report may be sufficient if the court believes it. The circumstances in which the report was produced and the report itself will be a matter for the court to adjudicate upon in deciding whether to accept it.

There are certain difficulties in this sort of situation. Such a report will be useful, for example, where there are difficulties in securing the attendance of sea-going witnesses, particularly in foreign boats. In some cases the record kept by the sea-fishery officer concerned may be the only impartial record available to the court. We are merely saying that justice will be served by allowing the admissibility of these reports but their acceptance is a matter for the courts. That is sufficient for our purpose. It will, of course, still be open to the courts to require additional evidence. This Clause does not impair the court's rights in that respect at all.

Finally, there is the question of compensation. It is considered that the provision will be of assistance to persons who have suffered damage at sea rather than that it is the gross invasion of the rights of the individual that the hon. Gentleman sees. I note the connection with recent legal discussion in Scotland and with the arguments which took place in another place. But the distinction the hon. Gentleman made in relation to personal injuries is not really applicable here. The two cases are not directly comparable, although the principle is the same in that a particular kind of evidence may be admissible, but may not be of itself conclusive.

I am not a lawyer. Nor is the hon. Gentleman, although he is backed up by formidable advisers. I do not think that he has made out a case for departing from the rule which relates affidavits very closely to Admiralty causes, and what we are discussing seems to me to have a certain amount of affinity to the Admiralty. The circumstances have to do with ships. The Admiralty Causes List links itself closely with affidavits. The List does not allow reports. In several items mentioned in paragraph 135 of the List, a report is not acceptable, but an affidavit is. In Clause 13, however, the Government are saying that there is something so special, unique and difficult that an affidavit is too much and that a report will do.

I would be perfectly satisfied if the hon. Gentleman agreed to alter the word "report" to "affidavit", but otherwise he seems to be breaking considerable new ground. On the Law Reform Bill we were told that the new law on corroboration was to affect only personal injuries and not damage to property, which is what is here involved. I daresay that I overstated my case by suggesting that this would be conclusive evidence, but nevertheless the word is "shall" and not "may" and the phrase is:

"shall…be sufficient evidence for the disposal of the question of compensation."

I suppose that we may argue about what is sufficient, but if the court thinks that it is sufficient, that will be that.

2.0 p.m.

Although I may take credit for spotting this myself, let me not lead anyone to suppose that I did not consult my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Pentlands (Mr. Wylie), who has been of use to both sides of the Scottish Grand Committee and the House in his time. He assured me that he thought that this was a step which should be examined very carefully. I therefore hope that the hon. Gentleman will be willing to say at least that he will consider the use of the word "affidavit" before the Bill goes to another place.

I understand the hon. Gentleman's argument about the use of "affidavit" and I am prepared to consider that matter to see whether there is any substance in what he says. I am not convinced by what he has said about the use of "shall".

Although he says that this is a new provision, it is a continuation of and corresponds to the provisions of Section 8 of the Sea Fisheries (Scotland) Amendment Act, 1885, so that no new ground is being covered, and that should be remembered when we are considering the precedents.

I should like to consider the hon. Gentleman's interpretation of the phrase "shall be sufficient evidence". The exact words are:

"shall, unless the sheriff considers that it is necessary in the interests of justice to allow additional evidence, be sufficient evidence…"

That is a very big difference. The second qualification is that it is to be sufficient evidence for the disposal of the question of compensation, which does not mean that it is to be taken as proof.

With those two important points, the qualification of the hon. Gentleman's interpretation of "shall" and the reminder that this is not as new as the hon. Gentleman suggests, I should like to consider the somewhat technical point about an affidavit, although I shall do so in as sour and discouraging a manner as possible.

That spoils the whole thing. However, as the hon. Gentleman has said that he will look at the matter again, whatever expression he wears on his face, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

I should like to bring the Committee back from Scotland and rather involved questions of Scots law to England and particularly the West Country.

The Clause includes the phrase

"fishing for and taking of shell fish"

This matter was raised on Second Reading by my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. Nott) when he was discussing the difficulties which have been occurring in the West Country between the Sea Fishery Committees and skin divers. I shall not refer to any possible decision which the Parliamentary Secretary may have to take about byelaws, but I put it to the Committee that there is a difference between professional divers, who use aqualungs and dive for shell fish and for whom perhaps there ought to be some form of licensing system, and the amateur skin diver in whom I have an especial interest as Vice-President of the British Sub-Aqua Club.

I remind the Committee that the Minister has brought in a new code of conduct for amateur divers and I hope that it will be agreed that it has been upheld, certainly by members of the various clubs, and one hopes that observance of the code will spread and that all amateur skin divers will take great care to observe it as being only fair to fishermen.

I want to refer to co-operation between the Sea Fishery Committees and the local fishermen and the skin divers, at any rate, organised skin divers in clubs. In Fishing News of 6th September, referring to the Devon Sea Fisheries Committee, it was reported:

"The Committee also decided in future skin divers would not be invited to six monthly meetings open to fishermen".

This seems to be a retrograde step. I hope that the Minister will agree that the more co-operation that can be obtained between the Sea Fishery Committees, representing as they do the interests of the inshore fishermen, and anglers or skin divers the better for the industry as a whole.

I do not want to go too deeply into this problem. The hon. Gentleman and I have had considerable correspondence about it and as a result a code of conduct has been drawn up and there has been an improvement. It would not be right for me to comment at the Box about any decision which may have to be made.

I want to correct a possible misapprehension concerning a matter raised with me by the hon. Member for St. Ives (Mr. Nott). He was apparently under the impression that Clause 16 did not provide additional powers to enforce the minimum size for shell fish which could be taken within United Kingdom territorial limits by foreign fishermen. I want to make it perfectly clear that the Sea-Fishing Industry (Crabs and Lobsters) Order, 1966, prohibits the landing, sale, exposure or offering for sale or the possession for the purposes of sale of any crabs measuring less than four and a half inches across the broadest part of the back, or any lobster measuring less than nine inches from the tip of the beak to the end of the shell of the centre flap of the tail when the lobster is spread as far as possible flat.

We have covered that fairly comprehensively and I hope that that matter will not be raised again.

I beg to move Amendment No. 13, in page 16, line 21, as end add:

(3) Any order under this section may make such transitional provision as appears to the Ministers to be necessary or expedient in connection with the provisions thereby brought into force, including such adaptations of those provisions or any provisions of this Act then in force as appear to him to be necessary or expedient in consequence of the partial operation of this Act (whether before or after the day appointed by the order).

I beg to move Amendment No. 14, in page 19, line 18, leave out '1' and insert '3'.

I beg to move Amendment No. 15, in page 19, line 20, at end insert:

15A. In section 3(4) (application of section 6 of the White Fish and Herring Industries Act 1953 to vessels and persons), for the words ' boats (as defined by the Herring Industry Act 1935)' there shall be substituted the word ' vessels'.

The purpose and effect of this Amendment is to bring the wording of Section 3 (4) of the Sea Fish Industry Act, 1962 into line with that used elsewhere in order to facilitate consolidation. The word "vessel" is now generally used in connection with grants for vessels engaged in the white fish or herring industry. This Amendment is similar to that relating to Section 6(4) of the 1953 Act.

I beg to move Amendment No. 16, in page 20, line 40, at end insert:

'and at the end there shall be inserted the following proviso—

"Provided that nothing in the first paragraph of this section shall apply to an offence under section 5, 6 or 10 of the Sea Fisheries Act 1968."'.

This is a fairly minor change. It will avoid the overlap between the provisions of Section 7 of the 1885 Act and those of Clause 14 in respect of offences under Clauses 5, 6 and 10. It is purely a tidying-up point.

I beg to move Amendment No. 17, in page 22, line 38, at end insert:

I beg to move Amendment No. 18, in page 23, leave out lines 27 to 31.

With permission, I will take Amendment No. 19 with this Amendment.

The Bill splits Schedule 2 into two parts, one part of which will come into force on the passing of the Act and the other on the appointed day. The Amendments provide for moving the provisions from Part I to Part II to ensure consistency with other provisions in the Bill and the Schedules.

While not being able to object to the Motion because of the change in date, may I put on record that it seems unfortunate that this rather contentious Motion should be tabled on a Friday when neither the Chairman nor the majority of members of the Committee are present?

As I was the Member who talked out the original Motion, I should like to say a few words.

This Motion is identical with the one which I talked out except that the date has been changed and the Select Committee has been given an extra eight weeks of life, for which I express my thanks. The points put forward in the short debate eight days ago have been noted. The repeated objections which various members of the Committee made this week to the original Motion have been noted. The Amendment which the majority of members of the Committee proposed to the original Motion has been noted.

Perhaps the new Motion does not completely conform with the wishes of many members of the Committee, but politics is the art of the possible. Therefore, I welcome and support the Motion.

I wish to say how much I regret the attitude of my hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Dr. John Dunwoody). Politics is indeed the art of the possible, but I should have thought that more was possible than has been gained by this exercise.

An important principle is at stake in this Motion. The essence of the Select Committee system is that it is a means whereby the House can control the workings of the Executive more effectively than has been possible through the procedure of the House which has obtained hitherto. That procedure has been devised over the centuries as a check on the Executive at the moment that the decision has been made and must be presented to the House for general discussion.

But such has been the development of the Parliamentary system and of the means whereby the Executive can get its way in the House that this check is often of little more than formal importance. Once the decision has been made, it is almost impossible to have it changed unless it concerns a highly controversial matter which causes a violent division of opinion in the country and the Government decide that, in view of the hostility, they are prepared to have second thoughts. But on detailed matters, which are not always controversial but about which a difference of judgment may obtain, it is important that the wishes of the House, as of every other interested party, should be made known at an early stage. That was the whole point of the proposals concerning Select Committees. The check should be exercised in the formative period before decisions are made.

When this system was started, there was some reluctance on the part of Government Departments to have additional checks placed on them. The attitude at that time was that some initial experiments should be made in a couple of spheres of Government activity. The Select Committees on Science and Technology and on Agriculture have been of very great use. I do not think that any Member who has read their Reports can believe that this experiment has failed. Clearly, it has not. The Select Committees have produced useful information for the education of hon. Members, but, in addition, they have done what was intended of them: they have made a signal contribution to the formation of ideas and the development of decisions before they are taken.

The essence of the issue before the House is this. Should the House be the final controller of its own Select Committee procedure, or should the matter be decided by the Front Benches? I know the arguments put forward for saying that this is a reasonable decision. It is said that there are not sufficient Committee Clerks available, that strain would be placed on the services and facilities on the House, and that Members are already committed on a large number of other activities and, therefore, there are not enough of them to staff the Committees. These are arguments for saying that we cannot have enough Select Committees to view the whole of Government activity and that, having tested the matters of science and technology and agriculture, it is about time that one of the Select Committees gave way to the requirements of the House to investigate some other area of Government activity.

In my view, that is an attractive argument only superficially, because I believe that if the will of the House is made plain the facilities, servants and finance for a Select Committee system covering the whole of Government activity could be found. There is no difficulty when the Government, rightly in my view, say that a new Government Department should be established for, say, economic planning. How many civil servants and facilities did the Department of Economic Affairs require? How much Government expenditure and space did it require? Once the Government make up their mind that it is necessary to have such a Department, it comes into being. This happened with overseas development and economic affairs. It could happen with any other activity in which the Government wish to indulge.

I am not criticising. I believe it right that this should happen. But it is also right that Parliament should be able to obtain the facilities and civil servants necessary to ensure that its activities go on unhindered. It is not enough to say that at present we have only a certain number of Clerks and facilities. We should be able to will the means. The only difficulty in such circumstances would be whether the House would be prepared to do the work involved in staffing Select Committees.

I know some of the difficulties. Not all hon. Members are willing to serve on Committees. Not all hon. Members, with their other interests, are able to do so. But that is a weak argument when applied to the Select Committee on Agriculture, which started with 14 members and then the number was increased to 25. It was not increased to 25 because the Committee wanted it; the Committee was content and happy to have 14 members. As I understand it, the extra 11 members were not all people who wanted to sit on the Select Committee on Agriculture. Therefore, one can only ask why they were appointed.

If Select Committees are overstaffed, it might well be that we could not man a whole range of Select Committees to span all Government activities. But if they were smaller, if they comprised those who were genuinely interested in the Government activity concerned, we could manage to have a greater range of Select Committees. If this matter were being discussed on another day in the week when greater numbers of Members were present, the expression of the House would be that it wanted the Select Committee on Agriculture to continue, but not at the cost of not appointing other Select Committees.

I have spoken perhaps for longer than I intended, but I make no apology for that. This is a serious matter. It goes to the crux of what Parliamentary reform is all about. If we lose on this battle, as my hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne conceded, I fear that we shall never gain the fundamental right that the House itself should decide the number of Committees, who serves on them and what their terms of reference shall be. In that event, the Executive will never be controlled by the House. It will always be able to set the terms of reference and decide who serves on the Committees. If matters are put forward in this way, inevitably somebody will say that the reality of politics is that one can only get what is possible.

My hon. Friend used the word "lose". I do not regard this as a battle to be won and lost. I do not think that there are victors and vanquished. The operation of these Specialist Committees is something that we have to work out with difficulty in the early stages. A compromise has been reached, and what we have today—

Order. The hon. Member has made a speech. He cannot make a second one under the guise of an intervention. Perhaps he will complete his brief intervention.

Today's Motion is of a different nature from the original one, and I think that it is a satisfactory compromise at this moment in time.

I accept the implied rebuke in my hon. Friend's intervention. I wish that he and the rest of the Committee had been just a little more unco-operative in this matter and that the issue had been thrashed out in a full debate in a fuller House. The issue is worth such a debate.

I should like ultimately to see a situation in which a Committee of Selection was appointed by the House, and not from the usual channels, and which then chose those hon. Members who wished and were willing to serve on such Committees and that those Committees had all the staff and facilities at their disposal to do the job. Until we get that, this attempt at reform of the House will never be successful.

I think that most hon. Members, on both sides, would go a long way with what my hon. Friend the Member for York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon) has said. The action of members of the Select Committee over the past week in objecting to the previous Motion was largely motivated by the fact that we were genuinely of the opinion that it would not be possible, within the limited time available, to prepare the report that the House has the right to expect to be prepared in the light of all the evidence and the witnesses we had interviewed and seen during the whole of last Session.

It could, I suppose, be argued that we could have prepared a report of some kind by 31st December, but as members of the Select Committee we felt that we would not be doing justice to the breadth and width of the scope of the investigation which we had undertaken. We felt that to present a cock-eyed report to the House would not do either the Committee or the House in the eyes of the public any good and would be the death-knell of any future Select Committees.

We always understood that the appointment of a Select Committee was experimental in nature. I hope, however, that as a result of what has been achieved so far, and when the report in due course comes before the House, it will be clearly revealed that the experiment has been worthwhile. I support today's Motion. Although it brings to an end our special Select Committee on Agriculture, I hope that this will not be the last word of the appointment of a Select Committee for the industry, because the industry is a very wide one, with tremendous ramifications.

No one who has served on these Committees—and I have served on both of them—would ever suggest that they had reached the end of the road of investigation. There is a good deal that I would like to see further investigated. I would like to know something about N.A.A.S.—

Order. The hon. Member must not go into the subject which he would like to see investigated. He may address himself to the change of date of termination of the Committee.

I accept your Ruling Mr. Speaker. I simply wish to emphasise that there is a lot more to be investigated even concerning the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. I therefore hope that when the Select Committee comes to an end further consideration might be given in due course to the appointment of another Select Committee to deal with the same Department.

I agree that when the membership of the Committee was increased from 14 to 25 it did not achieve any greater effectiveness in the work of the Select Committee. The fact remains that attendance at the Committee's meetings last Session was no greater with a membership of 25 than when the membership was only 14. It was, therefore, a waste of Members' time. Opportunities were lost for setting up another Select Committee to deal with other aspects of Departmental work by using a number of the members of the Committee who were so appointed, not with the support of the members of the Select Committee in the earlier Session, but rather against their wishes, because we felt that a Committee of 25 was unwieldy. In the result, the machinery was not improved by the additional numbers.

I would like to know whether the Chairman of the Select Committee has been consulted about the revised date as proposed in the Motion, and, if so, whether he agrees with it. Perhaps by the time we reach the end of February, it might be possible for us to have gathered up all the threads of discussion of the past Session and to present to the House a report which, I believe, will commend the appointment of further Select Committees.

My hon. Friend the Member for York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon) is a distinguished Yorkshire lawyer and, like a Yorkshire Hampden, he has fought for the liberties of the House. He has made a powerful forensic case and I agree 90 per cent. with him.

I should like to say a word about the changed date. I support the Motion. Since the Chairman of the Committee is not present, I speak as Chairman of the Fisheries Sub-Committee of the main Committee. I will say simply this about attendance at the main Committee. When criticising and castigating the total of 25, my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, North (Mr. Hazell) might bear in mind that there are two powerful Sub-Committees—Horticulture and Fisheries—and that we meet on Wednesday mornings. There is no doubt that we need a larger total on the main Committee to hive off, so to speak, people like ourselves to do this extremely important work. Kind words have been said about our findings.

Earlier this morning, we spoke about this very matter on the Sea Fisheries Bill. Unwittingly, the hon. Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall), if I may speak for him, and myself, as members of the Committee, complained about this matter, not having done our homework, not having looked at the Motion and seen the changed date.

I thank my right hon. Friend for changing the date, because it enables us in the Fisheries Sub-Committee to do the job, which is unfinished, of looking at the work of the White Fish Authority. I thank my right hon. Friend for giving us the additional time. I know the wide-ranging scale of debate that is possible, but I do not wish to pursue that. I believe that we can do our job in the additional time that we have been given in looking at the work of the White Fish Authority.

This has been an extremely interesting debate. I am sorry that I was not here when the hon. Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) made his remarks. Unfortunately, he is not now here. But may I say that I have never regarded Friday as an inconvenient day. After all, this is a normal Parliamentary day and I can remember many occasions when we have had major debates on Fridays.

Would the right hon. Gentleman confirm that his Government draw a distinction between Resolutions and Motions carried by this House on a Friday and those carried on other days, classing the former as second-rate?

The hon. Member must realise that the Motion before us, although the date has been altered, was tabled in principle earlier. Friday is a Parliamentary day and I deplore this habit of hon. Members, in all parts of the House, to think otherwise. The hon. Member for Shrewsbury (Sir J. Langford-Holt) is a distinguished Parliamentarian and I am sure he would agree with me.

The right hon. Gentleman misses the point. What I was trying to say was that this Government have remarked that a Motion carried on a Friday is "only a Friday Motion" and therefore has less validity than a Motion carried on any other day.

I would never accept that Friday is unimportant. I take the view that this is a normal Parliamentary day. The First Secretary has already made a very important statement today. I have been in this House ever since 1945, and I can remember many great debates that we have had on a Friday. This is right and proper, and the public takes note of it. Today the issue raised is an important one and the arguments are fundamental.

My hon. Friend the Member for York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon) made an interesting speech with which I have great sympathy. I am a reformer, even if this is sometimes forgotten. It was I, more than any other Minister who advocated Select Committees. I would recommend to him an extremely stimulating article that I wrote on this, and other issues, in 1945. I have always believed that there should be opportunities to check the Executive. This is the great strength of our constitution. It is our unwritten practice which enables an hon. Member to convey to the Executive the views of those whom he represents. I have always thought that we should create this kind of Committee, and I am on record when I was a shadow Minister as saying that. I hate the word "shadow" in this context. I see the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (Mr. Stodart) here. I am not sure whether he is a shadow Minister of Agriculture or of the Scottish Department, but he is a distinguished Member of this House too.

He will remember a major agricultural debate when one of my predecessors made an important announcement about the setting up of a Meat Commission, relating to the Verdon-Smith Committee. I then advocated the setting up of a Select Committee of the type that we now have. I have always believed in such committees, and I am now reaffirming my faith. I accept my hon. Friend's arguments about the check on the Executive. But I hope it will not be overlooked that I was the first Departmental Minister to give evidence before a Specialist Committee. I rather liked the experience. If one reads my replies carefully when I was cross-questioned by colleagues it will be seen that I felt it was good for me to explain policy and good for them to ask about it. I had an agreeable discussion with the Committee.

And the Minister answered very well.

That is very kind and generous. So often Ministers and Leaders of the House are criticised for not doing so well. I think I agree that I was a good Minister.

Order. I am enjoying this, but we must get to the Motion.

It is rather nice to have an enjoyable debate on a Friday. The Select Committee was not only good for me and hon. Members, but it was good for the staff of my Department. It is good that civil servants should appear before such a Committee and be examined. It leads to a constructive approach. I can assure my hon. Friend that I believe in this. There are certainly problems of staff. He argued earlier that we should have fewer hon. Members on the Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, West (Mr. James Johnson) has done tremendous work on the Sub-Committee and it is right that he should complete this work.

It will have an important effect on a great industry. My hon. Friend has proved the value of his work and is anxious that his report should be concluded. I do not disagree with that, but I suspect my hon. Friend the Member for York has sought to criticise the Motion.

I hesitate to criticise my right hon. Friend, whose work in this sphere I duly acknowledge. All that I say is that when he was like me he had the same feelings. Now he is in the position to influence matters, would he not agree that it is right that this Committee, having justified itself, should continue permanently?

I have always been consistent, in Opposition or in Government, but my hon. Friend must recognise that when this was announced by the then Leader of the House he stressed that it would be for an experimental period. I was involved as a Minister in the Department of Agriculture and I always accepted this. We are in no way saying that this experimental period has not been successful simply because we say that agriculture must soon give way to something else. I am looking at this and will probably have to make a statement to the House soon on those sections of political activity pursued by Departments that should be examined.

Order. It will help the Official Reporters if the Leader of the House addresses the Chair.

I hope, Mr. Speaker, that I always address the Chair. I was merely turning towards some of my hon. Friends who have raised important questions.

When is the experimental period likely to end and when is something of a more permanent nature likely to be presented to the House?

I cannot be precise. The Committee, together with the Committee dealing with science and technology, was one of the first in the experiment. We now have the Committee on Education. I might like to try some other experiments, without committing myself. The House will then have to decide whether to have permanently the Committees which we are discussing.

These are important issues. Some of my colleagues do not agree that it is right to have this examination by Committees. Others feel that it is right. There is a difference between our constitution and the American constitution. The Americans lay great stress on these Committees which can cross-examine Ministers, but we are in a different position because here Ministers can be questioned in the House and are linked with Parliament. But these are all issues which we must settle as we go along. Let us not denigrate an experiment which has been successful, but give me an opportunity to look at it over a longer period.

I hope that my hon. Friends will be assured that I am sympathetic towards their point of view. Personally, I believe in the system. The experiment must be continued, and it may well be that we shall have to choose other subjects and other Departments. I hope that the Motion will be approved.

I am grateful for the opportunity to raise a matter of vital concern to all my constituents—one which has caused more controversy and distress in the area than anything for many years. The issue is not basically about any particular specialist facilities, important though they are. It is about the whole future of St. Cross as an important district and training hospital.

The Birmingham Regional Hospital Board will suggest that I have broadened the argument in an effort to embarrass it. That may or may not be true. But what the board has coming to it this afternoon it has been asking for over a very long time. It has treated Rugby in a disgraceful manner, operating secretly, using back-door methods and paying little or no attention to the opinions of my constituents.

I have no criticism at all to make of either the Under-Secretary of State or the former Minister of Health. They have treated us with kindness and generosity and have listened with a good deal of understanding to our arguments over a long period. My criticism is not of them, but of the regional board. May I give notice of a Petition addressed to the former Minister of Health, in these terms:

"We, the undersigned residents in Rugby, are sending you this protest against the decision of Birmingham Regional Hospital Board, Group 20 Hospital Management Committee, to remove the ophthalmic, ear, nose and throat surgery from the hospital at St. Cross to hospitals near Coventry. We see this step as the beginning of the gradual reduction of hospital facilities for Rugby thus leaving our expanding community with only limited cottage hospital status."

That is signed by 10,000 people, and if the Minister wants 40,000 or 50,000 signatures they can be provided. There is formidable backing for the public from the borough council, the rural district council and all the parish councils, and from the Council for Social Services, from the trades council, from trade unions and from a great mass of other organisations, including women's institutes and guilds. Most important of all, I have the support of every consultant, every doctor, every nurse and, as far as I am aware, every administrator. I can claim with some justification that I am not the only one who has fallen out with the regional board.

On the face of it, the issue is straightforward. The board want to transfer the optical and E.N. and T. services from St. Cross to the Paybody Hospital, Allesley, and the Walsgrave Hospital, Coventry, respectively. I am in some difficulty. I believe that those decisions have already been taken, but I do not know. All I can do is to base my case on what I hope are intelligent guesses. I shall be happy if I am wrong, but I suspect that my suspicions are fully justified. It is not easy to know what is happening when one is confronted with an organisation which is behaving like a branch of the Kremlin.

We had a public meeting in Rugby last night on hospital services, and it was packed to the doors. The hospital board refused to send a representative to listen to our arguments. We pleaded with it to do so. Its attitude is a disgrace to democracy, if it will not even send someone to listen to the views of 300 people at a public meeting, many of them doctors and consultants of the highest calibre. The board has shown a shocking disregard for public opinion. What is even worse is the fact that the board declined to give any indication which might have been useful for this debate or for that meeting last night. The reason it gives, contained in a letter to me and others dated 8th November, is:

"The Board must, therefore—in accordance with the rules of Parliamentary privilege—wait at least until after the adjournment debate before making the conclusions of yesterday's meeting known or commenting upon the matter".

I ask the Minister: is that the position? What is this Parliamentary privilege? I have not been in the House for long, but it is new to me, and I do not know what the board is talking about. Or is it, as I suspect, a brush-off such as we have come to expect from this board?

Dealing, first, with E.N.T., the board wants to centralise specialist services on Coventry, and there is logic in the argument that children are entitled to the best possible treatment that can be provided. What is wrong with the treatment in Rugby? The whole essence of treating children is that parents should be readily available. Consider the problem of a parent in one of the many villages wishing to visit a child in the Walsgrave Hospital in Coventry. It will mean three bus journeys each way—into Rugby and out again twice, six journeys in all at a cost of 10s. and four hours travelling time. These amalgamations look good on paper. The trouble is that in Whitehall the human problem tends to become overlooked. If this proposal goes through there will be very real family difficulties in many cases for my constituents.

I come next to maternity services. I concede straight away that the hospital at Harborough Magna will have to close. There are many reasons for this, all of which are well known and I need not dwell on them. For years we have been promised that maternity cases would be transferred to St. Cross, where they belong, as soon as phase 2 of the development was carried out. I believe that the board is trying to throw that promise overboard. I quote the comment made by Mr. W. H. Lewis, who has great experience in hospital matters, and is a member of the H.M.C. At a meeting of Rugby Trades Council, he said that the Birmingham Regional Board left him with the conclusion that after providing more beds than were actually required the board had remained silent on its reasons for transferring services to the Walsgrave Hospital in Coventry.

"In that way", he said "they were hoping to close St. Mary's maternity hospital, Rugby, to reduce the extent of their planning blunder."

I shall forecast the intended sequence of events. As specialist services disappear, our position as a leading training hospital will be in jeopardy. The staff, faced with uncertainty, will drift to greener pastures and patients will go to Coventry or Nuneaton. The regional board will then come with a mass of evidence with facts and figures, to prove that we neither need nor deserve phase 2 to transfer to St. Cross.

I believe the assessment by Mr. Lewis was fair. Even the board had second thoughts because it appointed Professor Stall-worthy, of Oxford, to investigate and report on maternity services in the Rugby area and, I understand, it picked the wrong man because he found in our favour. The board has declined to allow Rugby Hospital Management Committee to see copies of his report. I have not seen one; I am working on fifth-hand information.

I do not quite follow what my hon. Friend is saying. Is it that the report of the Professor had already been distributed to the H.M.C.?

The board has made clear to the hospital management committee that in due course it will have to take the decision that Professor Stall-worthy arrived at. The hospital management committee is in the position of having to consider this matter without the evidence it may need.

I come to the third specialist service, that of children's beds. Here there is total and absolute confusion. The former Minister of Health has written to me on many occasions saying that there was no intention of withdrawing paediatric beds from St. Cross, yet this matter is still under consideration by the board. If it is given the slightest opportunity it will transfer those beds as well. If so, it will run into more trouble than it has ever dreamed about.

We are faced with the prospect of losing many of our specialist services. Under these circumstances what is the long-term future of St. Cross? If the board said to us straight away that St. Cross has no long-term future we would know exactly who and what we are fighting, but it is too clever for that. The board is hoping for a quiet rundown with the least amount of publicity and the minimum of trouble. It has not worked that way. I am quite happy to accept blame for that. Throughout this dispute I have made the facts available to my constituents and I am happy to tell the board that documents, confidential and otherwise, have a way of finding their way into my possession. We know people who are sympathetic to Rugby. The board's reaction to continued Press leakage is always interesting. The board says that it is difficult to understand what the controversy is about because no decision has been taken. Is it any use waiting? This is how it operates but it is too late. I have not been long in this House, but one thing I know is that one should get in as quickly as one can.

What is my justification for claiming that the real attack is not on specialist services of St. Cross itself? I shall briefly outline the position. We were provided—and were very grateful for that—with two operating theatres seven years ago as phase 1 of the development of St. Cross. We were promised that under phase 2, the ward block and materity unit, would follow at the earliest opportunity. I was surprised to receive a reply by the Under Secretary that phase 2 would be the first of the capital projects after 1969–70.

That was bad enough. We in Rugby are patient people, and we understood the difficulties with money. We accepted the position without any fuss. Then came the blow. No announcement was made about any change of plans, but I obtained a document in which the board said categorically—it has not denied it—that phase 2 would not now start until after 1976 at the very earliest. Even that forecast was qualified by the statement that it would be subject to a continuing review in the light of the opening of the new Walsgrave Hospital at Coventry. What is happening, in effect, is that we are gradually being phased out of existence. I do not expect answers to these points now, but I should be grateful if my hon. Friend would do me the courtesy which he has done me so often in the past of writing to me. I should like to know why the assurance he gave in the House was cast aside by the regional board. I suspect that the board will argue that Walsgrave Hospital has created a new situation and that planning must be flexible.

I rely for my reply on Mr. Norman Edyvean-Walker, a man of immense experience, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, West (Mr. James Johnson), will agree. I am delighted to see my hon. Friend, a former Member for my constituency, present today. There are those who think that my hon. Friend was almost as good a Member as I am.

Mr. Edyvean-Walker, a man of immense experience in hospital matters and a former Chairman of the Hospital Group; in a letter to the Minister dated 31st October said this:

"The statement that the Regional Board is reviewing the position because of the completion of the 662-bed Walsgrave acute hospital is almost too frightful to be taken seriously. The Walsgrave Hospital, maternity and acute, has been the subject of intense planning for at least 10 years and this planning has been carried out at the same time and in conjunction with the planning for Rugby and Nuneaton; that is, the whole of Group 20. To say now at this late stage that the Regional Board are reviewing the situation to ensure that the best use is made of resources is about the greatest example of bad planning I have heard for many years. The only possible excuse for an alteration in the planning could be a drastic alteration in the needs for hospital beds, and so far as I am aware no such alteration has occurred."

Mr. Walker is absolutely right. I will tell the House what has happened. Many millions of £s have been spent on Walsgrave Hospital. Running costs are in excess of £2 million a year and the board is now thrashing around looking for economies. I do not wish to deny the people of Coventry the best possible facilities, but I am bound to tell the Minister that subsequent economies will not come out of my constituents; and the sooner the board gets that into its bureaucratic head the better for all of us.

Within the last few hours some interesting figures have come into my possession. Admittedly they are unofficial figures, but they are prepared by people who have been interested in this matter for years. They find that in Group 20 as a whole the Coventry area has 65·5 per cent. of the people, Nuneaton and rural areas have 19·93 per cent., and Rugby and rural area has 14·57 per cent. Taking figures of capital expenditure on hospital development during the past twenty years and projected over the next few years, Coventry has had £12, 145, 716 or 9006 per cent., Nuneaton has had £1, 122, 815 or 8·32 per cent., and Rugby has had £218, 777 or 1·62 per cent. So with 14·57 per cent. of the population we have had 1·62 per cent of the expenditure.

The Board will argue that we have been consulted on all these matters. Yet in a letter as recently as 29th August to the Secretary of the board the Town Clerk of Rugby complained—

"there appears to have been little, if any, public consultation on the matter."

I should like the Minister to define "consultation". Mr. P. F. Liebert, Chairman of the Rugby and District Council for Social Services, has a very different view of consultation from that taken by the board. He has written to the board saying:

"My impression is that, whereas we gave full expression to our concern and fears about future proposals and rumours of impending changes, virtually nothing came back from your end of the table."

This was with reference to a meeting which a delegation from Rugby had with the regional hospital board.

"What then are the reasons for your proposals which were supposed to have been divulged at the meeting? If, as you suggest, these have already been given to us, why not send a representative of the board to our forum and restate them for the benefit of the whole community?"

The board declined to come.

My constituents fear that the Government's desire to centralise specialist facilities is being used as an excuse to begin the rundown of St. Cross Hospital. I have challenged the board on many occasions to confirm or deny my allegations, but it always refuses. It prefers to operate by stealth.

Briefly, what do we want? It has been suggested in the past that we might have a massive new 300-bed unit, a proposal which never seemed to me to be realistic; and if the board is quietly dropping it, I am not surprised. But what we do want, and what we have been promised for years, is a new ward block with a maternity unit to take those beds from St. Mary's. The area has a catchment of 80,000 people. Warwickshire is one of the fastest growing counties in Britain. Our strategic position for an accident hospital is vital. If the board's argument—I think that my hon. Friend will have something to say about this—is that Rugby, with all our villages, is not big enough for its own hospital, what about the Nuneatons? What about Nuneaton Spa? What about Warwick, with a population of 17,000, and Stratford-on-Avon with very few more? Will they all lose their hospitals as well? Are those hospitals to be run down and patients transferred to Coventry? I suspect not. The only hospital being attacked is mine.

My constituents have been patient for many years. They are sensible people, and generally speaking, militant. We have understood the difficulties in finding the money. We know the present problems. We have waited a long time, and we are prepared to wait even longer. But we are not prepared to stand by and see our services filched by a bunch of bureaucratic bone-heads in Birmingham.

I have a compulsive urge to catch your eye, Mr. Speaker, and speak for a few fleeting moments because I was formerly the Member for Rugby. We have listened to a doughty champion. My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mr. William Price) said that he is a better Member than I was. That is quite possible. He is certainly more vehement than I ever was, but I think that he has a more vehement case to put. As I heard the names which he gave—Mr. Edyvean-Walker and Mr. Liebert—and the places which he mentioned, and as I heard his case developed, I felt that I should not only sympathise but should support him.

I cannot speak either for or against the detailed statistics and facts which my hon. Friend gave, but, knowing him, I believe that they are correct. I wish only to add a word to put this matter into the context of the environment, so to speak. Rugby, a town of 50,000, is dwarfed by the ever-larger Goliath of Coventry. For some years, there has been a tendency to subordinate Rugby and its neighbourhood to the big fellow next door. There is a saying that sheer size begets size in matters of population and the size of cities. It seems also that sheer size begets further size in the matter of power in the Health Service. I support what this David sitting on my left here is doing in tackling the Goliath, and I am happy to show my loyalty to this champion—

My hon. Friend is personalising now.

I assure my very tall hon. Friend that the remark was unwitting and unfelt, and I know that it was uncalled for.

I am not sure about that.

As I was saying, the David on my left here can tackle any Goliath, whether in the House of Commons or outside it is battling manfully on behalf 50,000 or 60,000 people of Rugby against the giant next door. I cannot comment on the Nuneatons, Leamingtons, Stratford-on-Avons, Kenilworths and the like, but it seems to me that, if these things can happen in the town for which I was formerly the Member, they may, unhappily, be happening elsewhere. It is a battle of priorities. I think that my hon. Friend has a good case, and I wish him well. I also wish all my former constituents well in this battle, in which their Member is playing such a vehement, articulate and powerful part as their champion.

I recognise the accuracy with which both my hon. Friends have referred to size, personalised or otherwise, in the difficult matters of allocating funds. Far from resenting the attack of my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mr. William Price), I think that it is a most excellent exercise, and I congratulate him on the moderation with which, with one possible exception, he mounted his attack. It served a very useful public purpose. My only question is whether he has been quite fair in applying certain terms to the Birmingham Regional Hospital Board, bearing in mind that it is composed of voluntary workers who are subjected on the one side to the administrative and financial disciplines imposed by my Department and, on the other, to quite understandable public anxieties. But they are people who are doing a voluntary job to the best of their ability.

I shall deal a little later with the idea that, Rugby has been singled out for special and undesirable treatment. I recognise my hon. Friend's concern for the interests of his constituency and the enthusiasm with which he has presented his case.

Before dealing with the particular circumstances of St. Cross Hospital, I should like to explain some of the general principles of hospital provision. My hon. Friends may feel that they do not want to be lectured about the general set-up of the administration of hospitals under the National Health Act, but some of my remarks migh fully be examined by a wider public than is present today, and perhaps they will balance the rather charged atmosphere in which the matter has sometimes been discussed in Rugby.

I do not under-estimate public attitudes and loyalties and local traditions, all of which are most important. It may not be any comfort to my hon. Friend, but I have had precisely this sort of difficulty to deal with in my constituency. Much of it stems from the provision of district general hospitals. I have had to explain to my constituents more than once—and I think that most hon. Members will have to do the same in their constituencies—that one must find a balance between local loyalties and providing easily accessible points of treatment on the one hand, and on the other the provision of the most up-to-date, highly expensive and very specialised services, which can be provided only in a district general hospital.

Modern medicine requires hospital beds and clinics to be supported by highly-trained, specialist staff and expensive equipment. A simple case is that of renal dialysis. In the local Press from time to time one sees that a good-natured person has started collecting money for the provision of kidney machines. But I have had to explain many times that it is one thing to collect a certain amount of money to provide a renal dialysis machine, but that by far the biggest consideration, which the public do not always understand—and why should they?—is the training of specialist staff and provision of their pay to support such a machine. The district general hospital offers the most practicable method of placing the full range of hospital facilities at the disposal of patients, and this benefit far outweighs the disadvantages of longer travel for some patients and visitors.

Again I say, ask a man, "Would you prefer to have your wife in a hospital within 10 minutes walk of your house and where she will receive good but not the most up-to-date treatment, or would you prefer her to be eight, nine or 10 miles away, but where she will get the best that medicine can provide?", A very difficult, emotionally charged question, but it ought to be put.

It has been.

, it has, but it has still to be rammed home. The question has to be faced by many people.

We are now awaiting a report from a committee which is studying the functions of the district general hospital. I hope that all concerned will keep open minds as they consider possible changes in the pattern of the hospital services which may include the closure of uneconomic hospitals and rationalisation of specialist services. Quite clearly, to retain the new and old services, that is to say, a very expensive, new, up-to-date general district hospital, or an efficient but not so sophisticated local hospital, in parallel would be absolutely economically impossible.

My hon. Friend will, no doubt, be aware of the advice given in February of this year. It urged hospital authorities to look into ways of deploying hospital resources to the best effect. I should like to quote from a letter which the then Minister of Health sent to all hospital chairmen:

"New forms of treatment and improvements in other aspects of the hospital services are continuously being developed and should be welcomed and encouraged, but all this has to be contained within the total available resources of money and skilled manpower. This we can only achieve if hospital authorities constantly study the use of all their resources, and not just the use to be made of the additional funds made available each year. Total revenue expenditure in 1967–8 on running the hospital service will amount to over £700 million, and a saving of even 1 per cent. by greater efficiency would release over £7 million for new developments".

I interrupt the letter here to reassure my hon. Friend just in case he thinks that I am deploying a generalised argument affecting the country as a whole and not St. Cross, Rugby. He must be patient, because I am coming to that.

I continue with the letter:

"A serious review of present methods is needed, with the intention of redeploying effort to make the best possible use of medical and allied resources. We should not cling to old methods if new ones offer a greater return. Examples of action which might produce considerably improved use of resources include a critical reappraisal of bed use, of arrangements for the assessment and discharge of patients, and of the distribution of beds between consultants; rationalisation of accident and emergency services; concentration of services which might allow closure of small uneconomic hospital units."

Except where a radical change in the use of a hospital is planned my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State does not normally intervene in a redeployment of resources such as a transfer of beds in a particular specialty from one hospital to another. This is essentially a matter for the regional hospital board, whose function it is to make the best use of the hospital resources of the region in the light of its local knowledge of all the circumstances.

The Secretary of State must personally authorise the closure of a whole hospital and I assure my hon. Friend that he will not do so unless satisfied that there has been adequate local consultation and that satisfactory alternative facilities are available. Alleged lack of consultation has been queried and criticised by hon. Members, but we welcome local representations which can be made when a regional hospital board has made up its mind and has made a recommendation to the Secretary of State.

When talking about future hospital provision, it is important to remember the point made in Command Paper 3000—The Hospital Building Programme—that the hospital building programme is flexible and must remain so if it is to be responsive to any changes in local and national priorities, variations in the money allocations available from year to year and cost variations on particular schemes. Although boards may, for their own guidance, assign starting dates for new schemes for forward-planning purposes, it would be quite wrong and totally misleading to regard such dates as in any way fixed. Perhaps my hon. Friend will refresh his memory by studying paragraph 20 of Command Paper 3000 on this point.

For this reason, it is not customary to announce starting dates for schemes other than those due to start in a current financial year. While broad indications of priority can be given about later schemes, assumptions made about starting dates which have not been publicly announced must always be liable to cause misunderstanding. Regional hospital boards necessarily keep their building programmes continually under review, but they have been asked to show their revised programmes beyond 1969–70 to the Department next year.

I want now to deal with the particular issues raised by my hon. Friend and his fears about the future of St. Cross. I thank him for his patience in listening to my general preamble.

The new Walsgrave District General Hospital was planned to give a comprehensive range of specialist services over a wide area. In 1967, the population figures for Coventry, Nuneaton and Rugby were, respectively, 360,000, 110,000 and 80,000. Projected to 1981, these figures are calculated to be 427,500, 134,000 and 103,500 respectively. The hospital management committee population area for 1967 therefore covered a total population of 550,000 and the projected population for 1981 is 665,000.

Walsgrave was planned to serve Coventry and the surrounding district with modern specialist services. As the population grows and distribution changes, there will have to be a review of the catchment areas for Walsgrave and neighbouring hospitals. This will be part of the continual review I have referred to.

I come to the transport problem which stems from the location of Walsgrave, which lies just to the east of the centre of Coventry. Buses—and, in the case of Rugby, trains—between the towns run about every hour but at present do not go direct to the hospital. It is for this reason that the regional hospital board is approaching Coventry Corporation for buses to go direct from the town centre to Walsgrave Hospital and has indicated that it will seek to improve arrangements also for the country area involved, which of course, is also very important.

The new Walsgrave District General Hospital was planned to give a comprehensive range of specialist services over a wide area. Building has taken some time, but the acute block will be opened next spring, and this is to be followed by a much needed 284-bed psychiatric department. Recent developments in management techniques and in medicine have made it possible for a hospital of this size to give treatment to a greater number of patients than ever before, and this may in time lead to variation in the catchment area.

As my hon. Friend knows, the annual running cost of the new hospital will be over £2 million; and it will have a staff of about 1,350. A hospital of this sort, offering a comprehensive range of services, should be used as widely as possible, and it is likely that a fresh balance will have to be struck between the conflicting interests of the highest standard of treatment and local service.

With the completion of the 614 bed Walsgrave acute block, the regional board has quite properly conducted a full review of all the hospital services under the control of the Coventry Hospital Management Committee, which includes both Rugby and Nuneaton, to see that the most effective use will be made of the new hospital resources. The board's initial inquiries suggested that there was scope for rationalisation and as far as Rugby was concerned this involved the transfer of some specialist services elsewhere. The proposals did not envisage any reduction in the bed complement at St. Cross Hospital and the rationalisation of services was expected to lead to an improvement in the hospital's services.

Discussions were, therefore, held between the board and the hospitals concerned about the possible transfer of ear, nose and throat, ophthalmic, and paediatric in-patient treatment from St. Cross Hospital. Rugby to Walsgrave, Paybody and Gulson Hospitals respectively. The board's proposals also provided for the transfer of ear, nose and throat and ophthalmology in-patient treatment from Nuneaton to Walsgrave Hospital, Coventry, though out-patient facilities in these specialties were to remain in Rugby and Nuneaton.

News of the board's own discussions spread and the board began to receive representations from local interests about the proposed transfer of these specialties. No doubt my hon. Friend's speech was a reflection of the representations which he has received. Letters on this subject were also sent to us and we have kept the board fully aware of the views expressed. On 14th October, the board held a meeting with local bodies which had expressed interest to explain its proposals and to discuss the implications so that the planning committee would be fully aware of all factors when it met on 7th November.

In the light of the public interest which this proposal has aroused, my right hon. Friend has asked that the decisions of the planning committee should not be published nor acted upon until the board itself has had an opportunity of considering the whole matter at its meeting on 27th November. There is a slight misunderstanding about Parliamentary privilege. The board acts as agent for my right hon. Friend and perhaps the remarks should be read in the light of that relationship. There the matter now rests.

I also understand that since the opening of the new maternity unit at the Walsgrave Hospital, Coventry and the George Elliot Hospital, Nuneaton, the board has been considering whether it would be feasible to reorganise maternity services in the area. Should this consideration lead to a proposal to close any hospital, the board would undertake local consultations before submitting its proposal to my right hon. Friend, and when doing this would also send him full information of any representations made to it. I assure my hon. Friend that if any such proposal is put before my right hon. Friend he will very carefully consider all representations made by local interests before giving his decision. My right hon. Friend will also take careful note of the points which have been made in this House this afternoon.

I am aware of the public meeting which took place last night. Although I have only received what might be described as a Parliamentary carrier pigeon news service about it, because we have not had a full report, I have taken note of certain remarks which were made. I am awaiting confirmation—in the Press or in any other way—of these remarks. I ask my hon. Friend to be patient and I will in due course write to him with a more considered reply to some of the points which were raised.

I would just comment on one small point. I understand, subject to the accuracy of the report that I received, that one speaker said that we were using less of the gross national product than we were 20 years ago in the National Health Service. I am advised that this is inaccurate. But I will send my hon. Friend the precise figure as soon as I can.

I can assure the Minister that on his behalf I disabused that gentleman of that belief.

I am obliged to my hon. Friend.

I now come to the point for which my hon. Friend has no doubt been waiting, namely, the future of St. Cross Hospital, Rugby. As he knows, the Regional Hospital Board built operating theatres at St. Cross Hospital in 1966 as the first phase of its intended expansion. Later phases were to be a 60-bed maternity unit and a 120-bed acute ward block, and in reply to a Question of 21st June, 1967, I said that these were in the first list of schemes expected to start after 1969–70. This position has not changed.

I accept straightaway that, in the mind of the casual reader, to say that it will start after 1969–70 may indicate it will be within a few months of that date. But I am afraid that my Reply was devised specifically to mean that it would be after 1969–70. I hope that I will not be accused of equivocation in that matter.

I informed my hon. Friend that the two schemes were in the first list of schemes after 1969–70. The Hospital Building Programme (Cmnd. 3000) grouped proposed schemes in three classes. The schemes proposed for St. Cross Hospital were in the higher group to start after 1969–70. The board has given them no lower priority more recently. But it would be quite wrong for me to indicate a firm starting date for these schemes. I must leave it to the board to adapt its programme to changes of need and to consider Rugby's claims in this light.

Let me put this matter in perspective. We have a rising hospital building programme. Since 1964–65 we have seen the annual sums spent on hospital building in England and Wales rise from £59 million to £97 million estimated for the current financial year, and we expect to top the £100 million mark next year. We are making inroads into the major task of creating a modern network of hospitals that match modern needs of people and of medicine. But, large though those sums may be, we have to accept that our aim cannot be achieved overnight.

Mr. Speaker, if you, as I do, went round this country looking at some of our hospitals you would wonder what has been happening in the last 15 years. We are now having to patch up, alter and try to modernise on a huge programme. The current programme, over a 10-year period, is for about £1,000 million. This is a substantial figure.

Within the available resources—and this is a word that means more than just money; it means trained staff, material, building labour, the lot—we have to-choose priorities, and in choosing those priorities we must avoid unnecessary rigidity. I have seen no reason to disput the choice that the Birmingham Regional Hospital Board has made in this matter up to now. I now await the board's present review of its planning programme confident that it will make a sensible choice of priorities to meet current circumstances and knowing that it will be prepared to rearrange priorities if circumstances change. I therefore ask my hon. Friend to share my trust in the board's knowledge of the problems of its region.

I was a little worried when my hon. Friend talked about the lack of communication and information and the difficulty of obtaining the facts from the regional hospital board. I well remember, when I spent a little time as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the late Aneurin Bevan, hearing him say to me that the catchment area of consultation goes wider and wider and that it is difficult to know where it will stop. I do not think that there is any malice aforethought; there is no secrecy. There must be detailed consideration in depth. If that means a delay, bearing in mind the flexibility of the general position, in conveying information to a wider public, it is because it seems the best way of providing the public with accurate information. If there are inherent uncertainties, they are the result of the economic situation and the great medical changes which are being made and which make the job of the regional hospital board so very difficult.

I know how frustrating it is to the constituency Member to put over these considerations to the public. I speak from personal experience. Like me, my hon. Friend has the opportunity of viewing the problem nationally. It is not easy for people living locally to see matters other than from a relatively parochial point of view. They are the people who have to send their children and relatives to hospital, and they want the best for them. It is very difficult for them to understand why tradition should be changed and arrangements altered.

We welcome consultation between hospitals and other interested bodies, but it is not always easy to judge when such consultation should begin. "Begin" is the operative word. It must begin at some point. Proposals may be advanced at board or management committee meetings as a stimulus to discussion. It would be wrong to initiate public discussion until the proposals had been more fully considered and more clearly formulated. If the internal discussion process is taken too far, there is a danger that a position may be reached from which it is not easy to move. But I trust that hospital authorities are aware of this danger and are always ready to keep an open mind about their preliminary proposals and that this attitude will be reciprocated by bodies and people outside.

I have talked at some length about the general position in Rugby as we know it. We do not know, and the regional hospital board does not know, with precision what the position is likely to be at St. Cross Hospital. I have attempted to show the general feeling. I have no reason to believe that Rugby will be isolated. I do not think that the functions of St. Cross Hospital will be radically changed so as to result in its eventual elimination. I should not have thought that that was "on".

I think that its general functions and specialties will be changed, and that the consultants, whose opinion is most valued, will understand that it is intolerable, when there is a large, changing population, for any valid criticisms to be made that there has been an over-provision of maternity beds when existing provision may not be the sort of provision which we would like. The new provision is very necessary, and I have no doubt that if there is spare provision that is very much a temporary matter.

I hope that I have conveyed to my hon. Friend not only that there are great uncertainties, but that it is for the general good that we should not provide hospital services on a purely localised basis. Populations move, techniques change and requirements alter quite rapidly.

I have, however, obtained the authority of my right hon. Friend to say that not only will my hon. Friend's speech be carefully analysed and examined, but that information which we receive from the various public meetings in Rugby will be subjected to careful scrutiny. In due course, and from time to time, I would hope to give my hon. Friend more and more specific information.