I beg to move Amendment No. 1, in page 2, line 18, leave out "after the commencement of this Act" and insert

"on or after 26th March 1968".

It will not need very much discernment on the part of any hon. Member to understand that the effect of the Amendment is to make the operation of the Bill retrospective to what may appear to some to be an arbitrarily selected date. I am sure that the Minister of State, Board of Trade, will be the first to acknowledge that the Amendment is entirely intended to be helpful to the President of the Board of Trade, who has been on the horns of a difficult dilemma throughout, due to certain failures to act in his Department. I hope that if the Amendment is accepted by my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Costain) the President of the Board of Trade will be relieved of some of the anxieties he has felt.

The second point concerns why the date of 26th March was selected. This refers back to the famous or notorious event which took place at Aldwick Court, Wrington, in Somerset, which received a great deal of publicity later in the Sunday Times. The curious circumstances which the Sunday Times disclosed on 21st October was that on 26th March, 1968, a sale took place at that house and an auction ring was disclosed. As a result, a picture was sold for £2,700 and a knock- out took place later at the quaintly named Paradise Motel. The picture was knocked down to a dealer, Mr. Julius Weitzner, for the sum of £7,000, and it was later sold to the National Gallery for £150,000.

May I say, in parenthesis, that I am not one of those who criticise the conduct of the National Gallery in any way. It has a duty to the public. This picture was offered to it, although it was not aware of all the circumstances, for what seemed to it and to many people a perfectly reasonable price. It rightly carried out its duty of complementing and completing the national collection by the purchase of a very, very important picture. I say that because the National Gallery has been subject to some unfair publicity.

I now return to the Sunday Times article. Although these allegations were made, it is most remarkable that no actions for defamation followed the article.

On a point of order. I am very anxious to follow what my right hon. Friend is saying, but I cannot relate the Amendment to the Bill. The Notice Paper says:

"Page 2, line 18 [Clause 2], leave out after the commencement of this Act' and insert …"

There is no such line in Clause 2.

It is page 2, line 18, subsection (5).

Further to that point of order. There is a misprint on the Notice Paper. The Amendment is to Clause 1.

That is so. It is a misprint on the Amendment Paper.

I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr) is satisfied. I am grateful to him for his detailed study of the Bill. It is a misprint, and I apologise for it, but my hon. Friend must blame others and not me.

Further to the point of order. I think that the wrong line is referred to, also. Should it not be line 19 and not line 18?

It is line 18 and a bit of line 19. I hope that that satisfies the hon. Gentleman's meticulous examination of the Amendment.

I do not share my hon. Friend's enthusiasm for arithmetic, but it is interesting to know that we can all count up to 19.

No actions for defamation followed the article, but I should not wish to suggest that this was in any way proof positive that a ring was in operation. It was sufficient, however, to justify the President of the Board of Trade, under not inconsiderable pressure, setting up an inquiry into not only those events but the rather wider matter of auction rings. What an inquiry that was! It took some time. Many people were interviewed and at the end all that we had was "the report which could not be published". So much for this smack of firm Government.

I draw attention to one very curious circumstance. The report has, for other reasons, been made available to the Parliamentary Commissioner, who is the servant of Parliament, but is not available to Parliament—a curious and ironic comment on the effort of the President of the Board of Trade. The public, Press and the House have sought in vain to penetrate the wall of silence which the President of the Board of Trade has built around this affair. Fortunately, there are a few chinks in the wall. If one reads them carefully, one can draw certain inferences from the rather cagey replies of the right hon. Gentleman on 18th March to questions concerning the publication of the report.

In c. 216 the right hon. Gentleman made this comment:

"I should add that a study of the prices achieved at sales at the leading art auctions in London over the last two years strongly suggests that rings have not operated there …".

The right hon. Gentleman was very careful to say "in London". Therefore, we can reasonably infer that he is satisfied that rings have operated outside London.

Dealing specifically with the Aldwick Court sale, he said:

"As to the Aldwick Court sale no detailed or useful information was given either to the Board of Trade or to the police, or to the Director of Public Prosecutions, until after the time-limit for any prosecution had expired."

In the next paragraph the right hon. Gentleman said:

"The only information of any substance or significance concerning the Aldwick Court sale which my officers have been able to obtain has been provided by people who were in a position to make that same information available well before the time limit … had expired …".

At no stage did the right hon. Gentleman deny that detailed and useful information was given in the process of preparing the report, but, unfortunately, it was received after the time limt had expired.

In c. 220, in reply to a question by one of his hon. Friends, the President of the Board of Trade said:

"As to leaving the public in the dark about whether criminal events took place or not, I think I made it clear in my original statement that no evidence emerges from the report which would justify any criminal proceedings."

But he meant, after the date of expiry.

In reply to me, he repeated that the time had expired and said:

"I do not wish to comment any further on the Aldwick Court sale, for the reason that that sale is now time-expired and therefore it would not be right to comment on it."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. 18th March, 1969; Vol. 780, c. 216 and 220.]

Throughout the replies of the President of the Board of Trade the allegations in the Sunday Times article were never disputed or refuted. If they had been, the right hon. Gentleman would have been very careful to say so and he need not have hesitated to say so. We can, therefore all rest assured that the Sunday Times article is accepted by the Board of Trade as having been factually correct.

I should like to say a few words about retrospection and the effect of retrospective legislation. One of my hon. Friends said to me—and I think that we all agree with it—that retrospective legislation is repugnant. This is an admirable sentiment, but it needs to be qualified a great deal. During the last two decades, Conservative and Labour Governments have passed retrospective legislation—some good, some bad. Some matters are usually accepted as being suitable for retrospection, such as amnesties and free pardons, and no one can hardly describe them as repugnant. Retrospective legislation of a remedial nature is hardly likely to be unexceptionable, and who on these benches would suggest that a relaxation of the Betterment Levy provisions back to the date of the—

Order. An hon. Member may be tempted to answer that rhetorical question, but it is out of order in this debate.

Well, Mr. Speaker, perhaps I may leave it by saying that no one is likely to object on those grounds. The only strong objection to retrospection is where the matter concerns penal legislation and where, if I may quote Professor Goodhart, one is inflicting a punishment on a man for doing an act which was legal when he did it.

The Amendment does not do that. No new crime is created by the Bill. Its only effect has been to increase the penalties. No innocent man would or could be penalised if the Amendment were made.

I realise that there is one flaw in my argument. The fact is that the legislation has been changed in that the maximum penalties have been increased. But I suggest that, if a case were brought under proposed legislation incorporating my Amendment, this would be a very strong plea in mitigation.

There can be no mistake. The present situation in relation to the Aldwick Court affair could not be more unsatisfactory. Guilty men have got away with plunder. This would be a chance to rectify the position. It would also be a chance to get the President of the Board of Trade off the horns of an unhappy dilemma from which he has suffered some severe wounds that one could almost describe as self-inflicted.

For those reasons, I commend this Amendment to my hon. Friend, the Member for Folkestone and Hythe, and to the House.

The right hon. Member for Reigate (Sir J. Vaughan-Morgan) has quite fairly indicated that, in general, it is not the view of the House that retrospective legislation is desirable. But, in tabling his Amendment, he has done the House some service, in that it enables us to discuss one of the essential ingredients in our assessment of the efficacy of the proposed legislation which is before us.

It is well known that the legislation dates back to the 1920s and that, under it, only one prosecution has even been mounted, and that was as so long ago as 1928. It is also known that in 1952 the time limit of six months was introduced which, in the circumstances of the famous Duccio affair, enabled that ring in the event to escape unscathed.

Order. With respect, the hon. Gentleman must come to this Amendment, which is to put the effect of the proposed legislation back to 26th March.

I accept your point, Mr. Speaker.

The need for this legislation undoubtedly was indicated by the events which occurred on the date in the right hon. Gentleman's Amendment. Therefore, in view of the significance of what occurred on that date and the way in which undoubtedly it precipitated the introduction of the Bill, it is important to examine in some detail the circumstances of that sale and the subsequent events at the Paradise Motel, such as we know them.

On an occasion like this, it is extremely difficult for hon. Members to speak, knowing as they do that they are not aware of all the facts. This is particularly difficult today because, taking place simultaneously, there is an inquiry by the Parliamentary Commissioner into certain allegations of maladministration by the Board of Trade and, therefore, my hon. Friend the Minister of State is in an exceptionally difficult position in replying to the Amendment.

The right hon. Gentleman made a very fair point when he said that the Report which the Board of Trade has refused to disclose to the House is now in the hands of the Parliamentary Commissioner, who is no doubt able to examine it at leisure and in detail, whereas apparently the House of Commons will not be able at any time to read it and assess its significance. I feel that the Parliamentary Commissioner will be placed in certain difficulties when he presents his report. If he has to make certain deductions from the Board of Trade Report, I do not see how he can possibly make those deductions meaningful without quoting perhaps at some length from it, and we in this House have no way of telling how far his quotations are selective and partial because we shall not have seen the whole Report.

Order. We must come to the Amendment, which seeks to extend backwards the provisions of this legislation in respect of offences.

With respect, Mr. Speaker, I realise the danger of straying from the substance of the Amendment, and I may have indicated that all too clearly.

But the difficulty that we face is that the justification for the Amendment is that it is drawing attention to certain circumstances which previous legislation clearly was unable to cope with adequately. It is important to know whether, in the light of such knowledge as we possess of the incident in March, 1968, the proposed legislation will be any more adequate to cope with these types of difficulties. Without in some way illustrating the difficulties which present themselves to us, it is very hard to speak to the Amendment.

Order. May I help the hon. Gentleman? The hon. Gentleman may discuss the adequacy of the Measure on Third Reading. We are discussing now whether there should be an Amendment making the provisions retrospective.

I take your point, Mr. Speaker, and I will reserve any further comments on the general issue for Third Reading.

Perhaps I might briefly supplement the points that the right hon. Gentleman has made about the significance of the date in March, 1968, because that is quite fundamental to the Amendment.

On that date, it is now conclusively established that some very shady practices occurred. It is obvious that a painting which was known by a number of dealers to be a Duccio was sold purporting to be something quite different. It is also known that there was an attribution on the back of the painting which indicated that it was a Duccio.

I find it very hard to understand how experts competent to judge these matters who were called in to examine the works of art which were to be offered for auction, having looked at the painting and realised its importance, can possibly have failed to turn it over and look at the back of it. If they looked at the back of it, I find it hard to believe that they did not wonder why it was attributed to Duccio. This is one of the most sombre and unhappy circumstances of the whole affair.

Although the name of Mr. Julius Weitzner has been mentioned many times during the course of this long argument, it seems quite certain that others were involved in this attempt to defraud the vendor. In these very special circumstances, it does not seem unreasonable to urge the case for retrospective legislation.

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that the National Gallery should not be faulted for purchasing for the nation a painting which it is clear was, with the absurd market valuation we have today, worth the price paid for it. There has been no defrauding of the public purse. The painting is an asset to the nation. It is undoubtedly a work of considerable artistic significance, and there is no doubt that if it were sold tomorrow it would be sold for a greater sum than that recently paid for it.

It is, however, of some significance to recall that the Board of Trade was aware of allegations that a ring had been operating, and that those allegations were made not only by the hon. Members but by respected members of art dealers' associations. It appears that sufficiently urgent action was not taken until the six months period had expired: one can almost imagine the glee with which those involved in the ring must have awaited that terminal date. I feel that as far as the House can do anything in the matter, it should wipe the smile from those people's faces.

It is a matter of some surprise to myself that I should be speaking in support of an Amendment seeking retrospective action, because if there is one thing that I abhor, and one thing that I am certain most hon. Members abhor, it is the whole principle of retrospective legislation. The House must therefore take it that prima facie there are extremely strong grounds for tabling this Amendment, and extremely strong reasons for two or three hon. Members to find it necessary to support it.

I am fully aware that our argument for retrospective legislation in this regard is based on the special circumstances of the case referred to by my right hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Sir J. Vaughan-Morgan), with which he was throughout the whole proceedings so very closely involved. I cannot, as a mere layman, say that I was involved to the same extent as he, but I regard this case possibly from the point of view that many members of the public regard it. I know that at the time there was very widespread discontent and dissatisfaction resulting from a feeling that a real injustice had been done to individuals who, because of the then state of the law, were not able to defend their rights, and who, when they saw their possession sold for a very large sum of money, were not able to get any benefit at all from that sum.

As the hon. Member for Bebington (Mr. Brooks) has said, the Bill has been largely promulgated in the House and has largely reached the present stage because of the case mentioned by my right hon. Friend. There must be a prima facie case for saying that if it were necessary to promulgate a Bill to deal with the circumstances arising from that case, it is right that that Bill should be so broad as to bring that case within the net. My right hon. Friend was perfectly right when he said that one reason given by the President of the Board of Trade for not being able to pursue the matter and ensure that justice was done was that the time limit within the Act made it impossible for any further steps to be taken.

Quite apart from the narrow circumstances of that case, which, in my view, would fully justify this retrospective provision, a far wider issue is involved. It arises from the totally new circumstances in which auction sales for antiques of this nature are carried out. Only 10 or 15 years ago the sums involved in such auctions were relatively small: the big figures, where they occurred, probably did so only in the London auctions. Today, there is hardly an object over 30 years old that is not regarded as an antique—

With respect, the hon. Member is advancing an argument for Third Reading, I think, and not for this Amendment.

I am sorry Mr. Speaker. I was trying to show that times have so changed that cases of the type mentioned should be brought within the law, because the general circumstances in which auctions are now held are such that it is necessary that the public should see that such cases cannot again occur.

These auctions are now taking place in almost every market town, and very large sums of money change hands. There must be hundreds of cases that we never hear about in which an individual does not get the price he should for an objet d'art. I would justify retrospection purely on the ground that it is essential that at the earliest possible moment a case should be brought in court so that the public can see that as a result of this Measure they now have the necessary protection.

My right hon. Friend said that if the Measure were made retrospective some general injustice might follow because the new penalties are substantially in excess of those current, but thought that this fact might be taken into account as a matter of mitigation. He suggested that it would then be competent for the judge to mitigate the sentence having this point in mind. That might be perfectly possible for any court to do but, considering the amount of profit involved in the case that has been referred to, I am not certain that a fine of a mere £400 or some short term of imprisonment would be considered by anyone to be excessive. I do not therefore attach any very great importance to the penalty aspect.

The further point has been made that there is no need for this retrospective provision because the matter is in the hands of the Ombudsman. I do not see how that can be a valid argument. I believe that we are far too apt today to try to deal with such matters by the administrative mechanism and to leave aside the normal processes of the law. I have no doubt that the Ombudsman will do a first-class job, and will look into all matters and give a very fair and just report, but there is absolutely nothing that can quite take the place of the regular processes of the law before a regularly established court.

Because I believe this case to be of such outstanding importance and the circumstances surrounding it to be so exceptional, I would be perfectly prepared to make an exception to a general rule which I believe has the utmost validity, and I would give full support to this Amendment. It would allow us to know with certainty whether justice was done or not done in the case in which my right hon. Friend was so closely involved.

I have no great wish to delay the business of the House—there is much to be considered in the course of the day—but my experience of the Bill has kept me in a fairly constant condition of irritation. That, as the House will agree, is most unusual. I am an extremely pacific Member, even meek, but I recall that during Committee, although this is a Private Member's Bill, members of the Opposition party twice attempted to delay proceedings by moving the Adjournment of the sitting.

Order. I too am a pacific man, but the hon. Member must come to the Amendment.

As one pacific man to another, I come to it with great rapidity. I will leave the reasons for my earlier irritation, but I am now irritated by this Amendment.

The Amendment has been chosen to deal with a specific case, a case which we all agree is a bad one, and from which conclusions follow, and which might involve conclusions about the manner in which the auction business and buying and selling of works of art and antiquities proceed. I have no time for auction rings, and I am not trying to speak for them, but the business of buying and selling of works of art sometimes seems to lead to a distortion of values. We find people concentrating sometimes more on money than the art value of an object as a piece of art.

The reasons for objecting to this Amendment are two, and both are based on natural justice. It was rightly said by the right hon. Member for Reigate (Sir J. Vaughan-Morgan) that Governments of both parties have been obliged from time to time to pass retrospective legislation. I accept that there are circumstances in which retrospection is necessary, in which it must be done because the enormity of the offence or the particular conditions under which it arose demand retrospection. I cannot see that this is such a situation.

What is being asked here is that the legislation should be so altered that two things will follow. First, the penalty which might have been faced by people some months ago would be increased, and increased in such a way as to catch them. These men presumably faced a situation under the existing legal condition, no doubt taking account of the risk involved, and proceeded to business on the basis of their calculation. We are now asked to say that they got away with it and should be brought in and severely punished. I cannot accept that. I will illustrate my view by an example.

11.45 a.m.

I wonder how Opposition Members would react to the following circumstances. Suppose a couple of trade unionists published an article critical of their leader and were hauled before their branch, which fined them. The leader might say, "That is absolutely dreadful. They must be banned for life from holding office in the union". I can imagine the sort of uproar which hon. Members opposite would raise in such a case. Although hypothetical, it could happen. The idea of deciding that the punishment is not enough and twisting rules in the hope of making it fit is suggested. The right hon. Member by this Amendment would twist the rules to claw back something from an unsavoury situation.

Second, and more important, the offence, if there was an offence, is time-expired. The suggestion is that people who normally and naturally under the due process of law expect to be free would be put back in jeopardy. I cannot see that that fits in with any conception of natural justice. I am particularly surprised that this should come from hon. Members opposite. With all their faults, they pride themselves on the fervour with which they uphold natural justice. They are right to do so, and many hon. Members on this side of the House do the same.

Would my hon. Friend agree that there are some people in society who will commit a most heinous crime on the basis that they will not be harshly punished? If they thought the punishment would be harder and even retrospective, would they not desist from committing such a crime?

That might well be true. So far as I have been able to follow that intervention I agree with it, but it is not quite what I was talking about.

The hon. Member will admit that when this crime was committed the participants knew perfectly well that they were breaking the law. They knew they were committing a crime. Therefore, the strict case against retrospection must be very greatly watered down.

I agree with the hon. Member for Clitheroe (Sir Frank Pearson) that those concerned in this case behaved extremely badly. I am not attracted to these people in any way. This is capitalism at its worst, and I do not like it one bit. But these men acted badly within a certain context of law and got away with it. It is very annoying to all of us, but the whole legal system in the Western world is of that sort. That legal framework is laid down, and within it one behaves properly. Only in extremely special circumstances can one alter the context because someone has got away with it.

The hon. Member is making a very serious argument. I agree with much that he has said, but can he think a little deeper about the reasons for the Amendment? I know that he would not wish to take up the time of the House, or his own time, in discussing something on which there is general agreement, but—I am speculating—might the Amendment not have been tabled to enable the Government in some way to raise the veil on events which took place after the Aldwick Court sale? Is it to enable the Government to raise the veil in a way in which so far they have failed to do? I am trying to help the hon. Member.

The hon. Member is helping me. I had a brief dialogue with Mr. Speaker at the start of my speech, in which he suggested that to pursue this kind of course would lure me out of order.

That intervention will explain to the House why I am so irritated by this whole business. There are, no doubt, umpteen ways in which the veil, as the hon. Member calls it, can be raised. But it is wrong to fool around with this Bill, first of all trying to adjourn the Committee, then getting a report and trying to adjourn it, and fiddling around in this way.

If the hon. Gentlemen wish to make the law retrospective let them do so. But if they wish to raise the veil, let them not put down Amendments making the law retrospective. If the thing can be done, let it be done straight or not at all. Unfortunately, I am more irritated than I was even at the beginning, though I am not by nature an irritable man.

The whole point is first that it is wrong to increase the penalties retrospectively. Second, it is wrong to remove the protection of the time expiry, even though that protection sometimes assists people whom we do not like one bit. The whole process of our law is based on giving that kind of protection to people who might be guilty. It is wrong to tamper with it.

I would put one other thought about the time expiry. It is only because of the protection offered by the existing law that certain information has come into the hands of the Board of Trade. It is a fact also, whether we like it or not, that often agents of the law obtain their information from malefactors of one sort or another. They often do so under a variety of protections and deals over many of which it is best to draw a veil—indeed, over many of which it is a mistake to raise the veil, though I am not saying that that is the case in this matter.

What is certain is that a good deal of the information which the Board of Trade possesses concerning the operation of these rings would not have been available to it had it not been for the cover of the time expiry. We know this from the various Questions and Answers given in the House.

This whole attempt, whether it is a real attempt to change the law, for which I would have some respect, or whether it is a "phoney" attempt, as the hon. Member seems to suggest to me, is wrong. I agree with the hon. Member for Clitheroe that the correct manoeuvre here is to adhere to the normal processes of law. What is being suggested is an extremely abnormal process of law, and it should be immediately and totally rejected.

Perhaps I can soothe the troubled breast of the hon. Member for Luton (Mr. Howie) by saying that I also am against the Amendment. On the other hand, I am wholly in favour of what my hon. Friends did in Committee in trying to adjourn in order to get information from the Board of Trade about this matter, information which ought to have been given.

I declare an interest as an auctioneer—but, unfortunately, not an auctioneer of these high-priced works of art. My auctioneering is largely confined to cattle, sheep and pigs. Nevertheless, in auctioneering of any worth whatever dealers, auctioneers, vendors and purchasers are put at risk if there is any suspicion of a ring.

The previous legislation has been quite ineffective. Whatever has been said on this side of the House, I do not believe that it will be any help at all to make this sort of legislation retrospective. Auctions which are properly advertised, with the right knowledge behind them, with proper attribution, and with the right kind of expertise among people who are buying, are the best way for the vendor to get the best price for his object, whatever he is selling.

But when recently a well-known expert poured cold water on the attribution of many Rembrandts, how are we to say that in 50 years' time somebody will not say that this was not a Duccio at all? I do not know about that, but I am quite certain that many works of art which at present are hung in our galleries are probably wrongly attributed. Much of the value of works of art is attributed to fashion. It is a fashion to buy a certain artist's paintings.

When one comes to this particular sale, the Amendment seeks to deal with the people concerned. I do not know whether or not the matter has yet been proved in a court of law. [An HON. MEMBER: "It has not".] No, it cannot have been, because the Board of Trade has not given the right information. The painting was sent by the local museum, which could have had free advice from any of the major museums in London. It is a pity that it did not back its interest, which I understand it had in this work of art, by asking for somebody to come along and advise it.

I was wholly in favour of my hon. Friends pressing as hard as possible for the information to be given to the House, but, on the other hand, I am dead against the retrospection which the Amendment would bring about. It is a dangerous precedent which my hon. Friends would regret in the future.

I have no hesitation in supporting the Bill, but at the moment we are concerned with a narrow Amendment, whether or not we shall make retrospective the severe penalties which, quite rightly in my view, are being introduced by the Bill.

The hon. Member for Richmond, Surrey (Mr. A. Royle), in an intervention, said that there was some other purpose behind the framing of this Amendment.

I am not one to divulge or even to know, what is in the mind of my right hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Sir J. Vaughan-Morgan). I had no hand in drafting the Amendment and I do not know what were his reasons. For the assistance of hon. Members I was speculating as to the reason for the Amendment being put down.

I was not criticising the hon. Member, but since his name is attached to the Amendment—because he is allied on the Amendment with his right hon. Friend the Member for Reigate—I attached importance to his intervention.

It is quite legitimate to put down an Amendment of this kind, not merely for the immediate purpose of discussing the merits or demerits of retrospective legislation, but it is legitimate to use the machinery of the Amendment, as the hon. Member and his supporters have been doing, to try to elicit further information about the Duccio affair. I am not saying anything about that; I know very little about it beyond the fact that the circumstances surrounding that affair have caused the greatest possible indignation in the country and, as everybody knows, that episode prompted and inspired the Bill which will have salutary benefits to the community in the future.

The Amendment involves a matter of great constitutional principle, namely, the circumstances in which retrospective legislation of any kind is justified in this House. The right hon. Gentleman, and even more so, the hon. Member for Clitheroe (Sir Frank Pearson), realised the difficulty. They have tried to face the difficulty, they have expressed their abhorrence in principle of any retrospective legislation, and they have attempted to persuade the House that the particular circumstances of this case justify the House in making an exception to the generally recognised objections to retrospective legislation, as my hon. Friend the Member for Luton (Mr. Howie) has said.

Therefore, it is not inopportune, as the whole subject of retrospective legislation has exercised the minds of those in the House for many centuries, that we should once again try to clear our minds about the principles that lie behind retrospective legislation.

At the outset, one must draw a distinction between retrospective legislation in civil matters and in criminal matters. There have been several instances in which the House has recognised that in civil matters, where the personal rights of individuals are concerned, as distinct from criminal law, retrospective legislation is not only justified but necessary.

May I remind the House of two recent instances which were debated in the House? The Burmah Oil case gave rise to considerable agitation in this House and in another place. It was concerned with whether or not companies were entitled to large sums of money. This House, by a majority, perhaps against the convictions of many of us, came to the conclusion that Parliament was justified in passing what I thought at the time was the most glaring Act of retrospective civil legislation that the House has ever passed. Nevertheless, we did it. Another example was when Parliament decided to reverse the decision of the House of Lords sitting in its appellate capacity in the famous case of Rookes v. Barnard with regard to trade union law.

There have been other relatively minor matters of legislation where Parliament without demur has thought it right to legislate retrospectively to correct legal decisions in the courts which have pro- duced results contrary to what Parliament intended. There have been numerous instances, with which I will not trouble the House, where the law has been thought to be of a certain nature. Because of a judicial decision, perhaps on a technical point, the House of Lords has decided otherwise, and Parliament has thought it was justified in legislating, and had a duty to legislate, retrospectively to put the law back into the form which Parliament intended and in the form in which most people had thought it was.

All those were civil cases of retrospective legislation, and Parliament has always tried to draw a distinction between justifying retrospective legislation in civil matters, on the one hand, and, on the other, retrospective legislation which affects the criminal law, either by creating new crimes—Parliament can create new crimes but should not create them retrospectively, and ought to be circumspect before increasing retrospectively penalties for existing crimes—

rose—

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman in a few moments. I want to pursue this line of thought as it is relevant to the matter we are discussing.

Before coming on to the criminal law, it is pertinent to observe that there is an intermediate class of legislation between the civil law matters about which I have been talking and the criminal law, namely, financial legislation. Hon. Members will recognise that there have been numerous occasions on which we have had to consider in relation to Finance Bills whether or not financial enactments should have retrospective effect. Successive Governments have realised that exceptional circumstances have justified Parliament in legislating retrospectively from time to time in matters of fiscal legislation, but only cautiously, never capriciously.

The underlying justification for retrospective legislation in Finance Acts is that in a sense all Finance Bills have some retrospective effect because, in so far as people have regulated their affairs in accordance with the financial arrangements which they thought existed, no one is entitled to assume, for example, that the rates of Estate Duty will continue to be the same. Therefore, it has been recognised that some changes in our financial arrangements have an inherent and natural retrospective effect.

But there have been other cases in which the Chancellor of the Exchequer, perhaps after giving due warning, has announced that he may find it necessary in a subsequent year to introduce measures on tax avoidance with retrospective effect. Those occasions have given rise to debate and to division of opinion, but such measures have from time to time been passed by Government majorities in Governments of different political persuasions.

There are, therefore, several precedents for retrospective legislation in civil and financial matters, but, so far as I am aware, there has not for a very long time past been any credence given to the thought that Parliament should in any circumstances pass retrospective legislation of a criminal character. My memory may serve me wrong, but the last occasion on which it was attempted was in 1641, when this House, as you will remember, Mr. Speaker, since you have written a book on the subject, sought unsuccessfully to impeach Thomas Went-worth, Earl of Stafford. The impeachment failed because Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Stafford, had not committed any offence—

Order. I hesitate to intervene in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman, but I hope that he will not discuss the merits of the Wentworth case.

No, I will not discuss the merits. I was saying that as far as I know—and you no doubt, Mr. Speaker, will be the first to correct me if I am wrong—that was the last occasion in which retrospective legislation was attempted. As you will remember, the impeachment having failed, an Act of Attainder was passed so that Thomas Wentworth could be executed for having done something which was not a crime when he did it but for which Parliament thought he should be condemned to death.

Order. Far be it from me to correct the right hon. Gentleman's history, but we are discussing whether this provision shall apply to certain cases on or after 26th March, 1968—a little later than 1641.

I am seeking to explain how very rarely and in what different circumstances this House has ever attempted to deal retrospectively with criminal acts.

rose —

I will give way to my hon. Friend in a moment.

There is one other possible precedent for retrospective action in the criminal field, and that relates to the Nuremburg trials. Some of us thought that it was very wrong to participate with other nations in bringing to trial the German war criminals for acts which were not criminal by international law or any law at the time when those acts were committed.

My right hon. Friend has anticipated my intervention telepathically. Will he not agree that while many people may have felt that this was wrong, many more almost certainly felt that it was right, and in any case it was done?

In any case it was done.

I thought that I would be remiss in dealing with the arguments of the hon. Member for Clitheroe (Sir Frank Pearson) if I omitted that reference to a case in which it could be said that the House has been a participant in retrospective legislation of a criminal character. But, with that exception, I am not aware that the House has ever adopted the view that any circumstances, however exceptional, could justify retrospective legislation of a criminal nature. I will explain why.

The reason is this. To do so would be acting—the hon. Gentleman will appreciate the phrase—in personam; it would be passing an Act to incriminate one or more individuals. That ought not to be done in any criminal legislation because criminal legislation per se is legislation of a general character applicable to the general community, and it is wrong in principle to pass legislation aimed at a particular individual. That has always been one of the cardinal features of our criminal law. It should be general in its application.

It has been conceded by the hon. Member for Clitheroe and the right hon.

Member for Reigate that this Amendment is not intended to be of general or public application, but is designed to deal with one or two, or perhaps a few, specific individuals. That seems to me to be thoroughly objectionable in principle.

While I have the greatest respect for the right hon. Gentleman's legal knowledge and I am certain that on this point he is absolutely right in principle, may I ask him to comment on the fact that these very individuals will now be under scrutiny, probably by the Ombudsman, outside the normal processes of law? Is not this a matter that ought to be given consideration?

rose—

Order. We cannot have an intervention upon an intervention.

In answer to the hon. Member for Clitheroe, I would say this. I would welcome the investigation being conducted by the Ombudsman. I do not know what results it would produce. I hope that it would have the desirable effect of bringing to the light of day the circumstances concerning this Duccio transaction, but it does not seem to me to follow that whatever facts are revealed by the Ombudsman's report should then be used to punish individuals who are found guilty of something which was not punishable at the time when the offence was committed. That does not seem to me a logical argument.

I find the right hon. Gentleman's argument impressive and interesting. I sought to intervene with my hon. Friend the Member for Clitheroe (Sir Frank Pearson), because the Parliamentary Commissioner is not investigating the circumstances of 26th March. I wanted to make that clear.

I am obliged to the right hon. Gentleman. I confess that I am not very familiar with what the Ombudsman is doing or, indeed, with the details of the Duccio affair. That, I think, is veiled in a great deal of obscurity. I know that there has been a great deal of indignation and that it is the occasion for this Bill, but I thought that I might be out of order if I said too much about the Duccio affair.

I am much more concerned with this Amendment, which deals with a vital matter of constitutional principle, and to invite the House to consider the argument of the right hon. Member for Reigate and the hon. Member for Clitheroe, whether we could conceivably have here anything which would justify, because of its exceptional character, a departure from what the House has always regarded as a fundamental principle of natural justice with regard to retrospective legislation in criminal matters.

The right hon. Gentleman suggested that I might intervene later, and I am grateful to him. I have studied the old Bill and the present Bill. The actual crime is exactly the same in both cases. The only thing that this Bill does is to alter the penalties and the time when the prosecution can take place. It does not alter the crime.

I appreciate that. If the House will bear with me, I think that, in fairness to the hon. Gentleman, one ought to face that argument.

In my submission, there can be no possible distinction between the abhorrence one has for retrospective legislation which creates a new crime, and retrospective legislation which increases the penalties for an existing crime. The arguments which make either suggestion abhorrent must be the same. If we are dealing with what was never a crime but was only a trivial offence, and it. is suggested that because of a glaring case which has come to our notice the penalties should be increased to victimise an individual and that we should legislate retrospectively in order to do so, we shall be doing something pari passu with introducing a new crime to punish someone for doing something which was quite innocent at the time it was done.

I can see no distinction in principle, therefore, between the repugnance of making new crimes retrospectively, on the one hand, and, on the other, increasing savagely the penalties for existing crimes.

I should not like anyone to take it from anything which I have said that I have sympathy for those who were guilty of what was done in connection with the Duccio offence, and I am glad to think that, if we pass the Bill, anyone who attempts to do the same sort of thing in the future will expose himself to serious and just penalties.

If one can get the evidence.

If one can get the evidence. But that is the same with all crimes.

On this limited issue, which raises the question whether we should act retrospectively, it is right also to add that, however indignant we are—even, perhaps, the more indignant we are—at the action of those who were involved in the Duccio affair, the more necessary it is, not the less necessary, that we should restrain our natural feeling of indignation about what they have done and not allow that feeling to prompt us to support an Amendment to introduce retrospective legislation of a criminal character which, in my view, flies counter to all the highest principles which the House has recognised for a very long time.

Once we accept any set of circumstances as justifying an exception of this kind, we start on a slippery path. I shall not outline what has happened in other countries. I merely urge upon the House that we start on a slippery path once a precedent of this kind is introduced because, perhaps, there have been some exceptional circumstances. Such a precedent could be used in the future in a way which would defeat the liberties of the subject, which depend upon an individual's being able to act in accordance with the law of the land as it stands, being subject to whatever criminal sanctions exist at the time, and not be thought to be exposed to the possibility of Parliament subsequently changing those laws retrospectively to his disadvantage.

I appreciate the splendid argument which my right hon. Friend is putting, but one or two things have passed through my mind, and I should like to hear his comment—

Order. If one or two things have passed through the hon. Gentleman's mind, he will have an opportunity to speak. Interventions must be brief.

Yes, Mr. Speaker; and I shall be brief.

What concerns me is that, according to our code of law, appeals are considered retrospectively. I should like my right hon. Friend's comment on that.

With respect, I think that I should strain the indulgence of the House if I were to embark on that subject.

The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Islington, East (Sir Eric Fletcher) called this a limited issue, though he showed that the principles involved are far from limited and are of great consequence.

I find myself very much in agreement with what he said, and very much in disagreement with the propositions put by my right hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Sir J. Vaughan-Morgan), in moving the Amendment. I say that, however, not because I have a general lack of sympathy with the case which my right hon. Friend put. No one has spoken with sympathy towards what happened in this case, and no one yet has spoken with sympathy about the lack of information given by the Government regarding what happened.

I hope that the suggestion made by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Surrey (Mr. A. Royle) will be taken up when the Minister intervenes and that he gives the House the sort of information for which it has asked. Nevertheless, having said that, I am unable to continue my sympathy with my right hon. Friend further than that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, South-West (Mr. Hawkins), talked of dangerous precedents. The more one looks at the Amendment, the more dangerous the precedents are seen to be. In moving the Amendment, my right hon. Friend the Member for Reigate quoted Professor Goodhart on the subject of retrospective legislation. He said, if I understood him aright, that the objection was to making something illegal which was legal at the time, justifying his Amendment on the ground that the act done, if there were a guilty act, was illegal at the time and, therefore, there was no objection to retrospective legislation in this connection.

There is no new crime being created.

Precisely. That is what I understood my right hon. Friend to say, and that is the point which I have in mind. The fact that a new crime as such has not been created is not in itself a reason for accepting retrospective legislation on a matter like this. I thought that the right hon. Member for Islington, East put that point well.

There would be two consequences flowing from the Amendment. The first would be to remove a time limit. Time limits operate in a wide range of the law. I cannot see why, if it were considered desirable to remove a time limit in this instance, the principle could not be used right across the whole field of the law. It would make an enoromous difference. That is my first point, that time limits are necessary in the law and to alter them retrospectively is in itself wrong.

Second, not only is there the question of removing a time limit but there is also the question of altering the penalty. Clause 1(1) would allow incidents of this kind to go to a higher court on indictment, so that not only is the penalty as such increased but the whole range of punishments available to the courts is enormously increased.

The more one thinks about the proposition, the more it becomes obvious that a precedent of this kind would be wildly dangerous. The effect could be retrospectively to turn an offence which at the moment is, perhaps, punishable by only a nominal penalty—one could visualise, perhaps, the analogy of a parking offence or something of that sort—into an offence which, to carry the thing to its logical extreme, would merit the death penalty. Such a change would offend against every principle in which we believe.

Under the 1927 Act, the punishment was a term of imprisonment not exceeding six months, a fine of £400, or both.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. That makes my point; six months' imprisonment is the maximum which a magistrates' court can impose, and that supports the proposition which I am putting.

For those essential reasons, namely, that the proposition is that the time limit should be removed and that the penalty should be considerably altered retrospectively—I agree here with the right hon. Member for Islington, East—it seems to me that we should not allow any personal distaste in this matter to induce us to change the law retrospectively.

I very much agree with the right hon. Gentleman also in what he said about the personal character of the proposed change. He used the Latin phrase. I regard it as wise to keep off Latin in the House, but, if I understood what he was saying, it was that we must at all costs refrain from altering the law or introducing legislation in such a way as either actually to aim, or to appear to aim, at an individual. The right hon. Gentleman gave historical analogies. I shall not do this, even though I do not think that his analogies were perhaps as strong as they could have been.

We are being asked to put in the Bill a specific date. As my right hon. Friend said in moving the Amendment, it is specifically related to a specific event. Suppose the matter were tried by a jury, and the jury knew that Parliament had altered the law to bring that event within the law. Could that jury be absolutely open-minded about the case?

The very fact that Parliament had specifically brought the case within the law could not be thought of by 12 good men and true as a neutral fact. They would think that there must be, if not an actual statement, at least an implication of a statement of guilt in this case. We are enormously careful, as a House, to avoid any interference in the courts of law. The last thing we want to do is so to frame the law as to give the slightest impression that the result of a court case is anticipated one way or the other.

Whatever our personal feelings on the matter, it is essential for this reason, too, that we should, perhaps with reluctance, but on the soundest constitutional principles, reject the Amendment.

I have some difficulty in dealing with the Amendment, because the hon. Member for Richmond, Surrey (Mr. A. Royle) told me that the object of putting down the Amendment, to which he was surprised to find his name attached, was to enable me to raise the veil—

On a point of Order. Mr. Speaker. I think that my intervention was misunderstood. Of course I was not surprised that my name was attached, but I did not want to give the impression that I was giving the views of my right hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Sir J. Vaughan-Morgan).

I note the hon. Gentleman's clarification. But he said that the object of the Amendment was to enable me to raise the veil on certain events to which reference has been made in the debate. I think that the hon. Gentleman is optimistic. After all, we have considered these events in so far as you, Mr. Speaker, and Chairmen in Committees have permitted, on various occasions, and Questions have been asked in the House. I cannot go beyond what has been said in the House and in Committee.

The right hon. Member for Reigate (Sir J. Vaughan-Morgan) attempted to draw certain implications from what my right hon. Friend has said in the House. Nothing my right hon. Friend has said implied any judgment one way or the other on what happened at Aldwick Court on 26th March, 1968.

The House has listened with interest to the debate, and we are grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington, East (Sir Eric Fletcher), my hon. Friend the Member for Luton (Mr. Howie) and the hon. Members for Norfolk, South-West (Mr. Hawkins) and Chelsea (Mr. Worsley) for explaining the real objections to the Amendment, which I think the House must sustain if it puts aside its feelings, and even its passions, about the event that concerns it and considers simply the merits of the case.

The House is particularly grateful to my right hon. Friend, who placed the case before it in a way that I think to be absolutely irrefutable. It would be unwise for me to attempt to follow him. His arguments were so persuasive that I think they must carry the House, but I shall briefly emphasise the main points against the Amendment.

First, it places in peril men who were, by the law of this country, outside peril.

Second, it increases the penalities retrospectively. The right hon. Member for Reigate said that the fact that penalties were increased retrospectively could be used in a plea of mitigation in the courts. Possibly it could, but that does not seem to me to be any justification in justice or in principle for increasing penalties retrospectively. I believe that the House would be prepared to proceed on its own judgment of the right and justice of that case. But I would draw attention to Article 7(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights, which provides inter alia:

"Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the criminal offence was committed."

The third objection, which was also made by my right hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Chelsea, is that the Amendment would be directed against specific individuals and is objectionable in principle on that account. I was interested to hear my right hon. Friend's account of the events in 1641, in which I once had an interest, and I am impressed by the accuracy of his memory.

I hope that the House will listen to the pleas of my right hon. Friend and other hon. Members. The Amendment is clearly wrong in principle, and the House could not pass it. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will withdraw it.

All hon. Members, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Sir J. Vaughan-Morgan), who moved the Amendment, are well aware of the dangers of retrospective legislation, but my right hon. Friend has done us a service by giving us the opportunity to debate the matter this morning. I am only sorry that the Government have not taken the opportunity afforded them to tell us a bit more of what occurred on the famous occasion with which we are concerned.

I was also sorry that the right hon. Member for Islington, East (Sir Eric Fletcher), to whose speech we listened with such interest, was able only sketchily and briefly to give us the benefit of his historical researches. It was a pleasure to hear him speak again. I have not heard him speak in the House for many years, and I hope to have the opportunity of hearing him at greater length on another occasion, when he will be able to deploy his case more fully.

I am always opposed in principle to retrospection. A number of right hon. and hon. Members have pointed out the objections to retrospective legislation, but some of the arguments advanced against the Amendment have been over-stated. I suspect that my right hon. Friend was not so anxious to increase the penalties against anyone who might have committed an offence at Aldwick Court, but was worried about the time limit. The real tragedy, if an offence was committed there, is not that the penalties were so low but that the Board of Trade was dilatory and did not bring an action within six months.

I shall not go into that in detail, because the Minister of State will at once leap to his feet and say that this is grossly unfair because the Ombudsman is considering the matter and may say that the Board of Trade behaved perfectly. We shall await the remarks of the Ombudsman on the matter.

The hon. Gentleman is not awaiting the remarks of the Ombudsman. He is making his own judgment.

I am awaiting those remarks with great interest, If they prove that the Board of Trade behaved perfectly in the matter, I am sure that we shall all be very relieved.

My right hon. Friend showed this morning what an extraordinary case this was, and he advanced powerful reasons for saying that the extraordinary time limit of six months under the old Act should have been removed. The time limit is the only point that really matters here. After all, if there was no criminal offence at Aldwick Court on 26th March, or anywhere else subsequently, no criminal prosecutions could be launched. My right hon. Friend would be only too happy with the previous penalties if there were.

I was surprised by one remark of the Minister of State. He said that at no time had the President of the Board of Trade expressed any comment on whether anything had happened at Aldwick Court. I draw the hon. Gentleman's attention to HANSARD of 6th November last. The President of the Board of Trade, referring to the help needed in the inquiries, said:

"… many people … it now emerges, have for some months past known not only about the Aldwick Court case, but about the activities of this 'ring' in particular."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 6th November, 1968, Vol. 772. c. 891.]

If the right hon. Gentleman was not then making a statement that there was a ring, then that was a most extraordinary remark for him to make. Now I cannot accept that, on subsequent occasions, he has taken the attitude which the Minister of State has just said that he has done.

I myself would not wish to press the Amendment and I hope that my right hon. Friend the Member for Reigate will feel able not to do so. But it is a tragedy that we have not been able to have the full story published. There is here a serious anomaly. As the hon. Member for Bebington (Mr. Brooks), who is in favour of the Amendment, has pointed out, the Parliamentary Commissioner, a servant of the House, will know what took place while the House will not. Is the Minister of State in a position to answer the numerous queries put on 18th March following a statement by the President of the Board of Trade? The right hon. Gentleman said then that he would consider a number of matters, notably whether he was prepared to show the Report to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition. This aspect may be more appropriate for debate on Third Reading, however, and perhaps the Minister of State will answer then.

The real tragedy is the fact that the six months' time limit was exceeded and that more energetic action was not somehow taken to get round it. It is not a question of penalties or of making people criminals who would not otherwise have been criminals, but if only action had been taken within the six months hon. Members on both sides would have been happier, because action was certainly needed.

Let there be no doubt that we in this House are disturbed about the situation. I hope that no one outside imagines that we do not take the subject of auction rings very seriously. We look with abhorrence on the scandals of auction rings which we suspect have taken place and which meet with the strongest disapproval of the House of Commons. Let it be understood that, if the Bill does not stamp them out, further action will have to be taken.

I fully support the reaction of my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West (Mr. Channon) to the Minister of State's speech. Many of us concerned about this matter from the beginning have been worried by the apparent failure of Ministers to come clean with the House about it. Perhaps through my own fault, I apparently gave the impression earlier that in some way I did not know that my name was attached to the Amendment. Of course I knew. I wanted to make clear to the House that I supported the Amendment so as to enable the Minister of State to have the opportunity, which I am sad that he did not take—of lifting the veil a little more on the events of last year following the Aldwick Court sale.

I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman has not done so. Although, as he said, there have been many exchanges on the Floor of the House and in Committee on the Bill, he has not answered many of the questions put to him. Some of those put to him about the Aldwick Court sale were answered in a perfectly accurate way, but, nevertheless, in a way which some hon. Members may feel rather strange.

I will quote one reply he gave because it has an important bearing on the Amendment which would bring the Aldwick Court case within the remit of the Bill. On 3rd April, I asked the President of the Board of Trade

"… what request he has received to publish his Report on auction rings from the Society of London Art Dealers."

The Minister of State replied:

"My right hon. Friend has received no request for publication from this Society. They wrote to my right hon. Friend on 24th February asking whether the Report would be published."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 3rd April, 1969; Vol. 781, c. 643.]

The Answer was technically correct and accurate. That is exactly what the letter said. But if one reads the whole letter carefully, one sees that the theme was a general request to publish the Report. That is clearly what was being asked. If the letter is read in its entirety, one sees, as the hon. Gentleman knows, that it asks the Minister to publish, but if one words a reply in the way in which the hon. Gentleman worded his on 3rd April—

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Are we in order in discussing the rights or wrongs of the President of the Board of Trade publishing or not publishing the Report? If so, I have a great deal to say, but I would have thought that it was out of order in this debate.

The right hon. Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Strauss) rose to his feet a second before I began to rise to mine on the same issue. We are discussing the Amendment and I hope that the hon. Member for Richmond, Surrey (Mr. A. Royle) will now come to it.

The Amendment would make the Bill effective as from March last year, and, that being so, it would involve the Aldwick Court sale. The Report which the Board of Trade received about the Aldwick Court sale surely has a close relevance to what I am saying on the Amendment.

Order. I am most sympathetic to the hon. Member and, indeed, am listening sympathetically to the whole of this excellent debate, but, nevertheless, we cannot now debate the failure of the Government to publish this Report.

I am obliged, Mr. Speaker.

Those of us who put down the Amendment are bitterly disappointed that the Minister of State has not seen fit to lift the veil further and to clarify the situation about which so much concern has been expressed this morning, and previously, regarding the events of last year. I share the Minister of State's views on retrospective legislation and I hope that my right hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Sir J. Vaughan-Morgan) will, therefore, withdraw the Amendment.

I think that we have made clear the distress and concern we still feel about this affair. My hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West has underlined the feelings of right hon. and hon. Members on both sides that the Government still seem in some way to be covering up the events which took place after the Aldwick Court sale.

Any private Member would be flattered to have such interest taken in his Bill on a Friday. I am sure that you, Mr. Speaker, with your great experience of the House, would agree.

I should like to thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Sir J. Vaughan-Morgan) for moving the Amendment and for the great help he has given me in the process of drafting the Bill. As you have said, Mr. Speaker, the debate has been extremely interesting. It has ranged between whether we want to bring justice by back-dating the right to institute proceedings, or whether we should stand by the normal principles against retrospection.

My right hon. Friend made a good case fer his Amendment and my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West (Mr. Channon) made a good case for withdrawing the Amendment. I have had the opportunity of studying the debates on the 1927 Bill. At that time, hon. Members were talking about not paintings, but bulls and sheep, and they were concerned with the formation of rings so that farmers would not get fair prices at auction sales.

My right hon. Friend said that we were not altering the crime as a crime. If the Amendment had proposed that we should, every hon. Member would have opposed it. I shudder to think what laws might be amended. We might find ourselves doing 12 months' imprisonment for saying what we thought of the Prime Minister, for instance. But my right hon. Friend has suggested that we should alter the time limit for a prosecution.

Unfortunately, as the Amendment is drafted, it would also alter the penalties which could be inflicted, and I therefore hope that my right hon. Friend will agree to my suggestion. I am encouraged to think that no one is opposed to the Bill and I hope that it will get its Third Reading today. There will be an opportunity in another place for what has been said today to be considered, and the House may think it right for another place to alter the period while not increasing the penalties. That would avoid retrospection in respect of the penalties. I am not enough of a lawyer to know whether that would be possible, but that is my suggestion.

This issue has aroused much passion. My right hon. Friend the Member for Reigate, my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West and my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Surrey (Mr. A. Royle) have done much research into this matter. Some legislation is made retrospective, especially when it is legislation introduced by the Government. For instance, there is no time limit to prosecutions in connection with taxation or Customs duties. If someone smuggles something through Customs, that is not the end of the matter, for a prosecution could be brought at any time.

I wonder whether my hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea (Mr. Worsley) appreciates that if the ultimate price paid for the painting had been paid at the auction which has been so much discussed, the death duties paid by the family would have been much higher and the Treasury would have benefited enormously, that is, if the facts are as we understand them to be.

In all humility, I invite my right hon. Friend, in due course, to withdraw the Amendment in the hope that what he has in mind can be covered in another place.

This has been a far more interesting debate than I could ever have expected when I moved the Amendment. I am most grateful to those hon. Members who have supported it, and to those who have spoken more in sorrow than in anger against retrospection. The right hon. Member for Islington, East (Sir Eric Fletcher) made a particularly interesting contribution. When I first suggested the Amendment, I did not think that it would provoke references to the Strafford trial, the Nuremburg trial and the Declaration of Human Rights.

I was most careful in what I had to say not to refer to the aspect of this matter which is covered by the investigation being carried out by the Parliamentary Commissioner, because I realised that we would all be under a considerable handicap if that subject were introduced. However, we have been in a major difficulty in our discussion of this issue because of our lack of knowledge of the evidence known to the Board of Trade, but not to the House of Commons. There have been various appeals to the Minister of State to raise the veil, but he made a categorical statement that it was not his intention so to do. I have a shrewd suspicion that if he had raised the veil, we should have found that, like Salome, there were six more veils and that we should never have got at the facts.

The major argument has been about retrospection. It was I who first pointed out that there was a flaw in the Amendment and it was that the Amendment would increase penalties retrospectively. I therefore appreciated that it would probably not be wise or reasonable to press the Amendment to a Division. I now disclose that there were two other flaws, neither of which I mentioned. One was referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea (Mr. Worsley), but I will keep quiet about the other because I am about to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

I have attended the whole of this debate and, while I do not wish to delay the House unduly, I wish to have an opportunity to make my contribution to what has been a memorable debate on a subject of the highest general importance and of great importance to the circumstances to which the Amendment relates.

I must follow the example of my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, South-West (Mr. Hawkins) and declare my interest as an auctioneer. In Committee, my hon. Friend claimed to be the only practising auctioneer in the House, but that is not the case. I share with him the distinction of being an auctioneer, although, like him, any auctioneering work which I have done has not been in respect of works of art, but directed rather to the sale of freehold and leasehold property. If I am regarded as having an interest in the matter by reason of being an auctioneer, I take this opportunity to declare it.

I do not wish to traverse the ground already covered in what has been said about retrospective legislation, apart from dealing with one or two matters which have arisen and about which something more should be said.

I am on the side of those who feel that in principle this Amendment is objectionable and repugnant, and ought therefore to be rejected. I cannot agree with all the reasons that have been advanced by hon. Members on both sides who have spoken in support of my views. Retrospective legislation, in one form or another, has been debated in this House during the whole of the 20 years that I have been a Member. It is fair to say that on practically every occasion the attempt to impose such legislation has come from the government of the day. In my view governments of both parties have been guilty in some respect of this.

1.0 p.m.

On each occasion when the effort has been made to introduce such legislation, it has normally met with the strongest possible objection, on grounds of principle on the part of back-benchers on both sides of the House. When, in a case such as this, it is clear from the facts and from everything that has been said, that the particular retrospective legislation is directed against the activities of certain individuals, then such legislation becomes even more objectionable and repugnant.

It is perfectly natural, when we have such information about the facts of the case as we have now—it would appear that acts of great impropriety, if not illegality have taken place—that the House should be naturally concerned to deal with abuse and wrongdoing. I do not disagree with those who have expressed condemnation of auction rings generally, and of the activities of a certain group of individuals in particular, if what we surmise about these activities is proved, and if further information is made available to Parliament.

I had intended to make the main point of my speech the Declaration of Human Rights, to which the Minister, in his altogether too short and too unforthcoming intervention made a brief reference. Article 11(2) of the Declaration of Human Rights, to which this country is a signatory, says:

"No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed."

There are two parts to this subsection. From what has been said by eminent lawyers I would have some doubt, speaking as a layman, whether this Amendment could be held to be in contravention of the earlier part of the subsection. It has been denied that the Amendment would create any new penal offence which did not exist at the time when the offences, if they were offences, were committed. There can be no doubt whatever, as the Minister has pointed out, in relation to the second part of the subsection, that if this Amendment was passed it would be a direct breach of that part, which says:

"… nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed."

It has been admitted by the mover of the Amendment that its effect would be to increase the penalty retrospectively. Apart from any repugnance that may be held by hon. Members about retrospective legislation, in general or particular, I cannot believe that any hon. Member would vote for an Amendment that would obviously and clearly place this country in breach of a solemn international obligation into which we have entered when we became signatories to the Declaration of Human Rights.

I am, therefore, bound to find myself on the side of those who, while deprecating most strongly, the existence of auction rings and the operation of certain auction rings in particular, consider that it would be both inexpedient and wrong in principle for the House to pass this Amendment. My right hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Sir J. Vaughan-Morgan) has already shown his intention to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment. I am sure that he is acting in accordance with the feelings of the House and the arguments that have been nut forward.

I do not wish to delay the House, but, having listened with rapt attention to the splendid arguments adduced by hon. and right hon. Members on both sides, I agree that it would be less than just to concede the principle of retrospective punishment. I was at a loss to know why my hon. Friend the Member for Luton (Mr. Howie) was in danger of surrendering his equanimity. I am sorry that he is not in the Chamber at the moment. There is no reason at any stage for him to shed his pacific demeanour.

I am pleased that the principle he began to enunciate so eloquently has been accepted, and I trust that those who specialise in this practice, which has prompted recourse to legislation, those who behave in this anti-social way, will not derive any comfort from the fact that the House is to adhere to the present legislation.

Order. The hon. Gentleman is not speaking to the Amendment, which is concerned with retrospection back to 18th March. The debate is much more limited than the hon. Gentleman thinks.

The debate has been conducted for quite a few hours on the basis of retrospective legislation. I was quite sure that I was adhering closely to the Amendment. However, I have made my point.

It would be a dreadful mistake for the people who have been reprehensible enough to cause the Board of Trade a lot of headaches in recent months to think that it was haphazard in its approach to the problem. It would be a mistake for them to derive any comfort from what has been done in the House. Our indignation is no less for adhering to the status quo.

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

Although, under the new procedure, Private Members' Bills often go through without debate on Third Reading, six hon. Gentlemen have chosen to table a Motion to ensure that it is debated. I do not blame them for that. It is right that a Bill which has not been debated on Second Reading and which has gone through a Committee stage should have a Third Reading.

As I have said, I am grateful that the Bill has caused so much interest in the House. Some of this interest is no doubt due to the fact that this is a twin Bill. I had an earlier opportunity to introduce a Bill of a similar nature. I took all the professional advice which I could get on it. Hon. Members know how difficult it is for private Members to prepare a Bill on criminal legislation. At that time, the Board of Trade was moved by the same considerations, and it was proposing to introduce a Bill.

The Government Whips then had some control over the House and were able to arrange that my Bill should not have the easy passage which this Bill has had. The Minister of State—and I give him credit for all the help which he has rendered to me—invited me to take over what was virtually the Board of Trade's Bill. Hon. Members will have had the opportunity of comparing the relative merits of the Bills.

Reference has been made to the fact that we had an acrimonious discussion during the first Committee sitting. The hon. Member for Luton (Mr. Howie), who, I am sorry to say, is not in his place, was frank enough to admit this morning that he got irritable. He got irritable again today. I do not know why he should. Hon. Members' arguments do not gain anything if they get irritable. However, having confessed to that, I am sure that the House would be the first to forgive the hon. Gentleman.

In Committee, we introduced a number of Amendments. The first important Amendment was introduced by my right hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Sir J. Vaughan-Morgan). The purpose was to alter from three to five years the period during which a prosecution could be started. The Minister of State recommended the Committee to reject it, but the arguments from both sides were so convincing that we had a Division and it was carried by 9 votes to 2. On a proportionate basis, it is probably the largest majority which we are likely to get against the Government. Being kind, generous and considerate, the Minister accepted the Committee's decision in a democratic way, and I was delighted that he did not use the Whips or the opportunity of the Report stage to change it.

Basically, the Bill does not alter the law; it alters the process of the law which allows people to be brought to justice over a longer period. The Bill provides that prosecutions can be brought at any time on an indictable offence. The Amendment in Committee will enable lesser offences to be tried without the full majesty of the law.

The Bill is an Amendment of the 1927 Act. At that time, people were auctioning sheep at £3 10s. We are dealing with auctions which could bring in £250,000. One of the objects of the Bill is to maintain and possibly increase the very high reputation of our auctioneers. During my researches it was made obvious that auctioneers who know their subject advise their clients to put a proper and reasonable reserve on the article which is up for sale. I regret that that advice is not always accepted. As long as there is a proper and fair reserve on an article up for auction, any attempt to operate a ring fails because the ring cannot buy it at a low price. Therefore, we have the opportunity of giving a further boost to British prestige in the auction world.

An interesting new Clause was introduced in Committee by my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West (Mr. Channon). It is now Clause 2 in the Bill. Hon. Members who have read the OFFICIAL REPORT of the Committee stage must be puzzled by the fact that on 19th March, in column 80, I gave an assurance that if the new Clause was accepted I would be prepared to consider Amendments on Report. Here again, I want to pay tribute to the Minister of State, who gave me and my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West and I every opportunity to discuss the Clause with experts in his Department.

The Clause was stimulated by discussions which we had with auctioneers, who felt that in the event of anyone being found guilty of an offence under the Bill, one of the best penalties would be to prohibit him from attending auctions for a stipulated period. In the first instance, my hon. Friend's Amendment provided that the court "must" prevent a convicted person attending auctions. After consideration, he wisely decided that the word "may" should be substituted.

I have had a number of letters from auctioneers expressing their concern about this proposal. They felt that, if a court passed such a penalty, they would be required to police their own auctions. However, from my inquiries it is clear that there is no obligation placed upon auctioneers in this connection in the event of someone who has been prohibited from attending an auction happening to get into an auction. That would place an intolerable burden upon them.

The effect of it is rather like the effect when the Jockey Club warn people off the turf. The fact that a jockey can be warned off is a great deterrent to anyone who contemplates some misdemeanour. In saying that, of course, I am not suggesting that jockeys have any connection with the members of the rings which we are debating today.

Then there was the difficulty of deciding upon the penalties which should be inflicted on those who were found at an auction that they should not have been attending. We discussed this in some detail, and we intended to introduce a Clause to cover the point. Unfortunately, it has not been found practicable so far to put the point that we want to make into legal phraseology. From my conversations with Board of Trade officials, it is clear that there is little difference between myself, as sponsor of the Bill, my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West, who moved the Amendment, and the Minister of State. The difficulty facing a layman is that, though it is simple to say what one means, it is difficult when lawyers come to produce appropriate legislation on it.

However, should the House give the Bill a Third Reading, I have the assurance of the noble Lord who is to introduce it in the other place that he is prepared to propose a suitable Amendment, which this House will be able to discuss as a Lords Amendment when it returns from the other place. No doubt my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West will confirm what I have said.

I think that those were the main Amendments which were dealt with in Committee. Fundamentally, the Bill is designed to clean up auctions. During my researches, I have found what I consider to be the best definition of an auction, and it is one which will not be enacted properly until this proposed legislation is on the Statute Book. In 1912, in the course of his judgment in the case of Frewin v. Hayes, Lord Mac-Naughton said:

"The price which the public are asked to pay are the highest prices which those who bid can be tempted to offer by the skill and tact of the auctioneer under the excitement of open competition."

Primarily, the Bill is designed to see that there is open competition and that, if there is not, those who prevent it are guilty of a grave offence which is punishable by a fine or imprisonment. We discussed the amount of the fine, but in the end we decided to leave it to the court's discretion. In addition to punishment by way of a fine or imprisonment, there is the third deterrent in that an offender can be kept away from auctions for a period.

Those of us who have read this morning's papers must be proud of the fact that a British auctioneer was called upon to go to Switzerland to auction jewellery which has brought in £1¼ million. The fact that a British auctioneer should be called upon is no better proof of our reputation in the profession.

I ask the House to give a Third Reading to the Bill.

Let me, first, congratulate the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Costain) on having brought the Bill to its Third Reading. I hope that it departs from this House with our approval and passes through the other place quickly so that this improvement in the law can be effected.

The Bill is useful, but it remains true, as it was of the previous law, that its success depends on the willingness of those who have information about the operation of auction rings to give that information.

I think that I need make no comment on the contents of the Bill except to refer briefly to Clause 2, which was added to it in Committee.

The hon. Gentleman made several kind references to me in his Third Reading speech, and he spoke of my "democratic willingness" to accept the views of the Committee even when they were not my own. However, I do not wish the House to be under any misapprehension about my views on Clause 2. The hon. Gentleman has said that he and I are now approaching the Clause with the same object in view. The hon. Gentleman's approach to the Clause as it stands is that it is a good Clause, which has been approved. My approach is that it contains irretrievable nonsense, but that as far as I am able I am prepared to help the hon. Gentleman and the Bill's sponsors in another place to remove as much of that nonsense as possibly can be removed.

To that extent, I suppose that we do have the same objects in view but I cannot say that I think that this is a good Clause. On the contrary, as I said in the Committee, I think that it introduces a strange penalty, the full implications of which have not been thoroughly thought through. I would have preferred to have had the Bill without Clause 2. However, I repeat my offer to seek in any way possible to help the hon. Gentleman and the sponsors of the Bill in another place to do for the Clause what can be done.

This is a useful Bill to which the House would be well advised to give the Third Reading. I hope that it will have some effect in eliminating the operation of auction rings.

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Costain) on piloting his Bill through, as I hope, its Third Reading. I hope that he will be equally successful in another place. It is a curious fact that there was no Second Reading debate but that today such keen and welcome interest has been shown that we are having a Third Reading debate. I am glad that as a result my hon. Friend has now had an opportunity to refer to the various Clauses.

I hope that our discussions about auction rings and the difficulty of dealing with them will not obscure the fact that the reputation of our fine arts trade has seldom stood higher than it does now, has seldom achieved so much, or done so much for our balance of payments. The fact that we have concentrated on the activities of the two few rogues should not blind us to the fact that the reputation of the fine art trade in general stands extremely high.

The Bill does not deal only with fine art trade auctions, but with all auctions. I hope that it will be able to do something about the ring, but I cannot pretend to think that it will stop the ring for all time. There will, from time to time be rings at auctions. All we can do is to make the penalties more severe. As there has been only one prosecution under the 1927 Act, the great difficulty in stopping the ring seems to be catching the people who take part in it. However, once caught, they will now be subject to very much severer penalties.

I am glad that it will be possible to impose a term of imprisonment of up to two years and, more importantly, that it will be possible to impose a fine of an unlimited amount—perhaps, even as much as £150,000 should that be thought appropriate. We all know that enormous sums of money are made by people who take part in these dubious and devious practices at auctions.

I thank the Minister of State for being so helpful throughout our proceedings. We have had our disagreements on various points, but our debates have been very good tempered and rather interesting. I only regret his remarks about Clause 2. I do not agree that it is irretrievable nonsense, but, even were it so, it is most astonishing for a Minister to say that although he thinks that it is irretrievable nonsense he is, nevertheless, prepared to have it enacted. In his heart of hearts he probably does not think that the Clause is irretrievable nonsense.

One of the penalties laid down by Clause 2 is that anyone caught acting in this way at an auction will not be allowed for a period of up to three years to attend an auction or enter on any premises where goods are displayed for sale. I am advised by those in the trade that this penalty may prove to be a serious deterrent. It may not prove so, but at least the attempt is worth making. The penalty works very successfully in other directions. As my hon. Friend has said, the risk of being warned off the race course has proved to have a great deterrent effect. Let us hope that the result will be the same in this case. The provision will not do any damage, and it may do some good.

We have discussed earlier the Aldwick Court case, and it is interesting to note that the allegations then made have led to the impetus given to the passing of this Measure today. Even if the Aldwick Court case had not taken place there is a strong case for the Bill. The penalties under the Act were ludicrously out of date, while the six-month time limit during which prosecutions had to take place has proved to be disastrous.

The Bill will help in dealing with the rogues, but it must be remembered that the rogues are a tiny section. As I have said, a great majority of those in the fine art trade have a deservedly very high reputation and an international renown. I hope, though without very great confidence, that the Bill will do something towards curbing the activities of the ring in future, and I am glad that those who are caught will find the penalties much more severe.

I hope that the Bill will get its Third Reading today, and pass into law very speedily.

One point of substance needs to be made. The hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Channon) has indicated his anxiety about the implementation of the Bill, and other hon. Members have said that there may be difficulty in ensuring that the Measure will be effective and that the evidence will be available. We may, inadvertently perhaps, be minimising the Bill's significance.

Today, and in Committee, we have drawn attention to the problems the House faces in obtaining information. These problems are serious, and while congratulating the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Costain), as he richly deserves to be congratulated, on so skilfully piloting his Bill, we should also record our congratulations to the Sunday Times on the way in which it has pursued its own investigations.

It is, perhaps, not often that this assembly congratulates the Press, and I am sure that the Press would not have it otherwise, but on this occasion, and I speak personally, I would have found it quite impossible to have viewed the Bill sensibly had it not been for the exhaustive investigations which the Sunday Times made, and the results which it published—and bravely published—for us to read.

This is an example of the relationship between a free parliamentary assembly and a free Press which should not go unrecorded. It is relevant for the future because if evidence is to be the basis on which the effectiveness of this Bill will stand or fall, it is necessary that all sources of evidence should be sought. I hope that it will be forthcoming from them.

I hope that it is not out of order to point to the fact that the authors of the reports in the Sunday Times, who know a great deal about this problem, listed four specific points on which they thought it would be possible for the law to be changed on those bases to smash the rings. All four of those points have been included in the Bill. I therefore think that we are entitled to feel that this is a major step forward in stopping what has become a disgraceful fraud. I hope very much that in future those who participated in the Duccio ring may feel that it was the most expensive purchase they ever made.

I do not intend to detain the House for more than about three minutes. If I did so, some hon. Members might think that I had an ulterior motive, but that, I assure them, is not the case. Having sat here throughout the day and listened to the fascinating speeches which have been made, particularly that by the right hon. Member for Islington, East (Sir Eric Fletcher), I want to say a few words about the Bill in addition to congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Costain) on the Bill's reaching its Third Reading.

Like many other hon. Members, I could not possibly have supported the Bill if it had contained the Amendment proposed this morning to make certain parts of it retrospective. Now that that has gone, the Bill seems to make a most desirable alteration in the law of demonstrating that crime does not pay. In these days, when vast sums of money can be made by cheating in the way in which people who run auction rings cheat, it is quite ridiculous that the worst the courts can do to them is to make them pay a fine of £400 or send them to prison.

Nowadays, so far as they can, courts avoid sending people to prison because the prisons are already over-full. Whenever a court can do justice by means of a fine, it will choose that method. When the fine has to be limited to £400 it makes nonsense, because the criminal concerned may by cheating have made a profit of hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The only regret I have about the Bill is that the only penalties it provides are imprisonment or a fine. It seems unfortunate that the Bill contains no provision for compensating whoever has suffered the loss.

If the hon. Member is concerned with amending the Bill, he cannot do so on Third Reading.

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was about to submit that Clause 3 covers the point raised by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Bruce Campbell). Perhaps he might address himself to that Clause, which goes some way to help in this respect.

I would be happy to allow the hon. and learned Member to address his mind to Clause 3.

I shall not take up more time, but, of course, the criminal courts do not like to be turned into debt collecting agencies. They think it their business to punish criminals and not so much to assist the victims of crime.

It is important for the record that it should be seen that if this takes place the deal is off and restitution can be made under that Clause.

I am greatly comforted by the intervention of my hon. Friend and there remains nothing for me to do but to congratulate him on the Bill reaching its Third Reading.

I share the view of those who have spoken in this debate that it is right and necessary that this Bill should have a Third Reading. Hon. Members will recall that in our anxiety to get this Bill it received a Second Reading on the nod and that the debate in Committee, in which a very limited number took part, was of an abbreviated character. Reading the OFFICIAL REPORT of the Committee stage, I noticed that nearly as much of the total time was occupied in discussing whether the Committee should adjourn as in discussing the various provisions of the Bill.

I join hon. Members who have expressed congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Costain) on having had the foresight and initiative not only to introduce the Bill but to carry it through its various stages. He is fairly entitled to assume that he is now in the straight and that the goal will be speedily achieved. The commercial life of this country will be grateful to him for having made it a little more difficult for the misdeeds and activities of certain people to succeed. Their activities are certainly anti-social and probably illegal.

On the other hand, I must make clear that my welcome to the Bill is to some extent lukewarm because I am not certain how far it will prove effective for the task that it is required to undertake. We have already been reminded in this debate that the 1927 Act, which was put on the Statute Book more than 40 years ago with a view to curbing the evil of auction rings and activities of that kind, has very largely proved ineffective in dealing with the evils it was designed to abate. In a period of over 40 years so far as one can ascertain there has been only one prosecution under that Act. One hopes that the high expectations which accompany the passage of this Bill will not founder in the same way as did the equally high expectations on which the 1927 Act was based.

I recognise the limitations in a Third Reading debate. I am, of course, debarred from discussing matters in the nature of omissions from the Bill which I should like to have seen included. I will do my utmost, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to avoid incurring your disapproval by confining myself strictly and narrowly to discussing what the Bill contains, the things to be said in favour of what it contains, and what may be said by way of criticism. I do not intend to wander outside the ambit of what is actually contained in the Bill.

There are three or four main criticisms which I wish to make of the Bill. I make these criticisms so as to get them on the record and in the hope that some consideration may be given to them when the Bill goes to another place. We have already been informed by the sponsor of the Bill that he has secured the services of a noble Lord who has agreed to introduce and pilot the Bill, we hope, through another place.

In that other place there will no doubt be opportunities for Amendments which their Lordships consider expedient to be incorporated in the Bill before it comes back here. No doubt their Lordships will take into account criticisms which may be made in this House, criticisms which at this late stage cannot lead to alterations in the Bill here but which may lead to alterations in the Bill in another place.

I come to my criticisms of Clause 1. I wish to deal with the limitation on the five-year period within which a prosecution can be brought following upon the commission of an offence. I am sorry that the Bill contains a limitation upon the five-year period. I would prefer to see a five-year period without any limitation.

In the last three lines on page 1 the limit is expressed in this way:

"and within three months after the date on which evidence sufficient in the opinion of the Attorney-General to justify the proceedings comes to his knowledge."

During this debate we heard about one notorious case of what was alleged to be an inability to prosecute because the Government Department concerned was outside the six-months' period within which it was possible to bring legal proceedings.

If it be the case, as has been strongly alleged by eminent lawyers and others, that an inability to bring a prosecution in a case where eminently one should have been brought has arisen from a failure to comply with the six-months' time limit, how much more is there the fear that the same thing may happen again when there is a qualification to the five-year period within which normally a prosecution can be brought by reference to a period of three months following the Attorney-General's consideration of the matter.

Apart from the general objection to this qualification, which I should like to see omitted entirely from the Bill, there is an ambiguity in the wording. The provision uses the words

"three months after the date on which evidence sufficient in the opinion of the Attorney-General to justify the proceedings comes to his knowledge."

How does the three-months' provision operate? If I hear of a case today in which I believe that there is a prima facie case for a prosecution under the Bill and I send a dossier with all the available information to the Attorney-General so that he may consider whether a prima facie case for prosecution exists, does the three months run from the date on which my dossier arrives on his desk? Is that the meaning of the words "comes to his knowledge", or does the three months run from the point after which the Attorney-General has found time to give his consideration to the dossier and has decided that sufficient evidence exists?

It seems to me that it would have been very much better if these words had not been included at all, and I feel that the Bill is weakened by their inclusion. If the limitation on the five-year period is to remain in the Bill, the Law Officers of the Crown should consider whether there is not an ambiguity in the way in which the Clause is expressed.

I come now to Clause 2, on which I have one or two misgivings. In line 22, on page 2, one sees the words "or his representative". This deals with the possible exclusion for a period from auction sales of an individual who has been found guilty of an offence in connection with an auction ring. I am all in favour of that.

I do not share the criticism which has been made of Clause 2, which appears to be a reasonable Clause based on sound principles. But surely by including the words "or his representative" we are accepting the principle of what I believe has been described by lawyers as guilt by association. We are saying, in effect, that, by reason of a person being the representative of a person so convicted, even if the representative himself is entirely innocent of any offence and it was not committed with his assistance, connivance or knowledge, that individual nevertheless can have imposed on him virtually the termination of his career in the auction world merely because he has acted innocently as the representative of someone who has been convicted of an offence.

The hon. Member is making an interesting point, but I would draw his attention to the fact that there are no penalties for representatives attending an auction. The object of the word "representative" is to get over the problem, which the hon. Member as an experienced auctioneer will understand, that somebody who goes to an auction has only to have a partner there to act on his behalf. That is what the provision seeks to stop.

I am not sure that is the effect. That is what I am discussing. The subsection says

"the court may order that the person so convicted or his representative shall not for a period … enter upon any premises where goods are displayed for sale …".

This is virtually equivalent to saying that a man who is perfectly guiltless in his own conduct and knowledge may have his whole professional career terminated for a period of years on account of the doctrine of guilt by association. I am sure that this matter should be borne in mind by hon. Members when they come to decide whether they will give the Bill a Third Reading.

One other point I should like to make on Clause 2, which will not take more than a minute or two, relates to the words in line 27

"in the case of a conviction on indictment, of not less than three years."

I should prefer to see a longer period than that, and I hope that when the Bill is considered in another place possibly a figure of seven years could be substituted for three years.

It is a recognised principle of the law that the punishment imposed on an individual can properly have regard to the magnitude of the amount of money that he has made out of an illegal transaction. This principle was exemplified by the long sentences imposed upon the train robbers on account of the vast amount of money resulting from the crime which they had been successful in hoarding away and not disgorging. I would not feel that in a bad case in which someone might have profited to the tune of £250,000, as is suspected in the case of a recent notorious auction ring, it would be unreasonable for there to be visited upon the individual concerned seven years' debarring from auction rooms instead of three years. I hope that this may be considered.

I wish now to comment on words in lines 36 and 37 of Clause 3. Clause 3 gives to a person who has been defrauded of a proper price for goods which he has had sold by auction a civil right to have the transaction cancelled or, if it is not possible to have the transaction cancelled, to obtain monetary contribution towards his loss from the party guilty of bringing about the loss that he has suffered. The force of the Clause is tremendously weakened in that any aggrieved party seeking to obtain redress must, as a prior requirement to invoking the Clause, prove that one of the parties involved in his loss was a dealer and, if he suffers a loss as a result of a once-for-all activity by an individual or individuals who on the basis of their past record cannot be regarded as dealers, the person who has suffered the loss has no recourse to the remedies under the Clause and cannot obtain compensation.

My hon. Friend is on a good point, but the word "dealer" is used throughout the Bill for a specific purpose. When I introduced the Bill I was worried that it might involve, for example, a couple of old ladies buying Aunt Miriam's teapot, one buying the teapot and the other the stand. I did not want such people to be liable to criminal proceedings.

The advantage would be strongly on the side of leaving out the words, notwithstanding what my hon. Friend has said. Nobody will invoke this Clause in relation to the sale at an auction of a teapot in which two ladies may be involved. We are dealing here with cases on the scale of the one which sparked off the preparation and presentation of this Bill, where an individual may make £250,000 out of one transaction, to the loss of the vendor, to the disadvantage of the public at large and greatly to the disadvantage of the Inland Revenue authorities. If an individual who is not a dealer involves himself in a once-for-all transaction of that magnitude, it is unjust that the person who suffers an enormous loss as a result of the transaction should be debarred from recovering that loss against the person responsible for it simply on the ground that that person was engaged in a once-for-all transaction and is not a dealer.

My last point is on the word "auction". Although I have studied the Bill very carefully, I can find no definition of the extent and the type of transaction covered by the word "auction". An hon. Member has referred to a 1912 judgment in which a judge of the High Court gave his view of what was comprised in an auction, but I wonder whether the word includes a sale by tender. Sale by tender is becoming increasingly popular for certain types of property, and is in some cases taking the place of auctions. It is just as possible for the ring to gang up on a sale by tender, and for people who would have put in tenders to be persuaded or bribed not to do so, as for people taking part in a conventional auction to be discouraged from bidding. I would hope that the question of the exact extent of the word "auction" and the type of transactions which it includes will receive consideration before the Bill reaches the Statute Book. If a public tender is not included in the word "auction", a definition should be inserted which will include public tenders.

Having made what I hope are constructive points and having made it clear that I am a supporter of the Bill, I hope that the Bill will do what it is hoped to do, although I have doubts as to the extent to which it will be able to curb an evil which we all wish to see curbed.

I desire to raise a point of order of which I gave notice last night. It is of a rather curious nature, because it affects very seriously the rights of private Members and it also has considerable public interest.

The business that has just been called appears in the Orders of the Day for today, but in the Order Book of the House of Commons for Thursday, 1st May, 1969, which I obtained yesterday afternoon, Friday's business is set out and includes 25 Private Members' Bills but not the Divorce Reform Bill.

Similarly, in the Daily Telegraph and The Times this morning the business of the House for today is set out, but the Divorce Reform Bill is not mentioned. I have ascertained by research that under the present procedure that is inevitable.

When I raised this matter yesterday I inadvertently used language which might have been understood to suggest that the Leader of the House had acted im- properly in allowing arrangements to be made for the Bill to come on today. It was not, of course, mentioned yesterday, and I was raising the matter on the basis of a rumour that I had heard; I had had no official indication. I now understand that it was the operation of Standing Order No. 5(3) that resulted in the inclusion of the Divorce Bill as second in order in today's proceedings.

It is a very remarkable case because, looking back to the last occasion when the House was dealing with this Bill, I find that on Saturday, 26th April there was a Public Bill list. The item "Divorce Reform" in that list had a dagger against it, and on the first page I find that a dagger means "Given precedence by the Government." Having seen that, I thought it meant that the Bill was being adopted as a Government Bill, that no question of Private Bill procedure would arise and that we would be told yesterday in the Business statement whether or not the Government had decided to give time for it. I was led to believe that there was nothing to do except wait.

Yesterday, I suddenly heard "The Bill is coming on tomorrow." It now appears that the note "Given precedence by the Government" does not mean what we all thought it meant, but that it means that it has been given precedence by the Government in the past when it was down for a morning sitting. Therefore, there has been a glorious misunderstanding.

The justification that I claim, I hope hope not improperly, for raising this matter is this. I had the opportunity of a conversation with the Leader of the House this morning, when I assured him that I had not intended to make the slightest reflection upon him and he said that he entirely accepted that and had not regarded my action as a reflection. He also confirmed my view that under the existing system there is no provision for giving hon. Members any advance notice that a Private Member's Bill will be down for consideration until this morning.

Therefore, anyone who came here yesterday afternoon would naturally, as somebody has told me he did, get the document which was issued yesterday afternoon, to which I have already referred, and would say, "Let me see if the Bill in which I am interested is on tomorrow". He would look at it and would find that the answer was "No". The Bill would not be there.

Surely something ought to be done about this. It has been brought to my notice that this is a matter of concern to the public through the newspapers. Both The Times and the Daily Telegraph this morning list today's business, but neither mentions the Divorce Reform Bill. I am told that that is inevitable, and, of course, one never accuses them of incompetence and inefficiency. The answer is that they were not in a position to get the information until the Orders of the Day came out this morning. Imagine the position of a Member—I know that there are at least two of them because I have had communications from them this morning—who went to bed last night assuming that the Bill was not coming on today, who had made other arrangements for today and now finds that the Bill is on the Order Paper.

Another thing is that one sees from the House at the moment what the result has been—

Order. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is addressing the Chair on a point of order. Part of what he has said has been by way of a personal statement which I am sure the Leader of the House would have been glad to hear. The right hon. and learned Gentleman must allow the Chair to bring his point of order to a close.

May I add this point, Mr. Deputy Speaker? It is not a matter which concerns merely the opponents of the Bill. I know that supporters of the Bill have also been in the same position. May I remind you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that whatever one's views are, this is a subject which is of interest to very large numbers of the public, and if it should appear to them that this House has treated this matter more or less with contempt in that there are very few Members here today and Members who have their names to Amendments are not here it would be very unfortunate.

What I am suggesting is that you might think it proper, at any rate, to support an application that this matter should be considered urgently by the Committee on Procedure, because it seems from what I have said that it is absolutely necessary that some new procedure should be instituted.

I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for giving the Chair notice of the point that he intended to raise. I want to make it absolutely clear that the Chair understands the anxieties expressed by the right hon. and learned Member.

It would be better if, first of all, I made the procedural position clear. Under the House's Order of 31st October last, today is one of the days on which Private Members' Bills have precedence. The same Order, read in conjunction with Standing Order No. 5, paragraph 3, provides that on certain days Private Members' Bills are to be arranged on the Order Paper in the following order: Consideration of Lords Amendments; Third Readings; consideration of Reports not already entered upon; adjourned proceedings upon consideration; Bills in progress in Committee; Bills appointed for Committee; and Second Readings.

Today is one of the days on which this order of precedence has to be observed. The Divorce Reform Bill as reported with Amendments from Standing Committee D, was first considered on Friday, 25th April. At 4 o'clock on that day the debate was adjourned. When asked to appoint a day for resumption of the debate, the hon. Member in charge said "Monday next". Accordingly, the Bill appeared among the ineffective Orders on Monday last. Under the usual procedure it has been carried forward day by day. It has been shown among the ineffective Orders on each day this week, although this was not apparent yesterday since, because of a strike, the ineffective Orders of the Day were not available.

The Bill will, however, be found in its due place on Thursday's printed paper issued this morning, on page 6467. Today the Bill appears among the effective Orders of the Day in second place, in accordance with the Orders of the House to which I have referred.

The effect of the statement that I have made is that, as far as the Chair is concerned, it would be in order to proceed with the Order that is on the Order Paper today. In fact, the Chair could do nothing about having it otherwise. As to other remedies, the House may wish to support the right hon. and learned Gentleman in having this matter considered elsewhere.

Further to that point of order and your very full Ruling, Mr. Deputy Speaker, may I say that despite the fact that your reply, on the face of it, seems reasonable, and should perhaps be accepted by hon. Members, the arrangements for today's business and the manner in which hon. Members have been informed have created a tremendous amount of inconvenience, particularly to those hon. Members who live a great distance from the House. Not having been notified that this business was to be transacted, many hon. Members who have taken a great interest in the Bill and who would have been here, feel that they have been cheated—

Order. I have expressed the view from the Chair that the Chair may well share the concern of hon. Members about what has happened. I have ruled, however, that it is in order and the Chair has no power to alter the Orders of the Day.

I understand that, of course, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and, in common with the rest of the House, I appreciate the fullness of your statement which will give us guidance on future occasions when we have time to read it and consider it more carefully.

Further, I do not wish it to be inferred upon from what I put to you that I am suggesting anything against anybody. It appears that we have got into an unfortunate situation inadvertently. I am prepared to accept, for the purpose of what I am saying, that the matter is not debatable. It has been explained how we got into this situation, and that is not debatable. That is my premise. But that does not mean that there are not other processes for now discussing what we should do, having got ourselves into this difficulty.

I do not claim great knowledge of the procedure of the House, but it appears to me that the only way in which we can now discuss what we should do in the situation into which our procedures have put us is on a Motion to adjourn the debate. That would enable us to exchange views across the Floor as to what should be done in this situation. I should like to know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, whether that would be in order and whether you would accept such a Motion.

The hon. and learned Gentleman has submitted that I should accept a Motion that the debate be adjourned. At this stage, I could not accept it.

Further to the point of order—

Order. I have ruled on the point of order, and I have refused the hon. and learned Gentleman's submission. There is no more to be said on that.

Then may I put to you an entirely fresh point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker? Last Friday, the Divorce Reform Bill was permitted to be postponed till the following Monday. If, in the first place, it had been postponed until this Friday, it would have appeared immediately on the subsequent Order Paper in its proper place and none of this confusion would have arisen.

My point of order is this. Was it in order for this Private Member's Bill to be postponed in the first place to a Monday, which is not a normal day—

Order. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman heard the whole of my Ruling, but the effect of it was to say that what has happened has been perfectly in order. We must proceed.

Mr. Deputy Speaker, I do not wish to raise any point on your Ruling save to ask your guidance on how we should deal with the matter hereafter. You have said, in effect, that it requires investigation, but I am not altogether sure how it should be done. I am a member of the Procedure Committee, which is why I am particularly interested. Is it within the power of the Chair to ask the Procedure Committee, in the interests of the House in general, to examine the position, or must it be raised by hon. Members on the Floor?

The situation today appears to have arisen out of the Order of the House passed on 31st October. I should have thought that, if that Order had been examined by whoever ought to have examined it in the light of House of Commons procedure the weakness in it might have been seen. I refer to the weakness so ably outlined by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Chertsey (Sir L. Heald), and to which you yourself referred, Mr. Deputy Speaker, in your Ruling.

I wonder whether, not wishing to interfere with today's debate but with a view to the future, it is possible for the Chair, having been made aware of the difficulty, to send the matter for examination to the Procedure Committee. Perhaps you would be good enough to say how we should proceed, so as to put the matter straight.

Perhaps I can be of help to the House, Mr. Deputy Speaker. First, I express to the House the apologies of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House for his absence. He has an engagement in his constituency

Order. We have extended the procedure rather more widely than it should be, but I think that it has produced a satisfactory conclusion. May we now proceed?

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

The purpose of the Clause is to enable people, if they wish, to enter into a marriage which shall last for their joint lives and shall be indissoluble by the courts. People in this country think seriously about marriage. There are still many people who think of marriage as a holy institution, and take seriously the vows they make when they enter into that institution. Although Parliament may, in this Bill and previous Acts, put it within the power of the courts to end the contract of marriage, many people feel that they would like to enter into the sort of marriage which the courts cannot dissolve. The object of the Clause is to enable people who feel that way about marriage to put their agreement in writing either before or after the ceremony of marriage. If subsequently either spouse should tell the court, "I want a divorce", the other spouse can prevent it from being granted by producing the agreement. The Clause does not make divorce impossible in such cases, but either spouse can, by producing the written agreement at any divorce proceedings, prevent a divorce from being granted.

After all, marriage is a contract. Some people regard it as a very solemn contract, one of much greater gravity than the ordinary contracts that people enter into in the course of their everyday lives. In the past there has been some justification for enabling divorce to be granted because the law has been in keeping with the ordinary law of contract. The ordinary law of contract provides that if one party to the contract breaks it the other party is entitled to be released from it. Thus, for example, if an employer agrees to employ a man at a certain salary and on certain conditions, that is a contract of employment which binds them both. If the employee breaks his part of the contract, the employer is released from it and does not have to go on paying his salary.

In a sense, our divorce laws up to now have been in keeping with this view of the law of contract because they have been on the basis of the matrimonial offence, so that we have always had the situation in the divorce court that the petitioner has had to go to the court and say, "My husband has broken his part of the contract. He has committed adultery although he vowed that he would remain faithful to me." Or, of course, she could say that he has deserted despite the marriage vows. The petitioner, because the other spouse has broken his part of the law of contract, asks herself to be released from it.

Until now, our divorce laws have not really been different from our ordinary law of contract. If the Bill should ever reach the Statute Book, then, of course, the contract would go out of the window completely because the Bill provides that he who breaks the contract may get his complete release from it.

Order. The hon. and learned Gentleman must now come to new Clause 9, which he is moving.

I shall, Mr. Speaker. What I wish to achieve by new Clause 9 is a situation where decent people can say, "The law may enable people to break this solemn contract but we do not wish to take advantage of that provision, so we shall enter into a marriage which is indissoluble, and when we promise each other that we shall live together and cherish each other until death us do part we are going to mean what we say. Therefore, we will enter into this short written contract which will simply put us in a different position from other people in that neither of us will be able to divorce the other against his will".

Can the hon. and learned Gentleman elaborate a little? Surely it would still be open to the aggrieved party or either of the parties to seek an Act of Parliament dissolving the marriage in the way done formerly. Nothing in the hon. and learned Gentleman's new Clause would alter that.

No. I accept that, just as Henry VIII managed to obtain a divorce or two by Act of Parliament, an individual could do so even if my new Clause were accepted. But that is not a risk which greatly worries me. I do not think that there are likely to be many such private Acts of Parliament, and in any case that possibility could only be available to the very rich.

For the benefit of the very rich, will the hon. and learned Gentleman explain how much an Act of Parliament would cost?

Hon. Members will not be surprised when I say that I have no idea that I should be asked that question and have therefore done no research into it. But, having regard to the difficulties I have experienced in my short sojourn in this House, I venture to suggest that even great wealth may not be sufficient to obtain a Private Act of Parliament.

Is it not also the case that a future Parliament might be less favourable to divorce and therefore less willing to grant a special Act for divorce?

Yes, indeed.

It may be that, in any event, the partners might change their view as they go through married life and come to regret entering into a binding agreement. In those circumstances, of course, they would not have to rely upon it, because, just as people may enter into binding contracts with each other by agreement, so, by agreement, can they discharge or cancel the contract.

What the new Clause does provide is that it would still be open to an aggrieved spouse to obtain a judicial separation. This is important because we must provide protection for people who are the victims of, for example, cruel conduct in the marriage. This, after all, was the original idea of divorce. When judicial divorce was introduced over a century ago the whole object was to give relief to an injured or aggrieved spouse, and, of course, Parliament could never allow a situation where there was no relief available to a wife who, for instance, was being severely beaten up by a drunken husband every Friday night.

New Clause 9 deals with that situation because, although that wife could not get a divorce if her husband relied upon the agreement, she could get a judicial separation—which is all she would need for the protection she required. Judicial separation entitles the wife to live apart from her husband and no one can accuse her of desertion. She can get all the ancillary relief which goes with it.

Will my hon. and learned Friend indicate the sort of position which might arise supposing one of the spouses becomes of unsound mind?

In that situation the spouse who desired to be relieved from the marriage and sought a divorce would be able to obtain one unless a person acting on behalf of the insane partner—for example, a friend or the Official Solicitor—were to use the defence of the written agreement. If that defence were raised, that petitioner would not be able to obtain a divorce, and some of us would think it right that that petitioner should not be able to obtain a divorce, because he had entered into this lifelong contract on the basis that it would be lifelong. If one spouse has had the grave misfortune to become mentally ill, that would not be a ground for releasing the petitioner from that marriage.

I was saying that the Clause would still leave an aggrieved spouse with all the protection he or she needed, because—

Would not the hon. and learned Gentleman agree that some wives, even though their husbands have been drunk or cruel to them, are often more conscious of the necessity for fidelity and faithfulness in marriage than wives who sometimes are not so afflicted with drunken husbands?

That was a general observation which had nothing to do with the Clause.

I was saying that the Clause would leave an aggrieved spouse perfectly well protected. She would have available to her all the forces of the law to give her the relief she needed from a cruel or adulterous husband—and, of course, it would apply both ways, because there are cruel and adulterous wives as well. After all, there is no difference between a judicial separation and a divorce except that the latter gives the parties their freedom to marry again. An aggrieved spouse may have all the relief that the divorce court can give her, except the right to marry again during the lifetime of the other spouse.

I look forward to the day when this unhappy Bill—unhappy as it would be without my new Clause—reaches the Statute Book and, if it contains my new Clause, makes it possible for all those people, of whom there are many millions, who still think that marriage is an institution which we ought to preserve to enter into the sort of marriage that they want marriage to be; in other words, an indissoluble marriage.

We shall have a sort of élite class of married people, the sort of married people who have not only gone through a marriage ceremony but who have also entered into this little agreement so that they can tell their friends, "We belong to this rather better class of married people, the sort of married people who regard marriage as a serious lifelong business, not a temporary partnership that one can enter into every few years". The new Clause does not require the parties to enter into this agreement before they marry. They could do that if they wished, but it would be equally available to people who had been married for 20 years and who might have had their ups and downs and their storms but who could say, "We have now navigated all those difficult seas and 10, 15 or 20 years afterwards we are still together; let us cement it by entering into this agreement to make it plain that we regard our marriage as a lifelong affair".

The Bill will greatly affect the people of this country. It is a social measure. Many people are offended and affronted—

I know the hon. and learned Gentleman's expertise in the subject, but we are not discussing the Bill. We are discussing a new Clause, and I have so far listened to the discussion with great interest.

I was trying to explain why the Clause would greatly improve the Bill. It would enable people who wished still to treat marriage seriously, as a lifelong contract, at least to have their marriage put into that category.

I urge the House to consider the new Clause carefully. It could not hurt anybody who did not want it. Anybody who wants to have a marriage of the kind that may be entered today and got out of in three or four years can still have it. He need not enter into this agreement. But it would give to the people who want a stable, lifelong marriage the right to have it.

I could not follow all the arguments of the hon. and learned Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Bruce Campbell). No married couple who want to keep their marriage "till death us do part" need ever have recourse to the divorce court. The new Clause, as the hon. and learned Gentleman said, would establish two classes of marriage. I believe that that would not serve the best interests of married couples. I believe that it would not serve the best interests of society. I am absolutely convinced that it would do nothing to sanctify the ideal of marriage itself.

The hon. and learned Gentleman referred to an élite class in marriage. We might well be in danger of establishing a two-tier system almost as laughable as the postage service.

Why not?

I will say why not. We should have this two-tier system, the 4d. marriage and the 5d. marriage, in which the parties to a 4d. marriage, without an agreement in writing, would have recourse to the divorce court, while the parties to a 5d. marriage, with an agreement in writing, could never be divorced whatever the circumstances. This agreement in writing—

The hon. Gentleman has said exactly the opposite to what I have said. There is nothing in the new Clause to prevent a divorce if neither party desires to rely on the agreement.

I concede that point. The point that the hon. and learned Gentleman is trying to make is that this mystic piece of paper would somehow bind people together in a far greater fashion than do the most solemn vows that we take in places of worship. I do not agree. The words of the marriage ceremony, which most people follow today, make clear that the marriage is a union for life. I cannot see how any agreement in writing could have greater effect and force than this solemn undertaking, freely exchanged between two people in a place of worship.

I am sure that each couple entering into marriage, certainly the vast majority of them, are convinced that at the time of their marriage it will be for life. They are convinced because their love, their affection, their trust is, to them, far superior to that of anyone else's. Because of human frailty, because we can have a change of circumstances, sometimes because of indifferent behaviour by one party to the marriage, sometimes because of callous behaviour by one party, this ideal state of marriage does not prevail. If this situation arises and we are left with a legal marriage merely in words, and not the ideal state which all of us want to provide, which gives a home background in which young children can be brought up, then I do not think we shall be serving any useful purpose.

Both the parties to a marriage and society put an interest in the consequences of marriage. It must surely be contrary to public policy to bind the parties for all time not to dissolve their marriage whatever the circumstances. I accept that the hon. and learned Gentleman would not conceive that even insanity should provide a ground for dissolving the marriage. I do not think that his views are held by the vast majority of people. At the time of marriage it is impossible to tell what circumstances will arise.

In any new circumstances it would be wrong not to leave each party with a choice as to what action they could take. The first part of the new Clause would bind a woman who signed such an agreement in perfect good faith—but whose husband turned out to be adulterous, cruel, avaricious or even insane—to a legal marriage which was then an empty shell, bringing no comfort to husband or wife and no benefits to society. It is true that subsection (2) would allow a judicial separation. This means that we would be condemning an innocent woman, through no fault of her own, to a life of loneliness and celibacy, never giving her the opportunity of happiness, love and affection and of starting life anew.

We would never allow people to say, "We made a mistake; let's start again." This new Clause would punish, most cruelly, the innocent wife whose only crime would be that at the time of her marriage she believed that it would be a union for life, and wanted it to be so, but who later, because of the behaviour of her husband, became sadly disillusioned. I will certainly oppose this.

There have already been two Committee stages of this Bill, and as one who sat on only one I realise that there is a great sense of familiarity in most of the Amendments discussed so far. This new Clause is a new conception, described by the hon. Member for Rhondda, West (Mr. Alec Jones) as "two-tier divorce". Amendment No. 10 is on rather similar lines.

This is a new concept and for the first time in our discussions I find myself more in sympathy with the hon. Member for Rhondda, West than with my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Bruce Campbell). The whole issue which this new Clause raises is of profound importance. The House will have to consider it with great care. The fact that it has not so far been raised does not mean that there is not a very important argument, to which the House should address its mind.

I start, as my hon. and learned Friend knows, by sharing his extreme concern about the situation under Clause 2(1)(e), where a spouse of deep religious convictions finds himself, or perhaps more likely, herself, brought to the divorce court against his or her will, and wholly innocent. We argued in Committee against having this in the Bill. I still feel that this is the only effective way of dealing with the issue.

We must, however, address our minds to whether it is possible, as an alternative, to distinguish between those people who wish to hold on to their marriage for religious reasons and those who do not have the same feelings and are perhaps holding on for wholly irreligious reasons. Although it is not explicit in the new Clause, this is the substance of our discussion. The issue goes back to the classic argument which has always run through this question and other questions about the responsibility of Church and State.

Order. There is a later Amendment on that subject. He will not talk about it now.

I am grateful, Mr. Speaker. I accept that there is a distinction between the new Clause and the Amendment.

Although this issue particularly arises when a person is of religious conviction, it can arise, at least in theory, with people of no religious conviction who hold that marriage is indissoluble. I must use the argument which has been used classically about the relationship between Church and State. It is essentially an argument which one can put without using either of those terms. The argument is between the bounds of morality and the bounds of law. I may be on safer ground if I stick to that terminology.

In law, traditionally divorce was the business purely of the Church, and until the end of the Middle Ages, and indeed later, the State never intervened. In other words, it was regarded purely as a moral matter. We have heard the same argument in recent years; the classic exposition of it was in the Wolfenden Report on homosexual practices. The distinction was brilliantly drawn in that Report between, to use the religious terms, crime and sin—between those things which are illegal and those which are wrong.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Bruce Campbell) is giving the wrong answer. It is true that two couples coming to marriage will look on marriage differently, whether they are deeply convinced Christians or not. I agree with the hon. Member for Rhondda, West that almost every couple view marriage as a permanent state of affairs. I do not suggest that many people seriously come to marriage with the idea of its being a temporary arrangement. If that is so, why come to marriage? Although at the time these two couples regard the marriage as permanent, their beliefs about the dissolubility of marriage will vary. Therefore, as time goes on, those two couples may react very differently to the stresses and strains of the time.

The issue which has been brought out so clearly is whether the State should intervene to buttress the marriage of the first couple of religious conviction in a way which is different from the way that it buttresses the marriage of the second couple who have no religious conviction.

Order. The hon. Gentleman is still on Amendment No. 10. This Amendment concerns whether the Bill should apply to those who have agreed in writing that their marriages shall be lifelong unions.

I am grateful, Mr. Speaker, but I am suggesting that it will be just those people who have religious convictions who would consent to the curious formula indicated by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Oldham, West.

Would not my hon. Friend agree that there are hundreds of circumstances in which two sets of people may enter into different contracts, and the law enforces a contract according to whether it is more binding or less binding? That is all that this Clause does.

I think that it is misleading to talk of marriage as a contract in this sense. Surely what the State does and should do in this context is lay clown the ways in which a marriage can be ended.

I see my hon. Friend's point. He is arguing very much the same point as my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West. The only difference is that my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Sir C. Black) is arguing that there should be a set of different degrees of marriage, and I think that that carries the argument of my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West to the point of absurdity. If couples were able to write their marriage vows in different ways, we should reach a very complicated state of affairs.

If certain couples hold views on the dissolubility of marriage, it is not for the State to enforce those views in a way which is different from the way that it would enforce the rules of marriage for those who do not hold those opinions. If certain people feel this sense of the indissolubility of marriage, the sanction must not be that of the State but that of the Church to which they belong.

I suggest that it would be wrong to introduce this two-tier concept into the law. Even if it were not wrong, the practical difficulties would be impossible of solution. One can imagine the charming scene at the proposal, with the young lady on the settee and the young gentleman on one knee, and the question being popped, "Darling, will you marry me?" It would lessen the excitement and charm of the occasion if she had to answer, "Do you mean first-class or second-class?"

In looking at the question implicit in the new Clause, for the first time in our proceedings I have misgivings about what the hon. and learned Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Bruce Campbell) has said; and he has said quite a lot, during recent weeks, from his great experience in matters of marriage and divorce.

I concur heartily when the hon. and learned Members repeats the sentiments in the sacrament of marriage:

"… for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part … and thereto I plight thee my troth."

Those words are worth remembering.

Order. I know that the hon. Member has certain ideas about the Bill, but we are not discussing the Bill but a specific Amendment. The hon. Gentleman will not be out of order if he comes to the Amendment.

In all humility, Mr. Speaker, I am trying to deal with the argument. The Clause has something to do with the indissolubility of marriage and it seeks to cement that indissolubility by the signing of an extra form or the giving of a further undertaking. It is about those things that I confess to some misgiving.

The hon. and learned Member described marriage as an institution, but people today, confronted with legal penalties of one kind or another would ask, "Who the devil wants to live in an institution?" They have other ideas about marriage which have nothing akin to life in an institution. I believe that the sacrament of marriage is debased by reference to 4d. or 5d. contracts, or 4d. or 5d. marriages. We do no justice to our discourse when we use such phraseology. It will pay the Mother of Parliaments to proceed here with care. Extra underakings, documented or otherwise, could be civil or legal matters, as opposed to the sacramental nature of marriage. Marriage should be so sacrosanct that other undertakings are considered superfluous.

It is said that the present divorce law is unsatisfactory, and that we all agree with that view is evidenced by the fact that we are now dealing with a Bill to reform that law. In all spheres of life the law has revealed its limitations, and in this context it could be argued that the law has proved unsatisfactory because divorce itself is unsatisfactory.

The hon. and learned Gentleman has given us the benefit of his very great knowledge of these matters, and has made his mark in dealing with questions of very great moment, such as this is. He seeks safeguards against the breakdown of marriage, and has the greater power to do so because of his long and unique experience. It is very good for the House to have the benefit of that experience. It is in the interests of humanity and of the well-being of people that, as far as possible, the breakdown of marriage should be avoided. Many things create that breakdown. If it is wise and good—

Order. The new Clause is about an agreement on the lifelong indissolubility of marriage. The hon. Member is not addressing himself to the Clause.

I am grateful for your guidance, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I always do my best, as you know, to stay in order.

Standing Orders require the Chair to do its best to keep an hon. Member in order.

We are fellow sufferers.

Should such a Clause, without in every single instance taking into account the circumstances, be enshrined in our law? It might be helpful, but I doubt it. I think that it could be retrogressive. Often people in difficulties over their marriage would pay less heed to this extra guarantee, this extra documentation, than they would be prepared to pay to the laws of love, of obedience, of sanctity and fidelity. If the marriage is to break down despite all the promises they have given, and the sacrifices they have promised to make, I fear that such documentation would be far from sufficient to prevent the breakdown.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Bruce Campbell) based his new Clause on contract. The hon. Member for Rhondda, West (Mr. Alec Jones) rather took exception to that and also to the fact that the result of the new Clause would be two classes of marriage, which he described as a 4d. and a 5d. marriage.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea (Mr. Worsley) poured derision on that and thought it an absurd idea to have two classes of marriage. He seemed surprised that the proposal should be made. But it is no new proposal. It has been the law of the land in one of the greatest law systems the world has even seen. I did not take a degree in Roman law but my recollection as an historian is that the ancient Romans had not two but three different forms of marriage based on contract according to the will of the parties concerned.

The situation envisaged in this new Clause is exactly what used to happen in the ancient Roman system. According to the will of the parties there were three different forms of marriage into which they could enter, with three different degrees of permanency, which depended on the will of the parties to the contract. It could be permanent for life, it could be dissoluble at the will of the parties, or it could be dissoluble only in certain circumstances. Marriage must depend on the will of the parties. If the parties decide that they want something permanent, why should the law prevent them from saying so? Why should it not enable them to enter such a contract which cannot be dissolved by one party only going back on what was the original intention?

I did not take part in the Committee proceedings. My hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea said that this was an idea which had not been examined in debates in Committee. If that is so, I think it should be examined now. I am convinced that this system has been tried before. The results should be examined, and it should be considered whether this is a reasonable proposal which ought to be added to the Bill

I approach consideration of the new Clause not as a wholehearted supporter of the Bill; but believe it should be resisted as it would make the Bill worse.

The hon. Member for Truro (Mr. Geoffrey Wilson) said that civilisation has had some experience of the different forms of marriage contracts. He appeared to think that they were not a bad thing. I would remind him that the Romans also had certain other arrangements in association with the marriage contract, and I am sure that opponents of this Measure would not want to go that far.

As the hon. and learned Member for Oldham, West agreed when I intervened, his Amendment would have the effect of putting back the clock a century or so. The sort of contract which he has in mind could clearly be dissolved by Parliament. In our history we have too much experience of the difficulty which is involved when Parliament has to arbitrate about a marriage to want to repeat the experience.

There are serious errors of logic in the Amendment. If we are to have a formal contract as against an easier one which can be broken by either party, it would appear to be identical with arguing for trial marriages. I see no difference in logic in arguing for that and other systems of trial marriage which have been advocated in other quarters. That difference should be pointed out to anybody who supports the Amendment.

The hon. and learned Gentleman said that, although both parties could enter into this sort of contract, it could be broken if both parties agreed to do so. That is the most serious flaw in his argument. It would have been a respectable argument if he had said that, once one has entered into a contract, it cannot be broken at all; but to suggest that some agreement could take place between the two parties to break it is advocating divorce by consent.

It is the law of the land that any parties to a contract may make a further contract either varying or cancelling the original contract which they made. I do not see that this is any different.

I do not see that that affects my argument. The whole basis of the hon. and learned Gentleman's advocacy in supporting his Amendment was that marriage was a contract which was different from any other contract.

I should like to come to more detailed criticism of the Amendment. It says:

"This section shall apply if before or after marriage the parties thereto have agreed in writing that their marriage shall be a lifelong union …".

The hon. and learned Gentleman has given no reason why it should be in writing. At the moment all marriages are contracted before witnesses. I cannot see why it should be necessary to have the agreement in writing.

My bewilderment about that goes further when I look down his proposed Amendment which says:

"Provided that no particular form of words as shall be required for such agreement."

This opens the door to a great many legal chambers if no particular form of words will be open to agreement. It leaves it open to all sorts of argument about whether a particular form of words was or was not an agreement. Moreover, if one accepted the general idea that there should be a clearer indication in the Amendment in which the words should be written down—

Is the hon. Member aware that wills can be made in any form of words and are legally enforceable?

I am aware of that, and also that a large number of lawyers has retired happily as a result. I do not think that that affects my argument. A will can contain a large number of provisions. In the contract with which we are concerned there is only one provision, so that I cannot accent that the making of a will is an analogy in this respect.

Basically, I must resist the new Clause because the hon. and learned Gentleman's argument appears to be that at one particular time two human beings can make a decision which will be binding, notwithstanding anything which might happen. All experience shows that this is not the nature of the human condition, and that many things may happen which would make it undesirable in the public interest and in the interest of the institution of marriage that an arrange- ment should be continued by a legal form when it is in the interests of the public and of the parties concerned that it should be broken.

For these reasons the new Clause should be resisted.

The House knows my position. It could perhaps be exemplified in the words of the mayor taking his seat for the first time in the council chamber when he said, "Of course, speaking from here I must be neutral. I therefore propose to be neither partial nor impartial." I speak with complete impartiality because, having listened with interest to the arguments, I doubt whether I can support the new Clause. Looked at from one point of view the logic behind the Clause is unanswerable. Only when one looks at the new Clause from the other side, the practical and human side, can one see, without being able to answer the logic, that there may be sound reasons for not having it. The House should consider carefully the idea lying behind the Clause. We should not, simply because there may be strong practical reasons against it, automatically reject it, without discussing further what is implicit in it.

As I hope to show, briefly, there are important thoughts behind the new Clause. I am sorry that, because of the procedural difficulty which has been explained, there are not more hon. Members taking part in the discussion, and that goes for both sides, if one may talk about sides on this matter. Because of the misfortune of timing, only two of the promoters have had an opportunity to be with us this afternoon, and a third one for a brief time, and it may be that others who share the view of the promoters would have liked to express their view. Of those taking different shades of view, I am sure that there are also others who would like to add their words to this discussion so that we might have a useful debate and at the end see where the balance of advantage lies.

The reason why I think that the logic behind the new Clause is unanswerable is this. It is very much a lawyers' argument, but lawyers' arguments are not always bad, although they may often be tedious. When we are making law it is not a bad idea sometimes to have a close look at what law we are making. I believe that the House once excluded all lawyers from the House; the nickname of that Parliament given in the history books is the "Mad Parliament".

May I correct the hon. and learned Gentleman? The Parliament he speaks of was in my constituency. Because the lawyers were absent it was known as the "Unlearned Parliament".

That sounds like another Parliament and not the one of which I was thinking.

We have hitherto treated marriage as being something of a contract but a contract of a different kind from any other one, different because the State had an interest in it and therefore it could not be simply terminable on the ordinary principles of contract, which include termination by consent, but could be terminated only for what the State considered to be such sound reason as eventually brought the marriage to an end.

This is, in its briefest form, the legal concept behind marriage and divorce thus far—at least since the day, as my hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea (Mr. Worsley) said, when the State took an interest in it. For a long time the State did not take an interest in it. There was no provision for civil marriage and divorce. But since we have had the Matrimonial Causes Acts at the end of the last century and the beginning of this century, that is roughly the position.

There is a certain amount of acceptable logic behind that. I am one of those lawyers who believe that laws will be observed only if there is behind them some degree of logic which is acceptable to the people upon whom they are binding. Here, though we call the new ground irretrievable breakdown, in fact there is a lot of the old logic still behind it, and I for one am rather glad about that. I am not talking about the matrimonial offence. I do not choose that term. That imports a certain degree of the criminal law, which has really nothing to do with this. What we called a matrimonial offence under the old law was really a breach of the implied contract of marriage of such seriousness that one could say, praying in aid the ideas of contract, that it was a breach of the contract going to the root of the matter and, therefore, such as should excuse the other party from further performance.

I think "matrimonial offence" was a useful catch phrase, but it was not really an offence in the way in which we use that word. It is really a breach of the implied contract of such seriousness as would certainly justify bringing an ordinary contract to an end—

Order. It is difficult to relate the hon. and learned Gentleman's remarks to the new Clause, which is concerned with an agreement which places a voluntary restriction on divorce.

If you will give me another five minutes—

Order. I am not sure that the Chair can wait that long.

Would you look at it in this way, Mr. Deputy Speaker? When I am doing a jigsaw puzzle, I always go for the outside pieces first because it is so much easier to fit the inside pieces in later. I leave the sky to the end. Here I am taking the straight pieces of the puzzle so that the other pieces will be more easily picked out and fitted into the pattern. I interpolate this to show you what I am coming to, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The conclusion to which my argument will lead is that in view of the changes that we are making here, the logic for having this new Clause is unanswerable in order to fit into the pattern of the law as it will be on the passing of this Measure. I assure you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that I will demonstrate in a moment, I hope, that I am in order.

I was dealing with what the concept was in the past. We have preserved some of that because in Clause 2 (1) paragraphs (a), (b) and (c) are what we used to call the matrimonial offences—the breaches of contract such as to amount to repudiation, justifying acceptance, and so forth.

Now I am coming nearer. In the Bill we have got a stage further to bringing the law of marriage into line with the law of contract by introducing divorce by consent. The hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Roebuck) said that my hon. and learned Friend in his new Clause was moving rather in the direction of divorce by consent. But we have done it in this Bill, in paragraph (d) of Clause 2(1). We have introduced divorce by consent, and that has brought it more into line with the law of contract. But then, having preserved the previous contractual element, and having moved in Clause 2(1)(d) more into line with the law of contract by introducing termination by consent—here, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I reach the point where I show that I am in order—unless we have some such provision as the new Clause now before us, we elevate the contract of marriage into the one kind of contract which cannot be irrevocable.

I do not say that every other kind of contract is irrevocable, for it may in some cases be contrary to public policy to make a contract irrevocable, but there are some serious irrevocable contracts, for example, the contract to part with what little money one has which, in order to achieve certain tax arrangements, must be irrevocable. If one is moving the law of divorce into line with the law of contract, an understandable and, I think, quite useful concept, it is illogical not to go the stage further proposed by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Bruce Campbell) and provide that if parties happen to agree at any stage that the contract between them is to be indissoluble, neither can terminate it against the wish of the other.

The new Clause does not go as far as the promoter thought; if it did, I could understand more of his concern. Even with the new Clause, and even if there were such an agreement, it would still be open to both parties, by consent, to waive their rights under the agreement, for that is a basic right in the law of contract. It would still be open to a party to bring divorce proceedings, and if the other party did not wish to rely on the written agreement, he would not have to.

There is something to be thought about here. My hon. and learned Friend has drawn our attention to a valid and useful point showing that, while we are here making the law of divorce more logical in some respects, we should introduce illogicality if we did not have some such provision as the new Clause.

Again, I think that the promoter overestimated the effect of the new Clause. He said that it would not be the view of the majority that a marriage should be binding for ever. He may well be right, but the virtue of a Clause drafted in terms of this kind is that no one has to avail himself of it unless he wishes to, which, equally, is one of the fundamental principles of the law of contract.

I appreciate that there are substantial practical problems. I do not think that my hon. and learned Friend himself would suggest that the wording of his new Clause as it stands is the final answer to the question. But he has done a useful service in drawing this consideration to our minds, and, though I for one hope that the Clause will not be added to the Bill, not in its present form, at all events, I hope that what lies behind it will receive further consideration.

The hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Roebuck) intervened when my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Bruce Campbell) was introducing his new Clause. He said that marriages could always be terminated by act of Parliament. Another hon. Member instanced Henry VIII and his wives, and how Parliament had come to his help.

I would remind the hon. Member for Harrow, East of what he probably knows as well as I do, that Bills introduced in this House have a very uncertain road before them. If such a Bill was introduced, purporting to end a state of marriage between two people it would presumably be introduced as a Private Bill, and during the last few weeks we have had a number of Private Bills which have met with bitter opposition before they have gone into Committee.

The hon. Member would probably say, "Ah, but such a Private Bill would be an unopposed Private Bill." May I tell him that on the last occasion when I had the privilege of sitting on the Unopposed Private Bills Committee we threw out an unopposed Private Bill. This is no certain way by which a few wealthy people can terminate a marriage.

My argument is not the question of the dispatch which such a Measure would receive in both Houses of Parliament, but the desirability of such a process.

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman's view, and I share his concern that if Parliament was to be presented with a large number of such Bills the matter would become intolerable.

I have a good deal of sympathy with what my hon. and learned Friend endeavours to provide in his new Clause, but I fail to see how it will work satisfactorily. I am one of the few Members present today who is not a lawyer, but it does not seem to me that it is phrased without a certain number of loopholes. The Clause says that

"‖ after marriage the parties thereto have agreed in writing that their marriage ‖".

If such an agreement is to be entered into in writing, is it to be enered into before witnesses and, if so, how many? Has my hon. and learned Friend an idea for a standard form of procedure to be laid down if the House saw fit to include what is basically an admirable new Clause in the Bill? There are two different types of case which we must consider. There is a contract or declaration which can be made before the marriage, or there is the alternative of making it after the ceremony, during the marriage.

What is the procedure which will be undertaken with this form of declaration? It is not a declaration to be entered into lightly, it has some significance which I take very seriously. It is not good enough to say that the parties

"‖ have agreed in writing."

I want to give my hon. and learned Friend some examples to show why I feel that what is included in the Clause is not satisfactory. Does he envisage a form of registration of such declarations, and if so who should conduct the registrations? Who should keep the central register? Does he envisage that the register should be held by the Church or some other authority?

My hon. and learned Friend went on to say a little about the form in which such a declaration entered into before or during marriage could be terminated, and I take it that he envisages that the agreement could be revocable. Would there be any legal fees for entering or revoking such a declaration? I raise this point because, if a declaration is to have significance—and I consider that a declaration of this sort would have every significance to certain married—couples it must have some legal binding and as lawyers usually make a certain amount of income by preparing declarations, surely certain legal fees would be involved here.

What I have in mind is a situation where a devoted old couple are, say, going into a county home. They may be about to be separated for the first time in their married life and may wish to enter into a declaration before being parted temporarily. Or perhaps one partner is going into hospital and the other staying at home. They, too, might wish to enter into a declaration. Would fees be payable?

Earlier, I compared the circumstances of such a declaration to those of a will. The principle would be the same. No special form of words is required for a will, nor is a special fee payable until after the death of the parties, when it is brought into operation.

I am grateful. My hon. Friend has the benefit of expert legal background which some of us do not possess.

I want to raise one or two other queries in connection with the wording of the new Clause. I have mentioned that if such a register of declarations were to be compiled, the appropriate authority would possibly be the Church. But it might not be the adequate authority for such deposits. Has my hon. and learned Friend consulted Church leaders? Has he sought their advice? If so, the House will be glad to know what it was.

I hope that my hon. and learned Friend does not think that I am deliberately kicking holes in a well-meaning and well-intentioned new Clause, and to show that the ideas I am putting forward have real meaning in life I will give illustrations of the type of situation which I envisage could occur. I have grave doubts about the new Clause in relation to what could happen if only one copy of a declaration was made and perhaps one of the partners becomes of feeble mind while the other remains sane and then deliberately destroys the agreement. What is to prevent that happening?

The insane partner will probably have been removed to a county home and may have a vague recollection of having signed a declaration, but, obviously, his word will have no meaning in law. On the other hand, the sane partner, wishing to terminate the association following this development in a formerly happy marriage, obviously will feel constrained to deny the existence of such a declaration. How would such an eventuality be covered by the new Clause? This is a point of concern.

What happens when one partner is incapacitated in a motor accident or meets with some other serious mishap? I know of tragic cases when newly-married people have been in motor accidents and one has been rendered permanently almost speechless, or with damage to the head which prevents him from making proper sense. Unless there is a central register of such declarations, what is to prevent the other partner from changing his mind, on seeing what might be permanent disfigurement in the injured partner, and denying the existence of such a declaration?

I had a crash in a point-to-point and I remember nothing of four hours of my life. It could easily happen that such a declaration would be destroyed in such a period. I say that to emphasise how sensible my hon. Friend's argument is.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Mr. Dance) for that information. I did not have in mind exactly that type of incident, but it indicates the sort of hazard with which we are surrounded.

What happens if one partner tires of the marriage and seizes and destroys the declaration? The declaration may be hidden in a drawer, for instance, so that both partners know where it is, but what is to prevent one from seizing it, destroying it, and then denying that it ever existed?

All three eventualities which I have listed could easily occur daily. Unless there is a fabric of an organisation in the making of the declaration, with witnesses and registration, so that declarations are readily to hand, with details of the type of people who may witness declarations and where the declarations are to be held, and unless copies are available in case one of the partners destroys the original on the spur of the moment, the new Clause would be partly meaningless.

What are the views of the Solicitor-General? He has been good enough to sit here for nearly all the debate. He will agree that the Clause contains an interesting principle. I hope that at some stage—and I regret that it has not occurred already—the House will have the benefit of his legal expertise. This is an entirely new concept. The House would be helped by having the Solicitor-General's views about the points which have been raised, about having a central register of such declarations and their validity in law. For instance, does he feel that the Church would be an adequate repository for such declarations, or would that be better undertaken by the county councils, or by a Government Department rather like Somerset House? Is such a depository necessary to make the Clause work? If—

Order. The Solicitor-General will not have time to answer.