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

As the business of government extends itself more and more into the life of individuals, the need for Members of Parliament to concern themselves with the protection of the public grows. Traditionally, the function of the individual Member is regarded as being the exercise of some control over the Executive, and not to interfere in the business of local government established under statute in its day-to-day workings.

None the less I believe that there is a growing recognition and demand by the public that the Member of Parliament should play a rôle even in details of local government where they affect what might be described as the fundamental liberties of the subject. Whereas central government is subject to daily scrutiny in this House and the procedures of Ministers can be examined by us here, there are, I think, occasions when members of the public feel frustrated in their lack of recourse to remedies in their dealings with local government.

It has been said that the real burdens of oppressive bureaucracy are those inflicted by local government and not by those of the central Government. Indeed, the experience of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration set up under the Government's 1967 Act goes some way towards reassuring us that, for the most part, central Government operates efficiently and remarkably free from abuse. In all those cases which have been considered by the Parliamentary Commissioner, only some 10 per cent. have revealed abuses of administration of a kind which could be called maladministration within the terms of the Act.

Local government presents entirely different problems. Local councillors are subject to different and more immediate pressures in some cases than Members of Parliament. They may have to respond to the pressures of different sections or locales in their areas. Nor are they, like Members of Parliament for the most part, full-time in the exercise of their responsibilities; nor are they paid. Frequently they are overworked and sometimes they are inexperienced. Scrutinising the activities of their local qualified officials may present obstacles and difficulties which they cannot fully overcome. I think many of us have experienced the bafflement that certain local councillors feel in the face of the expertise of one of their officials, and even when they may feel that there is something wrong they cannot quite put their finger on what it is.

There are other reasons why the public may feel—and in my experience do feel—that the decision-making may wreak injustice or hardship upon them. The decisions of local councils can be taken in private, and the Press can be excluded from the deliberations. Nor does the central Government have the kind of day-to-day control over the activities of local government which might act as some check on abuse; the control of central Government is frequently statutorily limited to ensuring that local authority expenditure is broadly in line with national priorities.

To take one example, in the implementation of the Government's policy for the reorganisation of education on comprehensive lines, the broad lines of the Government's intention in Scotland were set out in Circular 600, but in the working out of the principle on the ground in terms of which pupils were to go to which schools, the details were left to be filled in by the local authorities themselves, and, provided that it was held to be educationally justifiable, a scheme could go ahead. There are many examples of this kind which one might cite.

It may be asked why the Bill should deal only with Scotland. Are Scotland's needs in some way peculiar or greater than those of other parts of the country? My answer is that that is not so. To my knowledge, Scotland is governed at local level with as great probity and dedication on the part of its local councillors as in England. But I come from Scotland, and Scotland's needs are those which most greatly concern me. Moreover, I see some advantage, if one is instituting a new scheme of this kind, in trying it out in an area which is smaller than the whole of the United Kingdom and whose local government is more coherent and unified and is a recognisable traditional unit.

I have referred briefly on an earlier occasion to the types of case with which I believe a Parliamentary Commissioner for Local Government in Scotland might well have to deal—cases arising from the exclusive responsibility of the local authority, for example, in the allocation of houses, cases arising from the planning powers of the local authority where, for example, a principal road may result in someone losing a part of his front garden, or where the procedures of public inquiry may be thought not fully to have exhausted consideration of the rights and arguments in the case. Certainly, in education there is greatest concern on the part of parents particularly, for nothing affects more intimately the development of their families. Likewise in health and welfare, local authorities have great responsibilities entrusted to them by Parliament and may make determinations affecting the comfort of people in old age and in sickness.

The kinds of maladministration with which the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration has to deal vary enormously. What has been revealed by his activities in the first years of his work has been that, for the most part, these maladministrations are relatively slight. There are one or two standing examples in which his intervention has proved beneficial, which will, doubtless, go into the history books, and in which a major Government climb-down has resulted from his investigation, as, for example, in the case of the Sachsenhausen prison camp. But although his investigations have not, for the most part, revealed major areas of incompetence, corruption, bias or unfair discrimination, he has revealed the kind of irritation and injustice which, perhaps, is inevitable in a highly complicated society with an enormous bureaucracy at the top.

I apprehend that objection may be taken to the bringing forward of a Bill of this kind on two grounds. It may be argued that it is possible that local government will be reorganised following the report of Lord Wheatley's Commission. It has become fashionable in Scotland at least to talk of "Waiting for Wheatley" in this as in other fields. But the Government themselves have not waited for Wheatley, not, for example, in reorganising the social work services throughout Scotland in the Social Work (Scotland) Bill on the basis of the existing local authority structure. Nor have the Government hesitated to tackle the highly complex subject of planning in the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Bill, likewise on the basis of the existing units of local government.

I concede that it can be argued that, with the present multiplicity of local authorities, the task of a Scottish Commissioner for Administration might be regarded as inordinately heavy and, possibly, unmanageable. But I counter that argument by saying that the structure of local government compared with the great Departments of State is relatively simple. It is not difficult, as it is in the case of central Government, to determine where responsibility for a particular action lies within a local authority. The process of establishing the facts of any given case should, therefore, prove relatively simple. Further, it might be that local authorities which take refuge in the relative informality of their decision-making to cover up their intro-missions would take greater care to record fully the considerations leading to a particular decision and, likewise, the way they have handled its implementation. If that were so, it would be all to the good.

The second objection which may be taken is that the 1967 Act on which this Bill is based is unsuitable for the purpose of local government and that its techniques are inappropriate for the scrutiny of local affairs. It is true that one of the objectives of the 1967 Act was to strengthen the hand of the Member of Parliament in his control of the Executive, and that the rôle of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration rested on the twin constitutional doctrine of ministerial responsibility for the actions of their Departments and their accountability to Parliament for those actions. In that no such accountability to Parliament exists in the case of local government, the proposal that the Scottish Commissioner should, at the request of Members of Parliament, report to them, may seem to be an important constitutional innovation. But our constitution, unlike that of the United States, does not proceed from theory to practice, but rather from practice to theory.

What, in fact, is the practice? Members of Parliament are familiar with the whole round of complaints which they receive from their constituents about the activities of local government. How often each of us has received a complaint that a particular local authority has not dealt with a housing problem, has acted unfairly in applying its points system, or has unfairly discriminated against an individual? How often have we, as Members of Parliament, been forced to reply that this is a matter over which we have no control, from which we are statutorily excluded, and which is ultimately and finally a matter for the discretion of the local authority?

It is not the purpose of this Bill to remove the discretion of the local authority in these matters. It is rather to see that that discretion is exercised fairly and openly in the interests of the local electorate. The purpose of the present Bill is to build upon the foundation which this Government have well laid in establishing the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration.

I believe that it is not too early to evaluate the achievement of the Parliamentary Commissioner, nor is it the only experience of the work of the Ombudsman system which we have. Apart from the Scandinavian countries, to whose experience in respect of an Ombudsman with power to investigate complaints against local government I have earlier drawn attention, there are other common law jurisdictions which have followed the Scandinavian model.

In New Zealand, for example, there has been recent legislation to extend the jurisdiction of their Parliamentary Commissioner to education and hospital boards. In Canada, three provinces have instituted, apparently with success, provincial Ombudsmen. In the United States the State of Hawaii has enacted an Ombudsman statute and I am informed a number of large local sub-divisions of government have introduced an Ombudsman with statutory power. We are not in virgin terrain.

There is a natural temptation for a Scotsman to gang warily in a matter of this kind. But we must beware lest we are too timorous when so much has been done to extend the protection which Members of Parliament, by intervention, can give to their constituents.

No claim is made by me that the Bill would fill such a gap as might be completely filled by the provision of a Bill of Rights defining the rights of the citizen. That would be a constitutional innovation of much greater difficulty and would be longer in gestation period. Let us regard this Bill rather as being in the nature of a practical experiment. If it is found unhelpful, and I doubt that it will be, then the experiment can be discontinued. It would now seem sensible for the House, after two years' experience of how the system has operated, to consider trying to apply in local government the principles which have been successfully applied in central Government.

It is too much to expect that no grievances will arise in the conduct of public affairs. What is intolerable, in a just society, is that the aggrieved citizen should have no opportunity to have his complaint fully considered with fairness and impartiality and, if his complaint is found to be justified, to receive redress. I commend this Bill to the House, in the belief that there are areas of local administration where a citizen's rights can be abused without local redress.

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on bringing forward this Bill, and in giving us an opportunity for a discussion of local government and its relations with the people whom it governs. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not take it amiss if I make one or two criticisms about the form of his Bill. However, we are grateful to him for raising this important subject and for the way in which he has done so.

I should like to make two short but important points about why I consider the Bill not to be in the form in which I would wish to see it. I have always felt that if we were to have a Parliamentary Commissioner he ought in the first instance to have been allowed to look into complaints of administrative wrongdoing by local authorities in local government as well as in central Government. I still feel that if we are to have this function at all it is best done by one person, with the necessary staff to carry out investigations, and that that person ought to be the Parliamentary Commissioner. My own preference would have been to give to the present Parliamentary Commissioner the powers which are sought in this Bill.

The second constructive criticism which I wish to make—indeed, the hon. Gentleman himself accepted it—is that it would not be appropriate to have a separate local government Commissioner, or whatever he has been called, for Scotland. If we are to set up a separate Ombudsman to deal with local government, it ought to be on a United Kingdom basis, not on a basis of Scotland alone. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would not disagree with that. No doubt he has brought this in as a Scottish Bill because that is where his interests lie. Possibly it started in his mind as a Scottish Bill, and so it has remained. Personally, I feel that if this is to be done it should be done on a national, United Kingdom basis.

There is one matter on which I am sure everybody will be in agreement. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman did not intend in suggesting this legislation to make a general condemnation—certainly I do not intend to do so—in any sense of the way in which local government has operated or the manner in which councillors and local government officials now carry out their jobs. In common with most other M.P.s, I have a great number of problems to deal with which are really entirely local government matters. I have always found that both local councillors and the officials on the councils are exceptionally helpful and most sensitive when one makes any requests of them for help and advice. I would place it on record—I am sure this will be echoed by all Members—the fact that we owe a great debt of gratitude for the help and advice which is so willingly given by local government officials whose sphere of activity is not ours, but who do not hesitate to help us.

There are two main sides to the matter we are discussing. First, there is the question why the representation of people's complaints against individual acts of local government is not being successfully achieved through the normal electoral process and normal contact between councillors and their officials and constituents, and what is the best way of achieving this. If we agree that the present system is not enabling the individual to get his complaints really successfully heard in a small number of cases, what could we do to put it right in the way of an Ombudsman?

The first thing we should realise is that it is not as easy to have an Ombudsman for local government as for central Government, because the decisions are taken in a completely different way. When we criticise administrative actions of central Government, we are dealing with a series of Ministries with their own organisation, headed by a Minister who takes responsibility for what the Department does. The actions he takes through his Department are identifiable and stem either from legislation or clearly recorded decisions of one kind or another.

But the actions of local government take place in a much more day-to-day and nebulous form. There are meetings of council committees and sub-committees, and full meetings of the council. Any of these may produce decisions, some of which are acted upon. Others are remitted from a sub-committee to a main committee, and then remitted again to the full council for ratification. All the time there is the problem of identifying exactly when a decision has been taken, and by whom, when one starts the process of asking whether there has been an injustice, and, if so, whether it should be investigated. Therefore, a fundamental objection to getting the problem dealt with in the way suggested is that the decision-making process of local government is not clear, as would be necessary for an ombudsman to function successfully.

If a Parliamentary Commissioner for Scotland were established in the way proposed, I do not think that complaints should be forwarded to him through the Member of Parliament. That would be very negative and bad for local government. I feel very strongly that if there were an Ombudsman for local government the person through whom complaints would go to him would have to be the local councillor concerned, just as complaints must go to the present Parliamentary Commissioner through a Member of Parliament if they are to be taken up by him.

The more we look at the problems of how the proposal would work, the more we come to the age-old question that has been discussed for so many years here, that local government as we know it has become so out-of-date in our modern form of life that, through no fault of those involved in it, it is becoming more and more difficult for the individual to know who is really running his local council and for the local people running local government to feel that they are doing a useful and worthwhile job.

We must never forget that the present boundaries of local government bear no relation to the lives we now lead. All over the country people in their thousands and millions are living in one local authority area, working in another and perhaps enjoying their recreation in yet another. All over the country there are places where one has only to travel three or four miles to cross the boundaries of not just one or two local authorities but sometimes three or even more. There must always be boundaries between local authority areas, however big these areas become, but the main conurbations and community units in which we live are now totally out of relation to the boundaries of local government. That is why local government reform has been talked about for the past few years, and is still being talked about.

The consequence of the lack of relationship between local government areas and the lives we lead is the truly difficult situation of the local councillor today. The difficulties local councillors must surmount in their jobs should make us feel that they deserve a great tribute from us for doing their work as well as they do. They have a most unenviable task. Though local government becomes more and more complicated, and spends more and more of the money raised both in general taxation and local rates, we still expect the local councillors to do all the necessary work in their spare time, to spend millions of pounds on our behalf, to earn their living in their own jobs and, presumably, to carry on a normal social and family life. It is astonishing that we can find people who will still carry on this work, faced with so much difficulty and so little time in which to do it.

Even the lack of time pales into insignificance when we discuss the lack of facilities for the average local councillor to carry on his work. Some of us may complain at times about lack of facilities in Parliamentary life, but the local councillor, who admittedly represents fewer people than we do, still has his people to represent and it is almost impossible for him to take up their problems on the scale that most councillors would wish without some assistance. In most cases the local councillor has not the chance of even part of a secretary, and he has no office in which to work except his own home. He has no transport, unless he happens to be a car owner, which many councillors undoubtedly are. We ask far more than is reasonable of local councillors when we expect them to take up people's cases, even with the small number of constituents they have, to see 10 or a dozen people with problems a week, write three or four letters about each of those problems, or go and see two or three officials about them, and at the same time to carry on their normal lives, earn their liviing and attend numerous council meetings.

This brings us to the reason why we may feel that there is a need for an ombudsman to deal with these problems, and to the point the hon. Gentleman made so well, that the majority—I would say almost the vast majority—of cases brought to Members of Parliament are problems that really belong to local government. The reason for the need is that we cannot expect the local councillors to have the time or facilities to deal with the problems of their constituents, which they would very much like to do.

Another difficulty is the enormous number of people—no one will ever measure it—who have not the remotest idea who their local councillor is. I find this when a large number of people come to me with problems that are entirely local government matters. Almost always, the first question I ask is, "Have you seen your local councillor?" Almost always the result is a look of complete incomprehension. They do not know who their local councillor is or, usually, which ward of the town or village they live in.

This is not their fault. I am criticising neither the constituents nor the councillors. It would be a superhuman task for councillors to make themselves known to all their constituents, except in a few cases. This illustrates once again the great difficulty of relating the old-fashioned system of local government to modern conditions. Neither the facilities nor the conditions exist to enable the people to feel that they know their councillors, or for councillors to feel that they are able to represent their people as they should.

This brings me to another point referred to by the hon. Member—the absolute urgency of local government reform. If we could only get it really moving and have something in prospect it would not be necessary to create a special Commissioner to deal with these matters. We could wait to see how the new local government set-up was working. I hope that other hon. Members will agree with me that unless the new local government set-up meets the problems and needs which I have outlined this morning it will be no improvement on the old system.

We must ensure that in the new local government units the local councillor feels that he really counts. He must be well known to his constituents. He must have the facilities to do a proper job of work. He must be able to put the complaints of his citizens before his local authority, and he must have the necessary time and assistance to argue on behalf of his constituents from a position of strength and not, as is now so often the case, from a position in which he does not know enough to argue technicalities with the council officials and, in any case, has not the time to press home the cases of his constituents.

The Bill represents a good effort to have this important point discussed. If the new system of local government does not turn out as I hope, there may be a need in the future, for a Parliamentary Commissioner to be allowed to investigate local government affairs and individual cases of maladministration as they arise. In my opinion, however, this is not an appropriate moment to create a Parliamentary Commissioner for Local Government in Scotland, in the form suggested. In my opinion, we must have our sights firmly set on local government reform, and expect and require it to fulfil the needs which have brought about the introduction of this Bill.

I am becoming more and more concerned at the longer and longer delay in the production of the Wheatley Report. The last thing that I want is an incomplete Report, but every month—and it is going from month to month with depressing regularity just now—that we delay in this matter, and every six months that we delay thereafter in implementing such of its conclusions that Parliament may decide to implement, will make it more difficult to carry out all the reforms which are now going on. The hon. Member mentioned the Social Work (Scotland) Bill and the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Bill. These reforms are going ahead without the reform of local government. What a tragedy it is that these things are being brought in without the framework in which they can succeed.

That is the result of a dragging of feet for years, on what is admittedly the thorny problem of the reform of local government. I do not believe that the Bill will be necessary when local government is reformed. I believe most strongly that we can no longer afford to delay the reform of local government for the sake of the country, or of local government or of councillors, or—perhaps most important of all—of ordinary people who should be able to look to their councillors to fulfil their needs and not to have to resort to the system suggested in the Bill.

I hope that we will all agree that the hon. Member has done a great service in bringing to our notice a very difficult problem, but I also hope that his desire to put the situation right can be transferred from a Bill such as this, admirable though it is, to a desire to get local government reform moving forward as quickly as possible, because that is what we need.

The hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger) has made a reasonable speech. I do not disagree fundamentally with many of the reservations that he has expressed about the form, content or objective of the Bill. It is easy to criticise the drafting of a Private Member's Bill. We have all done it. But we ought not to condemn a Bill on that count alone, and the hon. Member did not seek to do so. He was probably on just as unsure ground when he criticised the Bill for applying only to Scotland, because as long as we have a separate system of local government in Scotland we must have a separate Ombudsman for Scotland, assuming that the principle is accepted.

The hon. Member was right in his remarks about local councillors and local government in general. I do not believe that my hon. Friend remotely questioned—nobody in the House would do so—the incorruptibility or efficiency of the broad mass of councillors, given the limited facilities which they have at their disposal to do their work.

My hon. Friend must be congratulated in bringing forward the Bill, if only because it enables the House to consider the principle of creating an Ombudsman in any field, and to consider whether his work should be extended and, if so, in what way. The Government are to be thanked for introducing the principle of the Ombudsman. It was absolutely right to experiment in a limited field to see how the situation developed. It has not been an unqualified success. The Government would not claim that it has been. This is inevitable when we embark on unknown and unexplored territory.

The Government recognise, as we all do, that the safeguarding of the fundamental rights and liberties of the individual must never be lost sight of in this age where the big unit is becoming an increasingly severe problem, whether at the level of Government institutions or at the local level. Whether it be hospitals, regional hospital boards, management committees, nationalised industries, the police, or even business, with take-overs, large industrial units and trade unions—wherever we look the units of administration with which the individual has to deal are becoming bigger and bigger and therefore, by definition, more and more remote, so that the individual feels that his relationship with them is so impersonal that he cannot get at the people whom he thinks are doing him injustice. The individual has an ever increasing feeling of helplessness, of being weighted down by the complexity of the Governmental and other systems under which he has to live.

We see this as Members of Parliament in our post bags every morning. I suppose that there are more ulcers among Members of Parliament on average than among the rest of the community, and I think that this is largely due to the fact that we have to open a wretched post bag every morning with all these complaints knowing before we start that so many of them are not our responsibility. The ordinary citizen who writes to us does so partly out of frustration, because he has an inflated idea of what a Member of Parliament can do.

So often one gets people coming to one's "surgery" at the weekends or writing a letter and saying, "You are just the fellow to sort this out; my daughter-in-law wants a house". As soon as one hears that, one knows that one is lost and that one cannot do anything. But if one tells the constituent that he will say, "I will not vote for you at the next election; you are no good". That is the kind of problem which is extremely frustrating for both the individual and the Member of Parliament.

It is true that the tenacious Member of Parliament, the, if I may use the expression, bloody-minded Member of Parliament, can do much with a Ministry. He can write his formal letter, but that is just an opening gambit. He may then see the Minister and talk to him in language which I could not use in the House. He may get or threaten an Adjournment debate. He may get on to the local Press, and the local Press probably has a more important function than the Ombudsman my hon. Friend is suggesting. He may threaten the Minister with adverse publicity in the local and national Press, and the national Press, especially if it is anti-Labour Government, is quite willing to co-operate in that kind of exercise. He may also put Questions in the House.

There is much that an ordinary Member can do. Although I have said that the Government are to be congratulated on having introduced the idea of an Ombudsman, I viewed the experiment with mixed feelings, because I visualised, and it has not been denied by events, that there would be a slight element of blackmail of Members of Parliament, in that an individual constituent might say, "If you cannot dealt with it, I demand that you send the case to the Ombudsman". If the constituent does that, one is morally obliged to send it.

How often have Members of Parliament sent cases to the Ombudsman on the instructions of their constituents knowing full well that the Ombudsman would reply that the case was outside his terms of reference? I have had several examples of this nature. The annual report of the Ombudsman has borne this out and has shown that the vast majority of cases sent to him by Members of Parliament have been outside his responsibility. The Member has known this before sending the case, but he has to send it to satisfy his constituent that he has done all he can to deal with the problem.

The average citizen finds it difficult to accept that ordinary back bench Members have limited powers when dealing with the Executive and still less when dealing with local councils. Local government is very big business, dealing with hundreds of millions of pounds. If central Government is too remote for the individual to feel that he can have a proper personal relationship with it or with a Minister, there is a feeling of only slightly less remoteness when dealing with a local authority. How right the hon. Member for Ayr was to say that constituents coming to a Member's "surgery" at the weekend often do not know the name of their local councillor. They often do not know the name of their Member of Parliament, although there is probably more excuse for that.

It has to be remembered that the local councillor is unpaid and has to earn his living elsewhere. He has no postage or secretarial facilities. I sometimes wonder how we continue to get candidates to take up the work. I believe that the day is fast approaching when we shall have to think seriously about emoluments for local councillors. I know that this is a controversial proposal, but if we get bigger units of local government following the Reports of the Royal Commissions, the Wheatley Commission for Scotland and the Maud Commission for England, not only will the sense of remoteness between councillor and individual increase, but it will also be increasingly imperative to consider some kind of financial payments for councillors, who will be virtually full time.

Most chairmen of local authority committees are now virtually full time and much depends on their employers. When looking for candidates for local government, one of the first questions one asks is whether they can get away from their work. If the potential candidate would be a Labour councillor and has a Tory employer, the answer is often no, and vice versa, although not often vice versa. It is extremely difficult for able men and women to get sufficient time off work to do the kind of job expected of them in local authority work.

I want to quote an example to underline the problem which my hon. Friend has posed. I had an example in my own constituency when Fife County Council was planning to build high storey flats in Kincardine, mainly for workers to man the big new power station at Longannet. It was essential to build multi-storey flats because there has been much underground working in the Kincardine area and the number of possible sites was limited. The authority therefore had to build up rather than horizontally.

Certain people in Kincardine, quite properly from their point of view, objected to the proposal on aesthetic grounds. They said that it would destroy the character of the village. They went to the Scottish office of the Ombudsman in Edinburgh and asked whether it was thought that they had a prima facie case for referring the matter to the Ombudsman on the ground of the maladministration not of Fife County Council, but of the Scottish Development Department. They were told that they had.

Then then wrote to me. I knew very well that the Fife County Council had to get those houses up quickly, to get these extra jobs, and the new power station built at the earliest possible moment. It put me in a rather difficult position. I was being pressed by certain constituents to refer the matter to the Ombudsman and, if it were accepted by him, it would delay the building of the houses which the county council and the Scottish economy urgently needed to get this power station started.

I took the view that I had an obligation to my constituents to refer this matter. I did, with the result that the investigations held up the building of these flats, much to the embarrassment—and additional cost—of the ratepayers of Fife, and to the detriment of the whole project. Eventually the Ombudsman, after several months, came to the conclusion that there has been no maladministration, but time and money had been lost. Now Fife County Council is asking the Development Department to reimburse it for the additional expense that it was put to as a result of the investigations.

This is one of the difficulties into which we get as a result of the existence of the Ombudsman, as he is constituted now. The principle is sound. It is simply that the Ombudsman has power to go into Government Departments and presumably under this Bill to go into local government offices and look at papers. A Member of Parliament is not allowed to do this in Government Departments, still less in local authority offices. To that extent the experiment has been worthwhile. Another criticism which has been made, and which I would be inclined to make, is that this piecemeal approach might be wrong.

If we accept the principle of having an Ombudsman, or Parliamentary Commissioner, call it whatever we like, if we accept the principle of having someone in authority who can go much further than a Member of Parliament or a local councillor, why not cover a much wider area than central and local government? Apart from the Civil Service at central level and the local officials, the local councillors and the Members of Parliament are all elected and therefore the buck can stop with them. There are so many non-elected bodies where the Ombudsman is much more vitally concerned. Hospital administration is a very good example. Very often as Members of Parliament we get cases from constituents complaining about hospital administration of one kind or another.

It was decided, rightly or wrongly, when the National Health Service was initiated in 1947, that the bodies running the hospitals should be non-elected, and I am thinking of such bodies as regional hospital boards and hospital management committees. The power of a Member of Parliament is very limited in this area. The members of those boards and committees are not responsible to anyone. They are not elected by anyone, and often when we get hospital problems with which we cannot deal adequately, we cannot refer them to the Ombudsman, and there is no redress.

I have a very disturbing case before the Secretary of State concerning the police. The only people who can investigate the police are the police, and this is thoroughly unsatisfactory. I said earlier that Members of Parliament can threaten or promise an Adjournment debate. I have—I think threatened is the proper word—I have threatened an Adjournment debate on this problem because I want to blow it up. I want to show exactly what can happen in certain cases where the police are involved with the citizen, who has no redress whatever.

I do not know whether the activities of the Ombudsman could or should be extended into this area. There are also the nationalised industries, very big units run by people who are not elected. We have cases referred to us but the Ombudsman cannot investigate them. Instead, we are left to the Chairman of the Coal Board, or the area manager.

I want to say a few words about the prospect of reform for local government when we get the Royal Commissions' reports. I do not complain about delay, I would like them as much as anyone, but it is a highly complex matter and there are a lot of empire-builders in local authorities. I have some small burghs in my constituency and I know that if Wheatley recommends the abolition of small burghs what representations I will get from each of these burghs, where they debate for six months before deciding whether to build a public lavatory, or whether they can afford to build a public lavatory. Let anyone say that they are to get rid of these small burghs, and we all know what kind of representations we shall get. It is not only areas that are concerned, but there is also the question of how we are to finance local government, how we are to get councillors in the required numbers and of the necessary quality to man the bigger bodies. It is an enormously complex problem.

It is not surprising that the Royal Commissions are apparently taking such a long time. If we get bigger authorities it will be more and more necessary to examine the principle to which my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) has referred in introducing his Bill. The problem of the relationship between the ordinary citizen and the bigger units of local government, in addition to the big unit of central Government, will become even more important and urgent. Whether we try to create additional machinery through which the ordinary citizen can ventilate his grievances, or have them investigated, is a different problem. We might need another Royal Commission on that. Having decided how to reform local government we might need another to decide on the rights of the individual and how to protect them and his freedom in the new local government set-up.

These are highly complex questions, and they cannot be tackled adequately by a Private Member's Bill. My hon. Friend is nevertheless to be congratulated for allowing us to ventilate some of these problems. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will reject the Bill—it will not get as far as the Parliament (No. 2) Bill. He will make the appropriate sympathetic noises; they are all experts at this kind of exercise, some more than others. He will get up and say that my hon. Friend has brought in a nice little Bill and we have had a nice little discussion, but it can go no further, that the Government are looking at it and keeping it under constant review. None the less I am obliged to my hon. Friend for raising the subject.

I had intended to begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) on having initiated this debate, but in view of the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) I might be more in order in congratulating him on making my speech for me.

I had intended to say, as my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West forecast, that, while having every sympathy with the aims and objects of the Bill, I must recommend the House not to accept it. Despite the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West, I intend to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness and Sutherland and assure him that this has been a useful debate.

The subject raised by the Bill represents one of the major problems which we must examine in a modern democracy, for as democracy becomes more complex, so local government becomes more complex. There is never the same theoretical and continuing political consideration given to local government affairs as is inevitably given to national problems. I am glad, therefore, that we have today had at least a quasi-theoretical discussion of some of the problems facing local government.

I am pleased for another reason that this matter has been raised. Not only did my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness and Sutherland present his case in an admirable way, but I know how dearly he has been concerned with the whole question of the extension of democracy. His membership of the Latey Committee is a good example of this. This is not the first time that he has introduced private Members' legislation. In the past he has been successful, but I regret that I cannot advise the House to allow him to be successful with this Measure. At least he has marked the way to possible future developments.

In a modern democracy there are two basic problems. First, as democracy becomes more complex, there is great need for participation. Second, the need for protection becomes even more imperative. The Bill is more concerned with protection than with participation. However, a big problem is the need to humanise the decisions that are made, whether at national or at local level; the question of relationships between authorities and people, local and national authorities, and the need to ensure that justice is done. This concerns the whole basic protective element. People should get that which, in equity, they should have, and there should be an extension of those things which, in equity, they should get.

The concern of the present Government for the individual has been manifest in recent years. In many ways we have sought to protect the interests of the individual, both as consumer and citizen. For example, the Trade Descriptions Act will go far in preventing the fraudulent description of goods. Another sphere in which it is necessary to protect the interests of the citizen is housing, where we have introduced a whole new concept of the fixing of fair rents through rent officers and rent assessment committees.

The Government took the initiative in introducing the office of the Parliamentary Commissioner. It is as a result of that, no doubt, that we are today discussing the extension of that office. Within this problem, which is a protective one, we should not overlook the fact that the Ombudsman can never take the place of the elected representatives of the people. However, regretfully, I must advise the House against accepting the principle of the Bill at this time.

It may be useful for me to give an outline of the work which has so far been done by the Parliamentary Commissioner in Scotland, especially as I was myself involved in one case. The Commissioner may investigate any action taken by a Government Department or other authority to which the Parliamentary Commissioner Act applies.

The hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger) spoke of the difference between the decision-making process in local government and that in national Government as a result of the various committees that exist in the two structures. The rôle of the Commissioner is concerned not with policy-making but only with the faults that occur in administration or as the result of maladministration. Thus, the powers of the Commissioner are designed for administrative action. They do not extend to the legislative or quasi-judicial functions of the various departments.

Is that absolutely correct, when one considers, for example, that sub-committees of local authority housing committees make administrative decisions about which persons should be allocated houses and so on? That was the sort of matter to which I was referring.

I appreciate what the hon. Gentleman has in mind.

Inquiries in Scotland on behalf of the Parliamentary Commissioner are carried out on a part-time basis by Mr. J. A. Diack, who was formerly controller in the Scottish headquarters of the Ministry of Labour. Mr. Diack cannot receive complaints direct but, in conducting his inquiries, he has delegated to him the full powers of the Parliamentary Commissioner to interview Ministers and civil servants and to obtain documents. He also guides investigators from the Commissioner's office through the complexities of the Scottish administrative machinery.

In his first annual report—an extremely useful document, which we welcomed—covering the period from 1st April to 31st December, 1967, the Commissioner revealed that he had received 21 complaints of maladministration by the Scottish Office, six of which were rejected as being outwith his terms of reference. He had found no justification for the complaints in any of the nine cases on which he reported in that year. There were 16 complaints against the Scottish Office in 1968, seven of which related to matters which the Commissioner had no power to investigate.

In one of the nine cases on which he reported the Commissioner found that there were defects in administration. It concerned the refusal to authorise the full operation of a liquor licence for the complainer's hotel. The Commissioner decided that the complainer's applications had not been properly submitted to the Ministers, including me, and suggested that they should be resubmitted. This shows that by no means the least reason for having an Ombudsman is the help and guidance that he can give to Ministers, in addition to the protection which he can give to the citizen.

On the local government side we must consider to what extent there is an involvement between the Commissioner and the needs of local government and what he can do under existing local government machinery. I wish at the outset to pay tribute to the work that is done by many local councillors throughout the country. They are generally recognised as men of honesty and probity who work extremely long hours with frequently very little public recognition, though often with public complaint. Less publicity usually attaches to them and their work than to, for example, Members of Parliament. Local councillors have less personal satisfaction than hon. Members. We cannot pay too high a tribute to the many thousands of people who allow inroads to be made into their private and working lives, often at great personal and financial sacrifice, for the good of the community.

Local councillors must at times be depressed by the nature of the relationships that exist between them and the community; a kind of apathy of approach from the community to them. It is often said that people do not know who their local councillors are. Often the public do not realise the nature of the work they do. Usually a distinction is not made between the work of councillors and hon. Members. These things are bound to act as a spiritual disincentive to councillors. I wish, therefore, to pay a high tribute to the work they do in local government throughout the country.

Although council and committee work is probably the preoccupation of many councillors, not all councillors see this as their main work. Studies made by academic researchers, such as those in Strathclyde University, reveal that a large proportion of councillors see their main rôle as representing the interests of their constituents. To a large extent these interests involve grievances of constituents who want to know, for example, why they have not got a house, why their child must go to a certain school and why the corner shop is being compulsorily purchased.

The local councillor has an important function, just like the Member of Parliament, to see the appropriate official or convenor on matters of this kind. Frequently the local councillor can bat on his constituents' behalf just as well as any hon. Member, both at council level and with Ministers.

In addition, there is the question of special departments and officers. On the consumer side, for example, there are the citizens advice bureaux, often buttressed by voluntary organisations, perhaps with local authority backing. Increasing attention is being paid to the appointment of officers to deal not with the production side of local authority work—house building, roads, sewers, parks and so on—but with the people who have to use these services. There are not only technical but human aspects involved in the establishment of an officer to handle the relationships and the disruptions which this brings into people's lives. This kind of recognition of people doing this particular job deals with the other aspect of protection, the humanising aspect, which is no less important.

The Scottish Development Department, for example, has recently issued a circular about housing management, stressing the need for skilled housing managers with a close eye to the welfare aspects of their job. In the Report which I initiated on the social problems of delinquency in Glasgow, one of the interesting paragraphs deals with the potential rôle of the housing manager in assisting the whole social work set-up—the human relations aspect. This, also, will be of considerable value in dealing with the kind of complaints that a Parliamentary Commissioner might get.

In some authorities, suggestions have already been made that they should have a complaints officer of one kind or another. It is difficult for me to recommend increased expenditure in either manpower or resources from that point of view at the present time, but I think that there would be considerable value in controlled experiments of this kind by some of our larger authorities. Also, it must not be seen as a substitute for the normal diligent work of councillors. I confess, however, that I should welcome such an appointment on the initiative of local authorities having regard to the economic needs of the present time.

There are other organisations, too, which can help in this kind of way—tenants' associations, amenity associations and various trusts. Sometimes, too, the need is to provide information, not merely the normal information bureau kind of thing but information of the ways in which social problems can be met. In that respect, I know that the publication by the Government of the leaflet "The Short Step", which brought together all the social agencies and ways of dealing with the problem, is very useful in making people aware of their rights and benefits.

Reference has been made to the problem of local government. The management of local government, quite apart from the major reports, is in a state of flux. There have been not only the earlier Maud and Mallaby Reports on England, but our own report on the staffing of local government, looking at the position of the clerk as general manager for business, and so on. Clearly, quite apart from the major reorganisation which we are considering, changes are in any event taking place within councils. It may be that on reorganisation, the size of new authorities, the number of councillors in the new councils and other factors might dispose central and local government to think of a local government solution to this question.

My hon. Friend the Member for Caithness and Sutherland referred also to a number of instances in which a Commissioner or Ombudsman might be useful in dealing with particular cases. This was especially true of his earlier speech and today. My feeling is that, in the first instance, most of the type of cases and complaints outlined should, nevertheless, go to the councillor and are frequently solved in this way. I should not like to see a duplication of work done by the councillors in that respect, but neither, I would hope, does my hon. Friend, who would see them working in the same kind of way.

My hon. Friend also suggested that the imminent publication of the report on local government lent additional force to the creation of a Commissioner at the present time. I took his point that if we had it already it would be more useful in fitting in a future development. I do not know whether that is altogether the case. With the great mass of organisations—there are something like 200 Scottish local authorities—it would, I think, be better to await what most people who forecast suggest will be a considerable reduction in that number.

The question of foreign examples was also used, but it must be borne in mind that in most cases the foreign examples show a time lag between the first establishment of a Parliamentary Commissioner and his extension into this kind of field. In Denmark, the first Danish Ombudsman was appointed in 1955. It was in 1962 that his jurisdiction was extended to the officials of local authorities. In Sweden, an Ombudsman was first appointed in 1809 but not until 1957 was he given power to investigate local authority officials. I promise my hon. Friend that I shall certainly not wait 150 years before I take up some of the sug- gestions that he has made. The same thing is true of certain other countries.

It seems to me, however, that the arguments that were deployed at the time of Second Reading of the Parliamentary Commissioner Bill still apply. At that time, we thought it right that the local authorities should work out their own way of equipping their councillors with an officer or an office designed to remedy individual grievances. We hope that especially the larger authorities will continue to keep under constant review their methods of dealing with complaints and guard against any tendency to remoteness or indifference. I know how terrible the problem of remoteness can be in the individual case.

In the light of that suggestion which was made on Second Reading of the Parliamentary Commissioner Bill in 1966, can my hon. Friend say whether any authority in Scotland has subsequently set up or appointed a complaints officer?

I do not know whether there has been a formal appointment of a complaints officer, but the strengthening of the citizens advice bureaux in other directions at least has proceeded reasonably satisfactorily I will look into the point and write to my hon. Friend about it.

That intervention raises the point of the extent to which my hon. Friend or I have consulted local authorities on this Measure. I hope that he would not consider that they do not want such a Bill, or that we should be imposing anything on them without discussion. Formal consultation would, perhaps, be a matter for my right hon. Friend if such a decision as this were to be brought forward.

There are also technical difficulties it the question of a Parliamentary Commissioner to deal with local authorities were to be seen in this way. During the discussions on the 1966 Bill, attempts were made by several hon. Members to have its scope extended to cover local authorities. Both the then Lord President of the Council, who is now Secretary of State for Social Services, and the Financial Secretary to the Treasury took the line that a Parliamentary Commissioner should appropriately deal only with matters which came within Ministerial control and, therefore, would be subject to Parliamentary investigation. This is one of the great problems of linking these two things in this way through the Bill. It was thought better that the other aspects should be worked out by the larger authorities themselves. I take the opportunity to repeat that suggestion now.

My hon. Friend's intervention was quite proper in asking to what extent the suggestion had been taken up. I hope that local authorities will look at the suggestion of the appointment of a complaints officer, call him what one will, where they can do this.

Much of the effectiveness of the existing Parliamentary Commissioner lies in the power of Parliament to investigate further the matters referred to the Commissioner for report. We have a structure for precisely that. Actions of local authorities, however, are the responsibility of the elected councillors and local authorities are, by law, independent of Parliament. No Minister is directly answerable to Parliament for their actions. It would, therefore, be difficult for Parliament to take any effective action on a report of maladministration submitted by a Parliamentary Commissioner for local government. I hope that I have dealt with most of the points which have been raised in one form or another.

My hon. Friend the Member for Caithness and Sutherland raised the question of many decisions being taken in private, but it is also true that full council meetings and meetings of some major committees must be held in public. Certainly, the vast bulk of major decisions are taken in public.

The hon. Member for Ayr saw the problem as basically a problem of relationship, as a question of how to deal with complaints through local government. He felt it was easier in the sphere of central Government rather than the local government sphere because of the existence in the former of a Minister who would take a decision. When and how are decisions taken? How do we get in local government to know these things? These were questions which he touched on. I thought that his deploying of the arguments about understanding was good, and I accept this completely. The answer to that is not, I think, quite so simple. It could not certainly be answered by setting up a Commissioner alone. It certainly goes much deeper; it reaches into our democracy much more deeply than that.

I would say in conclusion that I think that this debate has served a very useful function, and it will certainly help and guide us in our future consideration, when we shall have to consider with the forthcoming report of the Royal Commission, some of these points which have been brought forward. We want to consider what kind of machinery is most needed to ensure the investigation of grievances of individuals against local authorities and within society in general, and how they can best be dealt with. As I said, I am doubtful whether this should be by a Parliamentary Commissioner. I have suggested that it would, perhaps, be better done through an officer of the local authority itself, but I do not by any means rule out the extension of this eventually in the way my hon. Friend has suggested. What I would not like to outline is the kind of timetable which may be envisaged for that. However, I think that what hon. Gentlemen have said today and this very discussion itself will facilitate and sharpen consideration of the problem.

In accordance with the form forecast by the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton), the Minister has rejected this Bill, although I must say he did so graciously and reinforced himself by argument. Whilst he has rejected it, I hope that the hon. Member for Fife, West will take note that the Parliament (No. 2) Bill has been rejected, and I think he will have taken note that there is also down for consideration later today a Parliament (No. 4) Bill, and I have no doubt he will be in his place to make his contribution to the discussion of that other momentous piece of legislation.

Order. The hon. Member must resist the temptation to discuss the Parliament (No. 2) Bill. We spent some time, I think, on that Bill.

I add only to that, Mr. Speaker, that it is hardly likely we shall spend the same amount of time on the Parliament (No. 4) Bill.

I think that what was particularly interesting in the Under-Secretary's speech today was the summary which he gave of the work of the Ombudsman in Scotland. I think that all of us who have participated in this debate pay tribute to the work which has been done by the Ombudsman. I must say that personally I have found, with most of the cases I have brought forward, that I have had experience similar to that of the hon. Member for Fife, West. When one has had, under pressure from a constituent, quite rightly, to bring these matters forward, one has often done so in the knowledge of there being but a slender chance of the Ombudsman being competent to consider them, but in those cases which it has been competent for the Ombudsman to consider all of us will pay tribute to the work which he has done. I personally feel that there is great opportunity for the Ombudsman to supplement the work of the ordinary Member of Parliament, because the Ombudsman has far more resources than we have at our disposal to carry out detailed investigation, and in that respect he performs an extremely valuable function indeed.

The Under-Secretary introduced, as he very often does in his speeches, some element of philosophy, when he raised the question of the difference between protection and participation. He often in debate raises the whole plane of debate from practical problems immediately under discussion to a philosophical level.

Today we are discussing the protection of the individual in relation with local government and it is perhaps right to differentiate that from the problem of participation, but what I think is equally important to make clear is that if participation is good, the participation of the ordinary person, the ordinary ratepayer, the ordinary individual subject to local government—if the degree of participation there is good—the need for protection is to that degree very much less, and the more that we can promote participation the more we remove the need for such a high degree of protection.

On the question of protection I join in the tribute which the hon. Member for Fife, West paid to the Press, not only nationally but, in this case, locally even more. Because the local and the weekly Press circulates in the very area of the local town council or local county council, which is a limited area, the local Press performs in this context a tremendously important function, and it is the local Press even more than the national Press which plays such an important part in the protection of the public locally, and I would personally pay a warm tribute to what the local Press has done.

The Under-Secretary raised the question of complaints officers in local authorities. I think this is important, but I do not think it is any substitute for what the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) is suggesting. The weakness of the case for the complaints officer is that the complaints officer may be limited in what he can do because he is employed by the very council a complaint against which he is having to investigate, and so a complaints officer is not necessarily the best way in which the investigation of complaints should be done. In this respect I think that the hon. Member's proposals are much more effective and much more comprehensive.

I agree absolutely with what the hon. Member is saying, but I should not like it to go out from here as implied, for example, that the Parliamentary Commissioner is hindered in any sense that he is paid by the Government when he is investigating and reporting. So I would not over-stress that aspect of the complaints officer as reducing the value of his purpose and function. I think his purpose and function would be valuable.

I entirely agree with the Under-Secretary, but I cannot see that the complaints officer would be in any way a substitute for what the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland has suggested. There is a distinction here between the Ombudsman and the complaints officer. The Ombudsman is, say, investigating a complaint against the Ministry of Transport; but he is not employed by the Ministry of Transport; he is completely free from that Ministry. The complaints officer might not be so free. There is that important distinction here.

The Under-Secretary finished with some points about local government reorganisation, and the one point which we are all very much interested to hear about was the very one upon which, perhaps predictably, he was vague, and that was the actual timetable. It is that in which we are interested and it is a topic to which I shall refer again later.

Like all other hon. Members I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland upon introducing this Bill because it has given us a good opportunity to debate a wide range of local government functions and a very important section of local government about which we must be concerned. Whilst congratulating him, though, I would just like to make two points of criticism, and I shall seek to do so as constructively as possible.

I got the feeling that what he would like to see would be a much greater centralised control of local government. I may be wrong about this, but I had the impression that he thought that one of the problems is that local government is not controlled sufficiently by the central Government and, thereby, by this House. That argument is wrong, because if we were to have too much control over local government we would immediately give less responsibility to local councillors and then we should be able to recruit to the ranks of local councillors only less able people, because people will not be attracted to local government unless they feel there is a responsible job for them to do. Instead of centralisation we have to think more of delegation and see that local councillors have full control over those matters which we delegate to them, and not subject them to great, detailed central control. Unless we do we shall not get the people of the right calibre we want for local government.

I certainly agree, as the hon. Gentleman does, that members of the public have grievances and complaints against local authorities and I agree with his suggestion that there should be a more efficient way of dealing with them, and to that extent I welcome his proposal.

Hon. Members have spoken this morning of the number of complaints which, as ordinary Members of Parliament, they get and which affect local authorities. I was under the impression that the greater proportion of the complaints which I received concerned local government. I made an analysis over a period and I found that only about one in four of the problems were concerned with local government. When such complaints come to us we realise that they are often problems which we have no jurisdiction to deal with, and the result is that the number of complaints becomes exaggerated in our minds. Many are complaints about housing. About one-third of my complaints related to housing. Complaints are not necessarily against maladministration by local authorities. Often a person will come to me as a last resort, when he has tried every other way to have his housing problem dealt with. Housing affects a person and his family in a big way, and it is only as a last resort that he comes to his Member of Parliament. We therefore tend to exaggerate the number of complaints which are beyond our jurisdiction and within that of the local authority. I join with my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger) in paying tribute to the local authorities. There are eight local authorities in my constituency, two county councils and six town councils, and almost invariably both officials and councillors have been extremely sympathetic in dealing with complaints.

What must be done is to find out exactly what causes the complaints. Those that stem from inefficiency and maladministration should be exposed and put right. We must make sure, as the Under-Secretary said, that the complaints come through local councillors. The reason why this is not done is that people do not know who their local councillor is. A recent programme on Scottish television screened a large number of interviews with local people, who were asked whether they knew the name of their local councillor. Of those interviewed, 99 per cent. did not know with any degree of certainty. Many of the names they gave coincided with names of Members of Parliament in those areas. Although the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) may in modesty think that his name is not very well known in his area, television has proved this not to be so. As he said, criticism of the Front Bench is one way of getting publicity, and, so long as he continues to do this, he will have no cause to complain that he is not well-known within his constituency. People do not know who their local councillor is and come to their Member of Parliament, and this lack of contact with local government is most tragic. If people have no contact with local government and do not know what is going on locally, we cannot expect them to take an interest in what is going on nationally. Local government affairs such as housing, schools, old folk's homes and so on, affect everybody and people should take an interest in them.

The Under-Secretary stressed the need for participation. If participation is not good at local level, it will be more difficult to secure at national level. It will be a tragedy for democracy if people do not take a greater share in local and national affairs. People of higher calibre might be attracted to local government if they felt they had a bigger job to do.

This matter cannot be looked at in isolation from local government reform, but we must not wait for reform before considering the appointment of an Ombudsman for local government. Even if the reform of local government results in it being brought closer to people there will still be grievances and problems. In so far as the Ombudsman is doing a good job nationally, we must treat seriously and sympathetically any move for an Ombudsman for local government. In local as in national government the Ombudsman will have power and resources at his disposal beyond those of Members of Parliament or of local councillors, and this will enable him to investigate complaints more efficiently.

I agree with the Under-Secretary that a Parliamentary Commissioner for Local Government must not be treated as a substitute for the proper channels of complaint through a local councillor. He should be treated as complimentary and not as an alternative. As central Government is answerable through us, as local government is answerable through the councillor. It might be more to the point if we were to discuss an Ombudsman for statutory bodies which are answerable neither to Members of Parliament nor to councillors. The hon. Member for Fife, West made a strong point in suggesting that before the appointment of an Ombudsman for local government we should consider the appointment of an Ombudsman for hospitals and, possibly, police and nationalised industries.

Although I welcome the debate, the proposal is slightly premature, bearing in mind the Wheatley Commission and the forthcoming report on the reform of local government. It might be that the Bill would be short lived in the event of local government reorganisation, although, as the Under-Secretary said, the reorganisation of local government into larger units will of itself result in many complaints, and so produce an intolerable burden of work for a local government Ombudsman.

I am disappointed that the Under-Secretary was not more forthcoming on the date when the Wheatley Commission report is expected. He expressed the hope that it will not be long delayed and that the Scottish Office will consider its proposals as quickly as possible—

Perhaps I might draw the hon. Gentleman's attention to a Written Answer given to the hon. Member for Moray and Nairn (Mr. Gordon Campbell) on 15th April, in which my right hon. Friend said:

"The Commission is now in process of drafting its Report. I understand that while publication in the early summer is not now possible, the Report should be published later in the summer."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th April, 1969; Vol. 781, c. 230.]

At any rate, the hon. Gentleman now knows an approximate date.

We have had these assurances in the past. I know about that Written Answer. However, the hon. Gentleman will recall that, a year or so ago, we were told that publication of the Wheatley Commissions Report was expected some time towards the end of last year. Many of us accepted that assurance and forecast from the Government and hoped that it would prove to be right, because so many matters are held up pending the publication of the Report. At the end of last year, we were told that it would be slightly later. Then, on 30th January, my hon. Friend the Member for Moray and Nairn was told categorically by the Secretary of State that the Report would be published in the early summer. As the hon. Gentleman has said, the latest information came on 15th April, when my hon. Friend was told that it will come in the late summer.

The publication of the Report is being pushed further and further back, and we are beginning to wonder whether we can accept the assurance that it will be published in the late summer or whether in fact it will be even later.

I regret having to intervene again, but the hon. Gentleman's remarks are quite improper. An independent Commission has been set up, and it is quite intolerable for hon. Members ostensibly to put pressure on my right hon. Friend who is in no way responsible for the timing of the publication of any report, but in practice to put pressure upon that independent Commission. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not pursue this avenue of criticism. With the good will of the House, the Commission has been set up, and it should be left to get on with its business. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will withdraw his remarks because, when the Government give forecasts of the likely date of publication, we do it with the best will in the world, but the matter is quite outside our control.

I have not asked the Government to put any pressure on the Commission. The hon. Gentleman has misconstrued what I said. I am asking, bearing in mind the information given to us in the past, whether we can take it that the latest information about publication is correct. If it is, we welcome it and we look forward to the publication of the Report in the late summer.

Once the Commission has reported, we shall require time to consider its recommendations, and no doubt we shall receive many representations about them. However, we hope that the forming of legislation will not be delayed too long.

Every hon. Member who has taken part in the debate has raised the question of the Wheatley Commission. Quite rightly, we are all concerned about it, and the people of Scotland are entitled to be concerned about it. The speed with which we can bring forward proposals for local government reform colours our approach to a Bill such as that which we are considering today. If the proposals are to be delayed, we want to see Bills such as this brought forward and considered. Whether we accept them depends upon the prospect of the Government making early proposals. For this reason, while I welcome the Bill, its prospects depend on our knowing when such proposals are likely to be made.

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will withdraw his last remarks, because they are putting direct pressure upon the Commission to speed up the publication of its report. That is quite improper. The hon. Gentleman has said that he does not wish to put pressure on the Commission, but his last remarks are in fact doing it. It is quite disgraceful.

I will not withdraw what I have said. Let me make my point clear yet again. I am asking the Government to give us accurate information. The only pressure that I am putting on the Government is to ensure that, once they receive the Report, action on it will not be delayed. If the hon. Gentleman is as sensitive as he appears, it makes me think that the Government are trying to hold back publication of the Report. This is what worries me, because it colours our approach to Bills such as this. Therefore, while there may well be a place for what it proposed by the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland in our future legislation, now is not quite the right time in the present context. But it may be that it will be worthy of consideration again later.

rose—

Order. The hon. Gentleman has exhausted his right to speak.

Mr. Speaker, with the leave of the House.

It is not customary, but the hon. Gentleman can speak again if the House gives him leave.

I intervene at the end of the debate with reluctance only because of the unfortunate note of acerbity which has characterised its concluding stages and because I would not like it to be thought that I shared in the views of the hon. Member for North Angus and Mearns (Mr. Buchanan-Smith), who has given me such generous support, about the Report of the Wheatley Commission. I sought to make it clear earlier that I, too, looked forward to the reform of local government as going far to solve many of these problems. However, I believe that this Bill would have a useful effect as an experiment which could be carried on independently of any Report of the Commission.

I believe that this has been a useful debate, and I am glad that there has been an opportunity to deal with these extremely important questions in the constructive way that we have this morning.

My hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) flashed the amber light at me in a quite unmistakable way when he suggested that I could not look to the Government for their support. If I cannot accept with good grace all the reluctance of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State, I am always sensible of the advice from the great experience of my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West. As a consequence, I will not press the matter further. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Bill.

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

The British Film Institute was founded in 1933 with the aims of encouraging the development of the art of the film, promoting its use as a record of contemporary life and manners, and fostering public appreciation and study of it from these points of view. To those functions, in 1961 there were added similar functions in respect of television films.

Since 1964 the work of the Institute has prospered, and it would be cavalier of me not to seize this opportunity of paying a warm tribute to my right hon. Friend the Minister of State for Education and Science and expressing to her the appreciation of the Institute and everyone interested in its work for the way in which she has helped to forward its aims.

The National Film Archive is an integral part of the work of the Institute. It is not the most important, although those who are concerned with the Archive regard their work with such pride as to lead them to suppose that it is. However, there are other divisions in the Institute, all playing an integral part in forwarding the aims of the Institute as a whole.

The Archive constitutes a permanent collection of moving pictures, including television films. What is important and central to much of my Bill is the fact that the collection, as it has grown, is not a collection of every film made on the same principle as every book published is required to be placed in the appropriate statutory book deposit. Rather, it is a collection of material judged to be of lasting value—that is to say, judged to be of lasting value for the study of film art, the development of techniques of film making and social and historical records.

The Archive spends about £90,000 a year, and this is under the current budget for the whole of the Institute of about £350,000. In other words, it enjoys expenditure of about a quarter of the total budget. The work of the Archive has been beset over the years with the problems of securing the films to store and catalogue. Certain sections of the industry have been quite remarkable in the generosity with which they have donated copies of films to the Archive. As I said when I was seeking leave of the House under the Ten-Minute Rule to introduce the Bill, had the whole of the industry been as generous and farsighted, in its own interests, as the best of the industry has been, there would be no need for me to be seeking a Second Reading for this Bill today.

The generosity has come not only from the film industry. The B.B.C., the Independent Television Authority and the television companies have all shown the same understanding of the need for a strong and active National Film Archive and have contributed very generously to forwarding its work. If I could instance the estimated value of films which have been donated from those sources to the Archive, in 1966 and 1967 it totalled about £18,000 and in 1968 their value was estimated at over £26,000. The House will recognise that, against a budget of £350,000, donations amounting to about 7 per cent. of the total expenditure of the Institute must be regarded as a generous form of public service.

Nonetheless, the fact remains that when the Archive seeks to acquire films, it meets with a very poor record of success. I find that even in the industry itself the selective nature of the process of acquisition is not sufficiently recognised. Of feature films which are shown in this country—the Archive restricts its attempt to acquire solely to films which are shown here—approximately 20 per cent. are selected as suitable material for the Archive. That 20 per cent. is then sought In one form or another, and rarely indeed against payment, from the appropriate distributing or producing companies. The records show that over 10 years between 1957 and 1968 the rate at which we acquired that small proportion of films for which we applied has been disappointingly low.

There are three categories of films: those made in Great Britain, those made by United States companies outside Great Britain, and those coming from other countries. Predictably, the rate of acquisition varies with each source. Over the 10 years to which I have referred, of films made in Great Britain we applied for 237 and it took us 10 years to acquire 126—about half the films made in Great Britain. Of films made by United States companies outside Great Britain, we applied for 360 and over 10 years we acquired 110—about one in three.

It is when we turn—and this is a very important point that I want to stress—to the films which are made in France, Italy, Japan and other countries apart from the United States that we find that the rate of acquisition drops. Of 401 films applied for, over 10 years we acquired only 50—about one in eight.

I want to offer a word of explanation and perhaps exculpation of all distributors of films in this country. It is not that they are particularly difficult or opposed to the work of the Institute. But, first of all, the quality of film which is imported on the basis of foreign language films tends to be higher and, therefore, attracts greater interest on the part of the Archive than other films which are produced or distributed here on an English language basis. So we find that more foreign language films are sought by the Institute than any other.

Second, because only one or two prints are introduced into the country, it is very difficult indeed for the distributors of these foreign films to make available a copy, except against payment of the cost. It is for this reason that some of the most important art films of the recent decades do not find their way into the Archive. It is a matter of great regret surely that Jean-Luc Godard is not represented at all in the Archive, when he must be one of the most important innovators and one of the most brilliant directors of films anywhere in the world.

So we are left with a situation where, starting in 1957, about 1,000 films over 10 years were selected for the Archive and the Institute was able to acquire only 286 of them—about three out of 10. This means that of every 100 films shown in this country, only six find their way into the Archive.

There is a further point, and that is the quality of the film which is deposited. There is inevitably a tendency for even the most generous sections of the industry to donate to the Archive worn prints, prints of poor quality and not useful any longer for commercial showing. Of the last three years for which I have records, in 1966 and 1967 about one out of every three copies of films deposited—free of charge, I would emphasise—with the Archive were assessed as being fair or poor in quality. In 1968 there was some improvement; only about one in two was thought to be fair or poor.

The master material, which is so important from the point of view of copying and showing, is also an indication of difficulties which the Archive faces under its present system of acquisition. In 1966 only 24 copies of master material were deposited out of a total of about 109 films. In 1967 there were 60 copies out of a total of 200, and in 1968 115 copies out of 234 were master material copies.

I hope that this brief account of the difficulties which face the Archive will convince the House that the argument in favour of some system of statutory deposit is a very powerful one. However, I want to emphasise one or two important differences which must continue to exist between the statutory deposit of film material and the statutory deposit of books. Most important is the continuing commercial interest in films as a source of revenue for the producers and distributors. This continuing commercial interest, which we recognise and which the British Film Institute has always respected, is something which gives an entirely different gloss to the problems of deposit. Most of all, the industry wants to know, and we want to explain, why or for what purpose a film should be deposited if it is not needed to be shown and to achieve some kind of commercial return.

Joined to this problem, so far as film deposit is concerned, is the extraordinarily complex and vexatious problem of ownership in the copyright of film. I shall not attempt to embark upon any consideration of this point. I merely want to assure the House and the industry that my Bill is in no way concerned with altering the current practice of the Institute so far as its considerable and emphatic respect for copyright and commercial interest is concerned. There is no question whatever of the introduction of a statutory film deposit infringing the continuing commercial interest of the industry as a whole.

There are other problems in the statutory deposit of film which differentiate it from the statutory deposit of books. The most important subsidiary consideration is the difficulty of enjoying a film. There are difficulties in obtaining a book from the British Museum Library, but, when one has the book out of the library, all one has to do is read it. When one extracts a film from the National Film Archive, on the other hand, one is still left with the business of projecting it and studying it, a technical problem involving a certain amount of capital cost and the provision of adequate equipment.

I draw the attention of the House to the difference between the National Film Archive and other kinds of museum activity. It is easy and a little superficial to regard the National Film Archive as simply a film museum. It is nothing of the sort. The National Film Archives differs from museum activity in this important respect, that museum activity is, broadly, concerned with the acquisition of material from the past the worth of which has been established over a long period of time, whereas the aim of the Archive is to project itself into the future, seeking to acquire material which at a remoter time will then be recognised as valuable material for the sociologist, the historian, the student of film art and related topics. This is a much more difficult task.

All the same, there is an element of museum activity in the work of the Archive. I invite the House simply to consider whether this growing and most popular art form is fairly served with a budget of about £90,000 a year such as I have described, when the museum movement as a whole in this country enjoys expenditure of about £10½, million. It is always difficult to establish a value judgment, but the contrast in this context is startling. I hope that in course of time the budget which the National Film Archive will be able to deploy will give greater equity in relation to the work of other museums and greater benefit to the film-going public.

I turn now to the Bill itself. There are three major principles which need to be understood. First—again I emphasise this as a major point—the British Film Institute is to select the films which it wishes to archive. It is not to seek to archive every film shown. Indeed, it would be a sheer physical impossibility to do so. I doubt that any of us, even those most interested and intimately concerned with film as a whole, can fully comprehend the enormous amount of material which flows out, not just from studios making feature films but from the makers of industrial films and advertising films, not to mention the vast and almost cataclysmic avalanche of television material. The problems not merely of storage but of cataloguing and assessing the totality of all this production would defeat even the most generously subsidised organisation. Therefore, for purely practical as well as aesthetic reasons, there is no question of seeking the acquisition of every film shown. Heaven forbid that, for example, we should be asked to archive every instalment of the "Avengers" or any similar television production.

Second, although the basis of archiving will continue to be selective, the Bill as it now stands applies right across the board to all motion pictures receiving exhibition in this country; that is to say, it will include not just feature films but all other forms of film production, motion pictures produced for television and films from all sources when they achieve exhibition here.

The third important principle embodied in the Bill is novel: the cost of supplying the film or of copying it to make it archivable shall be borne by the British Film Institute. In this connection, I revert to the problems faced by importers of foreign films. This method of meeting costs will relieve the Institute of one of its most troublesome problems in the acquisition of foreign films by relieving the distributors of the near impossibility of making available, free of charge, copies of foreign films.

It is only fair at this point to quote from the Eighth Report of the Estimates Committee, Session 1967–68, on Grants for the Arts, It dealt with precisely this problem of the cost of acquiring film, saying in paragraph 118:

"The problem here is thus essentially one of availability of films rather than only of money. … Your Committee would not consider the introduction of a payment for the right to acquire a single Archive copy an appropriate solution to the problem. … Your Committee are concerned at this situation, but are compelled to point out that the only solution (short of compelling companies to deposit, which they could not recommend in present circumstances) would involve public funds at a rate admitted by the B.F.I. to be £40,000 for ten years and £15,000 per year thereafter."

That was a reference to the copying of films rather than acquisition. The Committee went on:

"Even then the gaps in the Archive arising out of non-availability of films would remain. At present your Committee could not recommend that allocation of part of the existing scarce resources to this task, though in improved economic conditions they would welcome reconsideration of the question".

I come now to another important matter covered by the Bill. Recognising the difficulties, which were repeatedly drawn to my attention in discussing the terms of the Bill before I tabled it, I came to the conclusion that the commencing date of its operation should be left to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science and that I should not seeks its immediate operation if it became law. It is for that reason that I have included subsection (2) in Clause 7, leaving the operative introduction of the Bill to the Secretary of State, to be effected at such time as economic circumstances permit.

Clause 1 sets forth the main purpose of the Bill. I believe that use of the phrase "exhibition or broadcast" in line 6 covers the acquisition of material no matter the form in which it is exhibited. I have introduced the concept of an audience of more than six persons in order to give the Institute the opportunity to acquire films which may be of great value socially or artistically but which do not achieve a public showing before a commercial audience. Such films might, for instance, be exhibited privately in this country, and it would be a pity if the Institute were unable to acquire them simply because the definition of public showing were drawn too broadly in the first place.

Also in Clause 1 there is provision for the Institute not only to acquire material but, where acquisition is difficult, where there may be only one or a very few scarce copies available, to have the right to copy the material at its own cost.

Clause 2 deals with the question of who shall bear the cost, which is often quite considerable. On average, it may cost about £250 or £300 to provide an archiving copy, and in the case of certain colour or Cinerama films the cost may soar to £1,500 or more.

Clause 3 would protect the owners of material against loss, putting on the Institute, by implication, the responsibility to provide proper care and protection for any material lent to it, or, if that care and protection proved inadequate, of replacing the material without cost to its owners.

Clause 4 covers the difficult problems of copyright, setting the matter out, I believe, more clearly than has been done in any legislative Measure before.

Clause 4(1) provides that archived material shall become the property of the British Film Institute. At present, under the terms of the agreement between the Institute and the depositors of material there is a right of withdrawal. This has never been used, but in certain circumstances it could be embarrassing for the Institute. Therefore, provision is made for any deposited material to become the property of the Institute.

Clause 4(2) imposes on the Archive the responsibility of preserving copies in suitable form. Thanks to the generosity of the present Government, this has been made possible by the provision of new archiving storage at Kingshill.

Paragraph (b) lays upon the National Film Archive the duty to make deposited material available for private study at the Archive's premises. This is to ensure that people who want access to film for genuine study purposes should not have to seek a commercial showing, and that any commercial showing should not be undertaken without the consent of copyright owners. The matter is further dealt with in subsection (3), which gives protection to the commercial owners of the copyright which is entirely proper.

Clause 5 is a substitute for any sanction. It was difficult to consider whether any sanction was appropriate or relevant to any non-compliance with the provisions of the Bill. Therefore, Clause 5, rather than introducing a sanction, merely provides that the Institute can go to the High Court for an injunction requiring compliance where such has not been forthcoming within the time limit set out in the earlier Clause.

Clauses 6 and 7 are straightforward, and I have dealt with them earlier in my remarks. There is a definition of what is meant by the phrase "motion picture" in order to ensure that nothing shall be lost which may be of interest in terms of a moving picture.

The film industry was consulted about and, I hope, kept informed of my aims in this Bill. I am happy to report that the industry's attitude, although not uncritical, has been one of general support for the principle of statutory deposit. It is one of the most satisfactory developments in recent years—and in part is the result of the tabling of this Bill—that the industry as a whole has come to appreciate, more fully than perhaps previously, the value of the Archive to the work of the Institute to promote the prosperity of the film industry and film activities in all their manifestations in this country.

I appreciate the concern which is felt in certain sections about the consequences, not so much in Britain but overseas, if this Bill is successful in becoming Statute law. The fears which have been expressed to me take the form that if statutory deposit of film becomes universal the cost to the film makers will be vast and, in some respects, prohibitive.

I have sympathy with this point of view, but there is no suggestion that statutory film deposit in other countries is waiting to see what Britain will do. Indeed, we are a little behind certain other countries in introducing some form of statutory film deposit. Film has now established itself on television and elsewhere as an important document, and is bound to lead those overseas to give early consideration to this matter. Moreover, the introduction in my Bill of the principle of depositing copies is one which I hope the industry as a whole will persuade other countries to follow in order to protect the interests of the film industry both in this country and overseas.

It has been suggested to me that the Bill should confine itself to British films only. Clearly, this would be a matter for consideration at Committee stage, and it would not be proper for me now to enter into any discussion of that matter. By restricting the Bill to British films little would be gained to the Archive, as will be seen from the figures I have given. The whole quality of our collection would be gravely damaged in that we should not have a comprehensive collection of the film art. It would be rather like expecting the National Gallery to house pictures by British artists only, excluding Rubens and da Vinci and all the other artists. What is more important is the fear that if the Bill were to confine itself to British films it would be a great disincentive to foreign film makers and distributors to continue the current scheme. Although I am open-minded about the matter, I am reluctant to give any firm commitment about how the Bill might proceed in Committee.

In regard to the social importance of the British Film Institute in general and the National Film Archive in particular, there can be little doubt, even if that importance is not yet paralleled by fully alert appreciation on the part of the film-going public, about the way in which the Institute is assisting the development of film appreciation.

There is no doubt about the growth of interest in film as an art form. More important is the growth of appreciation of its archive importance to the future historian. The increasing numbers of people who today make recordings of their families on moving pictures know how superior are such records to the taking of still photographs and the tape-recording of their children's voices. In the same way the growth and development of our social scene has produced a wonderful record of moving pictures.

The Newsom Report, in paragraph 474, had this to say about film appreciation

"Here we should wish to add a strong claim for the study of film and television in their own right, as powerful forces in our culture and significant sources of language and ideas. Although the study of these media has for some time been accepted in a small number of schools as an important part of the curriculum, in the majority of schools they are used only as visual aids for the presentation of material connected with other subjects."

In such endeavours the work of the Institute and Archive is essential.

I should like to quote from a recent book "Signs and Meaning in the Cinema" by Peter Wollen. He says:

"It is important that there should be statutory deposit. Then, at least, few people could be confident of seeing the films which they want and need for their work. Unless this happens it is very difficult to see how there can possibly be any significant advance in the study of the cinema. The brutal absence of films will make a mockery of all the fine words about understanding our visual environment."

I find that a compelling plea.

My Bill is a simple and useful measure which involves no immediate cost falling up the Treasury. It does not require a Money Resolution. If the Bill is given a Second Reading and goes to Committee stage, it will constitute a great encouragement to the dedicated people who work in the British Film Institute, as well as lead the industry itself to understand and to assist in the work of the Institute in ways which have not yet been fully explored and exploited. The Eighth Report of the Estimates Committee referred to the need for more positive support on the part of the industry. I believe the passage of my Bill would give it great encouragement. For those reasons, I ask the House to give it a Second Reading.

The hon. Member for Wandsworth, Central (Dr. David Kerr) began what hon. Members will agree was a helpful and agreeable speech by what I thought was a somewhat ominous reference to the right hon. Lady the Minister of State, indicating that there might be some disagreement with the Bill from her Department. I hope that that will not be the case, because the whole House will regard the efforts which the hon. Gentleman is making as praiseworthy, in that the Archive should be given more support than it has been able to obtain under the present voluntary arrangements and that the art of the cinema should receive further encouragement.

At the outset I wish to enter a plea. It is that we should remember that although one often talks of the film in art terms, film-making—film production, distribution and exhibition—is a highly commercial activity. I cannot think of another activity in which art and commerce are so inextricably mixed. It is not like making an article to be sold over the counter. Nor is it right to take the example, which the hon. Gentleman took, of publishing a book. Filmmaking is a highly specialised type of business, and although I welcome the efforts which the hon. Gentleman is making—I would certainly not wish to oppose the Bill at this stage—this aspect must be borne in mind in any future consideration of the Measure.

The hon. Gentleman paid tribute, which I echo, to the work of the British Film Institute and the National Film Archive. Despite some recent increases in funds which I welcome, it is not an exaggeration to say that the work which these organisations have done for a number of years has been conducted on a shoestring. Their work merits praise. By passing either this Measure or an equivalent one later Parliament can mark its support of, and encouragement for, the work of the Institute and Archive.

When the hon. Gentleman obtained the leave of the House on 4th February to introduce the Bill—he was extremely fortunate in not only obtaining leave, but in securing a day for its Second Reading when many other Bills were in the queue—he said, and he repeated this today, that the deposit of films with the Archive had been made on a voluntary basis in a somewhat sporadic way over the years and that the record of the whole film industry was not particularly good in this respect, although some of the companies and firms had had a good record. He said that there was a rather poor record of success in obtaining the necessary Archival copies.

There is a reason for this and the House would not wish to blame the whole film industry for not being sufficiently forthcoming in this respect. There is an important matter to be borne in mind, for we are dealing not with the situation as it will be when and if the Bill is passed, but with the present situation.

The hon. Gentleman referred to the cost involved in making a copy of a film which is then deposited with the Archive. This cost is very substantial indeed. The analogy with a book and its deposit in the British Museum disappears. A copy of a book can be printed for a £ or two or even a few shillings, which means that the manufacturer or publisher does not lose very much by giving away a copy, to the British Museum. The cost of reproducing a film, and particularly a colour film, is great. This must be borne in mind when speaking of the attitude of the film industry as a whole, although the hon. Gentleman generously pointed out that a number of companies have had a good record in this respect.

A point which the hon. Gentleman did not make, but which must be seriously considered, is the fact that when copies of films are deposited with the Archive, it is vitally important that they are kept secure. I am not casting the slightest aspersion on those who serve the Archive, but the industry is extremely security-conscious in this matter because copies of films are valuable. Intrinsically, they are worth nothing more than the celluloid on which they are printed, but the rights which are owned in them are valuable and may be able to be commercially exploited for many years to come.

The industry's position in this matter should be understood. It is anxious that there should be no risk of any film which still has a commercial exploitation value being leaked on to the market and being shown to the public in competition with a showing which may be taking place in a commercial cinema, for which the exhibitor has paid a substantial rental. This is one factor that has been in the mind of some film distributors and producers in the past when they have perhaps not been as generous as the hon. Gentleman would have liked them to have been in depositing films with the Archive.

Many of the points about the Bill which I might make at this stage are more in the nature of Committee points and I will, therefore, concentrate on matters of substance. If the Bill goes further, I hope that we will have the support of the Government draftsmen to put some of its errors right. For example, I am not happy with the reference in Clause 1 to persons, organisations and companies having an obligation to deposit films with the Archive. From the text of the Bill, it will be seen that the responsibility is placed on

"Any person, organisation or company responsible in Great Britain for making available for exhibition or broadcast any motion picture …"

I do not know whether the obligation should be as wide as that. I suppose that it would be possible to construe those words as meaning that any exhibitor of a film, an ordinary cinema proprietor, is a person responsible for the exhibition of a motion picture and would be liable to deposit a copy of the film in the Archive. I am sure that that is not what the hon. Gentleman has in mind and I trust that we can consider those words further in Committee.

From the contacts that I have had with the industry, and from what I gather, the feeling is that it should basically be on the distributors that this obligation is placed, although one would not want to rule out some formula to enable requests to be made, provided the cost is repaid, to producers direct.

I have had constantly to bear in mind the involvement of television in this matter. It has been necessary to encompass television in this formula. I have taken careful note of the hon. Gentleman's remarks and certainly we can go into the matter further.

I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman and I had appreciated that the Bill extended to television.

I have been astonished to find that, to the best of my knowledge, the television industry—the B.B.C. and the independent television companies—has not been as active and alert in noticing what the Bill seeks to do as have been the film producers and the Cinematograph Renters Society, which looks after the interests of distributors.

I understood the hon. Gentleman to say that he had been urged to confine the activities and operations of the Bill to films made in this country. Although he said that he had an open mind on this subject, I got the impression that he leaned very much against the idea of confirming the Bill to British films. He would like to see the Archive acquire a substantial number of foreign films. I hope that he will reconsider that point. The film industry certainly has the impression from discussions with him that he intends to confine the Bill's operation to British films. More than that, there is a strong argument for so confining it.

We are concerned with the British National Film Archive. Although it may be very nice to have an Archive which contains a number of foreign-made films, we must bear in mind that American films, which constitute the bulk of the world's film industry output, are foreign. It might be nice to have a large number of American films and also a large number of Continental, Japanese and other foreign films, but the important thing to do is to provide that British films, within the definition contained in the Films Act, 1960—about which we can talk more in Committee—should be the yardstick in terms of deposit. As I read it this would include a number of foreign and American films, as well as films which have been made exclusively in Britain, with British artists, technicians and money. I hope that the hon. Member will consider that point.

There is a definition in Section 17 of the 1960 Act which I should like to see written into the Bill. We need not get too technical at this point, but I hope that the hon. Member will give the question favourable consideration, because in Committee some of us will press for something of this kind to be done. It would largely meet what the Archive wants. It does not want a lot of foreign films purely because they are foreign. It does not want films which will not have some lasting merit or value to the student. A definition of this kind might give the hon. Member what both he and the Archive want.

I now turn to the definition of a "motion picture" in Clause 6. I am not very happy about that expression. I know that those words are used frequently in the United States in connection with films, but to my knowledge this is the only time when such an expression has been used in British legislation. We refer normally to cinematograph films. I do not believe that the expression "motion picture" has ever been used before. I understand why the hon. Member has used it. In his intervention just now he explained that he wants to cover television films and television materials as well as ordinary films. I ask him to look at the definition contained in Section 38(4) of the 1960 Act. I shall not weary the House by reading it out but, in my opinion, it is wide enough to cover what he wants to cover.

Next, I want to deal with the question of the obligations placed upon distributors and producers to deposit a copy of a film, or to lend such a copy if so required. No obligation is placed upon the British Film Institute or upon the Archive to do some things which the industry regards as very important. The first is to protect such copies as are deposited against theft or damage. It goes more or less without saying that the people in charge of the Archive will regard themselves as trustees not only for the Archive but for the British film industry as a whole, in respect of copies in their charge, but if we are to bring in powers enabling the Institute to apply to the High Court for a mandatory injunction—that is the chosen form of sanction—we should consider the possibility of making the Institute responsible for protecting films in its charge against theft or damage.

Another point requires consideration in connection with the possibility of films being shown in competition with commercial showings. We shall ask that the Bill shall place a responsibility upon the Institute to refrain from showing films except for study on the premises of the Institute.

I am not very clear about the powers contained in Clause 4(3), which refers to the protection of such deposited copies

"so long as copyright shall subsist therein"

I believe that the protection given against the use, in a commercial or quasi-commercial way, of deposited copies should be permanent, and not limited purely to the period during which copyright subsists.

That leads me to the whole question of copyright. The House knows the situation, in broad terms. The hon. Member was right in saying that it is complicated and vexatious. The exhibitor of a film has no copyright in what he shows. The distributor has a copyright, which he obtains from the producer for a limited period—between seven and 15 years. Thereafter the copyright reverts to the producer, who can again, if he so wishes, sell it or release it for a certain period.

The producer has a copyright—subject to any lease he may have granted of his rights—for a period of 50 years. It is not impossible that within a few years from now films made 50 years ago, which have therefore become copyright-expired, may obtain a commercial audience and become extremely popular. Hon. Members will know of the celebrated film "Gone With The Wind". This has just been reissued in a format very different from the original production. Nevertheless, the film was made many years ago. Since we are legislating not just for this moment but for many years to come I cannot see why, if a copy of "Gone With The Wind" had been deposited with the National Film Archive—for all I know it was—when the 50 years' period of copyright has expired the Institute should not be given the opportunity—whether it wishes to take it is another matter—of putting the film out on the commercial market. As the Bill is drafted I apprehend that it could. I think that we should consider the matter in Committee.

Finally, I must draw the attention of hon. Members to the cost involved in this operation. I am still unclear exactly what the hon. Member intends to do about cost. It is clear that a substantial amount of money will be involved in making and providing these copies. It is also clear that under the Bill commercial organisations are entitled to look to the Institute for reimbursement. The formula used in the drafting needs to be examined—that is by the way—but I am not clear whether or not the hon. Member can get his Bill on to the Statute Book simply by relying upon the Institute's being able to pay for the copies it gets. As I understand the situation—perhaps the Minister can help us here—the Institute is financed partly by private subscription and partly by grants from the Arts Council. I believe that the Arts Council itself is financed partly by a grant from Government sources.

Entirely.

I am much obliged; my researches had not gone far enough.

If that is the case, the technical rules of the House must require a Money Resolution. If there is an indirect liability upon the Exchequer, we cannot proceed much further with the Bill unless there is such a Resolution. In that case—and here I address a plea to the right hon. Lady—I hope that we shall be given some indication this afternoon of what the Government intend to do. It would be unkind to the hon. Member and disappointing to the many people outside who have been watching the progress of the Bill with some interest if we did not have a complete assurance that copies provided for the archive would be fully paid for.

What I want to avoid is the sort of dreadfully muddled situation in which the Bill comes out of Committee with no clarity as to who shall pay for the copies, with the outcome that the industry is somehow made to provide them free. That would be resented and it would be strongly resisted by the industry, and I am sure that the hon. Member himself would not like to see that situation.

Broadly, I support the Bill. I hope that it will have a fair wind from the Government and other quarters and that it will eventually appear on the Statute Book.

I apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Wandsworth, Central (Dr. David Kerr) and to the House for having missed his opening remarks. Happily I missed only his introductory remarks, but I have gathered from what the hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Hay) has just said that I may have missed something rather important in those introductory remarks because, unless the hon. Member was mistaken, my hon. Friend expressed some anxiety about the fate of his Bill. I hope that my right hon. Friend will shortly put his fears at rest.

I appreciate the important and interesting points which the hon. Member for Henley has raised about the necessity for some additional financial help from the State, either directly or indirectly, from the Arts Council. I agree with him that it is immaterial whether the money comes directly or indirectly if the source is the State. However, I should have thought that there was no immediate necessity for finance, although there may be at some future stage.

Whether a Money Resolution is necessary depends on how far into the future the possibility of financing may arise. This is a highly technical matter, and I hope that it will not be found necessary to cast doubt upon the Bill because of it. It should be possible to insert a Clause in Committee making it clear that liability will not fall on the Treasury until a certain time. The current practice of the industry is very generous. What collections there are have been made largely without much financial expenditure, and although it is true that the generosity has not been universal, some people have been more generous than others, a beginning has been made without any direct cost to the community.

I therefore hope that it would be no reason to hold up the Bill going into Committee, though whether a Money Resolution will have to be provided to deal with the possibility of future cost is a matter about which my right hon. Friend will no doubt enlighten us in due course. I hope that it will not be regarded as a reason for refusing the Bill a Second Reading. It is something with which we can deal later.

I should like to take this opportunity of expressing to my right hon. Friend the appreciation which we all feel for the fact that the National Film Theatre, with which my hon. Friend is so worthily associated, has been enabled under her beneficient jurisdiction to make a contribution to the British film industry which is significant, necessary, important and growing. It is a contribution no longer confined to the National Film Theatre on the South Bank. It is rightly and properly spreading throughout the country. I therefore hope that she will feel able to give her blessing to this necessary extension of its functions.

The fears which the industry has expressed about the Bill are perfectly understandable. Its members will be required to produce the prints and the questions which have been raised have been quite legitimate. I do not believe that the fears are justified, but I agree with the hon. Member for Henley that we shall have to consider some matters in Committee.

I was glad to hear that my hon. Friend was not, at this stage at any rate, conceding that the Bill should be confined to films made in this country. That would be unfortunate. It is not a concession which should be made without detailed examination in Committee. I would require much more convincing arguments than any I have heard so far to satisfy me that the Bill should be confined to films made in this country. What the British Film Institute would wish to collect would be representative copies of films from all over the world, distinguished films, films which it had been found necessary or desirable to exhibit in this country. The film industry has always been international. To confine an archive to films made in this country would be most limiting, and I hope that it will not be found necessary.

Some of the fears which have been expressed could be met in Committee, but I would need further evidence before thinking that some of the others were justified. All that is asked is that films exhibited here and chosen and selected should go into the archive. The possibility of retaliation by other countries has been a little exaggerated. As my hon. Friend said, if another country intends to create an archive, it will go ahead and do so. About 40 countries are now embarked on this process. Distributors here need not worry too much about this, because the responsibility will clearly devolve upon the exhibitors in the countries concerned. This is not something which need worry production companies in this country too basis.

The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that some British distributors do a substantial export trade. If a situation arose in which it was a requirement of the granting of the right for a film for commercial exhibition in a foreign country that a copy be deposited free of charge with a national film archive in that country, and if that were done on a wide scale, a heavy burden could be placed on British distributors. This is the basis of the anxiety which has been expressed on this point and the hon. Member must address himself to that.

I understand the anxiety. The point I am making is that I do not think that this Bill will have the effect which is feared. I understand the fear, but it seems that what we do in relation to our country will not have the same direct effect elsewhere as producers fear. Their fear is understandable, but I do not think it is justified. It is a matter we can examine further in Committee.

All I am saying is that my hon. Friend is right not to concede the point now. Let us examine it more closely in Committee, and if convincing arguments are put forward let us look at them. As of now, I have not seen any argument which convinces me. I warmly welcome my hon. Friend's success in getting a Second Reading; he is to be congratulated upon it and I do so very sincerely. I very much hope that his enterprise in doing something which has long needed to be done will not be frustrated, but that we shall be able to go forward and examine the Bill fully in Committee.

I still have a part-time connection with the world of actors. It might be thought that the actors have something to fear from this. On the contrary, their view is that here is something that they, and all people concerned with film-making, feel gives the industry, and the art, because it is both, an added status. I hope that the Government will be able to give it their blessing.

I support and welcome the Bill. Let me list three things that I want to speak on and about which I have some query. I believe that the hon. Member for Wandsworth, Central (Dr. David Kerr) has underestimated some of the difficulties. The first is the width of the description of the film which he wishes to cover, the second is the question of cost and the third is the vexed question, which has been raised several times, of the foreign film.

Dealing first with the width of description, it seems that the Bill provides for some very wide categories of film. Any film which is available for "exhibition or broadcast", says the Bill, and the hon. Member was at pains to say that he would include in that description films made, presumably privately, for a very limited private showing. He was not clear it seemed, exactly how the process of selection would have been made in respect of those films. I began by thinking that he was seeking to select only those films which would be particularly regarded by the Institute as good films, as works of art. He then went on to speak about the value of film as a record of events.

Once we go to this second stage we are moving into a quite different realm of film. For example, I understand that under Clause 6 films which are temporary are not included. But take the use of film to record events from outer space, or the death of Kennedy. Film of this kind is projected across the Atlantic on to the B.B.C. screens, and I have no doubt is contained in the B.B.C. archives. Once we move into the realms of this sort of film we are moving into an enormous area.

That leads me directly to the question of cost. The hon. Member says that his estimate was £90,000.

The figure of £90,000 is what the archive now spends on all its activities. The estimated cost of implementing the terms of my Bill is about £150,000 a year, additional to the £90,000.

That makes it much clearer. I see that last year's figure of £22,000 is put down for acquisition and carriage of films. Thus at present only a very small proportion of the £90,000 is used for the acquisition of films. I suppose that in buying films the hon. Member is thinking of about £170,000 in the course of a year. That is a very substantial sum, and it depends on his assumption that the British Film Institute will continue a policy similar to that which it is now pursuing in its selection of films.

That does not cover the sort of film that we are now discussing, the small private film and the broadcast, which is not now collected by the British Film Institute. I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman is seriously under-estimating the cost involved. The archive side of the British Film Institute work is perhaps 5 per cent. of its total expenditure, and is an area of its work which can be expanded. It has my support in a higher proportion of its expenditure. This underlies the point made about the need for some clear indication during the course of the debate about the financial backing which this Measure will receive.

The other point dealt with the question of foreign films. I do not think that the hon. Member has clearly argued his case. We had an analogy with the National Gallery collection of pictures, and we have had various analogies with the British Museum. The position is not the same. A person is obliged to deposit a book if the book is published and printed in this country. There is no obligation for a book produced at, say, Harvard and sold in this country to be deposited at the British Museum. Likewise it is not even true that if a person wishes to paint in this country he has to deposit his work with the Gallery. Clearly he does not. The acquisition of works of art from abroad is made through an acquisition fund, and the selection is made by the Gallery. It is quite different from the situation we are now discussing. I understand the Bill requires someone bringing the film made abroad to be exhibited in this country to deposit that film and then the Institute will pay for the cost of it. That is quite a different situation. I should be willing for the Institute to have an acquisition fund greater than it now has, which would enable it to say: "You are introducing a jolly good film. Can we please buy it?" That is quite different from placing a statutory obligation to deposit before exhibition. It will now be a statutory condition before a film can be shown.

The statutory requirement would be on the basis of selection and would occur after exhibition. The statutory deposition would not apply to films not yet exhibited or to all imported films. It would apply only to those selected by the Institute for deposition.

I am grateful for the correction. I should not now be talking about the conditions before exhibition. It is still true that an obligation will be laid upon an exhibitor to provide such a copy.

The worry in the industry that at least 42 other countries are now setting up archives and that this will multiply the problem is a reasonable one. If we take this step we are introducing into the film world something for which there is no analogy in any other section of our arts. We are not seeking to extend something which has so far been deprived. I have great doubts about this but, with those two substantial qualifications about the width of the description of film and the question of the inclusion of foreign films I am happy to give a welcome to the Bill.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wandsworth, Central (Dr. David Kerr) has put the House very much in his debt by introducing this extremely valuable discussion. He has brought to us a wide array of facts and a great deal of experience. I, too, would like to pay tribute to the work of the British Film Institute. My hon. Friend has made an outstanding contribution to that work.

There is no doubt that the voluntary system is not adequate. It is true that some films that we would want to acquire are given, and we appreciate the generosity. It is also true that others, which we should acquire, have not been given. Thirdly, the point was properly made that some of the films are in a very poor condition.

The Government are entirely in favour of the principle of the Bill. We could take a different point of view, but we are entirely in favour of the principle. Film today is extremely important but in the future it will become increasingly important. In carrying out my job during the last few years, I have been impressed by the fact that it is possible for only a very limited public to appreciate the very best in opera, ballet and symphony concerts. It is immensely expensive when we seek to carry those great companies throughout the country. There is also a famine of suitable buildings. These have still to be erected.

The wonderful thing about film is that it can be taken to the remotest part and the smallest village. Therefore, as the Government are concerned to sustain the best of the arts but, at the same time, to make the best more generally available, it should be clear why we give a very high priority to films.

We have increased substantially the grant to the British Film Institute. As has been said this morning, we also made it possible to develop the Archive. Last year, new storage vaults for the Archive cost the Government £64,000. The Archive earns revenue of about £20,000 a year, but it must have direct Government support running at about £80,000 a year. Of course, we would like the money spent in this direction to be still further expanded.

Several hon. Members have raised the question of whether a Money Resolution would be necessary. I am talking without consulting my officials, but it seems to me, on the face of it—and I speak on this point subject to correction if need be—that if the grant received by the British Film Institute was sufficiently increased and in allocating its money for the various projects it decided to give another £100,000 to £150,000 a year, that would cover the financial provision. We need to think in terms of at least £100,000, although that is probably an underestimate, and a realistic figure would be much nearer an additional £150,000 a year.

Governments must always think in terms of priorities. As I say, we give a very high priority to the world of films.

The right hon. Lady is saying that £150,000 would have to be given to the British Film Institute for the Bill to become effective. If a lesser sum were available, would it not be up to the Institute to restrict its choice of films? If only £10,000 or £20,000 a year could be given, at least a start could be made. Why go the whole hog? If it cannot all be done, why not do part of it?

Because the British Film Institute is spending money on buying films. Some are received as gifts and some are bought. In our system of delegated responsibility, when we give a block grant to the Arts Council, the museums and galleries or the British Film Institute, those bodies must decide how best to spend the money.

I have been delighted that we now have 26 branches of the National Film Theatre in various parts of the country. It is central to Government policy and to what, I think, the entire House would want that we should sustain our great institutions in the capital city but, at the same time, bring diverse opportunities in entertainment, art and education to many of our constituents in parts of the country which we regard as being at present underprivileged.

My first point, therefore, is that the Government recognise the desirability of carrying out the broad intentions of the Bill and that we should have our Archive in such a condition that we are able, from the student's point of view, for enjoyment and for educational purposes, to preserve the films which we want to preserve. They might be in the ratio of one in five or even less. It is not a case of covering the lot. There is no difference of view between us about this.

When we come, however, to the problem of who should pay, we are talking more and more both to the commercial film world and to the British Film Institute, which is responsible for developing films in art form, and we are clarifying our relations. It is important to have clear demarcation lines of the duties and responsibilities of one group and another. The relations between them are good, co-operative and complementary. There is, therefore, a case for thinking in terms of a Bill in which the cost of the Archive would be shared between the film industry, the television industry, and the Government.

I am not, therefore, saying today that the Government would like to see the introduction of a Bill for which they would take complete financial responsibility. I hope, however, that I have said enough to indicate that in a more favourable economic climate this is one Measure that we would like to see on the Statute Book.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wandsworth, Central suggests in his Bill that it be left to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science to decide the date when the Bill should begin to operate. My hon. Friend will, I think, concede that that is not a desirable way of introducing new legislation. If that method applied in this case, it could apply in other cases and we could get ourselves into a complicated situation if the House gave a Second Reading to a Bill in a situation in which the Government said that they could not in present economic circumstances find the money to implement the Bill.

It is surely much better to be clear whether the concept is one which is accepted or rejected by the Government. This one is clearly accepted in principle. I would like my hon. Friend to consider that perhaps at the end of the day, having heard what I have said, having heard the point of view of hon. Members, on all sides, and having listened to what was said by the hon. Member for Walthamstow, West (Mr. Silvester) and the hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Hay), who both expressed good will, but had certain doubts and misgivings on the part of the commercial film industry, he might agree with me when I say that there are many various interests which have been brought together and I am optimistic enough to think that we can all be brought together.

I do not see why we should not—and I hope that it will not be in the too remote future—get this Measure carried through. I must not, however, convey to the House anything more than I have done, which is the good will of the Government and acceptance of the Bill in principle. We would like to consult the British Film Institute, the commercial industry and everyone concerned about how best it should be carried out. That is the gist of the matter.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wandsworth, Central talked about £10½ million for the museums and asked whether this was fair to the Archive. The position is not really like that. What has happened is that over the whole field—museums and galleries, the Arts Council and the British Film Institute—there has been more than twice the allocation of funds that there was before. We would all like to see more spent in this way.

The House can be absolutely certain that the film is a matter of very great concern to myself and to the Government. We see its possibilities, both in education and in the development of film as art and entertainment. Those should not be hostile terms. Good art can be good entertainment. Some bad entertainment can be both bad as entertainment and bad as art.

We are living in a social climate with rising standards of education and expectation. Films like "If …" and "Oh! What a Lovely War" would not have got general distribution at one time, but now distributors are finding new audiences and standards. Anybody who has had the privilege, as I have, of seeing the first of the series of Sir Kenneth Clark's "Civilisation" will appreciate the completely different experience of seeing a spectacle in colour on a large screen compared with seeing a small picture in black and white on a small television screen.

I want every encouragement to be given to television and the cinema. An immense number of gifted men and women exist in Britain and they are helping to raise the general standard of British films.

Having heard this explanation of the position, having heard the comments of hon. Members on both sides, knowing the concern which we feel—we believe that we could get over the copyright complications and financial problems in due course, although we cannot say, in the present financial climate, when the Government would be able to take financial responsibility for implementing a desirable Measure like this—and having congratulated my hon. Friend for the serious thought and hard work he has put into the Bill, I trust that he will not press the matter to a Division. I assure him that his effort is greatly appreciated by the whole House.

Like the Minister, I congratulate the hon. Member for Wansdworth, Central (Dr. David Kerr) on his excellent Bill. I, too, support it in principle, although I agree that there are numerous points of detail which need consideration. They were eloquently referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Hay) and my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, West (Mr. Silvester).

I was sorry to hear the Minister say that the Government could not support its Second Reading. That did not surprise me, in view of the cash that would be required. However, considering the way in which the Bill is worded, it is surprising that the right hon. Lady has adopted an attitude of rejection. After all, Clause 7 clearly says:

"This Act shall come into force on a date to be determined by the Secretary of State for Education and Science."

With that provision, it is not fair for the right hon. Lady to say, "We cannot afford the Bill now." Nobody is asking the Government to afford it now. The timing of its enforcement is at the discretion of the Government. The hon. Member for Wandsworth, Central, is merely asking the House to get the principle right, and then the Government can implement the Bill at any time, when funds are available.

The Minister accepts the principle of the Measure, welcomes it and thinks that the Bill is an excellent idea. The only thing holding her back is the necessary cash to implement it. Why not implement the principle and enforce the Bill later? She is not being asked to implement it now or this year. Nobody is asking for vast increases in public expenditure. There are many aspects of the Bill which require substantial amendment, but if the right hon. Lady accepted the principle we could go into those matters in Committee. If the Bill is dropped now it may be ages before another hon. Member has the good fortune, through the Ballot, of introducing a similar Measure.

That is not necessarily so. I made it clear that the Government would like to see a Bill of this kind on the Statute Book. I went on to say that we did not regard this as the financial climate in which to implement it. To do what the hon. Gentleman is suggesting might mislead the House and the public.

The House and the public realise that there is no intention of spending cash on the Bill now. Nobody would be misled. Innumerable Bills become law leaving the appointed day to be chosen by the Government. Frequently Measures contain the provision:

"This Act shall come into force on a date to be determined by the Secretary of State …"

The case for compulsorily depositing films with the Archive is extremely strong. Although there are differences between depositing films by this means and books with the British Museum, the cases are to a large extent analogous. Future generations will regard it as a tragedy that what to them were priceless films were not kept. In a century from now it will be thought inexplicable that some of our best films were not preserved. Even today films made in the 'thirties and more recently have been lost for ever. This is a tragedy for posterity.

Paragraph 118 of the Estimates Committee's recent report said:

"… for certain periods it is not possible to find copies of films for preservation as commercial companies used not to be interested in keeping any copies of films once their profit-making life had expired."

It went one:

"Even today, it seems that some commercial companies have a prejudice against giving films to the Archive, lest this should become compulsory here or elsewhere".

It is a remarkable tribute to the film industry and all concerned that there has been no objection to the principle of the Bill, although there are, of course, points of detail outstanding.

The important question of whether we should include foreign films in addition to British-made ones is important and could be thrashed out in Committee. My hon. Friends have made telling arguments about the differences between depositing films and books. The film industry is naturally concerned about the possibility of setting a precedent which might result in film makers having to deposit copies of film in every country in which they are shown. It would be unreasonable to expect film companies to supply free copies to 30 or more different countries. Perhaps this is a good argument for setting up an international body to ensure that films of merit, wherever they are made, are preserved.

The B.F.I. does excellent work and I pay tribute to it. The Estimates Committee pointed out that it had received evidence urging more money to be given to the Institute when funds are available.

There are enormous problems for resolution, of course. There are enormous problems, for instance, about television films. I am not quite clear about Clause 6 and why the hon. Member excludes pictures which are

"recorded ephemerally for the purposes of broadcasting".

I am not quite sure what that means. It might cut out some television copies might it not?

This is a definition in the Television Act, I think. It refers specifically to material which is recorded in such a way that it does not persist on record. It is used ephemerally—for television purposes. It does not have to be scrapped, but it simply fades.

Yes, I see. I understand the point. I am glad, however, the hon. Member has included television film within the scope of the Bill.

The right hon. Lady said at one stage in her speech that the proposal in the Bill is interesting and that perhaps one day there might be a scheme which did not put the whole burden on the Government, a scheme in which, perhaps, the Government and the television industry and the film industry would join. I think that is an excellent idea. It is certainly one which should be examined. Who knows?—perhaps we would get the support of the film industry and the television industry for a scheme of this kind. I do not think that such a scheme is outside the scope of the Bill. The Long Title says that it is a Bill to

"Require the deposit of certain copies of moving pictures in the National Film Archive of the British Film Institute."

Any such scheme with the support of the television industry and the film industry and the Government is perfectly within the scope of the Bill.

My experience in this House, and I think that hon. Members who have been here some time will know what I say about this is right, is that when a Government take such an attitude as that which the right hon. Lady has taken this afternoon the only thing to do is to push

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

The genesis of the Bill is interesting and may help to explain to the House why I have sought a Second Reading for it. Some months ago the British Broadcasting Corporation announced that it would discontinue the radio serial programme "The Dales" at the end of this coming week. At the time I was somewhat irritated by this decision. I considered that a programme with a listening audience of 3,700,000 people in the daytime, and not, let it be noted, at a peak listening hour, must be of some special social value. I protested publicly at the decision and stated that I would raise the matter at Question Time in this House.

The results of this statement were two-fold and unexpected. First, I received a vast number of letters from all over the country supporting my protest, and, although I had anticipated, or at least hoped for, support, I had not dreamt that it would be as widespread, or that "The Dales" gave so much comfort to the sick and elderly, or that there were so many hundreds, if not thousands, of people in homes and hospitals for whom Mrs. Dale and her family have become a major part of daily life.

The second consequence was in a different category altogether and resulted in this Bill. The Bill is not intended as a last ditch stand to save "The Dales", although, quite understandably, some members of the Press have interpreted it in this way because of the inevitable link between my protest and the presentation of the Bill. The second consequence is curious. In spite of every possible assistance from the learned Clerks at the Table, I could not devise any means of tabling a Question on the subject of Mrs. Dale and her diary to the Postmaster-General. This is because the Postmaster-General has no power to enable him to require or even to request the B.B.C. to retain a programme, even if it has a very large listening audience. He cannot request the B.B.C. even to retain a programme which this House might consider to be in the public interest. "The Dales", of course, does not fall into such a category, but it does not seem to me to be beyond the boundary of reason that such programmes might exist in the future.

My researches revealed that not only is the Postmaster-General unable to exercise any practical control over B.B.C. programmes, but that it follows that there are very few ways open to hon. Members to question the Postmaster-General on B.B.C. programme content. In certain circumstances the Postmaster-General may require the B.B.C. to discontinue the programme, but these circumstances are extremely limited.

I am not seeking through my Bill to enable the Postmaster-General to become an unofficial B.B.C. programme censor, nor am I seeking powers for Parliament to exercise independent control through the Postmaster-General over the B.B.C. I believe that this can be done properly only by the Governors of the Corporation, although some hon. Members may consider that the powers of the Governors are too narrow.

All I am seeking to do is to give the Postmaster-General powers, in agreement with the Governors of the B.B.C.—and I emphasise that the Bill contains the words "in agreement with the Governors"—to require the Corporation to retain certain programmes if, in his view, those programmes are in the national interest, are of an essentially educational character or give special comfort to persons who are sick, elderly or housebound and, therefore, dependent upon the radio in a unique manner.

It may be argued against the Bill that the powers are almost meaningless, since the agreement of the Governors would be required before the Postmaster-General could act, and there is nothing to prevent the Governors from taking such action themselves; but I do not disguise that my main purpose is to provide legislation which would have only one major practical effect: namely, to enable hon. Members of this House to raise with the Postmaster-General the content of programmes in the way which is at present denied to them.

It may also be argued against the Bill that if the Postmaster-General should require the B.B.C. to continue programmes which, in the opinion of the programme directors of the Corporation, had outlived their usefulness or could not be continued for technical reasons—for example, the non-availability of suitable scriptwriters—programmes would rapidly deteriorate. In practice, this argument could not apply since the controlling words in the Bill are

"in agreement with the Governors".

It is, therefore, unthinkable that the Postmaster-General and the Governors would be so insensitive or irresponsible as jointly to insist on programmes being retained which the programme directors could show should be abandoned for technical reasons.

My main argument in support of the Bill can be stated simply. The British Broadcasting Corporation has a total monopoly in the matter of sound radio in this country. In television it also has certain built-in advantages over the independent companies. However, it is sound radio with which I am chiefly concerned today.

This monopoly is capable of serious abuse. The B.B.C. has carried out its duties to the public with a sense of its great responsibilities. By and large, it has provided programmes of an astonishingly high standard. They are perhaps higher than those of any country in the world. If I dislike, as I do, what I consider to be a muddled use of the various sound radio channels and object to the increase in the number of television programmes containing excessive violence, this does not diminish my respect for the overall record of the Corporation.

Nevertheless, any monopoly is dangerous, and in my view it is essential that certain basic safeguards should exist when the monopoly has such vast powers over the minds of the country's people.

Broadcasting, sound or visual, is the most important means of mass communication. The power of programme content requires no emphasis from me. Millions of words have been written by people of great eminence on the subject, and I can add nothing today. Yet, in spite of its monopoly position and in spite of its powers, the powers that the Corporation wields, we have this incredible situation in which the elected representatives of the people, we in this House of Commons, have virtually no power to make any effective representations through the responsible Minister, the Postmaster-General. Often we hear of power without responsibility. This is the reverse. The Postmaster-General has the responsibility but scarcely any effective power.

Finally, the B.B.C. is the indirect recipient of a licence fee. That fee is paid to the Postmaster-General through Crown or other official offices within his control. He receives the money which, in turn, provides the Corporation with the financial means to discharge its duties. The law is rigorous. There are severe penalties for persons who attempt to receive transmissions without payment of the licence fee. Those penalties have been prescribed by this House; yet we have no means of suggesting ways in which those fees may be used to the public benefit.

I conclude my submission by emphasising again that my Bill contains nothing which would give the Postmaster-General or Parliament arbitrary powers over the Corporation. It contains nothing which would enable the Postmaster-General to extend his powers to require the B.B.C. to discontinue programmes or to censor them in any way. What it contains is a simple provision, and even that is extremely limited. It is a provision which would enable the Postmaster-General, if he could obtain the agreement of the Governors, to require the B.B.C. to continue certain programmes, and only those which had some very special public significance. Most important of all, it would remove a gag from the mouth of this House which at present prevents any hon. Member from raising effectively on behalf of licence holders, his constituents, subjects which are the prerogative of a public body which is well-managed but which nevertheless enjoys a complete monopoly.

I rise to oppose the Motion. What the hon. Member for Bodmin (Mr. Bessell) said towards the end of his speech was really a recommendation to hon. Members not to support it. At the beginning of his remarks, I was rather carried along with him. In his affection for "The Dales", I think that he was a little carried away and said that he would do something about it. As a result, he found himself stuck with it. He found himself having to produce a Bill. I think that he has produced the best one possible, having agreed to his commitment, and he has done all that he can.

Even in the negative sense, however, it is not a very good idea to establish a situation which can have some very odd effects. Let us suppose that a programme on sound or television has established itself as one of which the public is very fond. I can recall an occasion when one of the characters in "The Archers" was killed off, and there was a tremendous outcry in the country. "The Archers" has been going for many years, and I hasten to point out that at the time the hon. Member for Acton (Mr. Kenneth Baker) was probably still at school. The character concerned appeared regularly in much earlier instalments of the programme. "The Archers" was a very popular programme at the time, and there was a public outcry when the character concerned died.

If the Postmaster-General had been swayed by that wave of public emotion and had decided to issue a directive to the Governors along the lines suggested by the hon. Gentleman, a peculiar situation would have arisen in which the artist playing the part, who wished to be written out of the series, might have been directed by the Postmaster-General to continue in the rôle. In the event, the character was written out of the programme, and "The Archers" has remained with us.

The continuation of a programme is not a matter which the British Board-casting Corporation can always control. It depends on the co-operation of a large number of people. It depends on a director wanting to go on with its production. He may have put his individual stamp upon it. It may depend on a number of actors wishing to continue in the programme.

On reconsideration, the hon. Gentleman may come to the conclusion that his aim is impracticable. It might be practicable in the case of a news programme which has a personality quite independent of those who take part in it. That might be an area in which we could discuss on the Floor of the House whether it should continue, but it would have the effect of placing the news or current affairs programme concerned in the position of being regarded as a Labour Party, a Liberal Party or a Conservative Party programme, according to which party decided to support it.

We are on the thin end of a rather dangerous wedge and I hope that, on reflection, the hon. Gentleman will come to the conclusion that it is not only dangerous but perhaps an illiberal step.

I agree very much with what the hon. Member said about the unfortunate monopoly position of the B.B.C. I look forward to the day when, without surrendering to commercial radio interests, it may be possible to have an alternative sound broadcasting agency possibly financed by other means than licence revenue. However, it would be wrong to attempt to go further into that possibility in a debate of this kind. All I would say is that I hope those remarks may be of some assistance in enabling the hon. Gentleman to withdraw his Bill.

I think that many of us who have grown up in the world of "The Dales" will regret their passing. I hope, however, that there will be other families for us to become acquainted with in due course and that we shall not wish to place the Postmaster-General in the position of having to retain in being any programme. I rather suspect that "The Archers" may prove to be immortal and may go on after all of us. Whether this is desirable or not I am not sure, but the Postmaster-General should not be the man to decide.

I am sure that we are all grateful to the hon. Member for Bodmin (Mr. Bessell) for bringing forward this Bill. He has highlighted an important problem, namely the problem of the content of B.B.C. programmes where minority interests are concerned.

I do not often find myself in agreement with the hon. Member for Putney (Mr. Hugh Jenkins), but I cannot bring myself to agree with the hon. Member for Bodmin that his solution is either practicable or desirable. He seeks to extend the powers of the Postmaster-General to keep alive a programme which would be better killed. Irrespective of whether one likes "The Dales" or not, programmes do run themselves out, and if this Bill were to receive a Second Reading and became law the Postmaster-General would have the power of keeping going indefinitely any programme that he particularly liked, or for any particular reason. This raises the shattering possibility of the eternal existence of "The Archers", for example. It is an entirely negative power.

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman so early in his speech. The emphasis that I place in the Bill is on the fact that the Postmaster-General could not do this arbitrarily. It would have to be done in agreement with the Governors.

I will come to that point in a moment. Undoubtedly this Bill gives the Postmaster-General more powers. Admittedly he may have to discuss these matters with the Governors, but the object of the Bill is to throw responsibility on the Postmaster-General and on hon. Members of this House, and I would have thought that this was undesirable.

The Postmaster-General will not be given any positive powers under the Bill; they are purely negative powers. I would not have thought that they were powers which we want to impose on a politician or, indeed, upon the House. It will not have escaped the attention of the hon. Member for Bodmin that there is a Post Office Bill going through the House which seeks to reduce the powers of the Postmaster-General in the day-to-day administration of the Post Office. I am very much in support of the general tenor of that Bill. This Bill would have exactly the reverse effect and would give him additional powers.

None the less I would not want to be hostilely critical of the hon. Member for Bodmin, because he has done a valuable service to the House and to the public by raising this question. He is inviting the Postmaster-General to decide upon the content of B.B.C. programmes and to decide whether a programme is

"in the national interest, or of an essential educational nature, or of comfort to persons in hospitals or old persons' homes, the elderly or others who deprive special social benefits from such programmes."

I cannot help feeling that this is rather a narrow selection of minority interests. One minority interest in this country, the cultural interest, is catered for in the Third Programme. This is not mentioned in this Bill, and I hope that the Postmaster-General will give a very clear undertaking that he has no intention of discontinuing that service.

If the Bill were to become law it would raise most difficult problems in practice. The Postmaster-General would have to decide what sort of programmes sick people like to listen to. Are they encouraged on their road to recovery by watching such programmes as "Emergency Ward Ten" or "Dr. Finlay's Casebook", or programmes of that sort? Are people in hospital encouraged by seeing people in a more sick condition than they are themselves, or are they encouraged by seeing people in a healthier condition? I have no idea what the answer is; neither, I am sure, has the Postmaster-General. Therefore, to impose this obligation upon him to decide what sort of programmes sick people like is an absurdity.

When it comes to old people, the absurdity is even more evident. What sort of programmes do old people like? I think it was Chesterton who said that it is the young people who read the history books and the chronicles but it is the old people who read the newspapers. I think he was very perceptive. If I had this invidious duty of deciding what sort of programmes old people like, I think I would err on the side of cheerful, happy, optimistic programmes. I do not think that old people, on the whole, like intimations of mortality; they like to be kept up to date. But to impose this upon a Minister who has to answer to the House for his decisions would be totally unfair to that Minister.

The important consideration is that the B.B.C. television and sound broadcasts should provide such a variety—as they do now; I readily acknowledge it—that people, whether they be old or young, healthy or sick, can tune in to almost anything they want and be relieved, made happy, or whatever they wish.

However, there is great public concern about the content of B.B.C. television and sound programmes and about Independent Television programmes as well. It is apposite that there appears on the Order Paper today a Motion down for debate on Thursday, 1st May—it refers not to the B.B.C. but to Independent Television—calling attention to the violence shown on television. I welcome the opportunity which this debate gives the House briefly to discuss the content of television programmes. I am greatly concerned about the degree of violence which is shown on both B.B.C. and I.T.V. from time to time.

As the House knows, an important inquiry has been going on into this matter in the United States in recent weeks, and some rather disturbing results have emerged. I am even more disturbed about the quality of some programmes which cater for a large minority interest, namely, children's programmes, which, incidentally, are entirely omitted from the Bill. As the father of some young children, I am worried about some of the programmes which my children watch at the weekend. On weekdays, the quality of B.B.C. children's programmes is quite outstanding—I think, for example, of "Play School"—but the quality of B.B.C. programmes at children's time leaves much to be desired, routine and second-rate, for the most part, with quite a lot of violence as well.

Although I cannot bring myself to support his Bill, I thank the hon. Member for Bodmin for bringing it forward. He has a well cultivated knack of throwing his searchlight into various murky places—principally cafés at the moment, I notice—and he has thrown his searchlight today not on anything remotely murky—one could not say that of the B.B.C.—but on a particular aspect of the Corporation's work and the way in which it can and should cater for minority interests. He has done a service in allowing this short debate to take place.

The hon. Member for Bodmin (Mr. Bessell) presented his Bill with his usual ability, but, although I have some sympathy for his aim, I am greatly apprehensive about his suggested method. The debate has thrown up the question: how can we affect the Governors of the B.B.C. or those who run the Corporation in taking some cognisance of public opinion? This is the real problem. One of the aspects of the hon. Gentleman's proposal which frightens me is that not only does his Bill propose that certain programmes should be kept but it might be interpreted by a future Postmaster-General or by some new Governors as giving them also the right to abolish certain programmes. They might take it as inferred, if they have the right to do the one, that they have the right to do the other. I should regard that as a serious matter.

The hon. Gentleman must take note of the clear words of Clause 1:

"The Postmaster-General shall have the power, in agreement with the governors of the Corporation, to issue directives … to retain …"

There is no question of its being interpreted as a means of enabling the Postmaster-General to abolish programmes.

There is something in what the hon. Gentleman says, but I still think that it is possible for the other interpretation to be inferred. What is more, there is the danger that, if a particular programme which found favour with a large part of the population did not find favour with the Postmaster-General or the Governors, if no instruction were given that it be retained, that might be taken as an excuse to abolish it. This is a serious situation. We are grateful to the hon. Member for Bodmin (Mr. Bessell) for introducing this Measure. I am sure that if it had been presented on another occasion the debate would have been far more wide-ranging.

The matter to which I wish to refer does not really arise upon the construction of the Measure itself, but arises because I feel that we in this country have been passing through a particular phase. There was a time when an eminent ex-Member of this House tried to force his way on the B.B.C., above a Postmaster-General, and sought to impose his views. Fortunately, at that time we had in Lord Reith an equally dominant personality, who resisted it. We have ever since enjoyed the victory which was then won by Lord Reith for the B.B.C. If only for the reason that, in future, it might be possible for somebody to use this Bill as an opportunity to take a new form of power, I feel that we ought to reject it.

The Bill does nothing to meet a problem which faces many people. The problem is that there are not enough ways and means for ordinary folk—who, after all, finance the B.B.C.—to let those who run the B.B.C. know what they really think about the programmes which are being presented.

It is no use the B.B.C. saying that they have so many telephone calls on a certain day because of a particular programme. That is merely a hit-and-miss method. Therefore, one good thing about the presentation of this Bill is that it has posed the problem about the line of communication between the viewing and listening public and those who run the B.B.C. and how it can be improved.

The hon. Member for Bodmin (Mr. Bessell), when introducing the Bill, said that its genesis—I hope that I took down his words aright—is "Mrs. Dale's Diary." It is true, judging from the reports I have received, that much publicity has been given to the hon. Gentleman's attitude of mind on this problem of a particular programme being kept in being. It is only right and proper for me to intervene at this point and to put the position so far as the Postmaster-General and the B.B.C. are concerned.

The hon. Member for Bodmin has argued the case for his Bill persuasively, as I would expect of him. But I must tell the House that the Government cannot advise the House to give the Bill a Second Reading. Nevertheless, this debate offers an opportunity to take a quick look at the rôle of the B.B.C., at its responsibilities to the public and to Parliament, and at my right hon. Friend's position in relation to the Chairman and Governors of the B.B.C.

We are here dealing with finely balanced constitutional concepts. They are important because they touch upon the basic freedom of broadcasting in this country; and in particular on its freedom from Government intervention in programme matters. The expression of public opinion and feeling is absolutely necessary to good broadcasting. Unless the B.B.C. can keep in constant touch with public opinion and so keep in being an inter-play with its audience, it will not maintain its standards. Parliamentary debate provides a most valuable aid in this respect. Even more important, it offers an opportunity of restating the underlying responsibility which the B.B.C. owes to the public and to Parliament.

I am sure that this debate will receive the most careful attention of the B.B.C., because of the hon. Gentleman's observations and comments and the way in which he has presented his case.

Having said that, it must not be forgotten that since the inception of broadcasting it has been the B.B.C. which has had the responsibility of deciding the content and character of its programmes. Vocal public demand, whether expressed in the House or elsewhere, is a factor, but by no means the only one, for the B.B.C. to take into account. Whether, on balance, the B.B.C. should retain "The Dales". "The Critics" or any other programme are questions about which there will be widely differing views, but the principle which has been carefully established over the last 40 years or more is that the B.B.C. is independent of the Government in programme matters.

It is clear that in drafting the Bill the hon. Gentleman has tried to be reasonable. All hon. Members who have spoken have paid him that compliment. Indeed, he has tried so hard that it might seem at first sight that that Bill would not detract from the principle of the supreme authority of the B.B.C. to control its own programmes, for the Bill would limit the power of the Postmaster-General to make a direction only when the Governors of the B.B.C. were in agreement with him about the matter to be directed.

Although the intention behind the Bill may be to preserve the B.B.C. from Government intervention, its effect could not be limited to that. If the intention is that only the Governors shall decide, then that is the position already. But if the intention is that the Government would be given a power or duty to make proposals to the B.B.C. from time to time that it should retain particular programmes—for example, "The Dales"—then that would give the Government power to interfere.

It would imply a shift of emphasis to a position where the Government had the right to take the initiative. Inevitably the status of the Governors would be weakened. There would be an Act of Parliament which stipulated that, in given circumstances, the Government might invite the Board to accept suggestions for retaining programmes.

If a Bill like this had become law a long time ago, I invite the House to consider what would have become of it. Either the Statute would have become a dead letter, or it might have been altered to make the Government's rights and duties something more than merely persuasive. There would surely have been a considerable risk that it would have led to powers of a much more positive and authoritative kind.

The Bill might have an indirect effect, which some hon. Members might welcome, of appearing to widen the scope which hon. Members would have in putting down Questions about programmes on the B.B.C. I have frequently answered Questions in the House on broadcasting matters. Some supplementaries on the subject would not have been asked had they been tabled as official Questions. I have endeavoured, like my right hon. Friend, to answer those supplementaries.

Whatever small advantages there may seem to be, they cannot out-weigh the arguments against the Bill which I have already outlined. I remind the House of what my right hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason), then Postmaster-General, said in an Adjournment debate in May, 1968:

"The broadcasting authorities cannot, in matters of programme content and in the day-to-day conduct of their affairs, be almost independent of Government. Either they are independent, or they are not."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 6th May, 1968; Vol. 764, c. 179.]

This is the cardinal point which the House must face. Either we want the B.B.C. to be independent of Government intervention in programme matters, or we do not. In the view of the Government it is of paramount importance that the independence of the B.B.C. should be preserved at all costs. I advise the House that it would be not only wrong but dangerous to give the Bill a Second Reading, however well intentioned it may be and however well it may have been presented by the hon. Member for Bodmin, for whom I have a great regard. I hope that the House will turn it down.

The hon. Member for Bodmin (Mr. Bessell) has performed a useful service in bringing the Bill before the House. It is rather akin to the service provided by a fairground employees who puts up an Aunt Sally so that it may be knocked down by a good shot. My hon. Friend the Assistant Postmaster-General has provided a very good shot and has knocked down the Aunt Sally. I agree with the hon. Member for Bodmin that it may serve a useful purpose if, from time to time, appropriate representations could be made by the sort of Postmaster-General and Government that one could trust.

It is right to reject the Bill, however, because of the experience we had at the time of Suez, when the noble Lord, Lord Avon, was Prime Minister. It will be within the recollection of the House that he sought to interfere in a quite outrageous manner with the B.B.C. news bulletins, whereas while the party to which I have the privilege of belonging is in power—which will be for a long time—no such thing could be contemplated. But there may be a moment of aberration on the part of the voters which would put hon. Members opposite in power, and then there might be all sorts of impertinent interference with the freedom of the B.B.C. That is why, if there is a Division, I shall support my hon. Friend the Assistant Postmaster-General.

On occasions I have had cause to make representations to the B.B.C., sometimes because I have felt that it was being unfair and sometimes because constituents have drawn certain matters to my attention. I have always found the B.B.C. to receive such representations most courteously and to examine them very carefully. I have no complaints about that. For those reasons, although I believe that the hon. Member for Bodmin has done the House a great service in bringing forward this Measure, I regret that I cannot assist him to pick up his Aunt Sally from the floor.

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

I apologise for my slip of the tongue in saying "simple" instead of "Second", but I could well say "a simple reading" because, being reminded by the presence of the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) of the long Committee meetings that we had on the Parliament (No. 2) Bill, the effective Clause of this Bill, which is a very simple one, should prevent any such long Committee meetings, and should ensure that when a constitutional Bill is brought before the House there will have to be an adequate majority in the House before it is embarked upon. The simple provision is that a two-thirds majority is required to alter the composition of either House of Parliament.

Few would deny that there is scope for improving parts of our Constitution, be they concerned with the House of Lords, this House, or regional government. The existence of the Royal Commission is evidence of that. But if we are to sweep away a basic part of the Constitution—a part that has stood the test of centuries—it is all the more essential to be doubly certain that such changes as we make are for the better and not for the worse, as well as being right in the context of the next 100 years.

From recent experience it is clear that the Parliament (No. 2) Bill did not convince more than a small minority of hon. Members. Despite the pressure of Government Whips, less than half of the House was prepared to support the Bill on Second Reading, the actual number being 285 out of a total of 630. My own Front Bench supported that Bill and tried by its eloquence to persuade more of my hon. Friends to do so. There was an unacceptable degree of uncertainty, as events proved only too conclusively, and the result has emphasised the folly of the Government's trying to force through a reluctant Parliament so fundamental a constitutional Measure.

Especially now, on the eve of the Reports of the Royal Commissions on Local Government and on the Constitu- tion, a question mark hangs over the whole structure of government in the land, and alterations in regional government could well mean drastic changes in the size and functions of both Houses of Parliament. I therefore hope that the House and the country will consider that the simple proposition which the Bill puts forward, that a two-thirds majority is required for altering the composition of either House, is fair and reasonable. Such a Measure would be disappointing in that it would deprive us of the eloquence and some of the Parliamentary occasions which we have experienced during our discussions of the Parliament (No. 2) Bill, but this proposition is by no means out of line with written constitutions in the United States of America and other countries.

If such a Bill had been on the Statute Book before the Cabinet embarked on the Parliament (No. 2) Bill and before my right hon. Friends embarked on supporting it, much face would have been saved to both, and much time of the House would not been wasted. That time could have been used to debate other important subjects, such as "In Place of Strife", the Merchant Shipping Acts and the Seebohm Report, which affect the everyday running of the Government.

I hope that the House will give the Bill a Second Reading, because it will mean that before anyone embarks on a Constitutional Bill, he will have to be sure of Parliamentary support for the changes proposed, and the time of the House will not be wasted, as it has been wasted with the Parliament (No. 2) Bill.

This little Bill is more iniquitous and dangerous than that of which we have just disposed. The speech of the hon. Member for Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale) was remarkable in that it was pregnant with paradox. He argued the case for democracy and said that because there had been a long debate about changing the constitution, it had been a waste of time. He said that because a stout, brave, if vociferous, minority had challenged the Government and the official Opposition day in and day out and had won, that, too, appeared to be wrong. His most remarkable contribution was to draw an analogy between our constitution, which includes the other place, and that of the United States of America.

I cannot for the life of me believe that the citizens of the United States are in any mood to create the same constitution and the same sort of place as we have in the other place. What is serious is that when one makes comparisons with written constitutions in Europe and other parts of the world, one sees, throughout history, that these constitutions could be easily ripped up. We have had our forms of revolution, but since the days of Cromwell we have had our revolutions with a minimum of bloodshed, upset and vulgarity.

One of the reasons for this was that we never had a hard and fast written constitution. If the hon Gentleman would make the most cursory glance over European history alone he will discover that where a written constitution has existed in a country it has often been torn up and rewritten. In its wake there has often been bloodshed and bloody disaster. While we make up ours as we go along, the test has been that it has worked far better than any other. We pride ourselves that through out constitution one vote is enough to decide an issue, and this, too, has proved worth while.

In this remarkable constitution of ours, which I do not want to change, at least not in the way advocated by the hon. Gentleman, it has meant that people who have been prepared, like some of my hon. Friends, to fight both Government and Opposition, to fight six-line Whips, have in the end proved victorious. While on the one hand the hon. Member eulogised the efforts of my hon. Friends and his hon. Friends, at the same time he wants to produce a Measure which will never allow that to happen again. For all these reasons, including the last absurdity he produced, I feel that the House would be very wise not to give this Bill a Second Reading.

I wish to support the observations made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Molloy). I do not share the views of some of my right hon. Friends about the need to change many of the procedures of this place, or many of our constitutional practices. I believe that although to anyone with a scientific bent there may be a number of anomalies in our procedures, they are the sort of anomalies which safeguard the people against abuse by the Executive.

The most serious fault that I find with the proposition put forward by the hon. Member for Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale) is this question of the two-thirds majority. What might happen as a result of this is that one might have an undesirable ad hoc association in the Chamber between different groups of people, not at all like the splendid collaboration between the co-belligerents which we had on a recent Bill, which I suppose I ought not to mention, otherwise I would be out of order.

The sort of thing I can envisage happening is that which happens in some countries which have curious methods of voting to elect people to the legislature. I am thinking of the sort of system in which one says to the other:

"I will back you on this if you will back me on that."

That would be most undesirable for this Chamber. The most startling and compelling evidence which can be put forward against this Bill is what has happened in this House this year when the Executive, aided by the Shadow Executive, if that is the right expression, sought to impose upon this Chamber a number of highly undesirable reforms. Because of the peculiarities of our system, because of the methods we have for dealing with constitutional matters in a Committee of the whole House, and because of the benevolence and proper understanding of those matters by those occupying the Chair during those deliberations, these matters were talked about and discussed to such an extent that eventually those who put forward the proposals became convinced of their undesirability. That in itself is sufficient evidence that we require none of the sort of fancy voting system that the hon. Gentleman seeks.

For these reasons I support my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North, as always, and hope that the House will reject the Bill.

I listened attentively to the hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Roebuck) and his complaint about what he calls "fancy voting". But the only fancy voting the Bill provides is the provision in Clause 1(a) concerning "… not less than two-thirds of the total number of Members—…". We already have a number of rules of this sort. Sometimes there are not a certain number of Members present—I am being very careful in saying this; sometimes there are not as many as there might be, and something happens. Again, for a Closure, 100 Members are needed, and—I forget the precise new rule—I think the Third Reading requirement is that 100 Members have to rise in their place. Therefore, what the hon. Gentleman calls "fancy voting" is not new to our procedure.

I have a very open mind about the Bill. But at this juncture, when we have seen the two Front Benches getting into cahoots to bring forward a Measure which the great bulk of back-benchers did not approve, and which I believe would have put vast new powers of patronage into the hands of the two Front Benches, we as back-benchers have a duty not only to our constituents today but to our successor's constituents.

For this reason I believe, with respect to their Lordships, that members of another place might have been in a certain error. Some of them might have felt a little spirit of "I'm all right, Jack", and did not look to their heirs. In this House, we have a duty to look to the years ahead.

On balance, I believe that the Bill would safeguard the rights of the ordinary man and woman, rather than the reverse. Therefore, although it has its imperfections, I hope that the House will give it a Second Reading.

I intervene very briefly to utter a word of protest. This is a footling, piffling little Bill that should not absorb the time of so many hon. Members present this afternoon. I regard it as the ressurrection of a corpse that has been embalmed with Parliamentary phraseology and decently buried, in a piffling attempt to revise the whole procedure of the House, to attempt to intervene with the voting procedure, which is better dealt with by reforming Standing Orders.

This is a complete and utter waste of time. Sitting beside me is the arch enemy of the Parliament (No. 2) Bill, my hon Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon), who, in connivance with an extreme Right-wing Member of the party opposite, strangled at birth a far more important constitutional Measure than this. This Bill is but a tiny offshoot, a little weed, that has sprung from mistaken and misunderstanding thinking, and I am surprised that it has been put before us. We should get rid of this nuisance as soon as possible and go to the countryside and refresh ourselves with brighter thoughts, instead of wasting our time with the Bill.

One of my favourite playwrights is Mr. J. B. Priestley, and one of the better plays he has written is a time play known as "I have been here before". If hon. Members recall it, it was based on a time theory, that one went back and back over the same things for time evermore. Following the recent months when I have sat here through thin and thin—perhaps I can say to my hon. Friends, through thin and thick—on these matters, I just feel on this Measure that I have been here before. All that I shall recall from it in the long run is that my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) will be known by me for ever more as the hon. Member for Line-by-Line.

The Bill is so important that the hon. and noble Lord who presented it has not even seen fit to be present. The hon. Member for Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale), who saw fit to move it and regarded it as so important, did not even bother to put his name to the Bill when it was first presented.

I should like to say that the noble Lord the Member for Edinburgh, North (Earl of Dalkeith) is on urgent business in the North of England.

As the train which was to take me to my constituency is leaving about now, I also could have been on important business.

That sets the tone underlying the Bill. It is not really regarded by its sponsors as all that important. I suspect that it was intended that it would come up today while the Parliament (No. 2) Bill, of late lamented and, to some, unlamented memory, was still being discussed. However, as I have had to apply my mind to the Bill, it would be worth while that I should pass on some of my thoughts to hon. Members.

The first thing I find with regard to the Bill is that it is drawn in very wide terms, in wider terms, I suspect, than those who drew it up even suspected or intended. It is intended to cover main line constitutional Bills—I am sorry that I used the words "main line"; I obviously have something on my mind about that. It is intended to cover main constitutional Bills, such as the Parliament (No. 2) Bill, and this is stated in the Long Title.

In its present form, however, the Bill would cover some very routine Bills also. An obvious example, I am advised, would be the Administration of Justice Act, 1968, which included a provision to increase the number of Lords of Appeal in Ordinary from 9 to 11. By adding to the number of Law Lords, it clearly altered the composition of the House of Lords. No one, however, could call it a main constitutional Bill or justify a requirement that it should be treated in this special way.

Another example would have been the Peerage Act, 1963, which is best known for its provision to allow a peer who has succeeded to his peerage to disclaim it. It also includes, however, in Sections 4 to 6, a number of useful provisions which remove anomalies in the position of Scottish and Irish peers and of peeresses in their own right. For example, all Scottish peers, instead of 16 representative peers, were allowed to sit in the House of Lords, and a peeress in her own right had the same right to receive a writ or summons as a man holding that peerage.

A possible example in the future—and I should add that it is a Friday afternoon and that this is not forthcoming attractions, in case my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne is searching for thought about what might be coming; in any event, to add to the forthcoming attraction, I am a noncomformist anyway by background—might be a Bill affecting the number of bishops in the House of Lords. Such a Bill would, no doubt, be necessary if the Church of England were ever disestablished. These are all examples of Bills which would clearly be within the scope of the Parliament (No. 4) Bill as it stands. I am sure that the hon. and noble Lord who dreamed up the Bill did not have this in mind when he drafted it, and I am sure that he would not want it to have this effect.

There is also, I have gathered in recent weeks, an area of what the lawyers call uncertainty covering Bills which affects the disqualification from membership of either House. It is not clear whether a Bill which introduced a new disqualification or modified any existing disqualification would provide

"for the alteration of the composition of either House"

or not. An obvious case would be the House of Commons Disqualification Act, 1957, but also, oddly—or, perhaps, to some people, not so oddly—would be the Mental Health Act, 1959, which includes a Section, Section 137—I say this because, no doubt, the noble Lord will be reading HANSARD very carefully and will want to follow this advice which I give him—providing for the seat in the House of Commons of an hon. Member to be declared vacant if he is liable to be detained as suffering from mental illness.

Provisions of this kind could well be needed in Bills on subjects such as mental health or bankruptcy. Some Members of Parliament are given to mental ill-health. We cover the span in this place. Some Members of Parliament are given to bankruptcy—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]—I understand—in the course of time, in the course of history. These provisions could be needed in Bills whose main objectives are quite unrelated to the constitution or composition of either House.

I am sure that the House will agree that the examples I have given are not of Bills which are of such fundamental and constitutional importance that they are passed only if this House is virtually unanimous in supporting them. I say, "unanimous" advisedly because what the words in subsection (1)

"unless … not less than two-thirds of the total number of Members elected to serve in the House of Commons vote in the affirmative"

really imply is that the affirmative vote must be of two-thirds of the elected Members, and not of those voting in that particular Division. In the present House this means that 420 Members must vote for the Bill. I would hope that on that occasion it would be a consensus Bill or we should have difficulty in obtaining the necessary 420. Of course, if the Whips were on in the normal practice of the House that would be rather easier—or so I am advised, historically. Hon. Members will appreciate how difficult it would be to obtain a vote of this size on the kind of Bill I have mentioned.

I have dealt so far with a number of practical difficulties about this Bill, but there is a more serious and fundamental objection to its whole conception. What it tries to do is to entrench the existing composition of both Houses, but every means which has so far been devised for entrenching one or other aspect of the constitution has either been ineffective or has conflicted with the principle of the sovereignty of Parliament, and this Bill is no exception.

It is ineffective because a Bill to repeal it could be passed by an ordinary majority of 50 per cent. of those voting, and a Bill which altered the composition of either House could then be passed in the ordinary way. This Bill, therefore, would provide no more than a procedural obstacle to a Government who were determined to secure that objective. Any attempt to make the Bill effective—for example, by providing that a Bill to amend it would also require a two-thirds majority—would conflict with the principle that the powers of the Crown in Parliament are unlimited and that there is no law which it cannot make or unmake without relating to the constitution itself or otherwise. No Parliament can bind its successors, and attempts to do so in the past have subsequently been overriden—for example, the Irish Church Act, 1869, which, my hon. Friends will recall, was one of the first Measures of Mr. Gladstone's first Government in his attempt to solve the problem of Ireland, and I just recall a hundred years later that perhaps it has not yet been achieved. That Act disestablished the Church of Ireland, despite the provision in the Union of Ireland Act 1800, which stated that the maintenance of the established church in Ireland was a fundamental term of the Union. Yet 69 years later, in response to the agricultural and religious problems of Ireland, a High Church Prime Minister in the Liberal Government of those days—probably the first liberal Government—introduced an Act going against something which might be regarded as fundamental during the previous 69 years. Who of us in this place would gainsay that he had the right to do that and that in the long run we cannot commit our successors to a particular viewpoint?

The principle—and I am sure the noble Lord will be interested in this—is stated by Halsbury, Laws of England. 3rd edition, volume 7, pages 190–191, as follows:

"The powers of the Crown when acting in association with Parliament are unlimited. The Crown in Parliament is the sovereign power in the state. It is for this reason that there is no law which the Crown in Parliament cannot make or unmake, whether relating to the Constitution itself or otherwise. Moreover, any attempt in a statute to protect a statutory provision from express, or even implied, repeal would be ineffectual."

I never thought that I should live to see the day when I should be opposing a Measure introduced by descendants of Scottish dukes who were supposedly trying to save this country from totalitarianism and from democracy.

In the current state of political opinion—I am not referring to this in the practical sense of the term, the narrow political argument of votes that are counted; I am interested in the wider sense of the term—in the fair battle of politics those of us in this place who indulge to some degree in the party game, the Oxford Union type debate, ought to beware of using the word "totalitarianism" and saying that the country is heading for totalitarianism and that we are on the rocks. I know as a result of much travelling around the world, mostly at His Majesty's expense rather than my own, that we in this country have a great deal to be thankful for. [AN HON. MEMBER: "Her Majesty."] I say "His Majesty" deliberately because I have never served Her Majesty in the way in which I served His Majesty. People look to this country as the home of democracy; yet we hear in this country arguments which drive us to the pitch of believing that all is lost.

There may be times when we are in opposition—and I concede that we on this side have much experience of this—when we might feel that a change in forms of government would be useful, but, compared with countries on the other side of the Iron Curtain—and the events in Czechoslovakia in August brought this to my mind—or other countries in Europe, we live in a country where, as Members of Parliament, none of us is afraid of opening the door at night in case we might be whistled off to some dark dungeon; we are not afraid of speaking our minds; we have nothing to fear. We have a Civil Service which is one of the most human and civilised in the world despite all its problems, for some of which my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne attempted to find solutions in his contribution to the work of the Fulton Committee. We still have what most people in the world would be happy to have; that is, a democracy which works in this place largely because we want it to work. If any hon. Member set out to make it not work, it would break down.

All this talk about totalitarian Governments and the need to be protected from them is misplaced. Even if it had come up in one of the many discussions which we should have had if the Parliament (No. 2) Bill had gone on its way——

Order. We have finished with that one.

I apologise, Mr. Speaker. It is a matter which got itself into my system and I am finding it difficult to work it out again. I said earlier that I thought I had been here before.

This short and interesting Bill has been drawn up without due thought being given to what it means. If it were passed, it would require a two-thirds' majority even when we dealt with the most minor Bills, and it occurs to me to wonder how many political parties have been in that position in the last fifty years.

Will my hon. Friend give way?

I am very grateful to.

Would my hon. Friend agree to this extent? He poses a dilemma in relation to the Bill. He talked about entrenched Clauses earlier on. If the entrenched Clauses mean nothing, as I think he would say, and are merely an obstacle to progress in the event of a subsequent Parliament wanting to amend the Bill, there is no point in having them. If they mean something, it is an infringement on the sovereignty of the House. In all his researches in preparation for this interesting and cogent speech——

Order. Interventions must be brief.

I appreciate your point, Mr. Speaker, and I was about to come to the end of it. In all my hon. Friend's researches, has he come across a case in which what might be considered to be a major constitutional reform has ever been done via a Private Member's Bill on a Friday afternoon in the absence of the sponsor?

That is a most interesting point. The short answer is "no". The long answer, I regret to say, I made about ten minutes ago, and I am sure that I must not repeat it.

To come back to my point, which will serve my purpose, about the number of occasions when a Government have been in the position of having a two-thirds majority, I think that the Liberal Government of 1906 were in that happy position. The Government of 1931 also had a very large majority, though for quite the wrong reasons.

I do not think that this entrenched Clause is the way to deal with the situation. We in this House are the masters of what shall be done. If in their wisdom those who went before us had felt that this sort of provision was necessary, they would have done something about it. In this country, whatever party is in power, we are a democracy, and this institution is the receptacle of it. We have no need for ill-thought-out Clauses of this kind from hon. Members who are not able to find the time——

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I originally put down this case as "The strange case of Corporal H. J. Russell". The reason I called it the "strange" case—although that adjective proved in the event to be out of order—is that this is a case which reverses all the normal circumstances of such matters when they come before this House. The vast majority of cases concerning the problems of members of the Services, when hon. Members raise them in the House, are about young men who wish to leave the Service. There have been frequent debates on soldiers having regretted undertaking a lengthy period of service and who have wished to withdraw. In this case the opposite applies, and this is why I sought to call it the "strange" case of Corporal H. J. Russell.

I think I can best describe the circumstances by reading a letter from Corporal Russell which he wrote to me following an interview with me. It states very clearly indeed the nature of his complaint.

"During the second week of September 1967, or thereabouts, I was ordered to report to the officer in charge of the unit's administration for an interview. When I attended the interview the officer in charge told me that I would not be allowed to sign for a further period of service with Forces Postal Services, but should I wish to sign on I would be posted to any other unit or corps which I chose.

"When I asked him for a reason for this decision, he said he was not empowered to give me any answer. However, when I pressed for further information … he said he would endeavour to obtain permission to tell me the reason.…

I then inquired into the possibility of obtaining redress of my grievance from the Army Council or the General Officer Commanding London District."

Perhaps I should say that, before then, Corporal Russell had approached the commanding officer without success.

"He then said that even this would be impossible, and that any attempt on my part to find out the reason by any other means would result in my immediate posting away from the unit. However, as I was leaving his office, the officer in charge asked me what nationality my wife was. I told him that she, like both her parents, was English.

"During the course of the first interview I was told that I would be immediately withdrawn from postal and courier duties and that I would in future be working as a pay clerk in the pay office of the Civilian Volunteer H.Q. attached to Home P.C.C.D., and that this employment would continue till I commenced my terminal leave in December 1968.

I should add that, up to the time of receiving this information, I had every intention of signing on to complete 22 years with the Colours. However, on receipt of this information, I had no option but to submit my application to leave the Service at the nine-year point.

On 27th November this year, I happened to find out by chance that it would be possible for me to withdraw my notice to terminate my Colour service if I intended to transfer to another Corps and trade."

Pausing there, the position is that Corporal Russell had been refused continuation of his service in the post office section but had been told that he could continue elsewhere. No reason was given for that but he had then decided that, after all, he would like to continue in the Service, and, as he said in his letter:

"I therefore approached the unit paymaster, under whose direction I was working, with a view to finding out whether or not he would be prepared to recommend me for a transfer to the Royal Army Pay Corps. He said that if I wished to apply to withdraw my notice to terminate, it should be possible to do so, whether I wished to transfer or not. He then said that he would speak to the officer in charge of administration about it.

A few minutes later, the officer in charge called me into his office and said he had no idea that I wished to continue in the Service. He then asked me about my wish to transfer to the R.A.P.C. I told him that I would much prefer to stay in the Forces Postal Services, but should that prove to be impossible I would prefer a transfer to the Pay Corps, to any other unit, as I had been working on soldiers' pay accounts for the past 14 or 15 months and therefore already had a fair knowledge of the job.

He then said that if I wished to make application to the officer in charge of Royal Engineer Records at Brighton to withdraw my notice to terminate my Colour service, he would give it his wholehearted recommendation, and when this was authorised, he would attempt to have me retained in the Postal Service.

I then made and signed my application to withdraw my notice to terminate; the officer in charge added his recommendation, and the application form was sent to R.E. Records. When no reply had been received by 9th December, I saw the orderly room documentation clerk, who contacted Records by telephone. He was told by a clerk working at the Record office that the application had been approved.

However, the following evening the officer in charge called me to his office and told me that the assistant officer in charge of Records had contacted him by telephone, that the clerk concerned with the first telephone call had made a mistake, and that the application had not in fact been approved. The officer in charge said that no reason had been given for the non-approval.

I then commenced my terminal leave in the usual way on 13th December.

In conclusion"—

says Corporal Russell, or, perhaps I should say, ex-Corporal Russell—

"I would like to add that the officer in charge of administration for the whole period covered by this letter was Major Dunkeld, the Commanding Officer was Lt.-Col. Bennet and the Paymaster was Major Kincaid, and in all fairness to them both Lt.-Col. Bennet and Major Kincaid offered me the fullest references when I left the unit. Hoping that the information given herein can assist you in obtaining the fullest possible explanation for the shabby way in which I consider I have been treated—Corporal H. J. Russell."

I also felt that my constituent had been shabbily treated, without any explanation for this extraordinary behaviour. I wrote to my hon. Friend who is to reply, sending him this letter, which sets out clearly the circumstances of the case. Whatever the reason can be for the failure to retain Corporal Russell in the Army, it is not that he lacks power to express himself clearly and cogently in writing. In reply I received on 3rd January a statement that inquiries were being made into the matter. On 16th January the inquiries were still not complete, and on 29th January I received a letter saying that

"The Officer in Charge of Records' decision will be based on a number of considerations, many of them purely official, and we cannot in an individual case enter into discussion about reasons for a decision not to permit a soldier to continue in the Service."

This seems to be a most extraordinary state of affairs.

I put down a Question, and got the answer that nothing could be added to the letter. I looked into the possibility of taking the matter to the Parliamentary Commissioner, but I found that this is one of the matters which is excluded from his range of considerations.

I therefore come to this Adjournment debate as my final recourse on behalf of this constituent. What Corporal Russell wants to know is why he has been treated in this fashion. He has had a number of years service, he has been promoted, and his service, according to his officers, is satisfactory. He has now been told "You cannot continue". Presumably, the Army are short of recruits. Therefore, why is my constituent unacceptable to the Army? Are the reasons personal to Corporal Russell?

Is it suggested that in any way security questions are involved? What is the consideration in this matter? Is it something which my hon. Friend cannot tell me about? Is it something he cannot write to tell Corporal Russell about? Is it reasonable that in any form of full continuous service a man should be discharged, with no reason whatever given to him as to the area in which the inability to retain his services is contained?

I hope that my hon. Friend in his reply will at least be able to give some impression of the reasons that this decision was taken. It may be—and probably this is the case—Corporal Russell does not now wish to return to the Army. One could hardly be surprised if that was his conclusion. I believe that he has obtained other employment.

This matter is a bad advertisement for the Army as an employer. I hope my hon. Friend will be able to improve the picture and give some assurance and explanation about the peculiar set of circumstances which have affected my constituent, as a result of which the Army no longer employs the services of Corporal Russell.

My hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Hugh Jenkins) raises two points: first, why Corporal Russell, who wished to withdraw his notice of termination of his nine years' engagement, was refused permission to continue serving in the Army; and, second, why I refused to give my reasons for this decision.

I am afraid that I have nothing of substance to add to my letter to my hon. Friend of 29th January this year. In this letter I explained that a soldier who has given notice to terminate his service has no legal right to withdraw it at a later stage. He may apply to do so, but agreement is at the discretion of the Officer in Charge of Records. His decision in each case will be based on a number of considerations, many of these purely official, and we cannot in individual cases enter into discussion about the reasons for a decision not to permit a soldier to continue in the Service. This is often as much protection for the soldier as it is necessary for the Army.

Having said all this, I have reviewed the case carefully and thoroughly, and I am quite satisfied that no injustice was done to Corporal Russell. For the benefit of my hon. Friend, let me recapitulate the main facts of the case.

From February, 1967, Corporal Russell was employed as a postal clerk in the Royal Engineers Postal and Communications Depot in London. In October, 1967, it was decided that he would no longer be employed in the trade for which he was trained; namely, as a postal and courier operator. This was explained to him by his commanding officer, and he was given the opportunity of applying to transfer to another trade. Corporal Russell said that he did not wish to be transferred. Instead, he gave notice that he would terminate his engagement in the Army on 12th January this year—the end of his nine years' engagement. From his own point of view this was a sensible decision. He could decide to do this at any time before the final six months of his engagement. Because of the decision not to be transferred or trained in other duties, Corporal Russell was retained by his unit and re-employed on pay duties as a temporary measure. This could only be done for a time before the end of his engagement, and enabled Corporal Russell to stay where he was and suffer no alterations in his pay or conditions of service.

Corporal Russell was due to go on his final terminal leave in the middle of December, 1968. It was not until 28th November that he said that he had reconsidered his decision to leave the Army and would like to withdraw his notice to terminate his engagement. As I have said, it was within the discretion of the Officer in Charge of the Royal Engineers Record Office to decide at that late stage whether Corporal Russell could withdraw his notice of termination of service. Under the Army Terms of Service Regulations, 1967, where any notice to withdraw an application for discharge is within the last six months of service it has to be approved by the competent military authority. In this case, the competent military authority was the Record Office. After considering the case, the Officer in Charge of the Record Office decided not to approve the notice. It was entirely up to him to make this decision. As I have said, I have reviewed the decision thoroughly and carefully, and I think that it was the right one. It was most unfortunate that, through some misunderstanding, a clerk at the Record Office passed inaccurate information to the unit before the final decision was known. I am naturally sorry that this happened and for any distress that it may have caused.

As I have already said, I am quite satisfied that it was in the best interests of Corporal Russell that he should be allowed to leave the Army.

Will my hon. Friend clarify one point on that? He said that he is quite satisfied that it is in the best interests of Corporal Russell. Will he say why he is so satisfied? Why is it not in the best interests of Corporal Russell to tell him?

I must ask my hon. Friend to accept that I have personally applied my mind to the matter.

I want to know why.

I have done it in the way I deal with all cases of this sort. I am on the side of the soldier, and am most anxious to see that fairness is done. I am satisfied that in this case it was. It would not be in the best interests of Corporal Russell to go into this in any further detail.

Corporal Russell, now Mr. Russell, is happily employed—I have heard this indirectly—in the same sort of work, in the Postal and Telegraphic Office of the General Post Office. I assure my hon. Friend that it is right to leave him there, and not to press me any further.

I am very dissatisfied with that answer.