With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a short statement.

Instead of the business already announced for Thursday, 11th February, there will be consideration of the Rolls-Royce (Purchase) Bill.

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

The purpose of the Bill is to Amend the Road Traffic Act 1960 so as to require users of motor vehicles to be insured in respect of liability for death or bodily injury to passengers; and for connected purposes. Hon Members will be well aware of the evil at which this Bill is aimed. Tens of thousands of passengers are carried each day on the public highway without the protection of passenger insurance. Many of them do so unsuspecting that in the event of an accident in which their driver is to blame, or in the event of a fatal accident, they or their dependants are unable to obtain compensation. The cases of extreme hardship so caused are many and most hon. Members will have had some knowledge of specific instances either within their own circle of friends or among their constituents.

I venture to think that there must be almost unanimous support in the House for a change in the law. Ever since the hon. Gentleman the Member for Loughborough (Mr. Cronin) introduced a similar Bill in 1961, which likewise provided for no exemption, there has been a growing campaign both within this House and outside it to place this Measure of social reform upon the Statute Book.

The right. hon. Lady the Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle), when she was Minister of Transport, set up a special Committee of the National Road Safety Committee under Sir Harold Kent to investigate the matter. The Kent Committee, as it was called, reported in 1968 and recommended as strongly as it could that the time had come for passenger insurance to be compulsory. It expressed itself firmly opposed to opting out or to categories of exemption because it felt that the exemptions would be abused by a proportion of those involved and that as a result passengers would still be carried on the public highway without insurance cover. The Committee further stated that it had no reason to believe that there would not be a market for this type of insurance, and indeed, where the risk of passenger carriage was minimal, as in the case of ostensibly single-seat machines, this would be reflected in the premium.

On 10th March, 1969, the right hon. Gentlemen the Member for Greenwich (Mr. Marsh), who is supporting me in this Bill, who was then Minister of Transport, announced the then Government's intention to introduce legislation as soon as possible. However, it was subsequently announced that a date for legislation could not be given because of pressure of Government business. More recently, my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Waddington) brought forward a Bill which received its Second Reading in Febuary 1970 and passed unaltered through its Committee stage in April the same year. But it never reached the Statute Book because of the General Election in June. His Bill was similar in concept to the one now before the House, except that it exempted from its provisions mopeds of less than 50 c.c. and motor-cycles not equipped to carry a passenger, provided—a most important proviso—that no passenger was so carried.

I understand from my discussions with those representing the insurance companies that in effect, since the terms of that Bill would have required insurance companies to be responsible in the last resort in the event that a passenger was illegally carried on a vehicle, or in the case that, during the currency of the insurance, the machine was modified to carry a passenger, the exemption would have had little or no effect.

The present Minister of Transport, like his predecessors, has expressed himself in favour of amending the law. However, unfortunately, also like his predecessors, he belongs to a Government with a heavy legislative programme. I therefore venture to feel that the House will think it appropriate, in view of the great delay which has occurred and the unquantifiable human suffering which has been caused by the delay, that the Bill should now be brought forward once again as a Private Member's Bill.

I know that many hon. Members, except those, unlike myself, with preten- sions to legal knowledge, will share my view that there is as much scope for legal reform in repealing out-dated Statutes or pernicious provisions of previous legislation as there is in adding new laws to the Statute Book. The Bill does no more than repeal that subsection of the Road Traffic Act, 1960, which excludes from the provisions of compulsory insurance passengers other than passengers carried for hire or reward, or in pursuance of a contract of employment.

The Kent Committee estimated that approximately 90 per cent. of motorists already had insurance cover in respect of their passengers. This figure would appear to indicate that nevertheless there still remain on the roads about a million cars which are not covered for the carriage of passengers. The substantial majority of the 1.1 million two-wheeled vehicles licensed on the roads do not have passenger insurance, even though, as Ministry of Transport statistics clearly show, their passengers are at a greater risk.

The number of car passenger casualties who go uncompensated each year is impossible to assess, as no statistics are recorded of these and the majority of victims do not bring law suits when the driver is a man of straw and there is no means for them to collect damages awarded to them. In this context, I should like to point out that for many years those connected with the administration of the law have been most concerned at the way in which the judgments of the courts have been frequently set at nought by the inability to enforce on an uninsured driver the awards made to the victims of a road accident.

In 1969, in the case of Cornell versus the Motor Insurance Bureau, Lord Denning, Master of the Rolls, ended his judgment in this way: I would only add this: many people think that the statute should be altered so as to provide compulsory insurance for passengers. I think so too. It is very hard on a passenger that he should be injured by the negligence of the driver—and have no recourse for damages. I hope that Parliament will soon remedy the position. Meanwhile, I would suggest that anyone who asks for or accepts a lift should ask the driver: 'Are you insured for passengers or not?': for if he is not, and there is an accident, he may be unable to get compensation. Lord Justice Sachs echoed Lord Denning's hopes when he said: It is now the best part of 40 years since a large measure of compulsory insurance for motorists was brought into force, having regard to the perils to which other road users were put by the motor car drivers incapable of paying damages. That was indeed a great step forward, though even at that time there was a measure of criticism of the plight in which passengers were left. Since then the courts have seen only too often a procession of gravely injured passengers who were bereft of compensation because the drivers were too mean or too careless to take out a more comprehensive form of policy, though well able to afford to pay that much extra for their pleasure or convenience. One can only hope that the instant case will stimulate attention to the ever-increasing need to stop literally thousands of people being in effect licensed tortiously to injure others by negligent driving without being able to compensate them. Though it may not be possible to assess what proportion of motor vehicle passengers who are involved in accidents are not covered by the provisions of insurance, it is possible to get some rough idea of the scale from those accidents involving motor cycle passengers. In the 10 years which have passed since the hon. Member for Loughborough introduced his Bill, more than 35,000 pillion passengers have been killed or severely injured. In those instances when the driver of the motor cycle was to blame, the overwhelming majority of passengers were not covered for insurance.

If the House will allow me, I should like to cite but a few of the more recent cases. In 1969 a 21-year-old man was ordered to pay a girl injured on his motor scooter £4,000. Because he had no passenger cover he will have to pay £1 a week for the next 77 years, that is, until he is 98 years old.

Only two months ago, there was a case of a young woman, aged 29, who was awarded £33,105 damages for being blinded for life in a car crash nearly four years ago. According to reports of the case, she may not get a penny of it because her boy friend who was driving the car was not insured for passenger liability and it is doubtful whether he can pay up.

In another case, last year a young man aged 22 was ordered to pay a friend crippled in a car crash for which he was held responsible £44,280. In this case the insurance company concerned had gone into liquidation and was disputing the claim. However, had the Bill been on the Statute Book at the time, even though the company concerned were to repudiate the claim or default, the Motor Insurance Bureau would almost certainly have accepted liability in accordance with its agreement with the Department of the Environment whereby it covers all risks which are by law compulsorily insurable. However, as in this case there was no requirement for compulsory passenger insurance, those involved got no compensation whatever.

In June 1969, a girl who had been in a coma for six years after a car crash died without receiving any of the £21,000 damages which she had been awarded. The driver of the car in which she had been travelling was ordered to pay £5 per month, at which rate it would have taken 350 years to clear.

I know that hon. Members will be shocked by such appalling cases, but these are but a very few of those appearing all the time in the law courts. Hon. Members will agree that it is the uninsured driver almost as much as the uninsured passenger who is in need of the protection that would be afforded by the proposed change in the law. I must ask them to consider how it came about that there should be such a loophole in the law relating to the use of motor vehicles on the public highway. I must enjoin any hon. Member who, in representing a sectional interest, may be contemplating proposing categories of exemption to the Bill earnestly to consider what might he the consequences of that exemption should it be abused and should passengers continue to be carried on the public highway without the protection afforded by insurance cover.

I come to the reasons why this Bill contains no provision for opting out or exemptions. The Kent Committee dealt severely with opting out. It declared: A provision which left open to a motor cyclist to 'opt out' of passenger insurance on the basis of a simple statement to his insurance insurer that he did not intend ever to carry a passenger would be unacceptable. … we think that sooner or later the undertaking would be broken in the majority of cases. There would also be a very real risk of deliberate evasion by a substantial number of motor cyclists. It would be impossible adequately to enforce the undertaking because the uninsured machines would not be identifiable and in the great majority of cases the offence would only come to light after the accident. As to categories of exemption, a strong theoretical case can undoubtedly be made out for exempting machines not designed for the carriage of passengers. The Kent Committee considered this point but came to the conclusion that: Our inquiries confirmed that virtually all motor cycles and scooters in current production are of a type which is constructed in such a manner that passengers can be carried. Even if, as a result of demand, the manufacturers produced a sufficient supply of single-seater machines, the ingenuity of a mechnanically minded young man would, we are told, surmount the problem of subsequent adaption. Moreover, there would—conversely—be a problem for owners of existing machines which generally have an elongated seat for both rider and passenger and could not readily be adapted to a true single-seater. So we cannot see that there is any possibility of framing any exemptions around the concept of 'a true single-seater'. The Report continued: With the rapid development in power of quite small machines, mopeds capable of carrying passengers have been produced, and it seems quite possible that more will be. Although statistics show mopeds to be considerably safer than any other two-wheeled vehicle, they still compare unfavourably with four-wheelers and we think it would be better not to provide any exemption for those vehicles, on the basis that if, in practice, the extent of passenger-carrying remains fairly small, insurers would no doubt reflect this in the premium. I have made my own inquiries into the situation with mopeds and it is clear that there are an increasing number of vehicles on the market capable of carrying passengers. There are therefore very strong reasons for not allowing even in this case a category of exemption. First of all not only imported vehicles but also domestically-produced ones are being produced with an elongated seat. Secondly, children are not infrequently carried in baskets attached to the rear mudguard of the moped. I have further ascertained that for the sum of £6 15s. kits are obtainable to convert single-seat mopeds into two seaters. Fourthly the road accident figures for 1969, the latest available, show that 80 casualties were passengers riding pillion on mopeds. This makes clear that many mopeds can and do carry passengers.

In bringing forward this Bill, it is of the utmost importance that the extra cost to road users should be looked at closely. I recognise the concern expressed by several hon. Members about this and naturally following by discussions on this point with the British Motor-cyclists Federation and other bodies representing the motor cycling fraternity I have made the question of premiums the principal subject of my inquiries. There have been some very wild figures bandied around and I would like to be able to reassure hon. Members on this point. The House will recognise that two-wheeled machines provide the cheapest means of motor transport and nothing should be done to add unnecessarily to the cost. However, it is those who feel that they cannot afford a few pounds or, in the case of mopeds, a few shillings for passenger insurance, who are unfortunately least able to meet a claim for £20,000 or £30,000 damages.

Hitherto the question of additional premium has been a matter of much speculation. Now that passenger insurance is compulsory in Northern Ireland it is possible to see what figures are currently being quoted there. I will give a brief selection of the additional premium required to cover liability for passenger insurance. These are the current prices. For machines up to 50 cc £2 to £3; 50 cc to 200 cc £2 10s. to £3 10s.; 200 cc to 350 cc £4 to £5; over 350 cc £6 15s. to £7 15s. These figures are for drivers over 25 and for those between 18 and 25 years of age a loading depending on the company concerned of 25 per cent. to 50 per cent. is usually added.

I must draw to the attention of the House that Northern Ireland is more highly rated than anywhere else in the United Kingdom with the exception of London and Glasgow. I understand that the premiums in other areas would be up to 30 per cent. less than those and the normal no-claim discounts would apply. The House may consider that these figures are not unreasonable in relation to the capital cost of the machines involved or their annual running costs. In the case of what are ostensibly single-seat machines it is for the insurance companies to recognise the very remote possibility of a passenger being carried and to reflect this in the premium.

I very much hope that this will be the case with regard to veteran and vintage machines, which are in a very specialist category. They represent a very small minority of the vehicles covered by the provisions of the Bill and, as I understand it, a great part of their activities takes place off the public highway, in which case they would not need to be covered in this way, and that any way in most cases they are usually insured only for specific limited periods, and I have no reason to believe, nor did the Kent Committee when it inquired into this matter, that there would be any undue increase in the cost of the cover provided.

I have further had assurances from several leading companies in this country that, for single-seater mopeds, at current prices—and I must emphasise that, because I understand that generally throughout the insurance field there are shortly to be substantial increases in premiums—they will offer the cover required under the terms of the Bill for 10s. or 50p.

Northern Ireland has in its compulsory insurance legislation excluded machines not legally equipped to carry passengers. However, I have been in correspondence with the Home Affairs Minister in Northern Ireland about this matter, and he informs me that they have regretted having made even this exemption, because they feel that it is unworkable, and they intend to change the law at the earliest possible moment so that there will be no exemptions or exclusions.

Perhaps I should mention to the House that there are many countries which already have full passenger cover for all motor vehicles, with no exceptions at all. This situation applies in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, the Federal Republic of Germany, Hungary, New Zealand, Poland and Sweden, and if the list were to include those countries where the only exception is blood relations of the insured, the following would have to be added: Austria, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey and Yugoslavia.

In the light of the assurances which have been given about the level of premiums, and above all in the light of the difficulty in framing any workable category of exemptions which would not provide a loophole again in the law to enable passengers to be carried without the benefit of insurance, I venture to feel that the House will agree that the time has come to change the law in this respect and to go all the way in providing no categories of exemption and putting an end to the endless stream of human misery.

11.33 a.m.

I am glad of the opportunity to participate in this debate because I am, and always have been, particularly interested in this question of passenger insurance. In November, 1968, during the debate on the Queen's Speech, I drew attention to the grave problem of the terrible carnage on our roads and the need for passenger insurance. I then quoted the records available for the five years from 1962 to 1966, which showed that the number of passengers killed during that period was 5,130, and the number seriously injured was 77,335. Those figures did not include those who were slightly injured, nor did they include passengers on motorcycles or motor scooters. No doubt with the increase in the number of motor vehicles on the roads those figures have increased and will, in all probability, go on increasing.

The Road Traffic Act, 1960, was a consolidating Measure. It repealed the exemption from the necessity for third party insurance of passengers, persons in employment, or where there was a contractual liability, and so today, whilst the third party who is injured and can prove negligence is secure in the knowledge that an insurance company will compensate him, the passenger merely has his remedy against the driver. We know that a prudent driver will insure against this risk but, as the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill) said, there are many cases where this has not been done. The insured driver as a result of whose negligence the accident occurs may have little or no means. A judgment may be obtained against him by the injured passenger or by the executor or administrator on behalf of the family of the person who is killed, but such a judgment may be of little avail, and there have been some dreadful cases of this happening. The hon. Gentleman has cited a number of cases in which a passenger has suffered severe injury, or perhaps been maimed for life, and has received nothing—or very little—or where the family, deprived of the breadwinner, has been reduced to penury.

My hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Mr. Cronin) introduced a Private Member's Bill as long ago as February, 1961 to remedy this state of affairs by making passenger insurance compulsory. The then Parliamentary Secretary, speaking on behalf of the Government, expressed his sympathy with the proposal but said: We are not convinced that there is a sufficient weight of evidence to make out an over-whelming case for an alteration of the existing law, or that a large number of members of the public suffer hardship because the present law is defective. … Our attitude may reasonably be described as one of open-minded neutrality."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 10th February, 1961; Vol.634,c.829.] As a result, the Bill was withdrawn.

I hope that the Minister today will make a speech in very different terms from what was said on that occasion, because I should have thought that the case today is even more overwhelming than it was then. If only a small number of people are affected, they ought to be protected. If a large number are affected, the need is greater, but successive Governments appear to have burked the issue. Questions have been addressed to Ministers. There was a special Committee of the National Road Safety Advisory Committee appointed in March, 1966. That committee reported, and in March, 1967 it was stated that the report would be studied and the position considered, but nothing was done.

The hon. Gentleman referred to what he called the willingness of Governments to do something, but apparently because of what is called a lack of time nothing happens. One can be cynical about this if one considers the amount of time spent on, for example, the Industrial Relations Bill which is opposed by hundreds of Members, and yet no time can be found for a necessary reform of this kind. At any rate, nothing has been done, and I am extremely grateful that the hon. Gentleman has seized the opportunity of presenting the Bill before us today.

This Measure will no doubt mean an increase in premiums, and it may be that because of that Governments are reluctant to make the unpopular move of putting an additional burden on people, but a person with a lethal weapon like a car or a motorcycle should be prepared to bear the cost of the extra premium so that others may be protected.

The hon. Gentleman quoted figures. I do not know whether they are accurate or not. They seem to be small in amount but, whatever the amount, surely the amount of premium to be charged is no sufficient reason for preventing this Measure from going through the House. This matter should be one for legislation by the Government. The whole problem of insurance should be tackled in many aspects.

Some time ago, I raised the problem of the hit-and-run driver and the need for an amendment of the agreement with the Motor Insurers' Bureau. I am glad to say that the agreement was amended, but there are still a number of anomalies which should be looked at. There is the problem of the sub-contractor and the persons employed by him, who, although insured, may not be covered by statutory regulations. That is another matter which has been pointed out but which has not received attention to date. There is also the view, often expressed by many people, that there should be insurance cover of accidents, however caused.

It is essential that, at some time, the Government of the day should get down to serious consideration of these matters, with resultant legislation. But if governments will not move, as apparently they will not, in matters of this kind, I am glad that the hon. Member for Stretford has used his luck in the Ballot to seek to remedy this matter. I congratulate him on introducing the Bill to deal with a serious defect in our law.

11.41 a.m.

I have to give voice to very serious doubts, anxieties and reservations about the Bill, but I should like to say straight away that I think it would be wrong for the House to decline to give it a Second Reading. It is not, therefore, to oppose the Motion that I rise, especially as I see that the Bill's purpose is not only to amend the Road Traffic Act in the sense indicated by my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill) but also "for connected purposes". It is to those possible purposes that I want to draw special attention. But it would obviously be wrong to oppose the Bill's Second Reading because of the agonising experiences of injustice and human suffering to which my hon. Friend has drawn attention.

I think that the House would like to say to my hon. Friend that it is much indebted to him for the very workman-like and thorough way in which he introduced the Bill. His speech was a model for introducing a Bill of this kind. There was only one thing wrong with his speech, and that was his standpoint. He should not have made it from that place at all: he should have been making it from the place in which his grandfather and great-grandfather sat, the corner seat of the Front Bench below the Gangway, as captains of the "awkward squads" of their days. I hope that he will have due regard in future to the proper historical precedent as to where he should sit in this House.

I am interested in the Bill because constituents of mine are very prominent in the motor cycling world. Indeed, a principal officer of the British Motorcyclists Federation is a constituent of mine or resident in the borough of which my constituency is a part, and I am vice-president of the federation. It is from that point of view that I want to ask the House to consider one or two important points.

The Second Reading debate, of course, is concerned with the principle of the Bill, and, as I have said, I do not think that an objection on principle to the Bill is sustainable either in logic or in morality. I think, too, that one must accept the general proposition of the Kent Committee that in considering compulsory passenger insurance it is "not on" to allow opting out on a large voluntary scale.

But there are details which require consideration to meet certain serious doubts and anxieties which have been expressed. The principal one concerns exemptions. Of course, I accept what my hon. Friend said, that any exemptions will be difficult to frame because of the danger of abuse. This is especially true, I suppose, in the case of mopeds, although I do not think that we should give up in that respect for that reason.

But there are classes of vehicle which should not be brushed aside too lightly. There are the trials motor cycles, the vintage motor cycles, vehicles such as tractors, rollers and so on. The House will be doing less than justice to itself if it does not give very serious and detailed consideration to those classes of vehicle.

There are further doubts and anxieties on a second score, namely, that of the premiums which are likely to be charged by insurance companies in the open market, and, more subtly, the difficulties under which insured persons will labour in respect of the terms and conditions of the kinds of contract of insurance which may be available to them.

However, the Committee stage is the stage at which we should consider these matters, but I hope that it will not be considered out of place if I mention what I hope will be a subject for serious consideration later on. I hope, if I have the opportunity, to table Amendments in Committee designed to meet some of the doubts and anxieties which I am trying to express, and I hope that I may indicate them briefly, so that the Minister, whom we are all glad to see here, may turn them over in his mind in the meantime.

In the matter of exemptions, I should like the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford to consider the possibility of a new Clause procedure that the Minister may, by order, make regulations to provide for exemptions——

Another let-out.

In a sense, although I do not think that the hon. and learned Gentleman is saying that in a very friendly spirit, perhaps there is something in what he says. I might commend to him the merits of doing this by regulation. Everything in any exemptions which one may design depends upon detail, and detail has to be established after the most careful consideration by those responsible for framing the regulations and by the interests concerned. I am not sure that a Committee of the House is the best place in which to frame the details of the kind of regulations which should be made.

I should have thought that if my hon. Friend could give an undertaking, or at least accept an option, to try to frame regulations, it would then leave it open to those who want to be exempted to make representations to him and his Department which could be seriously considered, and all the difficulties could be debated in the kind of atmosphere and at the leisure which we could not have in a Committee. He could then come to the House with such regulations as he could frame and it would be for the House to decide.

So, when the hon. and learned Gentleman says that it is a let-out, in a sense he is right: it is letting the Standing Committee of the House to which the Bill will be committed out of a task which I am not sure it would be capable of fulfilling; but it is not letting the House out of its duty to give the interests concerned the right to protect themselves. So that is an amendment which we might envisage.

As to the anxieties about the premiums, which may resolve themselves into anxieties about the kind of contract which would be available, we have a useful precedent in the proposals in the Industrial Relations Bill for a code of practice. I would propose that we should consider a Clause to introduce a similar code which would put forward a model insurance policy, such that any contravention of the proposals in the code would not itself give grounds for action, but such that the provisions provided for in the code would be presumed to be part of any contract of insurance unless they were specifically excluded from the contract. That might satisfy the anxieties of many people who feel that persons who have to insure, especially for motorcycle passengers, should not be in danger of unwittingly accepting a contract which, though perhaps attractively low priced, would not give them the cover they should have. Many of these people are not highly sophisticated or accustomed to reading small print with close scrutiny.

My suggestion might also be a way to make permanent provision, as an alternative to exemption, for vintage and other vehicles. It may be convenient to have a model insurance policy which makes special provision for this class of vehicle.

As I pointed out, these points can be considered in Committee. In the meantime, I trust that hon. Members will agree that they would be in no way justified in obstructing the progress of the Bill at this stage.

11.51 a.m.

I wish, first, to congratulate the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill) on his luck in the Ballot and on bringing forward this Measure. This is a useful Bill. I want to make it clear at the beginning of my remarks that I have a vested interest in the insurance business. I am still the owner of a large and remunerative insurance book with the Co-operative Insurance Society, for which I receive no remuneration at present.

Selling motor insurance was a speciality of mine; in the years after the war I sold hundreds of motor policies. I also filled in hundreds of motor claim forms. I therefore have some knowledge—based on nearly 35 years of selling insurance to the public—of the subject under discussion.

I was glad that the Member for Stretford mentioned that 90 per cent. of passengers carried in motor cars are already covered by a clause in policies assuring them of cover for full legal liability in any accident. This cover is included in the policies issued by nearly all insurers which are connected with the British Insurance Association. In other words, for many years the majority of passengers carried in motor cars have been covered by reputable companies for this sort of risk. I wish to make it abundantly clear that the British Insurance Association has made it possible for virtually all passengers to be covered by the policies issued by companies connected with that association.

The Bill will close a loophole that has existed for a long time. I am not being unfair in saying that this loophole has enabled "bucket" insurance companies to sell policies for £1 or £2 cheaper than what one might call the tariff companies because people have not known that they were not being covered for the most important risk of all.

The closing of this loophole should result in motor insurance becoming really competitive again. I mention this because if there is one branch of insurance which does not make any money, it is motor insurance. One need only examine the premiums and company returns of the big insurance companies which are connected with the B.I.A. to see that year after year their accounts have been running at a loss. This is because, despite increased premiums, the amounts awarded by the courts, particularly in respect of passenger liability, have been increasing, and now awards of between £10,000 and £40,000 are given for a single accident.

Like the hon. Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Iremonger), I appreciate that in certain branches of insurance it is difficult to give full passenger liability. Indeed, for motorcycle pillion passengers it has not been found possible to devise a scheme with a premium that is both commensurate with the risk and capable of being paid by the passenger or motorcycle owner. This is simply because the whole basis of motor insurance is based on the claims ratio; if there are a lot of expensive claims in a certain sphere of insurance, the premiums in that sphere go up. Unfortunately, the motorcycle pillion passenger is at greater risk, with the result that a scheme to cover him fully would take a premium which would be outside the pocket of the average motorcyclist.

The basis of insurance is trying to assess the risk, and this is why insurance companies sometimes "load" people, place excesses on them or in some other way limit the type of vehicle they may drive. These steps are taken to reduce the number of accidents and so keep premiums down. The British insurance industry, in which I greatly believe, has done its utmost to keep motor premiums at as low a level as possible, and this is to its credit.

The Bill will close a loophole that has been open for many years, and as a result of this loophole the "bucket shop" has been able to sell insurance policies at a slightly cheaper rate, especially to people who are not fully aware of what they are buying.

It is in this connection that I make a "plug" on behalf of full-time insurance brokers and agents who spend the whole of their working lives selling and explaining insurance. I advise anybody who wants to take out a motor insurance policy or who is contemplating buying a motor car to go to those who specialise in this type of business—in other words, consult a full-time agent or broker.

Unfortunately, too many people are today selling insurance on the side. This includes the garage mechanic and garage owner. Indeed, the owner of a garage will frequently employ a member of staff to sell motor policies over the counter, frequently without explaining the terms and conditions of the contract. It is vital—not only for the protection of passengers—that the terminology of policies, especially clauses relating to passenger liability, are explained to policy-holders.

In many instances a passenger is covered while getting in and out of a vehicle but is not covered while travelling in the vehicle. This is how many "bucket" companies are able to sell insurance for a few £s less than the tariff companies, though in the long run their policies are frequently a lot dearer.

I again congratulate the hon. Member for Stretford on bringing forward this Measure, and if I have the privilege of serving on the Committe with him I will try, with other hon. Members, to improve it to ensure that everybody is covered. As I pointed out, the B.I.A. is to be congratulated on the wonderful work that it has done and will go on doing to preserve our insurance principles in this country.

12 noon

I am happy to support my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill), and to congratulate him on the way in which he introduced this very important Bill.

The House should also feel greatly indebted to the hon. Member for Battersea, South (Mr. Ernest G. Perry) for drawing our attention to two very important matters. The first matter is that the Bill, in essence, affects motor cyclists, because the vast majority of car drivers are already covered for passenger risk. The second is the very large awards of damages which are made these days. We must not lose sight of the fact that nowadays many people survive motoring accidents as a result of the advance in medical knowledge when a very few years ago they would have died. That is why we read of enormous awards of damages being made by the courts.

The hon. Member was too pessimistic when he spoke of premiums, a subject about which I should like to say something in a very few minutes.

My hon. Friend was kind enough to mention that in the last Session of the last Parliament I introduced a similar Bill. That Bill survived its Committee stage and might well have become law but for the Dissolution. In it I sought to exclude any obligation to insure passengers in the case, first of all, of motor cycles without pillion seats, and, secondly, mopeds. However, I fully appreciate why the present Bill contains no exemptions, and I support my hon. Friend. I hope that he will not feel it necessary to make the sort of concession suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Iremonger). I have a natural dislike of delegated legislation and more and more motor vehicle regulations. The time has come when the House should take the responsibility of saying that we have here a social evil of substantial proportions which must be dealt with.

The truth of the matter is that if a machine is not capable of carrying passengers that fact will be reflected in only a very small premium being charged. But if we do not impose an overall obligation to insure and some fool uses such a machine for the carriage of a passenger and that passenger is injured, that passenger will, for the reasons mentioned by my hon. Friend, have no redress at all. The driver will no doubt be unable to pay the damages awarded, and no obligation will fall on the Motor Insurers Bureau, because that organisation is there only to meet claims where there has been an obligation to insure and, in contravention of the law, insurance has not been taken out.

The same argument can be advanced against the suggestion that there should be provision for opting out. Before introducing my Bill I became convinced that it was quite impracticable in legislation of this sort to provide for opting out. Such a system would drive a coach and horses through the social purpose of the legislation, because a passenger who, all unwittingly, allowed himself to be carried on an opted-out machine would not get any damages.

Opting out would also lead to some quite ridiculous situations which would serve only to bring the law into disrepute. One example will be sufficient. A man steals a motor cycle from a street corner. He picks up a girl at the next corner. He drives away, and is involved in an accident. What factor would determine whether the girl received any compensation for her injuries? It would not be whether she had made proper inquiries before getting on the machine. It would not be whether she had had the sense to examine the credentials of the driver. It would not be that she had asked him whether he had a criminal record and a propensity for stealing motor cycles. Her case would depend on the pure matter of chance whether the owner of the machine had opted out, a factor of which she could have no knowledge.

I was also persuaded by the British Insurance Association, with which I had quite lengthy discussions last year, that there was another very powerful argument for not allowing exemptions for opting out. The fact is that the simpler the law, the more the standardisation of policies, the lower the premiums; and the present trend in the insurance business is towards that form of standardisation.

For many years hon. Members have sought to get a Measure of this sort on the Statute Book in order to safeguard the interests of those who travel in vehicles as passengers and who, not being learned in the law, do not realise the risk they run if they allow themselves to be carried when the driver of the vehicle is not insured against passenger risks.

As has already been mentioned, this aspect was dealt with by the hon. Member for Loughborough (Mr. Cronin) in 1961, but his Bill emerged from the Standing Committee looking like the proverbial dog's breakfast. A most extraordinary thing happened on Report. It is very interesting to read in the OFFICIAL REPORT the proceedings of that day. The hon. Member withdrew his Measure, incurring, in doing so, the wrath and indignation of some of his hon. Friends who had stayed behind on that Friday to support him, and to whom the hon. Gentleman had given no notice at all of his intentions. That was the fate of that Bill.

Then the Kent Committee was set up by the right hon. Lady the Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle) when she was Minister of Transport. The Kent Committee stated in terms that if it became the law that all drivers had to be insured against passenger risks, there was no real reason to fear that there would not be a market for that type of insurance. The arguments in favour of compulsory insurance against passenger risks are obvious, and I shall not now rehearse them. I know from my own experience in the law that many accidents occur every year in which serious injuries are suffered by passengers who get no compensation at all for them. As a result, we have to face the fact that the law, which provides that a person who is injured as a result of the negligence of another may receive compensation, is effectively frustrated, and to that extent brought into disrepute, because a person may obtain judgment in a court of law and then find that the defendant is a man of straw and there is no practical method by which he can obtain redress and compensation for his injuries.

On 10th March, 1969, the hon. Member for Loughborough pointed out that between the time when his Bill bit the dust in 1961 and that date in 1969 no fewer than 25,000 pillion passengers on motorcycles and scooters were killed or injured, the vast majority of whom received no compensation for their injuries. In 1969 in one-vehicle accidents—it is obvious that in one-vehicle accidents the accident happens as a result of the fault of the driver—1,491 passengers on scooters and 4,400 passengers on motorcycles were killed or injured. In the face of those figures, no one can pretend that there is not a serious social problem to be tackled.

One is entitled to emphasise not only the hardship which can befall the innocent passenger when an accident occurs but also the hardship which can befall the driver or rider. This is often forgotten. I stress that this legislation is not only for the benefit of passengers but also for the benefit of riders and drivers.

On the one hand, there is the consideration that the driver or rider may have an enormous award of damages made against him and may find himself making weekly payments for the rest of his life. On the other hand, he may be involved in an accident with a car. He may be partly responsible for that accident and the car driver may also be partly responsible for the accident. The driver or rider may suffer serious injuries. His pillion passenger may suffer serious injuries. When the case comes before a court the rider is awarded substantial damages against the driver of the car, but he is also found guilty of negligence himself and the court orders him to pay contribution towards the damages payable to the pillion passenger. In such a case, he may well come out of court without a penny from his own injuries, although the accident was partly the fault of another driver. I therefore invite the House to remember that this Measure is very much in the interests of the rider and driver as well as in the interests of the passenger.

Much anxiety has been expressed about the level of premiums if compulsory insurance becomes the law of the land. In spite of what has been said by my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North, I believe that these fears are largely groundless. Mention has been made of the experience which is now available as the result of this law having been in force in Northern Ireland for some little time. It is difficult to know what the precise level of premiums will be in England because there is no real market at present for passenger insurance in the case of motorcycles and the level of premiums cannot be computed until there is a market. Including the Lloyd's syndicates, 130-plus competing motor insurers are at present in business, and with a market for insurance of passenger liability in respect of motorcycles there will surely be little risk of ridiculous premiums being charged.

We know that it will vary greatly from one extreme end of the scale to the other, but there is some anxiety about what the level of premiums will be at the top end of the scale, which is the young driver of a very powerful machine, who is not necessarily by any means either unskilful or irresponsible. The kind of figures which are being bandied about are that that will cost about £15 a year.

In the case of a young driver riding a very powerful machine, the risk must obviously be very much greater than it is in the case of a mature driver riding a lightweight machine. I have made some investigations. Those made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford are more up-to-date, but as we probably did not go through identical channels, my evidence is probably worth putting before the House. As I have said, the Kent Committee did not think that there would be any difficulty about the creation of a market for this type of insurance. Last year it was possible to obtain quotations from six major insurance companies, which quoted premiums of between £2 a year for a lightweight machine driven by a mature driven to £10 10s. a year for an over-500 cc. machine driven by a lad of 16.

Very cheap.

Those figures are very different from the £15 mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North. I can only tell the House what I was told last year when there were already six companies prepared to quote for this type of business.

If we want to tackle a real social problem like this, there is bound to be a price to pay. This is a real social problem and we must pay the price. It is nonsense to suggest—no one in the House has suggested it—that a young girl getting on to the pillion of a motorcycle should be expected to ask the driver, "Are you insured or not?" I say that with the greatest respect to their lordships who gave the opinion in the case which has been quoted. It is nonsense, and one is living in a world of fancy if one imagines that people will ask questions such as that before getting on motorcycles.

I am sure that the last thing a young lady getting on to a pillion would be thinking about would be whether the driver had comprehensive cover.

I agree. That is not the world in which we live. Such questions are not asked, and it is highly unlikely that we would ever be able to educate young girls anxious to go for a ride with their boy friends into asking such questions. We must ensure that such persons are protected even if they fail to ask that question or even if, having asked the question, they receive an answering negative but still decide to take the ride. Such people obviously do not fully appreciate the risk they are running, and they are entitled to the protection of the law.

Therefore, I commend the Bill to the House.

12.19 p.m.

I, too, want to express my keen support for this excellent Bill which has been so ably presented by my hon. Friend the Member Stretford (Mr. Churchill) and supported by all five succeeding speakers, including my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Iremonger), who spoke from what he termed the "awkward squad" position in the House, although he himself stated he was, in principle, accepting the morality of the case for the Bill.

I have long felt the need for the extension of compulsory insurance to cover all passengers carried on motor vehicles, whether they be motor cars, motor cycles, mopeds or even tractors. Fifteen years ago a close relative of mine was seriously injured in a bad car crash and, since then, I have studied the ever-increasing number of reports of similar uninsured passenger accidents where not only the passenger but also the drivers have found themselves in a horrifyingly insecure financial position.

Shortly after the June election I came face to face with another clear example of this gap in our insurance laws. A constituent of mine in Exeter, a Mrs. Nina Morgan, came to me and presented the sad details of the loss of her 19-year-old son in a car crash which had taken place only a few months previously. Two young men were killed, both of them passengers. No insurance was forthcoming because the policy taken out by the driver had been repudiated by the insurance company on the ground that the engine of the car had been modified—as it is termed, "hotted-up." The Motor Insurances Bureau had no liability as there was no legal requirement then for passenger insurance.

The distress of this bereaved mother turned to anger when she found that not only was there no insurance responsibility or M.I.B. "back-up" cover, but that the insurance company was able to withhold disclosure of the reasons for repudiation until long after the police proceedings against the driver had been initiated. The consequence was that the driver was never prosecuted for driving while uninsured.

The point, therefore, is that if the law had been changed as this Bill proposes, even if that driver's insurance policy had been repudiated because of engine modifications, the M.I.B. would still have stood behind the claim and would have paid up. I also suggest that the machinery of law with regard to what is a very serious offence of driving whilst uninsured would have been set in motion.

Since that dreadful accident, my constituent has campaigned vigorously and effectively to bring these anomalies to the notice of the Government, and I have been pleased to assist in what I consider to be the most worth while cause that I have supported since coming to this House.

However, it is not just a matter of closing this remaining 10 per cent. gap in motor insurance, although it concerns over one million cars. The more investigations that I have carried out into this social problem, the more I have realised the necessity to effect total passenger cover for all motor vehicles which at some stage or other can conceivably carry a passenger. Accidents to children riding on tractors or on the back of mopeds, or even in a bus, or young girls going for a "burn up" on motor cycles—all of these cases strike at one's heart when reading in the columns of one's local paper or national daily.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stretford has recounted a few cases to the House. I have others just as horrifying and shocking. A 19-year-old girl cashier, riding pillion on a motor cycle, had to have her leg amputated and suffered facial scars. There was no passenger insurance. Many hon. Members, I am sure, will have knowledge of similar dreadful cases.

Over 70 pillion passengers a week have been killed or seriously injured since the failure of the first Bill in 1961–unsuspecting passengers unaware that they are not insured. This is, indeed, a human lottery. Why then should there be any hesitation at all in passing this desirable measure of social legislation? Like so many other factors in every day life, it comes back to money, of course. The fear is of sharply increased premiums, especially for the lower-income motor cyclists, the majority of whom do not carry passenger insurance, and, indeed, as a general rule, do not carry passengers.

I believe those fears to be completely unfounded. My own examination of three separate insurance companies' rates for a 25-year-old driver of a 350 c.c. motor cycle showed passenger cover available at £4, £5 10s. and £6 respectively—in other words, approximately 2s. a week to remove all that fear and anguish. Turning to moped owners, we can expect cover for an extra 10s. per year. I do not, therefore, favour exempting these special groups. One day they may be single seaters; the next day they may be quickly and cheaply adapted for passengers.

My investigation into the whole question of premiums bears out what has been mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Waddington). It has confirmed that the wider the spread of insurance, the lower the individual costs. This principle will certainly apply to the new insurers who take out passenger insurance, if, as I hope, the House approves this Bill.

We are not discussing a mere technicality of law. We are discussing the solution to a grave human problem which has distressed many thousands of families in the last 10 years. I speak, therefore, with the greatest sincerity in sponsoring this important Bill.

12.25 p.m.

It is an extraordinary situation that when we made third party insurance compulsory passengers were left out. It is difficult to understand why. The passer-by is covered but the passenger is not. It appears to be assumed, at any rate since the 1930 Act, that the passenger is a volunteer—that he voluntarily gets into a car. One has only to apply this to one's ordinary social experience to know how ridiculous this is. After a late night sitting, or even an all-night sitting, is one to refuse the courtesies offered at the Members' Entrance with the words, "It is very nice of you to take me to Victoria, but are you insured?" It would exacerbate even more the feelings of hon. Members on those occasions if one asked that sort of question.

How often does one say to the younger members of one's family, perhaps to a girl going out, "Have you asked your boy friend whether he is insured?" When one contemplates those situations, one realises the manifest absurdity of this idea that there is anything voluntary in a person nowadays going into a car as a passenger.

It has been said by almost every speaker today that this affects chiefly motor cyclists. Motor cycles are the most dangerous vehicles on which one can travel per mile of road. There is another category of vehicle, though a much smaller category, which in many cases carries nothing more than third party insurance. That is the second car which is usually driven while the main car is used for business. The second car is employed to carry children to school, and it is constantly used for passenger carrying. The owners of these vehicles are subject to unfairness in the law which can be seen whenever one goes to the courts.

Take the example of the man who is driving with uninsured passengers. I have an example in my chambers of this very case. A driver swept round the corner on the wrong side, running into an oncoming car. Not the slightest blame could be attached to the driver of the oncoming car. One passenger was killed outright and two others were injured to the tune of about £10,000 apiece. They could not recover a penny. There was no money. If the car had at the same time mounted the pavement and killed a passer-by, the unfair situation is that the passer-by would have been able to recover fully for his or her injuries. This is unfair to every other driver on the road.

If any Member of this House leaves this afternoon and, on driving home or to his constituency, is overtaken by a motor cycle with a girl on the back, and the motor cycle cuts in too quickly, with the result that the girl is thrown off and perhaps seriously injured—she may be paraplegic for life—what will be the situation? Her advisers will say, "Your boy friend was not insured, but if we can show just one per cent. of liability against the driver of the car, we can get home as far as you are concerned."

Of course, the court realises why the other driver is being sued. The court understands perfectly well that the driver of the car is the only person who is able to pay. Without in any way straining the law, a judge faced with that situation will, as a human being, wish to help the girl, and there is hardly a counsel worth his salt who cannot in a motor accident case show the other party one per cent., or just the tiniest amount, to blame. There is unfairness there.

A man who is virtually innocent, against whom only the most technical degree of blame can be found, will find himself thereafter in insurance difficulties because his insurance company has had to carry the £20,000, £10,000, £5,000 or even £500. What is more, he has to bear the loss of his own no claims bonus and, in addition, I am sure that most people, no matter how innocent they may know themselves to be, will inevitably feel the stigma of having had to pay after a motor accident of that kind.

The unfairness is even greater if another person cannot be blamed, for the girl suffers her injuries and has no compensation, and the young man will have an award made against him which will hang round his neck for the rest of his life.

I come now to the position of the motor cyclist, which I regard as the heart of the problem here. The Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Loughborough (Mr. Cronin) in 1961 went as far as the Report stage. It is apparent to anyone who reads the debates in the House at that time or who reads the Press reports that that Bill was killed primarily because of the motor cyclists' interests, who felt that they would be priced off the road.

The House should be concerned about what happened then. In my view, those interests who killed that Bill should be most disturbed at the history of the past 10 years and what has happened since it was withdrawn in 1961. The argument then used—straining to the limit—was that, if passenger insurance was required, the young man or the person on a motor cycle would drive more recklessly because he would have no worry about what might happen. That shows, I suggest, the measure of what was then being said.

In fairness, I must ask my hon. Friend to recognise that the British Motorcyclists Federation has in the circumstances of the present Bill adopted an extremely proper attitude, not trying to exert any pressure, and the general principle of the Bill is not objected to.

I readily accept that. I am glad that 10 years of experience have brought common sense into the matter, and I am happy to know that the opposition which occurred at that time does not manifest itself now.

There have always been three main objections to this type of comprehensive insurance. I shall deal with two of them briefly because they have already been covered in the debate. First, it is said that it is wrong to require people to undertake insurance in respect of a risk which is voluntarily taken. We need hear no more of that. Nowadays, one does not as a passenger voluntarily undertake the risk in that sense. Moreover, as my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Waddington) said in his powerful argument, there will be a great saving for the driver as well as for the passenger if the driver is partly to blame and has himself been injured.

The argument on cost has been effectively scotched today as well. The figures put to us by my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill) showed that this insurance could be obtained for just under £5 by people over 25 and for just under £12 for those under 25. My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Iremonger) interjected to say that he was concerned to find that the driver of a powerful motor cycle, perhaps a skilled driver though a young man, might have to pay as much as £15 for insurance. I can only say that, if my hon. Friend finds that an excessive sum to pay in these circumstances, he lives in a world very different from mine. I think it perfectly proper that someone who owns a powerful and expensive motor cycle should be required to find £15 if that be necessary to cover insurance for his passengers. He ought easily to be able to do it.

It is said that there should be certain exemptions, and an appeal has been made to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment to consider certain categories of exemption. I hope that he will do no such thing. The moment the Government begin to look at exceptions, they will come under the most appalling pressures from all manner of sources to provide for exceptions of one sort and another. There is no advantage to the Government in accepting that position, and in any case to do so would go a long way to ruin the Bill. Let us take no notice of exceptions. The roller, the trial motor cycle or the vintage motor cycle will carry so little insurance that it does not matter.

The Front Bench is being asked to accept concessions not for those reasons but because people hope to exempt certain categories of motor cycle, and that is a very different question. I hope that nothing of the sort will be contemplated. It would be politically silly, it would open the door to a great deal of pressure, and in any case, as I say, it would go a long way to ruin the Bill.

My hon. Friend should recognise that this is not a question of just shillings a year. There is a genuine argument that it will be necessary for the Committee to consider how much, and whether people who do not intend to carry, and genuinely will not carry, passengers should have to insure by law against a risk which they will not incur. I am not sure that there is no objection in principle to that which ought not to be considered.

I understand that argument, and it goes to the whole basis of opting out. My hon. Friend is saying that those who assert that they will not carry passengers and that their vehicle at this moment is not capable of taking passengers should have their word accepted. But that would drive a coach and horses through the Bill. The difficulty of enforcing such undertakings has only to be considered to be recognised at once. How does one see whether a motor cycle is or is not insured to carry a passenger? Do we ask that a special mark be put upon it, or is the driver's licence to be specially endorsed? The trouble with all such opting out provisions is that it is not until after the accident has occurred that one finds out that the motor cyclist was not so insured. But that is after the damage has been done. The police would have no way of knowing, just by looking at a motor cycle, whether it had been opted out or not. Thus, I consider that it would be fatal to the purpose of the Bill to allow any question of opting out.

I notice that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Greenwich (Mr. Marsh) has put his name on the back of the Bill as a sponsor, and I am glad to see that he has now, apparently, changed his mind, being ready to support this comprehensive Bill today. When he was the Minister of Transport, he considered this matter and issued a Press hand-out on 16th March, 1969. In reply to a Parliamentary Question from his hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough, he said that he was contemplating legislation on these lines, but in his Press handout he went on to say: But even so, if a motor cyclist is prepared to give an undertaking never to carry a passenger, then I think he must be given the chance to opt out of this insurance. Abuse of this concession will be an offence. I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman has changed his mind and that, in his view, there ought not to be opting out.

The right hon. Gentleman went on to say that, if one opted out and then carried a passenger, one would be liable to criminal penalties.

If opting out is to be allowed and one is then liable to criminal penalties, it may be that the M.I.B. will act as longstop and pay. In those circumstances, those who opt out and do not keep their word ask the rest of us to pay for their misdemeanours. Everybody else who drives and insures pays a proportion of his premium for this purpose and the misdemeanours of others are paid for by the innocent insurers at large.

If the M.I.B. does not come in, the situation will be even worse because the motor cyclist will be using his own insolvency to avoid his liabilities or at least to avoid effective payment of his liabilities. It is not the insurers at large who will have to pay through the M.I.B. but the girl who lies on her back for the rest of her life or whose brain has been damaged who will pay in a lifetime of suffering.

For those reasons, we should allow no exceptions, and for those reasons I support the Bill.

12.42 p.m.

On 10th February, 1961, the hon. Member for Loughborough (Mr. Cronin) introduced a similar Measure to this Measure. I was privileged to serve on the Committee which considered that Bill. For that reason, I should like to make a few points in the debate. This is the third time in ten years that a Bill similar to the one before us today has been introduced by a private Member and I hope that it will be a case of "third time lucky" for my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill).

Before 1930 there was no vehicle insurance whatsoever. The Statutes passed since that date illustrate a progressive feeling that people who drive motor vehicles should carry an insurance policy which gives compensation to those whom they may injure, whether in or outside a car. This is a social Measure to cover those unfortunate people who have been injured and can get no compensation. I know that the Kent Committee has shown that 90 per cent. of vehicles are insured. We are all delighted at such a high proportion. But it is clear that included in the remaining 10 per cent. is a large number of passengers who have suffered injuries for which there is no compensation.

I was surprised to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill) say that more than a million motorists were not insured. That is a very large number. All these vehicles represent a danger to people who are not familiar with the details of insurance, but take a ride in a vehicle as a result of which they are permanently injured.

During the Committee stage of the 1961 Bill the then Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Hay), said: It was, however, quite clear from the debate on Second Reading that there was a good deal of feeling that certain exemptions should be made, that certain types of vehicles should be excluded."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee C, 3rd May, 1961; c. 11–12.] My experience in that Committee was that a great deal of thought was given to the question of how we could exempt certain categories of vehicles and drivers from the Bill. That was one of the weaknesses of that Bill. The second weakness was that there were no statistics available at that time about the cost which would be involved if an individual's insurance liability were extended to passengers.

I have a fear that when this Bill goes to Committee the same thing may be tried again and it is therefore only right that these points should be made. Reference was made to tractors and bulldozers and, in particular, to the lorry taking people to work which had forms which were not fixed. People travelling in such vehicles expose themselves to a grave degree of liability. Many people who have dual purpose vehicles fit seats in the back. Members of their families whom they take out at weekends sit on those seats. Very few people realise that if those seats are not fixed their passengers are normally not insured. It is the usual practice among insurers to make certain that rear seats fitted to a vehicle are securely fixed to the vehicle.

This is a matter of social legislation. Many motor cycles constructed as single-seat machines can rapidly be adapted to carry passengers. If hon. Members go over Chelsea Bridge, where there is a very good mobile cafe, on any Saturday night they will see many motor cycles with girls on the back which are not adapted for passengers. I would hazard a guess that very few of the drivers are insured to carry passengers.

I differ with my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford. He said that if he is lucky enough to get the Bill on the Statute Book a warning should be given to people travelling as uninsured passengers. The point has been made that many people who have insurance policies never read the small print. The girl who is to ride pillion will say "Are you insured?", and the man will say "Yes", not realising that his policy excludes passengers. I know that some of my hon. and learned Friends who are up to date with the law will tell me that in those circumstances the vehicle is completely uninsured because the motor cyclist has acted in breach of his insurance and his insurance policy is void. That is another point which should be borne in mind.

I pay tribute to the Motor Insurance Bureau, but it does not cover every case, and certainly it does not cover the type of person to whom we are referring. The question of exemptions is the crucial point in the Committee stage of a Bill of this nature. If we are lucky enough, as I hope we shall be, to get the Bill to Committee, it will be said, "What about the bulldozer? What about the farm vehicles? What about the vehicle which is not equipped to carry the 101 pieces of machinery used for building work or for farming?" I would say to those people that the amount of money they will be asked to pay to insurance that vehicle for the possibility of someone getting on to it is very small.

Another important aspect is that, along motorways and major trunk roads, many lorry drivers pick up passengers out of kindness and also because they feel that, if they have a passenger with them, they are less likely to go to sleep. Very few of these passengers realise that, in all probability, the vehicle is insured for the driver only and not for a passenger, irrespective of the fact that it happens to be fitted with a second seat.

Again we are brought back to this difficult question of who we can exclude. I was impressed by the speech of my former neighbour, the hon. Member for Battersea, South (Mr. Ernest G. Perry), who raised an extremely important point. He said virtually that there were many cut-throat insurance companies—he did not use those words but that was the intention—which were prepared in small print to reduce their premiums in order to attract further business. Incidentally, I am sorry, knowing that he runs a book, to hear that his remuneration from his book is very small indeed. I hope that the increase in traffic may help him.

If we were to say that this is a social Measure, some people might say that the numbers involved are small so what does it matter? Others say that if the numbers involved are large, then the Measure is more important than ever. This really does bring us to a point where we have to decide as to why we are trying to make legislation comprehensive and whether it would not be better to include all vehicles, to spread the load over these vehicles which may never or only once a year carry passengers. This would spread the load and to some extent reduce the sort of cases which my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Iremonger) represented—the young man with the very fast motor cycle.

I must disagree with my hon. Friend on this point. I think that any young man with a very powerful motor cycle cannot escape the possibilities of liability, and therefore, if he wishes to choose that particular type of motor cycle, he should have to pay the additional premium. The young man who buys a fast open sports car knows when he buys it that he will be made to pay a high premium for the damage which he might do. Again as the hon. Member for Battersea, South pointed out, this is a balanced risk and each driver has to take his position according to his age, experience and possibility of a major accident taking place.

I hope my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill), who moved the Bill so well, will be successful. I think that we have all got to the state now when we have to make sure that there is a prescribed form of policy—in all probability the insurance companies themselves would be willing to do this—in which minimum liabilities are contained and ensuring that, when accidents occur, the passengers are covered. The really difficult one is the motor cycle which is not designed to carry two persons, but is being used to do so. Even if it is covered by the sort of insurance envisaged today by the obvious consensus in the House, the rider is illegally driving a vehicle and it is no help to his passenger that he is committing a serious offence. I hope that my hon. Friend will not be pressured into large scale difficult exemptions. I hope that the Government's advice will be that this is a Measure of social reform which should be given the opportunity to reach the Statute Book. No doubt my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will be in Committee to advise hon. Members on the dangers and difficulties of exemptions.

12.55 p.m.

I do not want to hold up the proceedings of the Bill by my contribution because I am in complete support of the objectives of the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill) and all those who have spoken today on this important matter. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Stoke Newington and Hackney, North (Mr. Weitzman) was quite right to call attention to the fact that all of us have been rather dilatory in dealing with this matter, and it does not reflect credit on us that so many people have suffered illness and death as the consequence of not being covered by insurance in these circumstances. I hope, therefore, that we shall learn the lesson on this occasion. The Opposition will give all the help they can to the hon. Gentleman and the Government in getting the Bill on to the Statute Book as soon as possible. It really is high time that Parliament legislated upon this very important subject.

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on having drawn a place in the ballot and on introducing this important Measure, giving us the opportunity, as it were, to put things right and redeem ourselves with my hon. and learned Friend and others who feel like him. Not only did I enjoy the way in which the hon. Gentleman presented his case, but I congratulate him on the thorough preparation he has obviously undertaken. I am certain that in Committee the Bill will be in good hands. A number of aspects will then need to be looked at with some care and concern.

The history of this matter has not been encouraging. When my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Mr. Cronin) introduced his Bill in 1961, there was, as has been fairly said today, a degree of agitated concern from a large number of people which almost bordered on hysteria. One feels, like the hon. Member for Windsor (Dr. Glyn), in looking at the record, that a measure of the change of public opinion on this matter is the very responsible attitude which now seems to be adopted by everybody, not least by the British Motorcyclists Federation, which has communicated with me and, no doubt, with every other hon. Member. Having read overnight the Motor Cyclist and the views of the federation, I must say that they seem very responsible in their approach and one should pay tribute to them for that.

The Kent Committee set up by my right hon. Friends made an unanswerable case for this Bill or something very much like it. The carnage on the roads, the number of people killed or injured in motor accidents, is unfortunately increasing, and all of us have had some experience, if not at first hand at any rate near enough, to know what devastating results come down on the families of those involved. That must be the main concern of Parliament.

The Kent Committee included statistics in Appendix C of its Report and, if those statistics are anything like as accurate today as they were when they were first published in 1965, it is clear that about 19,000 riders and at least 3,500 passengers on motor cycles, mopeds and similar types of vehicles are being killed or injured each year. These figures alone suggest the great importance of this problem. In a sense, we are having to legislate for the innocent and the ignorant. I do not think that we are having to legislate for the wilfully negligent. There may be a few of that ilk around, and if there are, they should be dealt with by legislation, but on the whole we are dealing with people who innocently get themselves involved by being passengers in vehicles not knowing that the vehicles are not properly insured.

We are dealing with the motor-cyclist who takes his friend with him for a ride. In considering what should be one's basic approach to the situation, one has only to think of the remorse of that man if as the result of something which happens suddenly he involves his friend not only in serious injury, but perhaps in a lifetime of financial hardship merely by not being insured. If that is the only fundamental starting point to this subject, as I believe it to be, one can well understand the complete unanimity among hon. Members about the way in which to proceed. We have talked much about motorcyclists, but there are other categories which we shall have to consider in Committee, and cars and goods vehicles are two such categories.

The House is indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, South (Mr. Ernest G. Perry) for giving us the benefit of his personal experience in these matters. I am sorry that he has not got his book. My associations with books are not connected with insurance. I hope that he is as successful as the keeper of books with whom I deal from time to time in my sporting experience.

He was able to tell us that about 90 per cent. of all motor car drivers are covered and that it is not usually the fault of the driver himself that the other 10 per cent. are not covered. He explained that the driver is often "taken for a ride" by an unscrupulous insurance agent. If that is so, the driver should clearly be protected against such antisocial conduct, and that situation, too, should be covered by the Bill. Most legitimate insurance men would welcome such a move.

The main point is concerned with the exemptions and premiums for the man or young person who uses a motorcycle or moped, or something similar, to drive to and from work and who claims that as a matter of principle he will not take any passengers and should therefore have to pay a lower premium. The Opposition would not rule that out as a matter of principle.

Would the hon. Gentleman see any difference between the person who says, "I shall not take any passengers and should therefore not pay the extra premiums", and the person who says, "I am not going to knock anybody down and therefore I do not want to pay the premium"?

I think that the hon. Gentleman will find that what I have to say on this subject is unexceptionable, but I do not want to get bogged down in detail on Second Reading. I want to deal with the matter of principle.

I agree with the hon. Member for Stretford that we start from the principle of blanket coverage and we believe, if we proceed from that principle, that it is right, if there is to be any exception, that the onus should be on those who want to make the exemptions to prove that they can be exempted without creating any anti-social difficulties and that they can provide a cast-iron method. The Opposition will approach the Committee stage in that spirit. We shall say that if it can be proved that such a scheme is practicable, we will consider it. Otherwise, we will not consider supporting any such exemption. That seems to be reasonable.

We might have to have penal provisions for those who deliberately flout any such scheme. We have discussed whether such a scheme could be enforced. I share the concern of the hon. Member for Blackpool, North (Mr. Miscampbell) on this subject. It might be possible for the man who says that he intends never to carry passengers to have a road fund licence of a distinctive colour.

This was an important issue in 1961 when the use of a coloured disc was advocated. It seemed a sound scheme. However, at night the police would not be able to see it and so it would be difficult to operate the scheme in practice.

That may be so, but it is now possible to have distinctive colourings which can be illuminated at night. That would help the police, who would have to enforce the Bill, for they would be able to see at a glance from the colour of the road fund licence whether it was a vehicle which in no circumstances should be carrying passengers. This is a subject which I should like to consider and about which I should like some information.

One important consideration is that of premiums. It is this which bothers the British Motorcyclists Federation more than anything else. It is right that it should do so. While agreeing with the principle of insurance, we have a duty to look after the rights of the consumer. I am not knowledgeable on this subject, but in Committee we shall have to examine the strength of the view that premiums tend to be unreasonably high, or not properly related to the market. The hon. Member for Exeter (Mr. John Hannam) mentioned the experience in Northern Ireland which seemed to show that my fears would not be borne out and that it is possible to have the sort of scheme which I want at a modest cost.

The hon. Member for Stretford will need much help with the Bill from the Government in Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough, the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Waddington) and the hon. Member for Stretford have all shown remarkable courage in attempting to produce a Private Member's Bill on this subject, and the House should acknowledge the debt which we and the country owe to each of them. But when we discuss the technicalities of possible exemptions and the subject of premiums and what is reason- and unreasonable we shall need considerable help. For example, they will need advice from the police and the Home Office about whether it is practicable to enforce such a scheme. They will need help from the Minister and his right hon. Friends about the other questions of onus which I regard as so important. Our hope is that this Bill will pass swiftly through Committee, with the help of the Government—one might hope that the Government would take it over—and go safely on to the Statute Book. I am certain that the one thing the House is resolved on is that this Bill needs to be on the Statute Book and the sooner the better to protect the lives of innocent people.

1.10 p.m.

I endorse all that has been said by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Smallheath (Mr. Denis Howell) in support of the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill). From some experience of initiating private Members' Bills, I know the difficulties of any hon. Member who wishes to persuade the House of the importance of any particular proposition. This is an especially difficult exercise for a new Member and I congratulate the hon. Member upon bringing this Measure before the House.

The principle of the Bill has enjoyed support from both sides of the House for a number of years. But it is not sufficient merely to have the goodwill of one's Front Bench colleagues. An hon. Member needs practical help and I endorse what my hon. Friend has said about the need for the Government now to give practical support. I appreciate that there have been some minor criticisms of the Bill, but the proposition before us is that it should be given a Second Reading. I would commend to the hon. Member for Stretford the thought that he should give very careful consideration to any representations that may be made to him from outside the House. He will have seen recently how even one Member in this House can delay legislation. I know from discussions with him that he will give the most careful and sympathetic consideration to any representations made to him. For his part, he knows that many of my hon. Friends would have liked to have been here today to support this Bill. In particular, many of my hon. Friends from the Greater Manchester area feel strongly that such a measure is long overdue. It is a Bill which seeks to help passengers in motor vehicles. In recent days, I have been learning from the hon. Gentleman of the very high incidence of casualties, including many fatal casualties, affecting people who are uninsured. Thus the Bill seeks to deal with a large area of tragedy.

In former years, my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Mr. Cronin) played a distinguished part, as have hon. Gentlemen on both sides, in commending the principle of the Bill to the House. I hope that the Bill will make rapid progress in Committee. It should protect over one million owners and their passengers in the country.

It will benefit more than one million people; it will benefit all those millions of people who are passengers in cars.

I have taken advice. We should be modest in the estimate we make. I understand that at least one million owners and their passengers would or could be protected from the provisions of this Measure.

What the hon. Gentleman is referring to are the number of vehicles which remain uninsured but that does not mean that they carry only one passenger. They may carry three. That is the difference.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. On the most modest estimate a large number of people stand to benefit from the enactment of this Bill. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, South (Mr. Ernest G. Perry) has been in close consultation with the Co-operative Insurance Society and he has informed us of their belief that the Bill should reach the Statute Book as quickly as possible. I congratulate the hon. Member for Stretford and wish him the best of luck in Committee. I hope that the Bill will be enacted at the earliest possible date.

1.17 p.m.

The House has been in rare harmony this morning. I must begin by congratulating, as others have done, my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill) both on his success in the Ballot and on his choice of subject. I would like also to congratulate him on the very great care and thoroughness with which he has done his homework. He has, I know, consulted the motorcycle interests, the insurance companies and whenever I have seen him in the Lobby over the last few weeks I have seemed to hear in my ears the sound of motor bikes revving.

I would also congratulate him on his political skill in finding such a wide range of sponsors for the Bill, ranging from a former Minister of Transport from the ranks of the Opposition, the right hon. Member the Leader of the Liberal Party, who has not been able to grace us with his presence today, to a number of my hon. Friends, in particular my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Waddington), who introduced a similar Bill shortly before Dissolution and sadly lost it.

The Bill covers ground which has received the attention of the House twice before as a result of Private Members' Bills. In 1960 such a Bill was introduced by the hon. Member for Loughborough (Mr. Cronin) but failed to complete Report stage. Then there was the Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne.

I hope that this will be a case of third time lucky.

The purpose and scope of the Bill have been fully outlined and I will not go over the same ground. It is worthwhile stressing that the essential proposals of the Bill do not involve any party differences. On the contrary, this debate has shown that all hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Iremonger), applaud the objective with which we are concerned, namely, to ensure that anyone unfortunate enough to be injured in a road accident should be certain of getting damages to which he is entitled under common law.

Although we are concerned with the results rather than the causes of road accidents, it is right to remind the House of the grim statistics which form the background to our debate. In 1969 there were one-third of a million road casualties in Great Britain. One-third of a million of our fellow citizens dead and injured on our roads, and I hope that we are not getting to the point of taking this for granted, or accepting that the number of casualties must grow because traffic is increasing.

A few weeks ago, as the hon. Member for Birmingham, Small Heath (Mr. Denis Howell) knows, the country was shocked, and rightly, by the terrible tragedy at Ibrox Park, and page after page went into reporting that disaster. And yet I wonder how many appreciate that in the weeks which have since elapsed there have been the statistical equivalent of 11 Ibrox disasters on our British roads? For these road traffic victims there have been few headlines, no national disaster fund, no queues at my door demanding that something should be done, and I cannot believe that as a nation we are so callous as to regard such a road toll as the inescapable price of personalised transport.

The difference in our attitudes to Ibrox and to road casualties has nothing to do with selfishness or false values. Rather, it is a difference of awareness. The sudden single overwhelming disaster still shocks us into responding, but the dozens, the scores, the thousands of dispersed local tragedies which take place on our roads every day now happen so often that we are in danger of becoming callous. We are in danger of taking them for granted. But there is nothing at all inevitable about these road accidents. There is no unalterable national law which says that more than half the children being born this day, sooner or later will be injured in a road accident, that one in 50 of them will be killed. There is nothing inevitable about it, and yet, on present trends, that is what is going to happen to them.

I now turn to the specific Measure before us. It is concerned with one important aspect of our individual responsibility for others on the roads, and that aspect is our care for those whom we carry as passengers. In 1969, about 113,000 passengers were killed or injured, almost one-third of all road accident casualties. More than 10,000 of those were on two-wheeled vehicles, motor cycles and scooters, and nearly 75,000 were passengers in cars and taxis, and I think it is worth noting against the background of this morning's debate that the passenger accident rate for two-wheelers is more than five times as high as the passenger accident rate for motor cars. Taking the fatal and serious injuries together, the 1969 casualty rate for motor cycles and scooters works out at 107 per 100 million vehicle miles travelled. For cars and taxis the equivalent figure is but 20.

That is part of the background, and it is relevant, because it is not enough for us to be concerned about road accidents. We must extend our concern to the effects which these accidents have on the lives of those who become involved in them, and one aspect of this is our legal liability to those who suffer, and often suffer very greatly, when we fail to live up to our legal responsibilities, and it is this question of securing compensation for pas- sengers injured because of their driver's negligence that the Bill is all about.

Much of the history has already been rehearsed by many of my hon. Friends this morning, and I think that all I need say about it is that ever since a requirement for compulsory motor insurance was first introduced, which was in 1930, liabilities to what can best be described as voluntary passengers have been excluded from the scope of the cover required by law. The principle on which this exclusion was based was expressed by the lawyers in the phrase volenti non fit injuria which, if my pronunciation is acceptable to the House, means roughly passengers who were "consenting to the risk". The issue now is the extent to which that principle of non volenti can, or should, be held to apply when the use of motor vehicles, and particularly the giving and accepting of lifts, is not any longer exceptional, but very common, upon our roads, and much more so than when the law was first framed.

There has, of course, over the years been deep concern about this problem, particularly among lawyers and those who have to deal with the after effects of accidents. It was for this reason that a previous Minister of Transport, then Mr. Tom Fraser, set up the Kent Committee to study the problem. As has been said, that Committee quite clearly recommended that passenger liability insurance should be made compulsory, without exception.

I turn now to the attitude of the Government. The hon. and learned Member for Stoke Newington and Hackney, North (Mr. Weitzman) said that previous Governments had burked a decision. He quoted one of my predecessors as having an open-minded neutrality, I am always open-minded, but in this case I am not neutral, and I want to quote the reply of my right hon. Friend the Minister for Transport Industries to the hon. Member for Hackney, Central (Mr. Clinton Davis), on 11th November last, when he said: Having carefully considered the views of all interested parties, I have decided that there is a strong case for making passenger liability insurance compulsory."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 11th November, 1970; Vo1. 806, c. 185. ] There is something open-minded perhaps, but there is nothing neutral, about that. I come now to the reasons why, and the first of them concerns the victims of accidents. Here we need to know exactly how big the problem really is. Unfortunately, it cannot be quantified exactly. We know how many passengers were accident victims in any one year. For the record, in 1969 about 83,000 passengers were killed or injured whilst travelling in or on private vehicles, but no one can possibly suggest that none of those passengers received any compensation. In many cases their drivers, if negligent, would have been covered by passenger liability insurance which they had voluntarily included in their motor insurance policies, and in other cases some drivers would have been at fault, and the compulsory third party insurance of the driver who caused the accident would have come into play to compensate the victim.

Nevertheless, there most certainly are a number of cases, though I cannot put a figure upon them, in which the passenger was injured by the negligence of his own driver, and where that driver had no insurance cover, and no other funds perhaps, either, to cover his liability. My hon. Friends this morning have quoted a number of distressing cases, and I shall not weary the House by quoting more, but the first reason why the Government support the Bill is that it is concerned with the victims.

The second reason is the value to the motorist himself of having passenger liability insurance because, quite simply, without it the motorist can find himself saddled with a financial burden which will cripple him and his family for the rest of their lives. The third general reason why we support the Bill is that we must ask ourselves whether it can any longer be right for anyone who is injured in a road accident to have to prove negligence on the part of a motorist before he can get damages on the common law scale. I do not think that it is any longer right. The Government's view, therefore, is that there is a strong argument for making passenger insurance compulsory. The case rests on social grounds and on the desirability of ensuring that road accident victims get the compensation to which the common law entitles them.

But of course, nothing can compensate for serious injury or for the loss of a close relative; this Measure would not of itself directly prevent accidents, and it is in no sense a substitute for road safety action, which successive Governments have taken and which we intend to continue to take. But the Bill, if passed, will, I think, mitigate the effects of at least some road accidents. This is an objective which I am sure the House as a whole should and will welcome today.

I have so far spoken almost entirely about the position of those who are injured in road accidents, but we must also consider the effects of the Bill on the motorists and the vehicle owners to whom it would bring the added requirement for passenger liability insurance. It will cost them more money. For many people, the Bill will make very little practical difference. The vast majority of car owners, as has been said, and a substantial proportion of commercial vehicle owners too, already have passenger liability cover. For them, there is no significant problem here. Cover is readily available, the British insurance world does its job, and the cost is a perfectly acceptable element in the normal third party or comprehensive policies.

But, as discussions on previous Bills have shown, and as a number of my hon. Friends have underlined today, there is and there should be concern about the position of the solo motor cyclist. There is the question in many motor cyclists' minds of whether this legislation would, as I think my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Iremonger) said, price them off the roads.

Until very recently, the insurance market has not considered it worthwhile or economic to offer passenger liability insurance to solo motor cyclists on a voluntary basis. The risk was considered to be very high, and on a voluntary basis, there would have been insufficient spread of the risk. In this situation, the premiums which would have had to be charged would certainly have been considered very high by most motor cyclists.

However, over the last year or so, I am advised that this position has changed, to the extent that some insurers at least are now offering passenger insurance in policies for solo motor cyclists, but it is still this aspect of cost which causes concern to those involved in motor cycling. The prospect of this higher cost has been and is of concern to the Government. We have been mindful of the fact that many people who use motor cycles, particularly the smaller ones, do not do so just to make an irritating noise or to "do a ton" or to take their girl friends for a whirl. They use them simply as a comparatively cheap form of necessary personal transport. I am thinking here of many men going to work in offices, for instance, who rarely, if ever, carry passengers and who have little need and in some cases no wish ever to do so.

There are also, as we have been reminded, the particular cases of the riders of sports and trial machines, which almost by definition are simply not equipped to carry passengers. Their owners may feel it a little hard that they should be compelled by law to insure against danger to passengers whom they cannot carry.

It is because of our concern about the position of motor cyclists that I have had meetings with representatives both of the motor insurance market and of the motor cycling interests. I am very grateful to them for their co-operation. As a Government, we have gone into this question of exemptions and premiums very carefully indeed.

We needed to consider, for instance, what, if any, exemptions for the motor cyclists might be desirable and possible, what the effects of such exemptions might be, for example, on enforcement, and, alternatively, what the costs might be if there were to be no exemptions at all.

I do not think that the House would consider that a Bill on this subject which completely exempted motor cycles would be acceptable; I believe it would reject that proposition out of hand. It is the motor cycle passenger who proportionately is most at risk, at least financially, if only because it is here that there is at present an almost complete absence of coverage for passengers. It would therefore be generally agreed, I think, that a passenger insurance Bill containing such an exemption would be largely ineffective and therefore unacceptable to the House.

The greater risk of injury, and of serious injury, to passengers on motor cycles does point, however, to the concern about premiums. Motor cyclists, not unnaturally—I have seen them myself—are concerned lest they should be charged pre- miums out of proportion to the risks which they incur. For our part, we have been equally concerned that the best possible information about the likely premium levels should be available to the House and later to the Committee when it considers this matter.

We are rather more fortunate in this respect than some of our predecessors who have had to consider these Bills, because then, it was difficult for the insurance market to make any accurate forecasts, simply because there was no experience on which to base their judgment. But now, the market has, I am glad to say, had some experience. It has had experience of Northern Ireland, where many of the same companies which will be asked to insure in this country have been providing and writing passenger insurance policies for some time— indeed, from 1st January this year. Passenger insurance in Northern Ireland has in practice become compulsory, without any exemptions in practice at all.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stretford has given us some idea of the premium levels which might be expected for this additional passenger liability insurance for motor cyclists. There is no need for me to repeat his points. I would say only two things—first, that, even in the high risk areas, for the smallest two-wheelers, it seems likely that passenger cover would be available for good risk riders at no more than 10s. a year from some of our biggest insurance companies. The general range of estimated premiums would be somewhere, I am advised, between £1 and 30s. for this type of vehicle. I cannot think that that is an extravagant figure for the insurance which is purchased.

This is a very important point. Would my hon. Friend agree that, if one has a solo bicycle and tells the insurance company that one always rides solo, the premium which would be put on that bicycle if it were used, wrongly, for two people would be very very small indeed?

Yes, and I will come to that point in a moment. But I must emphasise that no-one can maintain that the figures which I have given, somewhere between £1 and 30s. generally for this type of vehicle, are an extravagant and extortionate price for the insurance which is being purchased.

If the man concerned is a good rider and has a 25 per cent. no claims bonus, that will reduce the amount by 25 per cent.

Yes, this is true; I know that the hon. Gentleman speaks with much experience.

Secondly, as premiums over the whole range of motor cycles clearly show, the ordinary principles of the competitive insurance market will apply; that is, equating the premiums with the degree of risk. This must inevitably be a matter of commercial judgment, and the premiums will reflect experience.

However, I do not think it could reasonably be said that premiums at the levels I have quoted would represent an undue burden on this section of society, relative to the risk and the financial protection which would be afforded to the motor cyclists themselves, not to mention in proportion to the general running costs of what can be, in the case of the bigger machines, quite substantial outlays.

In coming to the thorny question of exemptions, I must remind the House that the estimated premiums to which I have referred presuppose no exemptions being included in the Bill. Were there to be exemptions, the overall risk would be less widely spread. The market would be thinner and, as a result, the premiums for those vehicle owners who were not exempted would, of course, be that much higher, a point which was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Dr. Glyn).

This is, therefore, a convenient point for me to deal with our approach generally to exemptions. It is understandable that those vehicle owners who claim never to carry passengers—I am thinking particularly of many motor cyclists—should think it unreasonable that they should be required to insure against a liability which they say they would not and could not incur.

I have heard, and we have carefully examined, many suggestions about how some sort of exemption should be provided, particularly for motor cycles which are designed in such a way as not to be able to carry passengers, or else on the basis of motor cyclists giving an under- taking never to carry passengers. As I say, those proposals have been put and we have looked carefully at them.

We have also looked into the question of whether vehicles could be marked in such a way to show that there is no passenger insurance cover and that the carriage of passengers is not allowed, perhaps with a coloured disc or a light, so that the police and anybody else would not be in any doubt about whether passengers were being carried unlawfully.

As hon. Members who have studied the Kent Report will know, that Committee considered these suggestions with very great care indeed. My right hon. Friend and I studied them all over again and I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne that no form of opting out could be or would be workable; and, therefore, I must say clearly that opting out is unacceptable to the Government.

The reasons are simple. With or without a marking system, it would not be practicable to manage this business. Motorcycles change hands frequently, especially among the young. There is also a great deal of casual lending of motor bikes. There would, therefore, be tremendous difficulty to ensure that any marking of a particular machine remained as a fixed marking, simply because it could be easily removed.

It would be difficult to decide whether the marking on a particular motorcycle reflected the insurance cover held by the person actually riding the machine or whether it was held by somebody else. This would place the police in the greatest difficulties and I do not believe that it would be acceptable.

The British Motorcyclists' Federation, with which among others I am glad to have had the benefit of talking and which has shown a very responsible approach to this matter has also reached the conclusion that opting out is not acceptable.

As for exemptions based on the design of the vehicle—for example, a motorcycle which could not carry a passenger, anyway—there is here a great problem of definition because however the seat is constructed, one will always have the risk of the girl friend being carried on the mudguard. Thus, to do it by physically designing the vehicle in some way would be extremely difficult. Moreover, even if we could get over the problem of definition—with the exception of certain specialist motorcycles such as trials machines—the great majority of motorcycles now in production have integrated dual seats built into them. The case for an exemption for motorcycles based on a single seat criterion could logically be extended to all sorts of other vehicles which are not specifically designed to carry passengers, but many of which do, and this would get us on to very dangerous ground indeed.

I referred earlier to an Answer given by my right hon. Friend in which he defined the Government's position and said that we accepted the case in principle for compulsory passenger liability.

In connection with exemptions, may I remind my hon. Friend that there is the question of invalid tricycles?

I hope that my hon. Friend agrees that that sort of point is best dealt with in Committee.

Mr. Iremonger indicated assent.

Having said that the Government accepted in principle the case for compulsory passenger liability insurance, my right hon. Friend went on to say in that Answer that, in principle, there seemed a good case for exempting mopeds. This view rested on two considerations. The first, which I have already mentioned, was our concern that people who, perhaps necessarily, use these small two-wheelers as a cheap form of personal transport should not be put to the unnecessary expense of paying for an insurance cover which they do not need.

The second consideration was that, at the time when my right hon. Friend made that statement, virtually all mopeds were single seaters with no passenger-carrying liability. Now, however, at least the second of those considerations has been overtaken by events. I find that mopeds designed with passenger seats are now on sale and, further, that conversion sets, consisting of a detachable passenger seat—a sort of tie-on pillion—are available and can be attached to single-seat mopeds. These are on sale, and this changes the circumstances to such an ex- tent that hon. Members will, I am sure, agree that an unqualified exemption for mopeds would not be appropriate.

I do not think I need at this stage go further into the arguments for or against exemptions, whether for motor cycles or any other vehicles. We are on Second Reading and any detailed discussion about the need for exemptions in any form and the implications of them for potential passengers, insurers and enforcement authorities can, if necessary, be taken in Committee in the context of any Amendments which may be tabled.

The Government's objective is to see that all injured passengers have open to them the source of compensation afforded by passenger liability insurance, and I think that the House broadly agrees with that view. This gap in the protection that is at present afforded to road accident victims has existed for far too long and we should now close it. With the exception of Italy, where there is as yet no compulsory motor insurance in force, we are the only Western European country where passenger liability insurance is not compulsory. That is not a situation which we should allow to continue.

I repeat that the Government are concerned to see that any new law would operate fairly and would not impose unreasonable financial burdens on those whose contingent liability for injuries to passengers is small or potentially nonexistent. The premium levels which have been quoted in this debate are significant in this context and the danger of the motor cyclist being priced off the road seems to me to have been exaggerated. The no-exemption basis proposed by my hon. Friend certainly has the important merit of simplicity.

If, as I expect, the House wishes to give the Bill a Second Reading, I can undertake that we shall take careful note of the views which have been expressed, particularly on the subject of exemptions, and of any other views which may be expressed to us from elsewhere as a result of the debate. In the light of those views, we shall consider whether or not the Government ought to table Amendments in Committee, and we shall very carefully consider any Amendments that may be tabled there by hon. Members.

Meanwhile, the House will share my feeling, I am sure, that this has been a very useful debate on a Bill which, in principle, has a strong foundation of social need, and on the introduction of which my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford is most certainly to be congratulated. I think that the House will wish to pass the Bill on for detailed consideration in Committee.

1.50 p.m.

I am sorry that I was not able to hear the beginning of the debate, but pleased to have heard the Minister's speech just now as it is that which has decided me to take part in the discussion.

I am wholeheartedly in favour of the principle of the Bill and accept all that has been said by those who have supported it. My doubts are whether enforcement will be made, or can be made. I am told that there are already some 2,000 rules, regulations and orders dealing with vehicles on the roads, and I challenge contradiction from any hon. Member when I say that 90 per cent. of those rules and regulations are never enforced. The reason for that may be good or may be not so good. We are told that the police are so overworked—that, I agree: that they are so short-staffed—that, I agree: that they are so underpaid—that, I agree: that they cannot carry out the law, though it is their duty to do so.

I have met many of those in the top ranks of the police force and many a man on the beat. The chappie on the beat has told me, "If we were even to start trying to enforce the existing regulations, we would be doing nothing else, by day and by night, all the week". Probably every hon. Member drives a vehicle of some sort: with the exception of his being involved in an accident or breaking one of the obvious regulations, such as those connected with speeding or evading a traffic light—by accident or design—on how many occasions has he been stopped by a policeman or an enforcement officer and asked to produce his certificate of insurance, or his certificate of roadworthiness if the vehicle is of an age to need one?

I myself, not illegally but in order to make a test with a my own vehicle, turned my road fund licence back to front, so that technically I was within the law. On the other side of the licence, I wrote "Road fund licence applied for". I ran around in my car for nine months——

Order. If the hon. Gentleman had been here earlier he would have learned that this discussion is on an aspect rather different from that which he is now taking up.

I am sorry, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but I am giving my reasons for doubting whether the Bill should be given a Second Reading. I am seeking to explain my belief that there is a possibility that even if it were passed it could not be enforced. If the Bill is eventually enacted, its insurance provisions will have to be enforced, and I am pointing out that even now there are grave difficulties in the way of enforcing the existing law.

I shall give a number of illustrations of the existing legislation not being enforced. I submit lack of present enforcement as a good reason for seriously considering whether the Bill should not pass the present stage, or, if it does pass it, why the Government should note some of the points that have been made so that they may, in Committee, introduce certain necessary Amendments.

As I was saying, I ran around in my car for nine months without its carrying a road fund licence. I have deliberately stopped policemen and asked the way to the House of Commons, and they have told me how to get there, but never once have I been challenged about my road fund licence. That being so, I asked the police, on quite another occasion, what happens in such cases. They have told me, "There are thousands and thousands of vehicles on the roads without road fund licences. We send in thousands of reports, but no action is taken."

If we are to have yet another regulation, how will the police be able to enforce it? Many drivers who do not have road fund licences do not have the certificates of insurance, yet the two go hand in glove and one, supposedly, cannot get the one without having the other. What happens now is that those who deliberately dodge just say, "We now find that we can get away without a road fund licence, because no one checks us. We do not need a roadworthiness certificate, for the same reason, or passenger insurance or any other type of insurance."

That is happening now. Coming to the House this morning, I saw a vehicle which is one of a fleet of vehicles owned by a public company. I have already previously reported the same vehicle to the police, to the G.L.C. enforcement officer and to the local borough council——

Order. The hon. Gentleman knows quite well that he is straying very far from the terms of the Bill. He must either come back strictly to the terms of the Bill or conclude his remarks.

Surely I am entitled, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to produce reasons why the Bill should or should not be given a Second Reading.

Yes, but such assertions must bear some relationship to the Bill.

I agree, but I am saying that the Minister has said that there will be the question of the enforcement of the Bill, and I am adducing reasons why the Bill may not be worth being accorded a Second Reading unless I can be assured that it is possible and practicable to enforce it. Unless I can be assured either that the police force or the enforcement department will be increased or that the existing regulations are being enforced, I have grave doubts whether, much as I accept the principle of the Bill and its logic, I shall be able to support it on Second Reading.

Perhaps I can help you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. There is no question of difficulty of enforcement with the Bill as it stands. Therefore, on Second Reading the question of enforcement is irrelevant. The question of enforcement could arise only if in Committee an Amendment were to be accepted.

We are now told that the Bill will prescribe that there shall be liability to take out passenger insurance, but the Minister has said that there will be no question of difficulty about enforcement. If the Bill is passed without Amendment in Committee and it becomes a legal liability, what happens if Mr. X refuses to take out passenger insurance cover? If he refuses to take out insurance cover for his vehicle and to take out his road fund licence—because one goes with the other—what happens? If he does not refuse to take out his road fund licence but does not have the insurance certificate, he cannot obtain his road fund licence. He must have a valid third party certificate of insurance before he can get a road fund licence. If the Bill were enacted, he would also have to have on the certificate some reference to the fact that he had taken out passenger insurance cover. If he did not have that, he could not obtain his road fund licence.

All insurance policies henceforth would include compulsory passenger liability. There would be no difference and no new enforcement problems.

I agree. As the Minister has come that far with me, perhaps he will come a little further. The man who deliberately dodges, whether at the moment or under the new scheme, will say, "I will not seek to obtain my road fund licence, because I have not taken out an insurance policy, and I do not intend to do so because I do not want to pay the fee for my road fund licence." It may be a vehicle that is the requisite number of years old and he will say, "Nor will I pay the fee for the test to obtain my certificate of roadworthiness." What happens about the man who now says, "I will refuse to take this out"? The Minister says that there is no question of enforcement.

I now tell all those who are now dodging that they will be joined by all the others who will refuse to implement the Act. If the Minister says that there will be nothing in the Bill about enforcement, will he consider moving an Amendment in Committee to ensure that enforcement is possible? If this provision is not to be enforced, it will be a farce: we shall be relying upon those who have no intention of implementing the Act to do it voluntarily; and it will not be against the law if they do not.

The importance of a policy of insurance comes into effect when there is an accident. Is not the most effective form of enforcement of third party insurance the fact that at the moment an accident has to be and almost always is reported to the police and a policy of insurance must be produced? If it is not produced, will the hon. Gentleman agree that the courts are taking what in terms of 10 years ago are now draconian measures and are imposing sentences of disqualification on drivers who do not have the requisite policy of insurance? The same could apply under the Bill.

Up to a point I agree with the first part. The hon. Gentleman will agree, however, that cases of those who are eventually caught by virtue of an accident are few and far between in comparison with the thousands that are evading the law. Many of those who evade the law and who are eventually caught are not very worried, because they have no respect for the law and invariably have no intention of paying, so the Motor Insurers' Bureau ultimately finds that it must settle any compensation that may be awarded. The evaders go bankrupt, or have no assets anyway. Eventually a fine is imposed. There is over £5 million of fines still outstanding. The evaders refuse to pay the fine. Nothing happens. They are again asked to pay. Again they refuse. Ultimately, years later, they may get a suspended sentence. The police say that there is so much of this going on that they do not trouble any more. The man who accidentally forgets to insure or who does it without intent or without often gets caught and pays his fine, but the man who does it deliberately gets away with it.

Order. We cannot go into the detail of fines at this stage and on this Bill. The hon. Gentleman must restrict himself to the terms of the Bill.

If the hon. Gentleman is concerned with evasion, will he agree that the whole point of the Bill is to enable passengers in vehicles to be covered by insurance which has been taken out or, in effect, as it will be a legal obligation, by the back-up of the Motor Insurers' Bureau?

Yes, I agree that this is in the Bill, but Mr. Deputy Speaker keeps telling me that it is not in the Bill. However, the Bill speaks about passenger liability insurance. I am told that I cannot explain, as I am trying to do, that unless there is some method of enforcement and insistence to cover that question, those who are deliberately dodging now will still deliberately dodge. I do not think the hon. Gentleman understands that if they now refuse to take out third party insurance they will surely also refuse to take out the added liability of passenger insurance. If they refuse to pay £10 a year now, as they do, they will surely refuse to pay £12 a year, because they say that £10 a year is too much and then say, "We will not pay it", and they do not pay it. I do not believe that someone who refuses to pay £10 a year now will suddenly say, "For years I have been dodging this and have not paid it. Now that it has risen from £10 to £12 a year I will pay it." I cannot see that happening unless there is some method of enforcement. The decent chap who already pays will continue to do so.

That leads me to the next point. We shall penalise those who already pay and we shall allow those who dodge the law to get away with it.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way again. He has dealt with that part of my intervention concerning fines, but he has not dealt with the part of my intervention which related to the question of suspension or endorsement. Perhaps he will consider it on the basis that courts now invariably endorse and very often suspend. This, he may think, is an effective form of enforcement.

I must be careful because Mr. Deputy Speaker evidently feels that this is not covered by the Bill. I think that I can deal with this point simply by saying that the people I have in mind—and there are thousands of them—are very often not traceable. Their vehicles are not registered; they have no road fund licence; they pay no tax or insurance. Indeed, if and when they are caught, an automatic suspension is not usually for a first or second offence. The totting up principle involves three offences, and usually the suspension does not follow until the third offence. Nevertheless, even if suspension were to follow the first offence, I still think that this proposal is wrong. Only this week a man came to see me in the House and produced chapter and verse, which has been submitted to the Minister and to the police, showing that fleets of lorries are running around, and have been doing so for years, with no insurance or tax having been paid. How is it intended to ensure that the law is enforced? Will it be by the G.L.C. enforcement officer or by the police? Will it occur when the man meets with an accident? There are about 2,000 regulations in force, dealing with all manner of things. Car lights, for instance, are supposed to be a certain height from the ground. The beam is supposed to be visible at a certain distance. I should like to know when was the last time that an hon. Member was stopped by the police to have his lights checked, or his brakes——

Order. I remind the hon. Gentleman yet once more that this Bill is about something quite different.

Yes, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I thought that I was in order in saying that I am in favour of the principle of the Bill but that I would like to be shown how the principle, with which I agree, will be implemented. I have been in the House long enough to know that in a Second Reading debate one is entitled to discuss not only what is in the Bill but what one would like to see in the Bill in order to implement the principle of the Bill. It is on Third Reading that one cannot raise matters which are not in the Bill but which one would like to see in the Bill. Therefore, with respect, I submit that on Second Reading I am entitled to ask for anything to be put into the Bill which would improve it, provided that it is within the Long Title of the Bill.

If I want to suggest that the Bill should be so extended as to provide for a whole revision of the basis of insurance, including third party and a whole host of other things, I submit that I am entitled so to do. It is quite true that the promoter of the Bill or the Minister may not want those things, but, nevertheless, I am entitled on Second Reading to put forward any suggestion which is within the scope of the Bill and which I wish to be included. On the evidence available, I am not sure that the existing insurance schemes are working properly and, therefore, I am not sure that an additional scheme would necessarily be an improvement. Therefore, I suggest that in Committee the Minister or the sponsor of the Bill should ensure that the whole basis of the insurance scheme as envisaged in the Bill is improved upon and tightened up.

I should like the Bill to be extended and made much more obligatory and enforceable than would appear to be the case at the moment. I should like to see a system whereby the insurance certificate must be produced periodically—perhaps every six or 12 months. I am concerned with assisting the police, not causing any difficulties. My suggestion would give the police a chance to keep a check on these pirates to whom I have referred. If every six or 12 months the holder of an insurance certificate had to go to a police station and have it stamped, this would indicate that the insurance was in order and valid.

While I am in favour of the principle of the Bill, I hope that when it goes into Committee action will be taken to see that whatever is agreed upon is capable of being implemented in toto, instead of allowing a continuation of the present situation in which the law-abiding citizen pays while others deliberately dodge and get away with it with impunity.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Standing Committee pursuant to Standing Order No. 40 (Committal of Bills).

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

I am very grateful to have an opportunity of presenting this Private Member's Bill. I at once acknowledge the element of luck that puts me in my present position. Within five months of becoming a Member of Parliament, to have got to number 10 in the Private Members' Ballot, if not as a place of residence, is I think a little fortuitous.

I have thought very carefully. As an architect and town planning consultant, it is with confidence, though diffidence, that I present this Bill. It is, as the hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis) said in the previous debate, on the general principles that one discusses a Second Reading. I believe that the purpose of this Bill is threefold and could be summarised as follows: first, to discourage the felling and mutilation of trees unnecessarily; second, to encourage the preservation of more old buildings; and third, to make the public more aware of planning applications.

On the question of trees, I wish to say a few words about existing legislation. It could be argued that if the spirit of the existing legislation had been carried out there would be no need for Part I of the Bill. Unfortunately, local planning authorities who are responsible for tree preservation orders have not been able in most cases to make a complete survey of trees in their areas, and therefore there are, in my opinion, many trees that should have preservation orders on them but at present do not. Second, there is a great deal of ignorance among the public about tree preservation orders.

The existing legislation is to be found in Section 29 of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1962, and Part II of the Civil Amenities Act, 1967. At this point, I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr. Sandys), who was responsible for carrying through the House the most far-reaching piece of environment legislation—certainly from the private Member's point of view—that Parliament has ever passed. I hope that he will agree that my proposals are, in essence, an extension of his Act.

I have been conscious of two considerations in this connection from the outset. First, I should be very hesitant to suggest legislation at this time which would require our local authorities to take on extra work or extra staff. Moreover, my whole political philosophy is such that I should in any case be most careful not to propose legislation which would unnecessarily infringe the liberty of the individual. Nevertheless, having said that, I believe that the people of this country are deeply anxious about the numbers of trees in our villages and towns which are coming down or are being mutilated.

My proposal is that anyone who wishes to chop down, to top, to lop, or materially to alter the appearance of any tree which is not the subject of a tree preservation order shall give six weeks' notice to the local authority before embarking on such a course. He would not have to obtain permission, although, of course, during those six weeks the local planning authority would be able to look at the tree and decide whether it should be subject to a tree preservation order. Second, I ask that such notifications as are received by the local planning authority should be kept, as planning applications are, in a register open at all reasonable hours for public inspection.

I come now to some of the detail of Part I. In Clause 1 I use the words, a tree, group of trees or woodlands because this is the phrase in existing legislation in respect of tree preservation orders. The Bill is not aimed at the forester who wishes to go about his lawful commercial business, and, if the Bill receives a Second Reading, I shall be prepared to exclude the word "woodlands" if that will help my friends in forestry. I regard that as a detail open to negotiation and discussion.

Second, I appreciate the danger in saying—I have tried to keep the Bill as simple as possible—that there shall be exemption in respect of trees which cannot be seen from a public place". Doubtless, my hon. and learned Friends and hon. and learned Gentlemen opposite will ask, "What is a public place?". This also, I believe, can be the subject of discussion in Committee.

Moreover, because I recognise that there can be legalistic argument about what is a tree, Clause 1 would give authority to the Secretary of State to make exemptions governing the location, size and species of trees covered by the Bill. One does not want to stop the Christmas shopper, for example, from taking a Christmas tree, at least from certain parts of the country, and one does not wish to interfere with what a person does to a sapling in his back garden which is not viewed by the general public.

Why do I propose a fine of £100 in Clause 2? Under existing legislation, someone who chops down or materially alters the appearance of a tree subject to a tree preservation order may be fined up to £250 or the value of the tree, whichever be the greater. In the context of my Bill, I suggest that a fine of £100 would be reasonable, but, again, I am open to suggestions from hon. Members.

If Part I of the Bill becomes law, it will not only discourage people from unnecessarily chopping down or mutilating trees, but it will have another important effect. I believe that many trees are coming down because people have not known that there were tree preservation orders on them. If my Bill becomes an Act, everyone will know that it will be an offence to cut down or doctor a tree without notification, and for that reason I commend Part I to the House.

So often, because a tree is in the way of the easy path of a bulldozer, because a developer wants to put an extra house on a plot of land, or because a row of trees obstructs the route of a double-decker bus, we have thoughtlessly allowed many trees to be chopped down or mutilated. I should like to think that, if Part I becomes law, it will be known as the tree lovers' charter. I hope that it will not be known—I heard one hon. Gentleman suggest this in the House yesterday—as a dispensation for dogs.

Part II covers buildings of architectural or historic interest. There are, in effect, three proposals here. First, it extends the range of buildings the demolition of which would require planning permission. The present law, with one exception, is that a person does not need planning permission to demolish a building. Generally speaking, this has worked satisfactorily because, in normal circumstances, no one demolishes a building unless he wishes to put another building up and, if he wishes to do that, he must obtain planning permission.

My right hon. Friend's Act, the Civil Amenities Act, 1967, was directed to the keeping of buildings of architectural or historic interest for the benefit of the nation, and very rightly so, because so many of our buildings are being knocked down that we shall soon rue the day that a civilised society such as ours ever tolerated it. But, quite often, there are buildings which, although themselves not of architectural or historic importance, have none the less a character and interest in an agreeable setting. To knock down one building in a conservation area, which by very definition is an area in which there is a group of period buildings, could be to destroy the character of the whole area. An extreme example which comes to mind is the pleasant house which comes down, to be replaced by a multi-storey supermarket or a garish block of flats.

Part II would give the local planning authority the right to insist, as it sees fit, that there be a planning application for demolition of such buildings in conservation areas. At present, only listed buildings need that consent.

The second proposal in Part II—we come here to more technical though none the less important matters—deals with the listed building which is left in a state of neglect. Section 6 of my right hon. Friend's Act—I hope that I do it justice by my paraphrase—provides that, if an owner of a listed building deliberately leaves it in a state of neglect, the local authority may enter the building and do the necessary repairs so that, in effect it will not have to be demolished.

Unfortunately, that Act did not give the local authority power to recover the reasonable costs of the work involved. My Bill proposes that it should be allowed to charge the reasonable costs rather than bear them as yet another burden on the ratepayer or taxpayer. Such charges could be recovered summarily as a civil debt.

The third proposal in Part II relates to what has become known as minimum compensation. Section 53 of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1968, gave the Minister power to issue a certificate for minimum compensation when the owner of a listed building had let his building fall into a state of disrepair and it was decided compulsorily to acquire it to stop it being pulled down. A loophole is that the courts have decided that the fixtures of a building, in which quite a lot of people are interested—for instance, the Adam fireplace or plaster ceiling—are not part of the building and, therefore, a certificate cannot be given for minimum compensation. The Bill would close that loophole.

Part III of the Bill is concerned with planning applications. I suppose that one could say that, whereas town and country planning is the second oldest profession in the world, it is one of the newest in this country. The first Town and Country Planning Act was passed in 1909. It was not until the twentieth century that we got down to planning how we should use the land in our relatively small island. This was well after the Industrial Revolution had left its scars on our landscape and townscapes.

All too often people think of planning in a negative aspect. Legislation passed by not only the Conservative Party but the Labour Party tried to encourage greater public participation in planning matters. This is a good thing. If members of the public feel that they do not know what is going on, instead of having public participation, all too regularly there has been private resentment towards planning proposals. I see nothing wrong in making the public more aware of pending planning applications.

At present, with one important exception, an applicant does not have to give notification of an application that he is making to a local authority. Section 15 of the 1962 Act, which deals with what has become known as the "bad neighbour planning application", provides that if one proposes to put a knacker's yard, abattoir, pets food shop, gymnasium or Turkish foam bath on a piece of land, one should post a notice on the site. It would be a good thing, and would not delay planning applications or be an expense to the applicant, if more site notices in respect of planning applications were posted.

As a first step, I propose in the Bill that a local planning authority, if it thinks fit, should require an applicant to post a notice on the site so that a neighbour or anyone else who can claim to be involved can see it. Unlike Section 15 of the 1962 Act, I do not suggest that the applicant should put an advertisement in the local newspapers. Many people read the local newspapers, but there is evidence that notices can be inserted in such a way that nobody sees them. However, this costs the applicant money and would, I think, be an unnecessary and unreasonable provision.

Secondly, my Bill proposes that a local planning authority, if it thinks fit, can give information to any member of the public about planning applications in its ward or parish. If this were done, it would be reasonable for the authority to charge a fee. I am thinking particularly of the amenity societies and voluntary organisations which are set up because of concern about the way in which their village or parts of their town are developing. This is a reasonable proposal, and it is contained in Clause 8.

The third and final proposal has been contentious in and rejected by the House before, but I believe that it is very important if we are to bring public participation and purpose into planning. Parish councils should have the right to receive details of planning applications concerning their areas. Therefore, I commend this provision to the House.

I hope that the House will forgive me for having spoken a little technically and at some length on the Bill. It may seem strange to some people that when, if my calculations are correct, men are at this precise moment walking on the moon I should invite the House to come down to earth with a rather severe bump. But "environment" is now the "in" word in politics. It is the new word in the politician's vocabulary. We have been falling over ourselves, certainly at the last election, to say that we are concerned about environment, conservation, pollution and amenity. I dare to suggest that this is the first Bill of the new Parliament which gives us the opportunity to practise what we have been so assiduously preaching to our electorates in the last few months.

I said that I rose with some diffidence to propose the Second Reading of the Bill. In fact, any diffidence which I had was dispelled before the postal strike by the flood of mail which I received from all parts of the country giving me support for this modest Bill, which I commend to the House.

I should like to take this opportunity of thanking hon. Members on both sides of the House for their active support and encouragement. I hope that this will be a Parliament which does something about preserving the good parts of our environment. I believe that the environment is an issue which should cut across the whole political spectrum. People outside this Chamber are looking to this Parliament to try to make their environment a little more tolerable. We talk, quite properly, about the quality of life. I believe that the quality of life concerns not only the economic well-being and social justice of the people but the physical environment in which they live.

I ask the House in all humility to give the Bill a Second Reading.

2.37 p.m.

May I, as the first speaker from this side of the House, warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Mr. Chapman) on bringing forward this Bill for discussion. It is fitting that we should discuss this subject after a week in which we have had debates on which there has not been very much agreement between the two sides of the House. I am sure that there will be a great deal of agreement about the Bill.

There are three specific Clauses in the Bill, and I respect the importance of all three. Having lived in the country, I can appreciate the great concern for the preservation of trees, as with historical buildings. Those of us who have served on local planning committees are fully aware of the point which the hon. Member for Handsworth rightly made about the lack of public awareness of what is proposed in the areas in which people live and, in many cases, in which they will continue to live.

I am sure that many people in London directly affected by housing developments or motorway proposals had no awareness of what was being proposed. Certainly this was the case with motorways in London until public participation was started by my right hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay), and supported by hon. Members on both sides of the House. People in parts of London—for instance, North Kensington—are living in great discomfort. I am sure that they were not fully informed of the effects which certain proposals would have on their lives. In this respect, Part III of the Bill is of great importance to the communities not only in the larger cities but throughout the country.

I welcome the provision concerning notification, but I wonder whether it goes far enough. The hon. Member for Handsworth said that the onus will now be for site developers to post notices informing local residents of the development; but elderly people sometimes do not see such notices. Many hon. Members must have had people coming to their advice bureaux complaining that although a certain development was taking place in their area they had not had notice of it. We may tell such people, "The local council has had site notices displayed", but a person may say "I know nothing about it". I hope that this question will be considered in greater detail in Committee. Developers, whether they be private or council, should bear the onus of informing local people about the effects of the development. I am sure that the additional cost involved in making sure that from the outset local people are informed of what is proposed would be well spent.

When planning permission is granted one sees a slow decanting of the local population, with more and more houses becoming empty and a consequent creation of problems. Hon. Members on both sides of the House must have heard people complaining bitterly about the creation of rubbish dumps where areas have become empty. Empty houses become the homes of tramps, and this causes much difficulty.

A further problem arises for families who remain in an area that is being redeveloped. Houses are pulled down all round them. We can imagine the problems of such families. I know of one case where half a dozen families are still living in an area that is being redeveloped. Bulldozers have knocked down houses all round, and many problems are created for the people who remain.

It seems to me that developers do not pay sufficient attention to the human problems that are caused when redevelopments take place. These affect my constituents as, I am sure, they affect the constituents of many other hon. Members.

Clause 7(5) provides that: In determining any application for planning permission in respect of which a direction has been issued under subsection (1) of this section, the local planning authority shall take into account any representations received by them before the end of the period specified in the last preceding subsection. On 16th December last I asked the Minister for Local Government and Development a question about industrial user rights. Hon. Members may know that when an industrial site has acquired user rights those rights continue. Problems have arisen in my constituency concerning two sites which back directly on to the homes of my constituents. The sites have been vacant for a long time and have become rubbish dumps. We are now informed that these sites are to be redeveloped. Little consultation has taken place with local residents about such redevelopment. Because these sites have acquired industrial user rights it appears that there is no obligation to inform them. We now find that on one side a garage that has been disused for a long time is to be redeveloped. It is adjacent to a block of flats, on the other side of which there is a garage that is open 24 hours a day. One can appreciate the problems of the people in that block of flats with a garage that is open 24 hours a day—with all the noise and fumes that arise—and the further problems that they will have to face with the building of another garage on the other side of these flats.

I understand from the reply that I received from the Minister that a local authority could be required to pay compensation if it refused to continue industrial user rights. I hope that we can fully examine this question in Committee. We have talked a great deal about environment. I am convinced that the majority of our people want to see some action that will help to improve the amenities of the areas in which they live.

The hon. Member for Handsworth said that this was a modest Bill. It may be, but it is a very important one, and I am sure that the hon. Member will be able to rely on the full support of both sides of the House. I hope that when the Bill goes to Committee we shall be able to discuss some of the points that I have made—and others which I am sure will be made by other hon. Members—in wider detail.

2.46 p.m.

I join with the hon. Member for Wandsworth, Central (Mr. Thomas Cox) in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Mr. Chapman) on the initiative that he has taken in bringing forward the Bill. Its legal drafting will probably be criticised. It is as well to recognise from the beginning that it has legal weaknesses, but I appeal to the Government to help my hon. Friend to correct the drafting rather than concentrate on those weaknesses. I am sure that my hon. Friend will not misunderstand me when I say that. In essence the Bill is very important and valuable, and I hope that there is no risk of its not going through simply because of technical and legal difficulties.

The Bill has three parts. I fully support the provisions contained in Part I, dealing with the protection of trees. People have greatly changed their attitude to trees in recent years. Developers, local authorities and the public are now taking an interest in trees which they never did 10 years ago, and that is very encouraging. The layout of a new housing estate is now often adjusted so that existing trees can be built around instead of being felled. Similarly, local authorities will often divert the line of a toad rather than knock down a fine row of trees. The public are constantly on the lookout for threats to trees, and often write to their Members of Parliament about such threats.

Nevertheless, I am sure that we should tighten all the restrictions that we can provide against the needless des ruction of trees. We all know that a tree can be knocked down by a bulldozer in a few minutes, but that it takes a generation or two to replace it.

Part II of the Bill is of special importance to me. It fills a serious loophole in the Civil Amenities Act, 1967, which I introduced. It is not enough to designate a conservation area, to draw a line around ito n the map and think that one has done the job. That is only the beginning of the process. Something must be done to give legal effect and protection to what has been described as the "character" of the conservation area. The whole idea of the 1967 Act was to get away from the idea of preserving individual buildings and to recognise that very often buildings which have no architectural merit in themselves are, when taken together as a group—for example, buildings around a cathedral or a market square or street—of great beauty and charm which it is tremendously important to preserve.

I am wholly in support of the purpose of Part II of the Bill, therefore, but I am not happy about the way it is worded. I think that it has dangers. In the first place, I think that it is a mistake to limit the provisions of Part II to buildings of architectural or historic interest or which contribute to the character or appearance of the Conservation Area". As I have said, these buildings may individually have no architectural merit and no historic interest but together they contribute to the character or appearance of the area. What we want to prevent is their being demolished. Once they are demolished, something else has to be put up in their place and that will not contribute to but will violate the whole appearance and character of the area.

What prevents the planning authority from controlling what is put up in this case? Is my right hon. Friend suggesting that these special powers should apply to buildings which have no architectural or historic value and make no special contribution to a special conservation area?

Yes, I am. We know very well that in a row of old houses there may be one that is not so old, perhaps late Victorian, but is quite inoffensive and hardly noticed. Perhaps it should never have been allowed there in the first place amid a row, say, of old Tudor houses, but at least it does not do harm and one does not really notice it. But knock it down and see what happens. In replacing it, one can hardly say that one will put up a mock Tudor building. One will have to put up something in the latest modern style, and it is unlikely that that will be as inoffensive as the building knocked down.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Ronald Bell) may say that the planning authority has this power, but it is safer that it should exercise it early. It takes no more time and trouble to exercise this control before demolition than it does to exercise it when the application comes in to put up something else. Invariably, the planning authority will allow the new building, for example, to go one floor higher than the old one. There always seem to be special circumstances—for example, one is told "We would, of course, prefer what you suggest, but there are economic reasons." So, bit by bit we lose the character and appearance of the area.

My desire is to reinforce Clause 3, not weaken it, and that is the objective of my criticisms. As I understand it, the power proposed for local authorities would be limited to the power to protect individual buildings. It is a great labour for local authorities, and some of them will not take the trouble to do so, because it means going around looking at one building after another and saying, "That is not a building of great interest", for example. They will hesitate to put this designation on buildings which are not of fairly outstanding interest. Again we shall find that our individual buildings in a street or square we would like to preserve as a whole will not get designated in this way.

I think that we should give the local planning authorities the power, if they wish to exercise it, to impose blanket control on a whole street or square or area which they think important. I shall not be serving on the Standing Committee, but I suggest a new wording for Clause 3(1) which would make it read like this: If in order to preserve the special character of a Conservation Area designated under section one of the Act of 1967 it appears to a local planning authority desirable to exercise control over the demolition or material alteration of the buildings"— I believe that one wants to emphasise the purpose— within such area, the local planning authority may direct that the provisions of section thirty-two of the Act of 1962 shall apply to any building or group of buildings or to all building within the whole or any part of the Conservation Area". Some conservation areas are quite small and it is essential that the whole area should be protected. In other cases, there are certain parts of the conservation area which are important but certain parts which are unimportant but which have been included because it would have been administratively difficult to omit certain small areas within the conservation area as a whole. Then the subsection as I would reword it would go on being buildings appearing on the list". I have left out any reference to "historic or architectural interest". These are already dealt with in many other ways. We must concentrate now on protecting the character of an area as a whole.

My right hon. Friend has had a great deal of experience not only in the operation of the 1967 Act—his own—but as a former Minister of Housing and Local Government. My experience has been that the local planning authority is often the nigger in the woodpile. It is the authority which is not willing to preserve and is on the side of the developers. I wonder whether we are not placing too much faith in the local authority.

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galbraith), but the local authority is the planning authority and unless the whole of the planning laws are altered, we can operate only through the local authority. We must leave it to local authorities, with the opinion of Parliament and public opinion, to do their task. That is where the third part of the Bill will come into effect.

However, I believe that one must make it as easy as possible for the local authority to impose these controls and that we should not ask it to go round building by building deeming them to be listed as proposed.

Would not my right hon. Friend think it his duty to advise my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galbraith) to avoid phrases such as "nigger in the woodpile" in case he is brought before the Race Relations Board?

I will leave it to my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East (Sir S. McAdden) to convey his thoughts to my hon. Friend the Member for Hillhead.

Part III, too, is important and entirely in keeping with the spirit of the new legislation which was recently introduced and the whole modern approach to public planning. In the past, it was always thought that local authorities were the only people who had any knowledge or wisdom in these matters and that the public and the amenity societies were just a lot of cranks and busybodies and that the less they were brought into the picture, the better. We talk about the "environment", a terrible word, although no one has found a better, and "participation", which is one of the latest pieces of jargon, but public participation in the environment is very important, and we cannot get it unless we tell the public what is going on. It is essential that there should be participation before final and irrevocable decisions are taken, not afterwards.

The parish councils should be brought in, for they have a part to play. I do not think that they should be given great powers, but they have a responsibility and represent the possibility of reflecting and stating the views of people in the area.

I am not sure whether it is sufficient in Clause 7 to say that an authority may, if it thinks it desirable, publish an application for planning permission. If this provision is to be effective—and this will no doubt please my hon. Friend the Member for Hillhead, who does not have the fullest confidence in local authorities—I hope that the local authorities will make it a procedure that applications for planning permission are publicised. It would be no great burden to put a notice in the town hall so that everybody could know. If it is left to the local authority to decide in which cases to publicise an application, some important applications may slip through without anybody knowing anything about them.

Would not my right hon. Friend agree that there are certain planning applications which are very private and which should, clearly, not be revealed to the public, provided that they do not concern the outside of a house, for instance?

I prefer exemptions rather than leaving it entirely to the discretion of the local authority. However, this is a valid point, and it would be easy to have some provision for it not to be necessary in certain circumstances. We are concerned with applications for rebuilding which will materially alter the character of the exterior of a house or a street.

I again congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Handsworth and express the hope that the Bill will see its way to the Statute Book.

3.2 p.m.

I give my wholehearted support to the Bill, although I think that in some ways it could go a little further, as in one example which I shall mention. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Wandsworth, Central (Mr. Thomas Cox) about the kinds of area which he has in his constituency and of which I have too many in mine, where clearance areas have been turned into rubbish dumps in precisely the circumstances my hon. Friend mentioned.

Like most other hon. Members present today, I have had drawn to my attention—and the right hon. Member for Streatham (Mr. Sandys) was absolutely right to comment on the increased interest in these matters—cases in which tree lopping and the cutting down of trees have caused grave dissatisfaction in areas where they were regarded as amenities. Some of these actions have not only affected the visual amenities, grave though that is, but have a slight but nevertheless important ecological effect in that the birds which have nested in an area have gone away and perhaps not returned, and that, too, detracts from amenity. This is something which has been brought to my attention. It is all very well for assurances to be given about possible replantings, but the Bill will help to allay misgivings of that kind.

I would warn the hon. Member not to be too forthcoming in his negotiations with forestry interests, because although one would not wish the Bill to fail through arousing unnecessary opposition from such interests, nevertheless his readiness simply to withdraw the word "woodlands" without the substitution of some other word not offensive to forestry interests but covering what is necessary, would be to blemish what is basically a good and valuable Bill.

I totally agree with what the hon. Member says about Clause 8. I have an excellent civic society in my constituency which is doing its best to preserve areas of considerable architectural interest. Clause 8 will undoubtedly help it in its worthy and voluntary efforts. What concerns me, and this is not a blemish in the Bill but in legislation as a whole, is that although the Bill provides and extends means for preserving areas which have been left reasonably intact, I would like to see the law go a little wider so as to preserve buildings which are no longer part of an area of beauty, attraction or historical interest, but which are the last vestige of it and whose disappearance would remove entirely all traces of the character of an area.

I am sure that many of us have examples of this in our constituencies. In my constituency there is one extremely handsome house in the midst of a clearance area which will now have to come down. By its disappearance we remove entirely the memory of what that area of Manchester was like, and it was representative of a very important time in the history of Manchester. That is not a criticism of the Bill, it is only a hope that we may be able to widen the legislation.

We have heard a great deal, and hon. Members have made something of this, about the vogue for environment and participation. Certainly since I have been a Member of this House this is the first genuine article in what might be called participatory legislation, and it is particularly to be commended for that reason. Clause 8 and other Clauses will remove this terrible, strangled and frustrated feeling that people have when something is happening which they do not like and when they say "We did not know". The Bill will help people to know and by doing so will encourage the participation that we all want to see. I very much hope that the House will give it an unopposed Second Reading and that we can get this piece of open government on the Statute Book with whatever improvements the right hon. Member for Streatham and others wish to make.

3.9 p.m.

I hope that the House will forgive me for intervening at this early stage, but this is a Bill of real significance and it might be helpful if I can put one or two of the arguments that the Government would like to have considered. I was immensely impressed at the way in which my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Mr. Chapman) introduced the Bill. There was a deep knowledge and personal conviction behind the legal drafting, and no one who listened to his speech could have failed to appreciate that.

There is a great deal in the Bill which is very attractive from a legal point of view and from the point of view of trying to find a policy of accord throughout the country on general amenity and environmental considerations. Perhaps I might say something about the individual parts of the Bill, and I start at the beginning with Part I, because this is where I am in the greatest difficulty in helping my hon. Friend. The difficulty is to take the rather harsh and cold drafting of the Bill and balance it against the eloquent arguments which he put forward for the preservation of trees. On the issues of principle, and on the wider amenity arguments, there can be no doubt that my hon. Friend has the total sympathy of everybody who has come into contact with this subject, or who has any knowledge of the way in which this is done, but unfortunately it is necessary to look at the words of the Bill, and it is on that basis that we find ourselves in some difficulty.

The Bill refers to any owner of any tree intending to cut down, top, lop or otherwise materially alter the appearance of any tree … That is so wide a definition as to threaten those involved in public administration with a deluge of applications which would be unworkable in practice, and I think that there are two consequences which flow from that. First, that the machinery which would have to be set up would not be able to cope with the problems concerned. Second, and perhaps of even greater concern, is the fact that the public would find this sort of bureaucratic interference with their private lives such that many of them would avoid its provisions. I hope my hon. Friend will feel that to introduce a law in the knowledge that it will not command any wide sympathy and would deliberately be avoided by large numbers of the public is something that should be done only with the greatest reluctance.

One finds a difficulty also when one looks at the exemptions which my hon. Friend has introduced. I can see that it is probably relatively easy to agree upon whether a tree is dead or not, but it might be much more difficult to decide whether a tree is dying.

The phrase in the Bill is taken from existing legislation relating to tree preservation orders. I am sure that my hon. Friend agrees with that. I, in turn, agree with what he has just said and would be prepared to withdraw "or dying" and leave it at dead or in a dangerous condition. I have used the words of existing legislation to make the matter simple.

I appreciate the point, and I am aware that my hon. Friend has taken these words from existing legislation, but that legislation relates to a totally different number of trees, and the scope of the problem is the point that we have to consider. I appreciate the fact—and this is probably essentially a Committee point—that my hon. Friend has it in mind to be flexible on this issue. Nevertheless, I give that merely as an example of the problem.

A dangerous tree is a problem about which one can be relatively certain, although it would be difficult for local authorities, when faced with a tree which had in some way been topped of mutilated, to decide whether it was dangerous before the topping or the mutilation took place. That would be one of the problems.

Another difficulty is the qualification that it should be necessary for the tree to be seen from a public place. It will be very difficult to decide by whom it should be seen, with what quality of eyesight, in what seasonal conditions, and, perhaps more important, whether the tree should be in full foliage, because it could be behind other trees in foliage and therefore hidden in summer, but in winter be in full sight.

And in what degree, because it might be possible to see it from one point on a footpath, or a yard, and that would be enough.

I cannot dissent from that general difficulty in which we find ourselves the moment we look at the situation in any depth. It is therefore not surprising that those local authorities from whom we have had representations—and they after all, will be responsible for dealing with this matter—the Urban District Councils Association, and the Association of Municipal Corporations, have emphasised that it will not be possible to work the sort of scheme which my hon. Friend has in mind without taking draconian powers, which would be unacceptable. I accept that he could say that there is a Clause 4 exemption which means that the Secretary of State could exempt whole categories of trees. It is our view that the exemptions would be so wide-ranging in order to make this legislation work—anyway, as drafted at the moment—and would come back so close to the existing situation as to mean that there would be virtually no change in the situation at all.

It is very hard for me to make these observations, based essentially on a strict interpretation of the Bill, about a subject on which I personally—and I know my colleagues—would share the anxieties which my hon. Friend and my right hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr. Sandys) have expressed about tree preservation.

I am aware of the real change in attitude right through the local and national government machine, to try to take these factors into account, and this attitude is shared by many people—developers and people who are involved on the ground in this problem, in trying to achieve the results which we have in mind. I could not advise the House that the first Part of the Bill would prove an acceptable weapon.

Does what my hon. Friend has said about trees and groups of trees, on which I understand the difficulty, apply also to woodlands, which are larger areas and of which there are fewer examples?

This also is a problem where, once one moves into the definition of woodlands and the way in which they were to be treated, the sort of exemptions which would be required from the Secretary of State, would move us back to a situation quite different from that envisaged by my hon. Friend.

Has my hon. Friend any views as to what can be done about one of the most worrying developers' rackets which has grown up, which is that where estates of houses are being built either undertakings are given to the planning authority or copies are shown to people buying properties showing existing bands of not necessarily protected woodland but woodland which will be preserved? When the time comes—surprise, surprise—the bulldozer which is clearing the road takes off several of those trees, which may be fine specimens, and a surprising extra bungalow comes in at the end of the row. This has happened over and over again, and it is producing some- thing totally different from the elegant first plans which come before the local authority; a filled-up desert arrives in practice.

I should want to write to my hon. Friend on this point, because I want to be sure that the advice I give is totally right, but it seems that there are two aspects to the question. The first is the planning aspect, on which it is up to the local authority to contain within the planning permission precisely the conditions which it wishes to impose, so that there should be no possibility, legally, of their being caught by surprise.

The second aspect is one essentially of consumer protection and it would not be a matter for my Department to take a decision on that, although I should have thought, from my knowledge of this subject as an ordinary Member, that there would be protection on the issue of literature which gave false impressions. But I will write to the hon. Gentleman about that question, in view of the advice which I get from the Department concerned.

I now turn to Part III, which is less important than Part II. I am glad that I can move on here to happier ground, because my hon. Friend's intentions are widely shared and, I am sure, exactly meet the feeling which is growing up among members of the public and all those affected by development.

I accept entirely that his intention is to extend the concept of bad neighbour development at the discretion of the local authorities into any other field of development which the local authorities feel to merit the publicity he has in mind. I accept that the details of the drafting are taken from existing Statutes, so there are precedents.

It is certainly our view that they should remain discretionary at this stage. The local authority representations to us have been that they should remain at the discretion of the local authority. This is an extension of existing responsibilities, and if it can be done at their discretion, it will command more support from them than it otherwise would.

How can people be certain of knowing what is going on if it remains within the discretion of the local authority to decide, in its wisdom, what should and should not be revealed?

It is intended under this legislation that it should be at the discretion of the local authority to decide, in the terms of the Bill, whether a particular planning application merits being given wider publicity.

Hon. Members will appreciate that an enormous number of applications are made every year for planning permissions of various kinds. If each one automatically had to carry with it the additional steps of publicity, this might be a costly and unnecessary exercise, certainly in respect of the vast majority of applications.

We are trying to widen the existing definition away from the present essentially narrow one of bad neighbour developments so as to give local authorities discretion when they feel that something merits wider publicity because it affects peoples' interests. The House may feel, in view of the arguments adduced by my hon. Friend, that this is a suggestion the spirit of which can be accepted. The Government are certainly sympathetic towards it.

On the question of the ability to charge fees, it has been put to us, and we are content to accept it, that local authorities already have this ability. It is essentially a negative power in that there is nothing to stop them from doing this. In other words, they are free to charge fees if they wish.

There are, however, reasons why they are not, in certain cases, keen to charge fees. For example, the moment it becomes a statutory provision to charge fees, there may be a temptation to do it; and there are groups of people who, in the eyes of the Association of Municipal Corporations, would suffer if the charging of fees became the general practice. There are voluntary and public bodies which at present receive this information free. To introduce this provision might mean them having to pay for it.

If one introduced this statutory provision for charging fees, one might be calling into question the general power which local authorities now have in this respect, and I am sure that that is not the intention of my hon. Friend. Perhaps it is one of the reservations which merit further consideration at a later stage.

In connection with Clause 8, perhaps I should mention that the only likely objection might be on the ground that it could greatly increase the work of local authorities, which is something we should avoid at a time when we are attempting to find ways of encouraging public participation. Certainly one is reluctant to greatly increase the costs of running local authorities.

Clause 9 raises the question of giving wider rights to parishes. I hope that my hon. Friend will feel that this is an inappropriate moment to take this matter into consideration in this Measure because the Government are now deeply involved in the consideration of local government reform as a total package I suggest that this matter is more appropriately dealt with under that heading.

If I was forced to give a rather unhelpful reply in connection with Part 1 of the Bill, and certainly a general acceptance to Part III, I am happy to move on in a quite different spirit to talk about Part II.

Before my hon. Friend moves on to Part II, may I ask him to agree that the question of payment is not a particularly important one? As he said, it is covered under other legislation. Does he agree that people do not go to their town halls and frequently do not know what is going on? Is it not a fact that they should be better informed in this as in other matters?

I do not dissent from that general view and I made that point at the outset of my remarks about Part III of the Bill. I can only feel that if the information is there and available free of charge, people are perhaps just that much more likely to go and get it than if they had to pay for it. Clause 8 deals with fees and I agree that it is a small part of the Bill and a part which need not delay the House for long.

We have very great sympathy with the definition contained in Part II of the sort of properties that are now to be brought within the general power of local authorities. It is quite comprehensible, and gives the local authorities the opportunity to protect areas and buildings which, whilst not in themselves of outstanding architectural or historical interest, add up in the round to an area that one would wish to see preserved. It may be that, individually, the houses are of architectural or historical interest, but they do not necessarily have to be. They may comprise a unit, perhaps of a historical nature, which in total creates a pleasant atmosphere and where to destroy any one part would be to destroy the whole atmosphere.

There are already 1,200 conservation areas, so we must take very seriously any steps proposed to ensure that they are preserved as was, and is, the intention of all those who have played a part—and, in particular, my right hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr. Sandys)—in bringing about that situation. The Government believe that whilst tiny details in this Part of the Bill can be discussed, the general purposes and provisions of Part II are acceptable, and will be warmly welcomed.

I am sorry to have intervened so early in the debate, but as so many hon. Members appear to wish to take part I thought that to do so would be helpful.

3.26 p.m.

The Minister had no alternative but to intervene early, and I will follow his lead. I congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Mr. Chapman) on producing a Bill that we on this side regard as a very useful contribution to planning discussion, particularly in regard to its three aspects, but even more on getting any discusion in the House on planning at all. Planning is of great and growing concern to the public, and not the least of our reasons for hoping that the Bill will be given a Second Reading is that it will enable us at greater leisure to consider the details in Committee. There is a growing awareness of the importance of these issues.

The only part of the hon. Gentleman's speech to which I take exception is his comment that he would like environment to be taken out of politics. I know what he meant, but when I hear people say that politics should be taken out of housing, out of education, and now out of environment, I feel that there is some danger of our being put on the list of the unemployed. We should never apologise for politics intruding into any of the nation's affairs where they properly should intrude. To engage in politics, though not necessarily party politics, is an honourable pursuit. It means argument, and where there is no argument about what should be done and how, democracy dies.

I get a little irate when various Press and broadcasting commentators keep trying to rough-ride politicians, as though there were something dishonourable in our profession. There is nothing dishonourable in it at all. We are performing a great service, and most of us also do a great deal of voluntary work. It makes one feel good sometimes to say this.

I agree with the Minister that the proposals about trees causes some concern to local authorities and to such bodies as the A.M.C. I am in favour of the hon. Gentleman's proposal and of what the right hon. Member for Streatham (Mr. Sandys) did on a previous occasion. The hon. Gentleman and the right hon. Gentleman earn the country's gratitude.

It must be a principle of all that we do that Parliament does itself no good by enacting legislation which cannot be enforced or which is flouted on a general scale or which is resented by the public. That is my worry about the proposals concerning trees: a great part of them cannot be enforced, people will think that this is pure red tape, and they will bring us into contempt. This is not to say that what the hon. Gentleman is trying to do should not be supported. We would certainly join him and the Government in a spirit of co-operation to see whether we can remove those parts which are thought to be unenforceable and replace them with something more agreeable.

We strongly support the proposals in regard to buildings of architectural and historical interest. My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Ardwick (Mr. Kaufman) mentioned one case. There is a case which I know—possibly the hon. Gentleman the promoter knows of this case, too—in Birmingham at the moment where the very first municipal estate ever erected in Britain—it is in the centre of Birmingham—is being demolished to make student accommodation for Aston University. One would have thought that it would have been possible to preserve the façade of that interesting development—by grouting it and modernising it—and then to have made it available for students to live in. However, the building has gone. History has gone. As I understand it, this was because there were no such proposals as these. Therefore, there are real practical reasons as well as emotional reasons why we should support these proposals.

Again in respect of planning applications, we fully endorse the view that the public are entitled to far more information than they get about decisions which will affect their lives and which all too often are taken without their knowledge. Therefore, anything that can be done to let people know their rights and let them object should be supported.

In these three details we see this Bill as a step in the right direction.

I want to make some general comments which I think are of some importance and which will have to be thought about if the Bill goes on to the Statute Book. First, there is the whole rôle of planning machinery. The proposed provisions as regards trees makes this important. Planning machinery, at the very moment when the public regard it as more important than it ever was, is becoming overwhelmed by applications, appeals and decisions. A long, hard think must be taken about what should be done.

Although I prepared a much longer speech, this is not the time for me to put forward ideas about this. The whole training of our planners is of a very haphazard nature. The whole question of the competence of planning authorities to do their job properly should be examined —and not only the competence of the planning authorities but their place in the hierarchy of local authorities. There are still far too many local authorities which do not have a competent planning officer or in which, if they have one, the planning officer is ridden over roughshod, particularly by the highways department and other departments. Therefore, not the least of the services which the hon. Gentleman is rendering us is providing us with an opportunity whereby, even if we cannot do it this afternoon, we can at later stages consider all these vitally important questions.

The hon. Gentleman was quite right when he said that although "environment", "planning" and "participation" are the jargon of the times, this reflects a very real public concern; and that must be right, because we are concerned with nothing less than the preservation of our national heritage and the developing application of the law of the land and the procedures of local authorities to the lives of ordinary people.

It is in that spirit that the Opposition welcome the Bill, and offer the hon. Gentleman and his Government colleagues our full support in trying to make the Bill workable when enacted.

3.34 p.m.

I congratulate and support my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Mr. Chapman) in both the attempt and the achievement of the Bill. I trust that he will accept any of my comments as being intended to be helpful and constructive to the purpose that prompted him to seek to close the gaps in existing legislation in the three areas covered by the Bill.

With the benefit of about 15 years in local government planning matters and with a lifetime's obsession with trees, I applaud the motive contained in Clause 1, with certain reservations.

When one considers the many years required for some species of tree to reach maturity and contrasts that with the short time required to cut a tree down to the ground with callous indifference to environmental amenity, it is clear that giving notice to the local authority of an intention to cut down can be a great protection which I for one would welcome. My reservation falls entirely in the area to which my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary has referred— top, lop or otherwise materially alter the appearance of any tree". I can foresee grave administrative difficulties when a man prunes a tree in his garden unaware, if it can be seen from a public place, that he is breaking the law. Today many authorities seeking to place preservation orders on groups of trees of great amenity value ensure that they are in a public place, but this is a positive action taken by a local authority ensuring for itself that the trees are a general amenity. If we are to place this burden on everyone in his own garden, to assess whether a tree can be seen from a public place and to give notice of intention to lop, prune or materially alter the appearance of any tree", I feel, with the Minister, that this will be an almost impossible law to enforce and as such would bring the law into disrepute if we had widespread evasion.

Every intention as described in the Clause to cut down, top, lop and so on would undoubtedly involve the local authority in a visit to the site. A claim by the owner that any part of the tree, or the limb was dead or dying or has become dangerous would certainly require an investigation by the local authority, because this is a matter of opinion. It is a matter of opinion even among different tree experts. I can recall a situation where a local authority had in its area a very fine avenue of trees along the side of a road, and in the view of a consultant tree expert some of the trees were dangerous. The local authority had a responsibility to the pedestrians and traffic generally, and this expert was of the opinion that some of the trees ought to be felled and replaced with new planting. This raised such a furore of opposition that the residents brought in yet another tree expert who arrived at an altogether different conclusion.

I suggest that to expect an ordinary gardener to make such an assessment about a tree in his garden, both as to whether it is dangerous or dead or dying, and whether it is visible from a public place, places too great a burden on such a person, although I am mindful of my hon. Friend's objective.

I appreciate the subsection giving the Secretary of State power to exempt in respect of location, size or species, but here again I fear that ignorance could bring the law into disrepute. Not everyone, apart from the avid gardeners amongst us, is intimately familiar with Lawsoniana Cupressus , Lombardy poplars or even the common British oak. We are, therefore, asking a person to assess whether he falls within the exemption or not. If he is not certain, he calls in the local authority, and here again I fear that this would place too great a burden upon a local authority. I am mindful of my hon. Friend's hope in this Clause, but, living most of my life in the area of Kent, with as many trees as people, I see grave administrative difficulties. No doubt, in Committee this point will be borne in mind with the other points which have been raised.

Part I has my wholehearted support. It closes an unfortunate gap in the Civil Amenities Act, 1967. My only concern is on two questions of finance. I hope that the Committee will consider whether the safeguards have been drawn widely enough to protect an owner's right of appeal against not only the works but the sum assessed as the reasonable cost thereof. I hope that the Committee will consider also the ways in which a local authority could recoup the cost if it is found not to be recoverable through the usual civil debt procedure.

As regards Part III, I appreciate that my hon. Friend wishes to extend the requirement which is already statutory, inasmuch as these provisions relate to the "bad neighbour" type of development, although he specifically excludes the need to publish in the local Press, which I regard as an advantage in that it removes that additional expense.

I must disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galbraith), who obviously, has met only the less enlightened local authorities. My experience is that many local authorities already take the initiative in advertising and publicising planning applications. They do so by public Press advertisement, and sometimes by writing to residents. One hon. Member opposite suggested that the Bill could be amended to contain a requirement that a local authority should write to all residents in the immediate vicinity lest perchance they did not see the notice posted on the site. Many local authorities do this. Where they believe that a planning application or some proposed development will bear heavily upon adjoining residents, they write individually to such residents.

My hon. Friend has referred to my doubts about local authorities. Has she found that they do that when it is their own development which will affect people?

No, the cases in my experience have related not to their own development but to private applications. Certainly, since the activities of my right hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr. Sandys), many local authorities have taken good care to have close consultation with local amenity societies. However, I am sure none the less that even the most enlightened authority can never be complacent about the extent to which it publicises planning applications and intentions.

I commend my hon. Friend for choosing to try to close the gaps and to provide in his Bill some additional assistance by statute to local planning authorities in order further to preserve our tree heritage, our areas of great amenity and our conservation areas, and further to enlarge the right of the community to be fully aware of changes which are proposed.

3.42 p.m.

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Mr. Chapman) on his initiative in bringing forward the Bill, and I earnestly hope that it will have a Second Reading. The Bill has three valuable aims: to preserve trees, to preserve old buildings, and to widen the notification of planning applications and permissions.

My only fear—I express here points which I hope will be dealt with in Committee—is that if we are too zealous about preserving trees and old buildings, and if we insist on too wide a notification of planning applications and permissions, we shall tend to frustrate much necessary development. In my view, if the Bill is to be effective, it must be selective.

My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State said much of what I had in mind to say about the preservation of trees. I suggest that they way to make Part I effective is not to have exemptions but to specify which classes of tree should be preserved. If this, as he suggested, restores the position to that provided by existing legislation, perhaps Part I could most usefully provide for a stiffening of the penalties for neglect of the existing law.

On the preservation of old buildings, 1 say only that we must be careful to ensure that the buildings which we want to preserve are ones which should genuinely be preserved. We must guard against the widely-held belief that what is old is necessarily good and what is new is necessarily bad. The City of Bath should remind us that yesterday's speculative housing scheme is today's Regency terrace which we rightly seek to preserve.

If we were to be too rigid in insisting or wide notification of all planning appli- cations, we would frustrate much development. I should like to see wide notification in this Part of the Bill restricted to those developments which are material and which are in areas of dense population.

If I have been slightly critical about the Bill's application, it is not because I oppose the Bill—I wholeheartedly support its principles—but because I want it to be effective.

3.46 p.m.

I join my hon. Friends and hon. Members opposite in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Mr. Chapman) on the diligence with which he has prepared the Bill. I congratulate him on being successful in being drawn No. 10 in the ballot and on the result of all the hard work which he has done in preparing the Clauses. Having said that, I must confess that there is very little in the results of his work shown in the Bill's Clauses which commends itself to me. If I started the Bill at Clause 10 and ended at Clause 1, I should like it less and less as I went along. I can summarise that by saying that Part I is completely unacceptable to me and, I think, to a number of hon. Members on both sides of the House for reasons which I shall give briefly.

First, Part I completely prohibits the economic activities of any forestry owner. As the Bill is drafted, a forestry owner would have to apply to a local authority for permission materially to alter the appearance of a tree. In economic forestry, it is necessary periodically to prune all the trees in the plantation. It is generally necessary at the 10-year stage and then at the 20-year stage to go through a plantation of trees and thin them. It is necessary every second year and sometimes every year to go down the rows of trees and cut down the saplings or brushwood which may have grown. As the Bill is drafted, before a forestry owner engaged on those activities he would have to give six weeks' notice to a local authority.

My hon. Friend the Member for Handsworth has said that it would be possible in Committee to delete the word "woodlands", and, therefore, commercial forestry owners would be excluded.

Clause 1(4) gives the Secretary of State power to make exemptions. governing the location, size or species of trees which may be exempt from this Part of the Bill. At the forefront of my mind was the point which my hon. Friend mentioned; namely, to exclude people who made their living through forestry.

I am grateful for my hon. Friend's intervention, but it has not altered much of what I propose to say. Although this exemption is granted to the Secretary of State by, I think, negative Resolution of both Houses, to be effective and generally acceptable to the House the whole country should be included in such an order initially made by the Secretary of State. If the whole country were included in such an exemption order there would be little point in including Part I.

Not only would it be difficult for commercial forestry owners to continue to operate; it would be quite unnecessary to add to the regulations with which they already have to comply. Speaking from memory, I believe that any forestry owner or landowner is allowed to fell 300 cubic feet of timber per quarter, without licence. Provided that he does not exceed that figure he is legitimately enabled to fell any tree he likes. If he wants to fell more than that he must apply for a licence to the Forestry Commission, which will consider his application and will generally expect him to replant an acreage of trees equivalent to that which he proposes to fell. This legislation has worked fairly well up to now.

Part I is phrased in very woolly terms. It refers to trees that cannot be seen from a public place". It provides that trees that can be seen may not be altered or tampered with in any way. As my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Ronald Bell) has said, a public place is a main road or a footpath. If a person stands on top of some of the hills in my constituency he can see miles of rolling countryside with woodlands, and with a telescope he can pick out individual trees. My hon. Friend may think that I am splitting hairs, but I repeat that the Bill is too woolly.

One does not have to pick out a tree; one just has to see it. That is enough. Not only forestry will be affected; the Bill will apply to private grounds. It is surely an outrage.

My hon. and learned Friend is quite right. He has raised a point to which I was about to refer. If the Bill becomes law it will be an offence punishable with a fine of up to £100 to fell a tree in one's front garden, however big the tree may be.

Before I develop that point, however, I want to deal with an even more important body of people than private garden owners; namely, people who derive their living from the land—farmers. As the Bill is drafted, if a farmer wishes to fell a tree that is overgrown in a hedgerow, provided that it is visible from any main road or public footpath he must give six weeks' notice to the local planning authority to see whether one of its inspectors wants to come along to see whether the felling should be permitted. To go into matters in such detail means that the set-up is wholly derisory. How can farmers comply with such legislation? When is an overgrown hedgerow not an overgrown hedgerow but a group of young trees? There is no doubt that if this legislation is enacted it will add to the wholesale avoidance of the law.

As my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Buckinghamshire, South has said, every owner of a front garden visible from a main road would be subject to a penalty of £100 if he broke any regulation contained in the Bill concerning trees growing in his garden.

I should like to know the cost to the ratepayer of the tremendous amount of machinery that will need to be set up under Parts I and II. We shall have to have a register of virtually all buildings in a conservation area. Where will the staff come from to look after such a register? What will the cost be of deciding whether a building in a conservation area should be listed?

Part II of the Bill refers to the fact that it will be possible for a local authority to say that any building in a conservation area should be registered. Who will operate the register? Presumably the local authority. Who will send the inspector round to see if a building should or should not be included in the register? Presumably the local authority. Who is going to decide if a building in a conservation area is contributing. to the character or appearance of the Conservation Area or is itself of architectural or historic interest? Presumably the local authority. The burden that this will place on the local authority and the ratepayers will be enormous unless the legislation is simply ignored. For example, every designation will require the confirmation of the Secretary of State. Every designation will have to be registered by the local authority. Every local authority which has registered a designation will have to serve a notice on the owner and occupier of the designated building. The cost of carrying out all this paraphernalia would be quite burdensome and quite beyond the small advantages which might be obtained from implementing these powers.

My hon. Friend talks in terms of the cost, including the cost of implementing a register of this sort. I wonder whether in doing so he has thought in terms of the cost in loss and destruction to the centres of our cities, and towns which have taken place over the years. How much would most people in London now pay to have the Adelphi back? How much people in the centres of old cities like Ipswich or Bristol pay if they could have preserved the sort of amenities which it is the intention of the Bill to protect?

Before my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr) replies to my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Mr. Money), would he bear in mind equally the extent to which some of the centres of our towns are being turned into museum pieces by the almost fanatical administration of the existing preservation law, in which, I am afraid, the Department itself is not at all free of blame?

I am grateful for both interventions. I shall bear both points in mind. But what I have in mind is not so much the impact of the Bill upon city centres but its impact on the countryside. Clause 5 goes so far as to give local authorities the power to go to someone's house and say that it needs painting or a new roof, and if the occupier does not do it, and quickly, the local authority will do it and the occupier will get the bill. I still believe that an Englishman's home is his castle and that if he prefers to let it fall in ruins about his ears, so be it. He should not be put in a position of having to foot the bill.

Mr. Chapman rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put, but Mr. SPEAKER withheld his assent and declined then to put that Question.

The provisions in Part III, of which Clause 5 is one, are really not acceptable to many hon. Members. Clause 7(2) (a) contains further points——

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. It is just about half a second or so before Four o'clock. We have had an adequate debate. Would you now accept from me the Motion, That the Question be now put?

I have just ruled that I cannot accept that Motion.

Mr. Farr rose ——

Let the Bill have a Second Reading.

As far as Clause 7 is concerned——

Shame!

—there are certain particular points which are most important——

It being Four o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.

Debate to be resumed upon Friday, 19th March.

Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

Object.

Debate further adjourned till Friday next.

Object.

Debate further adjourned till Friday next.

Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

Object.

Second reading deferred till Monday next.

Object.

Second reading deferred till Monday next.

On a point of order. May I seek your guidance, Mr. Speaker? When objection is taken to Bills which are merely a consolidation of the present law and which it would be greatly to the advantage of the ordinary citizen to have passed into law, would it be possible to record that the objection comes from a particular quarter of the House?

That is not a point of order on which I can act. I am governed by the rules of the House and, if objection is taken, I must then ask on what day the Second Reading is proposed to be taken.

I know from experience the reluctance of Home Office Ministers to take a public attitude which is different from that taken by the heads of police forces. Nevertheless, on the Adjournment this afternoon I am raising a matter of such importance to road safety, particularly the safety of children, that I hope that exception may be made in this case.

I have in mind the decision of the Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis to withdraw the specialised police road safety teams from their work in schools and other parts of the community with effect from July this year. These are special teams which were formed in 1965. There are nine, each consisting of five police officers, operating in the Metropolitan Police District. That with which I am familiar operates in my constituency and the surrounding areas. It operates from the Plaistow police station, and its work covers the Boroughs of Newham, Barking, Haveringham and Tower Hamlets. What I am about to say refers to the work of that team, but I understand that the eight other teams in the Greater London area work in a similar way.

A week or two ago I was privileged to see this team giving a demonstration in a primary school in the Borough of East Ham. It was typical of the demonstartions which it is giving all the time. It was a demonstration in kerb drill and road safety generally, given to seven-year old children. It was given with tremendous skill and ingenuity, with a certain amount of humour, and it was considered a great success. The team held the attention of the children for 20 to 25 minutes, which the teachers at the school assured me was a most unusual feat, and the children obviously both enjoyed the experience and learned a great deal from it.

May I first congratulate my hon. Friend on raising this subject. He has mentioned the enjoyment of the pupils. Is he aware that the police are very anxious to continue doing this and that they, too. are enjoying it?

This is certainly true. Through talking to the policeman, teachers, borough officials, parents and all concerned, directly or indirectly, with this, I know that they all support this excellent work. This is only part of the work done by these teams.

They give talks to older children, they lecture at driving courses, they help organise road safety weeks in the schools, quizzes and brains trusts. They train cycling instructors, they test candidates for the cycling proficiency certificate, they give demonstrations and talks to children under five accompanied by their mothers at the "Tufty" Clubs. They lecture at advanced driving technique courses organised in the borough. In a variety of ways they are integrated with the work of the local authority in promoting road safety. They work long hours with great dedication and excellent results.

Those who are close to this and have experience of it are unamimous in their praise of this work. Many organisations in the Borough of Newham have gone on record deploring this decision by the Commissioner of Police to disband these teams. The Borough Council, the Newham Road Safety Council, the Newham Teachers' Association, the Newham Head Teachers' Association, the Newham Trades Council and many other bodies have done so. I cannot do better than to quote to the House an extract from a letter I received from Councillor Jenkinson, Chairman of the Highways Committee, who said: During the five years the police have been operating in the schools their influence with the young children has been most marked. There is no doubt the police team can take considerable credit for the fact that in the first nine months of 1970 there has been a significant reduction in child road casualties. And there is no doubt the total effectiveness of their work will not be in evidence until these children drive motor vehicles on our roads in a few years' time. When they do they will be drivers who have had a close contact with police officers. They will know that the man in the uniform is concerned with road safety and that the rules and regulations he has to enforce are in the best interests of the road user. It is certain that these young people will have a much better understanding and respect for safety legislation and the essential part police have to play to enforce it, as will the adults who come into contact with them in this work. If the teams are withdrawn the police will lose means of accumulating the goodwill of children, who in a few years, will be a new generation on our roads. I have made no attempt to canvass opinion in other parts of London but I understand from several of my hon. Friends that anxiety has been expressed by other local authorities. This matter was discussed not long ago at a meeting of the London Boroughs Association, when anxiety was expressed about this proposed change. Hon. Gentlemen on both sides of the House have raised the subject in questions to Home Office Ministers and Ministers from the Department of Education and Science and the Department of Environment, who all have an interest in the matter, asking what possible reasons there are for making the change.

The first reason that we have been given is that it will save manpower. I put it to the House that we are concerned here with 45 police officers who are a tiny percentage of the total strength of the Metropolitan Police. I anticipate the reply that these are skilled officers, of great experience, with training in road safety who could be deployed on traffic duties, particularly at black spots in the Greater London Area.

I think the answer to that is that if one considers the great number of traffic black spots in the Greater London area—I do not know how one defines a black spot, but there are hundreds of them—one realises that the impact of 45 police offices released to this duty is bound to be marginal. Against that, we are disbanding teams which, in the view of those close to the situation, have had an effect in saving life among children, and it seems to me, therefore, that both the Commissioner and the Home Secretary have got their priorities wrong.

I quote from a letter which I received from the Home Secretary on 4th December. I believe that my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis) received a letter in similar terms. The right hon. Gentleman said: In the field of road traffic the primary police obligation is to facilitate the orderly movement of all road users. It is an aspect of this that road users should do so in reasonable safety. With respect, that is surely not the case. Surely road safety should be the first priority? We are all concerned with the orderly movement of traffic, and we have all sat in traffic jams and been frustrated, but these are not as important as considerations of road safety, and particularly road safety among children.

Then I shall be told that alternative arrangements can be made, and here I believe there are two suggestions. One suggestion is that the local road safety authorities can recruit teams—civilians, not policemen—to do the kind of job which is now being done by these police teams. I suggest to the House that, however successful such teams might be, however dedicated they are, and however experienced they may become, they are not likely to have the impact on children that uniformed police officers have. Uniformed police officers have a special impact in that they are serving policemen who come from a police force, which the children see on the streets as they go about them. These police officers therefore have a particular impact.

Then there is the complementary suggestion that police officers on the local beat should be encouraged to make more visits to schools in their localities, and by doing so reinforce the work of the civilian teams provided by the local authorities. Here again the policeman off the beat, however hard he tries, and however good he may be, does not have the same kind of expertise as these teams have. The members of these teams are not merely experts to start with but by working as a group over a long period they acquire techniques of how to deal with children, and they learn from experience how to make their presentation most effective. In other words, they are doing a unique job which, in my submission, cannot be replaced either by civilian teams or by policemen off the beat making an occasional visit to the schools. These teams have been proved a success in the work that they are doing, and this success is acknowledged by those with experience in the field.

The debate today is mostly about road safety, but there is an additional point of some importance, and it is that the work of these teams is good for the whole relationship between the police and younger members of the community.

Particularly in the East End of London.

With respect to my hon. Friend, not only in the East End of London, but in any part of it, and in other parts of the country, too, where the same problems could arise. These teams are popular and respected because they are helping children to cope with the real problems which they face every day of their lives. They put the lesson across cheerfully and helpfully, and the children know that it makes sense, because of their everyday experience. It seems to me that in a period of increasing lawlessness, and when there is a dangerous degree of alienation between the police force and some members of the public, we should not lightly abandon something which promotes confidence and good will and which can have intangible but important results in the future.

My main point is that we are concerned today with the safety of children. In the years ahead the amount of traffic on our roads will increase, and the potential danger to children will increase. Everyone should do more to deal with the problem. If the argument is that local authorities should now have a growing and more positive rôle in road safety, no one denies that, and local authorities would accept it, but it seems to me that it is a great mistake in that situation to disband an organisation which has proved to be so successful.

4.15 p.m.

I am glad that the right hon. Member for East Ham, North (Mr. Prentice) has raised this subject, which gives me an opportunity to remove one or two misconceptions and to pay tribute, as he did, to the work of these road safety teams. Everyone knows of their excellent work and the great amount of expertise which has been developed in this field. I should like to set the record straight on various matters, some of which the right hon. Gentleman has mentioned.

The first point that I should like to make, and to make firmly, is that there is no question of the police, either in London or anywhere else in the country, deciding or having been advised to cease to take an interest in road safety in the schools or anywhere else. Nor is there any question—I am talking of the whole country—of any force refusing to assist, so far as their commitments permit, with road safety instruction in schools. But this is not to say that a particular arrangement, made some years ago, is sacrosanct and should not be changed. Conditions and problems change rapidly; nowhere more than in regard to the police service.

Changes must be made to meet changed conditions. I was interested in what the right hon. Gentleman said about the importance of maintaining the links between the police and the schools. I recognise the particular importance in the area represented by himself and his hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis), who is also present.

All police forces, Metropolitan and provincial, realise that links with schools are important. They are important above all in the creation of the sort of police- public relations that are essential to effective policing in this country as we know it. There is no reluctance on the part of any police force to pay visits to schools. They welcome the opportunity. But it does not follow that school instruction and visits about road safety should be the sole responsibility of the police or that they are necessarily undertaken as a full-time duty by specialist officers.

In the field of road safety the primary obligation on the police is to facilitate the orderly and safe movement of all road users. Of course, within this, giving of talks and instruction in schools and other places on road safety has an established place, but a balance has to be drawn up as to where and when resources available shall be deployed; this must cover all aspects of police activities and obligations across the board. There can be no undertaking that police can accept permanent responsibility for ranges of social service, however deserving, outside the functions which fall to them alone.

There is now a well-developed and accepted policy of appointing local authority road safety officers to promote and co-ordinate—as well as to take a leading part in—all local road safety activities. The right hon. Gentleman will know that this was a policy initiated by the Government of which he was a member. It makes sense to look at road safety officers to co-ordinate road safety instruction in schools. The police will always be glad to co-operate, but we look to the road safety officers to plan what is needed and then to see how and by whom the tasks set out shall be undertaken.

The police are as well aware as all of us that a visit by a police officer, particularly in uniform, to a school does attract attention amongst schoolchildren, particularly the smaller children, and the police welcome this as an exercise in improving police-public relations.

The police are anxious to have entry to schools for this reason, and there is no question of them looking for reasons to withdraw from this contact with the schools. The police are always willing to assist school teachers—who, of course, have expertise in teaching—to acquire expertise in this subject, and in many ways this may be a development to which we can look forward and, in some respects, may prove to be the best answer.

The way to achieve the best results may vary from area to area and from school to school, depending on the resources and personalities that can be brought to bear. Often the best solution may be to deploy police manpower on road safety tasks that only a man in uniform can do, such as enforcement of the law and improvement of road user behaviour on the spot.

I come to the matter which particularly concerns the right hon. Gentleman, and that is the effects of the decision of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police about the Metropolitan Police District. This is a subject on which the right hon. Gentleman and a number of hon. Members who represent London constituencies have written to me.

I am sure that all of us—all London hon. Members, including myself—accept that one of the problems, particularly in London, is manpower, as well as the very large police traffic and road safety problems which exist in the area. The Commissioner of Police hopes to be able to achieve significant accident reductions in the street by deploying specialist groups of officers in activities designed to prevent high risk situations arising. Experiments in this sphere have been taking place with a considerable degree of success.

The Commissioner deserves—and I ask all hon. Members to accord him this—our warm support in this attempt to take positive action to reduce accidents. The present plan for trying to achieve this is to set up a sort of tactical reserve of specialist officers who can then be deployed on carefully worked out projects based on accident intelligence.

The manpower for this reserve must be found from somewhere, and the Commissioner will do this by using the men presently manning the road safety teams, and handing over the responsibility for school visits to local police in the area of the school. This is an operational decision which is entirely for the Commissioner and with which the Home Secretary has no authority to interfere, even if he wished to do so.

I do not pretend that the Commissioner might not have continued the present arrangements had he had the men to spare, or that the change does not pose local problems. However, a year's notice was given of the change.

We, naturally, support this idea of what the Minister described as a tactical reserve. Bearing in mind the size of the Metropolitan Police Force, is he satisfied that it would not have been possible to have formed that reserve and yet still to have kept the 45 officers in the role which they had performed so successfully and in which they had fitted in so well with the methods and objectives of local authorities in the road safety sphere?

As I said, this must be an operational decision for the Commissioner. He is aware of the state of his manpower. Although the right hon. Gentleman points out that only 45 men were involved, he must accept that in terms of the Metropolitan Police one can talk of taking away 45 men from a job here or a job there but one must put all available men where they can be best employed. The right hon. Gentleman paid a well deserved tribute to these teams, in which one has a great deal of expert knowledge, with officers who are devoted to this aspect of their police work.

As I was saying, a year's notice was given of the change, following discussions initiated by the London Accident Prevention Council, about London borough road safety organisations. Police personnel will remain available to train their successors—that is, the local police—and local police will be available to cooperate in future with local road safety officers in all local road safety activities including school visits. The best ways of doing this and of making the change as easily as possible are now under study.

I would not wish to pretend—to do so would be to mislead the House and the right hon. Gentleman—that the same kind of excellent and frequently amusing displays given by the present road safety teams in the schools will be put on by the local police. On the other hand the local police are likely to be able to visit schools more frequently than the road safety teams, who may only have visited each school once a year. They may be expected to know a good deal more about the local traffic conditions that the children face in the areas in which they serve.

I hope that local authorities will accept that it is for their road safety officers to take the lead in organising and coordinating all local aspects of road safety, and that they will encourage them to make positive and effective plans for schoolchildren and other groups in which the police will be happy to co-operate. Given good will, imagination and support, I see no reason why the effectiveness of such plans should not equal or surpass that of the present arrangements.

There is no dispute between us about the objectives. We are all concerned with the importance of road safety and with the safety of schoolchildren in particular, who are a particularly vulnerable group. The question is the best way to go about doing this. This Government, like the last Government, have adopted a policy of local authority road safety officers with the responsibility of co-ordinating local activities. The police will continue to help so far as they can and there is no question of police efforts being reduced as a result of Government policy.

But it must remain for chief officers of police, in the country generally as well as in the Metropolitan area, to make the best use they can of their manpower and resources in this field and in all other fields in which they have responsibility. I have been very carefully into this, and I am satisfied that the Commissioner in making his present plans has, indeed, all these factors in mind, and I believe that he deserves our support in his endeavours.

4.28 p.m.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for East Ham, North (Mr. Prentice) for raising the subject, and I congratulate him on his excellent presentation of the case. I must say that I am very disappointed with the Minister's reply. With respect, I do not think that he attempted to answer the case at all. He told us, in effect, that the Commissioner has decided, that therefore the Commissioner is right, and that is that.

The Commissioner may have been right to decide, but the hon. Gentleman might not only in our borough but throughout London has expressed exactly the same have suggested to the Commissioner that as everyone connected with road safety, views as has my right hon. Friend, the Commissioner might be wrong. I do not suggest that the Commissioner is wrong, but it seems strange, on the other hand, that everyone else should be wrong. Perhaps some of the others may be right It is strange that the whole host of arguments by persons who have had a lifetime of experience should be wrong and that only the Commissioner should be right. To me, it just does not add up. I suggest that the Minister should tell the Commissioner that what is now done is necessary, and that the alternative is not really an alternative.

I am sure that we will continue to do all we can, even after July, to show that we are not at all satisfied with the position, particularly when we know that the police themselves, who are doing the job as well as they are able within their resources give us 100 per cent. support.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes past Four o'clock