I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

This amendment is to correct a drafting error to which attention was drawn on Second Reading in the House of Lords. Obviously it should constitute a punishable false trade description if one overstates the fineness, but should not be so if one understates it. The draftsmen overlooked the double negative created by the word "except ".

The error was originally discovered by the hon. Member for Consett (Mr. David Watkins), whom I am glad to see on the Opposition Front Bench. We are indebted to him for his help.

I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

With this amendment it will be convenient to take Lords Amendment No. 58, in Schedule 1, page 24, line 11, leave out from "in" to end of line 12 and insert "section 1 of this Act"

This amendment is consequential on the last amendment to Schedule 1, page 24, line 11. The effect of that amendment is to extend paragraph 1(c) of Part IV of Schedule 1 so as to enable the Secretary of State by order to make consequential amendments not merely in subsections (2) (3) and (4), but in any part of Clause 1.

I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

This proviso is to make clear that if an article has some improper alteration made to it, but it is then reassayed and struck with any further approved hallmark which the Assay Office may require, the alteration ceases to be an offence.

I think that this point should be clarified. The amendment makes it clear that no offence is committed if an alteration has been made once it has been resubmitted. That is a point of some importance. Indeed, in Committee my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. (Wiggin) produced certain illustrations which had some historic interest where hallmarks had been altered and, if re-assayed, could still be submitted as silver or as gold. This minor change is of some small historic significance. It seems sensible that the amendment should be made.

I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

This, too, is a drafting amendment. The wording to be deleted dates back to before the Bill contained the definitions of "fineness", "standard of fineness" and "minimum fineness" at the foot of page 18. By those definitions the "standard of fineness" has imported into it the concept that the article referred to must in all its parts be not less than the fineness of the standard of fineness. I think that we would get confused if we were to go further into the matter. It is a question of the legal definition.

I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

This is slightly more than a drafting amendment because it is associated with certain amendments that have just been made to the Bill. Basically, it is important to make it plain that the amendments that have been made provide that an assay office must be satisfied that the article is of British origin before it applies to it a United Kingdom hallmark Unless it is satisfied about that an assay office must apply the mark used for imported goods. In other words, the amendment makes it an offence for a sponsor to mislead an assay office about the origin of an article.

Somebody who has non-British goods might submit them to an assay office in this country and try to pass them off as goods made here by obtaining a British hallmark from an assay office. People ought to realise that that is a criminal offence and that there are punishments for committing it.

An assay office is largely dependent upon statements made by the sponsor of the article when he submits silver or other articles for assaying. Often an assay office has little means of checking the validity of such statements. It is therefore important to make it clear that an attempt to mislead an assay office is an offence that is punishable, and it seems right and proper that we should reinforce the Bill by making the amendment.

This is an important matter. The only thing that worries me a little in the light of what the Under-Secretary of State said is whether this provision will be enforceable. The Minister said that an assay office would be largely dependent upon the statements of those who submit items to it. I assume that assay offices will be in a position to make fairly stringent tests and inquiries for themselves. I accept that this is not an easy matter to deal with, but I should like an assurance that this provision will be enforceable. I appreciate the deterrent effect of this provision, but it should be made clear that it will be enforceable.

This is a matter of common sense. The hon. Member for Consett (Mr. David Watkin) has made a valid point, and I am certain that his remarks will be drawn to the attention of the Hallmarking Council and assay offices in due course.

I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

With this we are to take Lords Amendment No. 38, in Clause 12, page 12, line 40, leave out paragraph (d).

Amendment No. 19 spells out the procedure to be adopted when a sponsor appeals against the refusal of an assay office to hallmark an article. It adds the new proviso that if the council considers the refusal to be unjustified it may direct the assay office concerned to hallmark the article, and that assay office will be duty-bound so to do.

The amendment is necessary in order to make certain that the new council as established by the Bill has power over any assay office, which is what everybody wished to see. It was the intention of the sponsors of the Bill to ensure that, but in this instance it was felt better that it should be made clear in the Bill, and that is what the amendment sets out to do.

Perhaps at this stage I should declare my interest, as I have on previous occasions, in that I am a member of the Livery of the Goldsmiths Company.

Will the council have its own assaying facilities? An assay office might decline to hallmark an article on the grounds of suspect material, wrong degree of fineness, and so on. If the question is submitted to the council in the proper way, will the council be able to carry out its own assay work, will it send the article back to the assay office from which it came, or will it require to see the full reports of previous tests?

My hon. Friend has asked rather technical questions, but I think it can be said that the Hallmarking Council will not of itself have assaying facilities. One of the great arguments for the Bill has been that assay offices are the only places capable of assaying accurately and adequately, but those who are thinking about how the council should work intend that there should be a technical adviser and presumably one of the assay masters or somebody who is similarly qualified to help the council with these technical matters. I hope that that adequately answers my hon. Friend's questions.

I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

The new clause is substantially a complete redraft of the existing one but it does not materially alter the sense of the Bill. This is very much the work of parliamentary counsel and we are grateful for the help that he has given us. In his wisdom he has found it necessary to rewrite the clause and many other things.

The new clause reproduces in a concise form what is substantially the existing law, and is intended to safeguard the integrity of hallmarks struck by assay offices against illegal alterations and additions made to articles that have been hallmarked.

Unless the alteration is by way of an addition of precious metal in a very small amount, as with a repair of an article, the consent of an assay office to any alteration is required and it is an offence to make alterations without such consent. My hon. Friend has mentioned that there have been some examples. It is one of the features of the museum in the assay office that it has objects which counterfeiters and others have, by the addition of base metal parts to precious metal objects, used to make themselves a handsome profit. I am sure the House will agree that this is wrong. The purpose of the clause is to make certain that it is an offence.

These safeguards have been found to be essential and the criminal penalty to be fully justified, if the very real risks of illegal alteration and deception of the public are to be avoided.

subsection (1) makes it an offence for any alteration to be made to an article bearing approved hallmarks unless the written consent of the assay office is obtained. Subsection (2) would make it an offence to remove, alter or deface any sponsor's mark, approved hallmark or the words "filled" and "metal" when prescribed under Schedule 2. Subsection (3) makes an exception of the battering of an article for re-manufacturing purposes. That is an obvious exception. I am sure that my hon. Friends from Sheffield and other areas with manufacturers in their constituencies will agree that this is essential.

Subsection (4) affords further exemptions for what may be described as miniscule additions of the same precious metal as that of which the article being altered is made. It would be wrong if repairing a silver tea kettle with silver solder were regarded as a fraud on the public.

My hon. Friend has referred to the repair of an article. If, in the course of a repair, an addition is made it is not an offence under subsection (1). If the repair involves the ironing out of dents in an article and no addition is made, will consent be required from the council?

I am no Solomon in these matters, but to some extent it depends upon the alteration. As I understand it, the alteration that matters is the addition of metal. To remove a dent would not in any way be an alteration for the purposes of the subsection. The adding of handles or spouts, or complete conversions of silver articles, are the sort of matters that would require consent.

I had got as far as explaining subsection (4). Subsection (5) allows the coating of an article after hallmarking, but only to a properly small thickness of two micrometers. We have gone over this. This relates to the protective coating of certain rare metals used to protect gold and silver and improve their appearance and long life. Subsection (6) entitles an assay office to insist on the re-assay and hallmarking of an article when its consent to a proposed alteration to an article is sought. That is exactly the same as the existing law. Subsection (7) gives a right of appeal to an aggrieved applicant for consent to the council and subsection (8) requires the assay office to abide by the council's decision on appeal.

I hope that this is an adequate explanation of the new Clause, which is the same as its predecessor in total effect and meaning but is much more easily understood in its new form.

I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

We are to take at the same time Lords Amendment No. 22, in page 9, line 9, leave out from "die" to end of line 10 and insert:

"or article bearing a counterfeit of a mark if knowing or believing the die or mark, as the case may be, to be a counterfeit, he supplies, offers to supply, or deliver the die or article".

These amendments are linked and constitute a substantial extension of the present scope of the clause but not of the present law. The penalty provisions for forgery of hallmarks under this clause, indicated at the foot of page 8 of the Bill, are, on indictment, in excess of the penalty provisions of the Trade Descriptions Act 1968 applied by Clause 8 with regard to other offences under the Bill.

The penalty provisions of the Act are proposed to be incorporated in the new Schedule A. In paragraph 1 of that new schedule it will be seen that on summary conviction there is a maximum fine of £400, and on conviction on indictment a fine without limit, or imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years, or both, are prescribed. The imprisonment proposed at the foot of page 8—namely 10 years for forgery—is in excess of those general limits of two years.

Those who feel that these penalties are severe should remember that under the existing law the penalty for the same offence is 14 years. We debated this matter fully in Committee and I am completely satisfied that it is right to include this heavy penalty. One clearly hopes that it will be a deterrent. I am not prepared to say whether the courts have exercised their discretion widely, but I do not think that anyone has been sent to prison for 14 years for the offence. It is important that we should retain the high maximum penalty. The whole system of hallmarking would break down if forgery of dies and marks became prevalent.

I should be grateful for some guidance, as this is a complex legal matter and I am a layman. It appears at first sight that Lords Amendment No. 21, which, under Clause 6(1)(c) would have read:

"utters any counterfeit of a die"

would now read, with the amendment:

"or any article bearing a counterfeit of a mark."

This matter, in essence, was discussed in Committee at some length together with the associated matter under Amendment No. 22 raised by the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Ronald King Murray). My hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Wiggin), with the courtesy and care with which he has piloted the Bill so far and upon which I congratulate him, wrote to us stating that the then clause relating to these matters would be materially altered and improved, and that was done. I am grateful for that. On the other hand, re-introducing the words

"or any article bearing a counterfeit of a mark"

seems to place a substantial onus, essentially of proof. Suppose a false mark were sold by an old lady who had a piece of silver in her family, and who was a little uncertain about the mark. She may purport that it was a fraudulent mark, or she may not know. For example, I have here a piece of silver on which I have been given two different expert opinions. One expert tells me that the mark is good Georgian and that it is a very valuable piece, but the other expert from the same well-known firm, says that the mark is all wrong and that the piece is virtually valueless. If experts can be so deceived on a mark, what of the old lady with her piece of family silver, which she wants to get rid of? She may in her bones want to say that it is very valuable, and she may need the money. If she sells it, no one knows whether the mark is good. But she could be brought to court for an offence with a maximum sentence of 10 years hanging over her.

I should hope that if the courts were faced with the situation which my hon. Friend poses the Bill would be suitably interpreted when it becomes an Act to comply with the situation. There may be a precedent involved. Nothing which we may say in the final stages of the Bill will influence the courts, but, I very much hope that the point which my hon. Friend has outlined will be accepted and considered in the courts if any such case comes up.

Anybody who has had experience of sitting even in a small way, as I have, on a magistrates' bench knows how difficult it is when dealing with receiving cases to be sure whether there was an intention to do something in the mind of the person before the court. That is the difficulty of understanding the possible intention in the mind of the old lady when she is brought before the court for uttering a suspect article. That seems a difficulty even if the words

"with intent to defraud or deceive …"

apply, I should like to be satisfied on this.

If my hon. Friend were to turn to Amendment No. 22 he would find that to a large extent his point is there answered by the words

"… If knowing or believing…"

That is the point. I shall extend the explanation of both amendments by saying that it concerned those who are advising me that under Clause 6(1)(c) it is an offence to utter a counterfeit of a die and under subsection (3) to supply or offer to supply or deliver a die when knowing or believing it to be counterfeit, yet it is not an offence to offer an article bearing a counterfeit of a mark—that is to say, a forged hallmark.

In practice, frauds are usually of the latter character. It would be possible to catch a person for uttering an article bearing a counterfeit mark by prosecuting under Clause 7(6), but the lower maximum penalty generally applicable to the Bill would then apply. I discussed this matter with the Department to see whether Clause 6 should be extended so as to embrace that sort of offence. The amendments taken together are directed to that purpose. I hope that that deals completely with the point which my hon. Friend has made.

I reply with the leave of the House. I am sorry to hear that the offence of issuing such an item as the piece of silver which I showed to the House should be met with the possibility of punishment of up to two years' imprisonment. On the announcement now before us, however, it seems a pity that we have to have the additional words,

"… or any article bearing a counterfeit of a mark …"

Those words are added to Clause 6(1)(c), which carries the long 10-year sentence on conviction as a possibility, which could apply even to the old lady of whom I spoke.

I am grateful and satisfied to be told that intention to defraud applies and that the old lady could not be convicted unless it was proved that she was of a guilty mind when she uttered or delivered the piece of silver. Taking that into account, and accepting that the matter of intention does apply, I am satisfied not to press the matter further, although I still voice my concern about accepting the amendment.

Might I have the leave of the House to reply for a second time on this amendment? At the risk of a dialogue developing, which I am sure would not be allowed, I must say that it would be wrong of me to make statements about the way in which the law works. We are passing these amendments today. They will become the law, which ultimately will be for the interpretation of the judiciary.

I have given as legalistic an explanation of the matter as I can. It is a complicated matter and a great deal of thought has been given to it. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and his Department have agreed that the solution that we have come to is the right one. That is by no means a reason for saying that the result is perfect, but I think, in fairness, that this is the right solution.

I understand the view expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Wiggin). He summed the matter up fairly closely. We are intent not on catching the dear old lady of my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Loveridge), who, by accident, happens to sell something which she believes to be genuine and whose hallmark is subsequently found to have been altered. It is the intention that is important. We are after the scheming, conniving old lady who thinks that she will be able to catch out a young married couple by passing something off in an attempt to gain a considerable variation in the real value whilst knowing that she is deceiving. I am sure that the House will feel it right that any article bearing a counterfeit on a mark in that instance should be able to be caught fully and properly by the amendment.

I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

The clause and the new schedule effectively reproduce Sections 18, 19, 20, 23, part of 24 and 25 of the Trade Descriptions Act 1968, which it will be seen were among the provisions of that Act applied by the existing Clause 8 of the Bill.

It has been thought that it would assist the reader of the Bill if the provisions were set out in a schedule rather than incorporated in a reference to the 1968 Act. It is fair to say that throughout the drafting of the Bill and the negotiations that went with it a great deal of thought has been given to the similarity of the purposes of the Bill and the Trade Descriptions Act. To an extent this amendment reflects that similarity.

The only significant departure from the Trade Descriptions Act provision is in paragraph 6 of the new Schedule 2A, which reflects the defence of mistake, accident, etc. afforded under Section 24 of the Act but in a much more limited form.

This matter has been the subject of considerable discussion with the Department of Trade and Industry and with the Parliamentary Counsel who is responsible for the redraft as a whole. The Department has accepted that in the context of hallmarking law a more limited defence than is appropriate to the general commercial field should here be afforded. On the other hand the essentials of the defence in Section 24 are preserved.

I believe that this is a satisfactory conclusion to the substantial negotiations which have gone on behind the scenes.

I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

This constitutes a further part of the parliamentary counsel's redrafting of the Bill and effectively reproduces that part of the present Clause 8 which incorporates Sections 26 to 33 of the Trade Descriptions Act 1968.

The new clause provides for the enforcement of the Bill by the local weights and measures authority and by the British Hallmarking Council and the assay offices. It is appropriate to say here a word about the functions of the local weights and measures authority because the main concept of hallmarking has been altered by the Bill—that is, the concept that those who offer for sale in the course of trade or business articles of gold, silver or platinum and wish to describe them as such should have them hallmarked.

This means that if a weights and measures inspector inspecting a jeweller's window, for example, sees an article described as silver, gold or platinum, he can, by looking at the mark, ascertain whether the retailer is complying with the law. This means that throughout the country there will be more than 1,000 individuals who will have as one of their many tasks the carrying out of this law. It is a very big improvement over the previous arrangements, whereby the assay officers had to do all the policing themselves, and by the nature of their functions and the geographical spread of the retail outlets it was a hard task. I think that this will add little extra burden to the weights and measures inspectors and it is one of the strengths of the Bill that they will be helping to carry it out in practice.

The British Hallmarking Council will in the time available to it teach, or take steps to teach, the associations involved the minor technical things to look for in this matter. The process is not that complicated and I believe that it will prove a substantial safeguard to the average consumer, which is what the Bill is about.

I ask my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State how this will work. When this went through another place and the Committee stage in this House, one or two examples were put to me. In Sheffield, for instance, we have an assay office of which the city is very proud and on the consumer protection side we have also perhaps one of the more vigorous and more ambitious weights and measures and consumer protection departments.

The House will be interested to know that the Sheffield assay office is shortly to celebrate its 200th anniversary, and I am sure that those of us interested would like to congratulate it on its long life and prosperity.

I thank my hon. Friend. I think that he and I will be travelling to Sheffield on Tuesday to take part in this important celebration, and I have every confidence that interference such as mine today will not hinder the progress of the Bill but, indeed, will ensure that it becomes an Act of Parliament.

In the years I have been in the House, consumer protection has been all important and the rôle of the weights and measures department in the local authority has also become more important. It means a bigger load on the weights and measures department, on consumer advice bureaux and other bodies within the town hall or the city hall. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will have to ensure that there is greater knowledge of what the marking is all about. It will mean training.

I am a searcher at the moment for a company of cutlers in Hallam which had the right at one time to search manufacturers' premises and to carry out much of the work which was moved to the assay office and now goes from the assay office to local authority support for the consumer. One of the purposes of the company with which I am associated is to maintain the quality and reputation of the products of Sheffield. Therefore, I feel that the new arrangement will be welcomed there at any rate, but it would be useful to know how the burden will fall on the weights and measures department.

I welcome this provision. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. J. H. Osborn) has made a valid point. It will put a bigger load on the weights and measures departments not only in the volume of work but in the necessity to acquire a greater amount of technical knowledge. I believe that the departments will be able to cope. I think it a good thing that they should be so firmly brought into the work of protecting the consumer.

As has been said repeatedly, the overall object is the protection of the consumer. I think that the consumer has growing confidence in these departments. I accept at once that the assay offices have for centuries done an extremely good job, are doing it now and will continue to do so. But it is also a very good thing if there can be a system of spot checks by the weights and measures inspectors.

In the eyes of the consumer, this is another defence which I am sure will be welcome by the assay offices and all quarters where there is responsibility for this matter. Of course, despite the most careful checks at or after the point of manufacture, quite often goods of not the right quality can find their way through. The consumer will now know that he can bring in an inspector and the dealer himself knows that additional protection is afforded by a further check.

We have raised the question of deterrents to would-be frauds, who are thick on the ground in this business. This further check once the article is in the retail shop adds to the protection. The amendment is important in giving the ability to hold spot checks in order to protect the consumer at the point of purchase as well as at the point of manufacture. The amendment is very much to be welcomed.

Because I am not a lawyer, I feel strongly that it is highly desirable that legislation should be easily read and that one should not have to keep cross-referring from one piece of legislation to another, particularly when one is trying to find out how it is to be enforced.

My hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Wiggin) has succeeded in covering the whole of this subject by this series of amendments.

Subsection (1) ensures that the duties of enforcement are placed upon the local weights and measures authorities. Subsection (2) outlines provisions identical to those of the Trade Descriptions Act. It gives power to make a test purchase under Section 27; power to enter premises and inspect and seize goods under Section 28; deals with the obstruction of authorised officers in Section 29; notice of test and intended prosecution in Section 30; evidence by certificate in Section 31; and compensation for loss of goods seized in Section 33.

Subsection (4) confirms the powers given to a local weights and measures authority and its officers and the enforcement powers of the council and assay offices and authorised officers. This is of some importance. It was suggested that we should not have gone as far. This shows our confidence in the assay offices and the council.

Subsection (5) deals with the slightly different Scottish law, under which it is the procurator fiscal who institutes proceedings.

Subsections (6) and (7) outline the special provisions of the Minister of Commerce of Northern Ireland.

The clause is a much better arrangement. It shows clearly how these functions will be carried through and what prosecution powers will exist. I congratulate my hon. Friend on amendments making the Bill readily understandable.

By leave of the House; my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. J. H. Osborn) must be cautious about the business of instruction. I may be at fault for leading him on.

The functions of weights and measures inspectors can be simple-that is one of the great virtues. It may be a question of showing whether an article offered for sale is of the metal according to the hallmark upon it. I suspect that the argument will be, as with the Trade Descriptions Act, that it is what is on the notice and not on the article that matters. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Consett (Mr. David Watkins) for putting his finger on the point of reorganising the schedule and I welcome his support.

I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the House of Lords in the said amendment.

There seems to be more to this than meets the eye at first glance. Amendment No. 36 omits the word "precious" before metal. That is not important on page 12, because it there relates only to advice that the council can give. But something appears to have crept into the Clause—as it is a deletion of a word, perhaps I should say that something has crept out!

The clause stated that the Secretary of State may at any time, after consultation with the council, apply the Bill to any other precious metal. But with the amendment it will say that the Secretary of State may at any time, after consultation with the council, apply the Bill to any other metal.

Surely that is not what we are here about. I thought that it was a hall-marking Bill relating to precious metals. In the preamble we were told about precious metals. Now we come to the point that the Secretary of State, in consultation with a council that deals with gold, silver and platinum, is able to make provisions relating to all other kinds of metals, which he chooses to determine virtually at his own volition without any consultation with other trades. What will happen in that case about lead, tin, copper and so on? Why is the word to be deleted?

With his usual perspicacity, my hon. Friend has put his finger on a slightly soft spot. This point has been the subject of debate by lawyers who, after the highest possible legal consideration, decided to leave matters as they were. The expression "precious metal" is defined in line 22 on page 19 and includes any metal prescribed in that clause. Without the amendment, the reference to "precious metal" in Clause 16(1) becomes tautological.

I accept that there is a conceivable element of doubt as to whether it might be possible to imagine the assay offices taking upon themselves the task of hall-marking brass. But I am told that it is unlikely that any court would consider the Bill to intend that.

I hope that my hon. Friend will not over pursue this matter, which has been considered by lawyers far better than I.

In the light of what has been said, we can perhaps place our trust on these high authorities that my hon. Friend has consulted. I hope so, because it would be unsatisfactory to find later that the power was being used to deal with other metals for which it was never intended.

The assay offices are financed by the industry and their expenditure is closely looked at by those who have to fund that expenditure. Those sponsors would not be encouraged to see those assay offices go beyond the activities for which they are financed and for which they have authority to proceed.

It is a reasonable assurance that in terms of economy and finance those who have to pay for it will discourage this development, even if my hon. Friend's assurances are vague. They are business concerns and are not going into handling these other metals.

I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

It should be made clear that this amendment implies that the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man are, for the purposes of the Bill, to be treated as foreign territory. That is the intention, and it relates only to the purposes of the Bill. This should be made clear since some residents in the Channel Islands have communicated with me about our legislation. I therefore thought that I should draw the House's attention to this point.

I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

This amendment deals with a point that is quite small but is, I know, of interest. to hon. Members from manufacturing constituencies. The term "Britannia metal "is applied in other circumstances to a certain base metal and it would be very confusing if in the Bill we started involving ourselves with references to Britannia metal rather than to Britannia silver, which is something quite different. That being so, it was decided to exclude this phrase from the definition of Britannia silver as an indication that an article is made of silver and not of any base metal.

This is quite an important amendment because together with later amendments regarding millesimal markings the House will realise that we will be left with sterling and Britannia silver as the two types of silver rather than those stipulated by millesimal markings, which would be placed on the objects themselves. Britannia metal is metal containing between 84 per cent. and 97 per cent. tin, and to allow this term would not be fulfilling the object of the Bill.

In these groups of amendments we have also catered for the term "carat". It will be realised that the schedule deals with traditional terms which no longer are the official way of indicating the fineness of gold though they may still be used by traders and will be assimilated into the new system.

It is interesting to note that "carat" is also used to express the weight of precious stones. A later amendment provides that the use of "carat" in connection with precious stones will not bring the article within the scope of the Bill. When we begin using terms in different areas it is important that we should get the definitions absolutely right. That is what the amendment sets out to do.

I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

With this amendment we will take the following Lords Amendments.

I am pleased to move this amendment because it deals with one of the major issues in the Bill. In other respects one has heard the expression, "away with the damned dot", and we have also heard, "away with the damned decimal point". This issue has given rise to considerable thought among my hon. Friends and the Government as well as the assay officers which are interested in putting on their marks as cheaply and easily as possible.

As I know that some of my hon. Friends and the Minister wish to speak I shall, with the permission of the House, confine myself to a few remarks at the conclusion of this debate.

These amendments, which seem quite simple when read, provide that the only indication of fineness which needs to appear on articles of silver or platinum produced in the United Kingdom will be a symbol. The figure of a lion or Britannia will be used for the 925 parts out of a thousand and 958 parts of a thousand standards of silver, respectively, and an orb and a cross for platinum of the 950 parts standard. I have to point out that imported silver and platinum will, on the other hand, bear the appropriate millesimal symbols of fineness only.

It is important that the consumer should be able to know the fineness of the metal used in the article he is buying, and I believe that public interest demands the adoption of a readily intelligible system of marking to convey this information. The Government's view throughout has been that the simplest system for the consumer to understand is one which is standard throughout. The one system which would be standard throughout is the millesimal system for all silver and platinum, but we have no objection at all to the retention of the lion passant and the figure of Britannia in addition because this is something which the trade wishes to have.

It appears to have been accepted by the Bill's sponsors, even if these numbers are accepted in respect of home-produced silver and platinum, that all other articles will be marked in the millesimal way, but with the millesimal marks indicated on the silver it seemed difficult to the Government to justify on necessarily reasonable grounds the anomalous situation for which these amendments provide.

Perhaps I should recount to the House what has happened since our debate on Report and since the amendments were accepted in another place. It was important because certain evidence I then produced was criticised as being somewhat out of date, in that these were views which had been sought when the Government were considering what could be taken on the Stone Committee's Report. That evidence was criticised as being perhaps two years or three years out of date. I therefore thought it right and proper that I should try to discover and inform the House whether these consumer bodies still held the views about which they had previously advised the Government.

Apart from the need for people to use a couple of magnifying glasses to see the marks, and leaving aside that probably they do not even know what a millesimal mark is, is it reasonable to expect people once they get the information, to understand it? Is it not a matter of insignificant detail, however important it may be to give information to the consumer?

That was one of the arguments put forward previously. That was why I thought that it would be a good thing again to ascertain the views of the consumer bodies. It had been suggested that perhaps the Department or myself misunderstood the consumer bodies' views. Therefore, in order to ensure that the matter was understood, I asked the Department to contact them by letter and to send to them the reports of the debates on it in this House and in another place.

The Consumers Association replied that the millesimal system was in line with its support for informative labelling generally and that it was opposed to distinctions being made or maintained between ways of conveying product information as between home and overseas products. It believed that in the long term a common system of marking of fineness throughout the EEC would be necessary.

Is it not the case that in France and Holland, as well as in Ireland, for some objects, no millesimal mark is needed?

That is so. I shall refer later to the Convention on the Control of Marking of Articles of Precious Metals which resulted from the meeting in Vienna on 15th November 1972.

The Institute of Trading Standards Administration made it clear that the marking with symbols only would, in its view, be contrary to the consumers' interests. The inspectors, to whom we have paid tribute this morning, made it clear that they believed that few average buyers would be aware that the figure of a lion implied that the silver was of 925 standard whereas the advantage of the millesimal system was that the proportions of previous metal to base metal were made clear to the average purchaser.

I accept that not everybody will understand that, but there is a much better chance of it if the system of knowing the fineness, the quality, of the metal being purchased is set out arithmetically, with so many parts per thousand, and consistently across the board. The advisory committee of the BSI on consumer standards advised the introduction of the millesimal mark for silver and platinum as well as for gold.

Is it not a fact that other countries using millesimal marks do not have the standard of assay and independence in carrying out assays which applies in this country. My information is that it is normal for the manufacturer to do that and that there is no independent body, such as the assay officers, as there is in this country. In other words, millesimal marks may be of long-term validity. Are we certain that they are relevant at present as a guarantee of quality?

It would be unfair of me to say that there is any body better than the assay offices and, without wishing to give offence, may I say that certain countries greatly admire the way in which they have held to a standard.

The next point which was relevant and which was missed in the argument was that the standard for all silver in this country would be that judged by the assay offices. Imported silver has to be assayed by the assay offices. Therefore, all that the Bill, in the form that it was before it left this House, ensured was that there was a comparable standard situation for all silver which was more simple to understand and which applied to all silver, whether imported or home produced.

I am grateful for the way in which the sponsors of the Bill discussed this matter with me when I was able to produce the evidence about which I have informed the House. There is little doubt that this matter concerned the joint committee of the assay offices of Great Britain. The Committee, under the noble Lord, Lord Runciman, who had moved the amendments in another place, said that, while it accepted the views which I had put forward, doubts could be expressed by other people about the authority in dealing with silver and made the point which has been made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, North (Mr. Gorst).

We were faced with the difficulty of knowing how to cope with an extensive Private Member's Bill which did a great deal of what we wanted to do when there was doubt in our minds about one particular aspect. It was pointed out in another place that the Bill contained powers to rectify this and that a statutory instrument could be laid to introduce millesimal marks if that were felt to be necessary.

I make it plain beyond peradventure that the Government would not wish to accept an amendment from the other place and immediately attempt to thwart it by introducing regulations to get round it because there was insufficient time to send the Bill back to the other place. We are coming towards the end of the Parliamentary Session and I had to bear in mind the possibility that if time were taken up in trying to reach absolute agreement the Bill might fall because of the operation of time.

I wanted to find a way round this and I believe that a fairly satisfactory solution has been found. I have received a suggestion from the sponsors of the Bill and by letter, signed by Lord Runciman, from the Joint Hallmarking Council that one of the first things that the new Hallmarking Council to be set up under the Bill should do is to consider the whole question of millesimal marking. The members of the council will include both consumer representatives and representatives of the assay masters. We shall be considering the exact composition of the council in a later amendment. It is suggested that in this way this useful reform could be carried through and the matter could be fully considered by the trade and assay office experts and consumers.

If the EFTA Convention were widely accepted by most European countries—indeed, all nations are being asked to ratify it—the situation would be entirely different. There are strong arguments in favour of a standard system for all forms of silver, whether imported or home produced.

We accept that there are differences of view. We accept the strength of the argument of the assay offices that they are the protectors of the consumer and have been protecting the consumer for many hundreds of years.

The Government are willing to go along with the amendments. They do not alter the present situation. The suggestion that this should be one of the first matters to be considered by the council makes sense. Although it is impossible to tie a body which has not yet been set up, I have no doubt that it would pay considerable attention to what has been said in this debate and to the views of the Government and the Joint Committee of Assay Offices in Great Britain. On that understanding, the Government are willing—

Will my hon. Friend say what will be the likely time scale involved in these deliberations?

No. The council will not operate until 1975, and nothing will alter between now and then. By that time we shall perhaps know more about the EFTA Convention, and the time scale will then rest to some extent with the council.

There is an irresistible feeling that we have all been here before. The millesimal markings proposal has been a matter of contention throughout the proceedings on the Bill, and was the subject of the only Division that occurred during the entire proceedings—a Division that took place in Committee.

It is interesting to recall that the proposal for millesimal markings was not included in the original Bill presented by the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Wiggin). He has conducted the Bill through the House with great skill and courtesy for which we are all most grateful. The amendment to insert them was moved by the sponsor of the Bill in Committee. He was strongly supported by the Under-Secretary of State. The amendment was opposed by hon. Gentlemen on the Government side of the Committee.

Before the hon. Gentleman, perhaps unwittingly, gives the impression that because I moved the amendment I am necessarily in favour of it, may I remind him that in Committee I made clear that I was ambivalent on this issue, but that, in view of certain trading that had gone on, I felt on balance that in the interests of the trade and the sponsors of the Bill behind the scenes it was right to do so. I do not want my position on this to be misinterpreted by the House.

I have no intention of misinterpreting the hon. Gentleman's position. He has virtually anticipated my next remarks.

In Committee the amendment was strongly opposed by hon. Gentlemen on the Government side, and it was supported by my hon. Friends on the Opposition side. They were so impressed by the arguments advanced by the sponsor and the Minister that they supported the amendment and it was carried by the votes of the Opposition.

The matter was again contested on Report, when there was before the House an amendment to delete the amendment which had been made in Committee.

The hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare agrees that he took an ambivalent attitude on this matter, and the Opposition took a similar view. Indeed I advised my hon. Friends in the earlier stages of the Bill to adopt a similar standpoint. I must confess that if the matter had reached the stage of a Division on Report, we would have remained consistently in support of millesimal marks. Those hon. Members who on Report sought to remove millesimal marks wisely did not force a Division on the matter because they obviously took the view that there was a real possibility that the Bill could have been lost, perhaps through lack of a quorum. It was made clear that hon. Members would seek to see that the matter was pursued in another place. But nothing happened in the other place which was not foreshadowed in this House.

The hon. Member for Consett (Mr. David Watkins) has expressed his views about the constitutional propriety of a decision by this House being reversed in another place. I must confess that I thought that that was the purpose of the other place, which, from time to time, reverses decisions taken in this House to give us an opportunity to think again about the situation. This is what has happened on this occasion, and the fact that Members of the other place happen to have agreed with my point of view is coincidental.

As a sponsor of the Bill, I pay warm tribute to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. He has been exceptionally fair in the matter of millesimal marks. He has listened to the debates in this House and to the representations which have been made outside it, and has given this matter a great deal of his time. It is clear from my hon. Friend's remarks that he is not convinced by the arguments put forward by me and others of my hon. Friends or by those deployed in the other place. Nevertheless, he is prepared to accept these amendments and to put this decision to the judgment of a body of men who probably are the most qualified to speak on this matter. I thank my hon. Friend for his fairness and for the decision that he has just announced.

The hon. Member for Consett suggested that their Lordships were interested parties. It is clear from a list of those who spoke in the various debates that they had an interest. Equally, they were qualified to speak on the subject. However, in addition a number of laymen took part, and perhaps I might refer the House to a remark made by the noble Lady, Baroness Phillips, who said about millesimal marking:

"I must say, as a consumer representative, that I think we should be overstating the case if we suggested that it would make it any easier for the average consumers to understand what they were buying."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. House of Lords, 15th May 1973: Vol. 342, c. 704.]

That is a view expressed by someone highly qualified to make it, and it is this which lies at the root of the matter.

I shall not rehearse all the arguments about millesimal marks being superfluous, and about the danger of their being less legible. We have been through those before. I make only a passing reference to the aesthetic quality of the marks and the drawing from that quality by the addition of numbers. At one time the Design and Research Centre was in favour of millesimal marks. I am glad to see that it has now come out against them on aesthetic grounds, as has the British Antique Dealers' Association. We have heard the arguments about the difficulty of application and about the possible additional cost resulting from having to use separate punches for these marks. Those arguments still stand. I do not believe that the force of them has been reduced by anything which has been said today.

That is not the crux of the matter, however. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary said that the consumer should know the degree of fineness. The hon. Member for Consett said that the consumer should be able readily to understand. The point really is that it is not the consumer who reads these marks. I do not believe that the normal run of consumer is able or wants to know about the exact degree of fineness. In my view it will remain the case that when dealing with precious metals and articles made from them the expert will always be needed to judge the quality and, in these circumstances, to read or to understand the marks. If that is so, the lion or other marking will be adequate.

Another relevant point which has not been referred to is that Clause 10 requires a notice to be displayed permanently in retail shops and the like showing what these marks mean so that if there is any dispute or if the consumer is sufficiently interested to look at the marks and does not understand them, the notice will be there for him to consult. That is really the main answer to the arguments advanced from both Front Benches.

Previously, I have based my arguments solely on silver and have tended to disregard platinum. I have argued that the lion is well known the world over. But it is also an argument for saying that the orb or the orb and the cross should be allowed to stand without the fineness or millesimal marks being shown.

I conclude by again thanking my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary. I welcome his announcement that this matter is to be put before a council composed of a body of people very well suited to deal with it. I am certain that it will take account of the arguments of both sides of the House in this dispute.

One reason why I have not been able to take an active part in the earlier stages of this Bill with my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Wiggin) is that I have been away frequently on Council of Europe and other activities. But it is clear that everyone wants the Bill, and I have listened with great interest to today's exchanges between the two Front Benches.

I intervene today because, as a member of the Cutlers' Company, I have had drawn to my attention the objection of every one in the trade in Sheffield to the idea of adding millesimal marks to the hallmarks which we know and understand so well. In the past six months I have been questioned about this matter again and again.

In the course of these debates, one great difficulty has been that the imposition of another mark, the millesimal mark, on existing marks involves the problem of space and the problem of obtaining the right punches. There are practical difficulties involved in introducing yet another mark.

I welcome the decision of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary to accept the amendments made in another place and his wise announcement that the Hall-marking Council, when it is set up, is to be asked to examine the position. It requires much careful examination because I sense that, in the years since the original Stone Report, this House has become much more conscious of the need to protect the consumer. This is a matter which needs looking at carefully from the point of view of the consumer.

I have a certain amount of sympathy with the point of view of the hon. Member for Consett (Mr. David Watkins). But 1 am also somewhat perplexed. In terms of other industries in Sheffield, I have been a great supporter not only of national standards, but of international ones, and the British Standards Institution has an important rôle to play in this connection.

I am one of the few who supported the decision taken by the Labour administration, backed by the CBI and other bodies, that we should adopt standards similar to those elsewhere in the world. I have no intention of embarking upon a debate on metric standards, but they reflect themselves in the standards that we are accepting as part of the EFTA convention. For that reason I could be accused of supporting the introduction of metric standards elsewhere but of not being too enthusiastic in this connection. However, in the course of time the millesimal mark is one which may well be better understood in Europe. But it will be very confusing if we have two sets of standards on one article.

Nearly 10 years ago, on a Friday, I put through the Trading Stamps Bill. The problem with that measure was to let the consumer know how many stamps he would get for a given number of purchases. In Clause 10 of this Bill this point has been elaborated. There will be an increasing responsibility on those who retail and sell these goods to let the general public know what these marks mean. If we accept a new set of standards the consumer is likely to be confused so the task will not be made easier.

We are talking about a lion passant, a lion rampant, the figure of Britannia, an orb and a cross, which are well known marks outlined in books that connoisseurs are able to purchase to see these traditional marks for themselves. Therefore, I suggest that, although the Minister is accepting the Lords amendments for which I have been urged to press, in a changing world the Hallmarking Council will face a challenge.

I began my comments by saying that I was serving on the Council of Europe.

The Under-Secretary quite rightly referred to the EFTA convention. I think it would be wise to find out more about the practices and methods of assaying in Europe compared with this country. As the Community and EFTA countries are involved, this might well be a task for parliamentarians from this country on the Council of Europe to consider. I think that I am on an appropriate committee, and I look forward to helping the Hall-marking Council and the Under-Secretary in due course.

We must know about the practices in other countries, and parliamentarians from European countries must know what the issues are, before we abandon traditional standards and adopt standards which may be more commonplace elsewhere. We should know whether those standards form a sound basis on which to look to the future.

The acceptance of these amendments by my hon. Friends shows them to be on the side of true love rather than greed. No longer, at least for the time being, will a girl be tempted to ask her financé whether his gifts are fully millesimalised.

These marks are ugly. It is almost impossible to imagine them being well designed, particularly on small pieces of silver. It was significant that my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (Mr. Adam Butler) drew attention to the change of views by the Design and Research Centre and the British Antique Dealers' Association. Who could imagine making these long numerals on small pieces of artwork beautiful?

I appreciate what was said about the EFTA convention and the need for some world wide standards. This point was referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. J. H. Osborn) who spoke with knowledge about these matters. On the other hand, I cannot help feeling that a world-wide standard in art must inevitably lead to some dullness.

Is there not also a commercial aspect? If we keep to our famous British marks we will have the edge in exports over other nations sticking to a common standard. Ours will be more in demand by the connoisseur and the collector. None the less, I welcome that the council is to consider the reasonable suggestion put forward by the Under-Secretary that its first discussions should relate to this problem.

I end by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Wiggin) and the Under-Secretary for the way that they have worked on the Bill which we so much want to see go through.

As a layman, I have listened with great interest to what the Minister said on this subject and on the Bill. I thought he made not just a convincing but an overwhelming case for the consumer. For that reason, as spokesman for the Opposition on behalf of the consumer, I am astonished that he has now felt it necessary to back down from the argument that he presented.

I should like to put forward what I think would be the view of the general consumer in this respect. Surely where there is a choice between imported and domestic products it is helpful to the consumer to have comparisons of equivalent form.

One hon. Gentleman said that the lion is well known to the connoisseur. The mark will not be a source of confusion to the connoisseur, but the lion is not known to the non-connoisseur. After all we must also think of the non-connoisseur. A quantitative comparison, as opposed to a symbolation's head on one product and a specific number on another—would seem to be more helpful to the non-connoisseur, so that he may compare like with like in terms of quality. I accept that the term "millesimal" will not be understood. Frankly, I do not understand amps and watts, but when I see them on a bulb I am able to understand which bulb will give me the greater degree of light. One does not necessarily need to understand the terminology to make meaningful quantitative assessments of the relative qualities of the products that the consumer is likely to buy.

The hon. Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Loveridge), in an interjection, said that France and Holland do not require millesimal marks. My comment is, "So what?". Must we always be the last? Must we wait until no hon. Member can find any one country that does not impose a requirement for millesimal marks? The Opposition, and the Government appar- ently from the Under-Secretary's speech, believe that the millesimal mark would be of assistance to the consumer. For that reason, I regard the activities of France and Holland as irrelevant, somewhat regrettably, and I hope that at some stage somebody in both the French and Dutch legislatures will say, "Everyone except France and Holland is imposing millesimal marks. They have now done it in Britain. Should we not do the same?".

My interjection was not designed to suggest that Britain should be last in the queue, but to show that other nations have wisdom as well.

The hon. Gentleman may interpret his remarks as he wishes. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. J. H. Osborn) said that we would be abandoning traditional standards, but we would not. As I understand the Bill, there is no suggestion of altering the standards. We are talking about information. The hon. Member for Hornchurch said that we should keep our marks because they could conceivably be of advantage to us in the export market. There is nothing to prevent us keeping our traditional marks. All that is requested or required is that further quantitative information be given where possible.

I stressed that consumer protection means that the consumer should be able to see in the shop information on what a mark signifies. Therefore, the consumer to a greater extent, as a result of the Bill, will have an opportunity of finding out what the marks signify and will know where he may see quality.

In Britain we have embodied in these marks standards that are second to none. They have a world-wide reputation, and if we adapt them and make them coincide with new standards which I am not certain have the reputation of our own marks that could be a retrograde step. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will support the right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) in pressing for us to go ahead with metrication.

I shall be speaking about metrication in the debate next Tuesday. I spoke from the Front Bench on the last occasion when we debated this subject, and if I remember correctly the hon. Gentleman and I were in unison in attributing responsibility for the move towards metrication to the right hon. Member for Knutsford (Mr. John Davies). There are many quotations from articles, and so on, to show that the right hon. Gentleman was the prime mover in the campaign for metrication.

The hon. Gentleman said that dealers would display the appropiate notice, but this is a trade in which there are a considerable number of private sales and transactions. In such transactions there will be no notice to which a member of the general public will be able to refer, nor will there be an expert seller who will be under an obligation under the Trade Descriptions Act to give authentic advice, because a private seller is in a privileged position.

But even if the point that has been made about purchases through legitimate dealers is valid there is still no protection for the person who buys privately, and our argument is that the extra information given by the millesimal mark will help a considerable sector of the trade. I regret that the Minister felt it necessary to back down on this issue, because the council will not be established until 1975.

There is a slight misunderstanding here. If the Bill receives the Royal Assent, the council will start on 1st January 1974. It will take a substantial time to equip all assay offices with new dies, and therefore the marks will not appear until 1975, but the council will start on 1st January 1974.

It will be several years before millesimal marking comes in through the use of this machinery. It is regrettable that, the House having given its decision on the first occasion when the matter was discussed, when the Bill went to another place and the Government were faced with a clearly interested lobby they did not see fit even to nominate Tellers to protect the decision of the elected House.

I do not regard the amendment as acceptable, nor do I see it as necessarily representing the overwhelming opinion in the other place. It was never put to the test by means of a Division. It is my conviction that the consumer groups which made representations to the Government represent public opinion and public interest far more than does the interested trade lobby that has set out to block this innovation.

I hope that I may have the leave of the House to speak again. I shall not detain the House for long, because I spoke for a number of minutes earlier in the debate.

There seems to have been some slight misinterpretation of what I said by the hon. Member for Consett (Mr. David Watkins) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (Mr. Adam Butler). I should not want them at any time to be able to accuse the Government or myself of having misled them or the House.

I reserve the position that my right hon. and learned Friend may wish to consider the question of fineness marking, millesimal marking, or whatever one wishes to call it, when we give effect to the EFTA convention in connection with articles made of precious metals, or when we give effect to provisions in other treaties entered into under the EEC rules and accept for circulation in this country articles that have been assayed or marked overseas with millesimal marks.

It was suggested that the Government would act only on the advice of the Hall-marking Council. The Government will consult the council, as they have to do, but if the Government thought it right to do so they would reserve the position for my right hon. and learned Friend to be able to ensure that an order could be made if it was necessary for the carrying out of any international treaty obligations. That is one reason why the statutory instrument powers are laid down in the Bill.

Is it only in that circumstance, and no other—that is to say, a legal obligation under the Community rules or under some other international agreement—that the Government would act in advance of any decision by the council?

My hon. Friend is a clever parliamentarian and a brilliant debater but I, too, have been here for a little while, and he is not catching me on that one—not at this time of the afternoon. How long is a piece of string? I cannot give my hon. Friend the assurance that he seeks. I do not know what factors might arise in the future, but I compliment my hon. Friend on having wrapped up the question so nicely that I might have fallen into the trap.

I think that the hon. Member for Swansea. West (Mr. Alan Williams) slightly overplayed the argument about the views of this House and those of another place. It is my judgment that if there had been a Division on the millesimal marking amendment on that Friday the amendment would have been carried but the Bill would have been lost because there would not have been 40 Members present.

indicated assent.

I am glad to see the hon. Gentleman nodding. The thwarting of views is something of which we do not want to make too much political play in this debate.

I think that the cogent arguments for and against millesimal marks have been very well put again this afternoon. My hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (Mr. Adam Butler) put the case for them, while the hon. Member for Consett (Mr. David Watkins) to some degree put the case against them. I urge the Opposition not to make this a plank of Labour Party policy, because I seriously suggest that it is a small issue and I honestly do not believe that all the consumer bodies that have been consulted have had all the evidence placed before them. I do not think that the Consumers Association, as a council, has considered the matter, or even had the various arguments put to it in an understandable manner.

The hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Alan Williams) said that a private dealer would not have to exhibit the card that would be issued by the Hallmarking Council. As I read the clause, I do not think that the hon. Gentleman is right. Anyone who consistently deals in precious metals will have to exhibit the sign.

That was not my point. There is a considerable private trade between individuals who are not traders. The information to which I have referred would not be available to them.

The hon. Gentleman will recall that we had a good debate about "the course of trade or business" in Committee. We have been over this matter pretty thoroughly in previous stages. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the question of light bulbs. Is a 12-volt light bulb of 100 amps brighter and more powerful than a 400-volt bulb of 30 amps? I do not know and I strongly suspect that only a scientist would be able to say which produces the most lumens. That is a good example of how to get confused by too many numerals. This matter should be studied and market research should be undertaken to discover what the man in the street thinks, as well as a retailer, who is involved at the point of sale.

I am glad that the Hallmarking Council will have this worthwhile matter to consider early in its existence. Lord Runciman gave some substantial assurances to the Government. I wish to defend the Minister against charges that he has backed down. He has proved to be inordinately stubborn over this issue. I am sure he will not take my observation amiss. He has stuck to his guns to make sure that the matter will be considered by a body of people who are well equipped to consider it.

It would be wrong to talk in terms of days, months and years. An assurance that it will be early in the programme is adequate. I do not jump to conclusions on what may be decided. It would be wrong to do so. We have come to a satisfactory compromise to expedite the Bill and to allow the matter to be investigated.

I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

With this amendment we can discuss Lords Amendment No. 70, in page 26, leave out lines 40 to 46.

These amendments go together. It has been agreed that the regulations governing the use of base metal in the manufacture of an article of otherwise precious metal should be solely made by the Council and the Secretary of State should abandon the regulation-making power controlling the powers of the council for which provision was made in the earlier version of the Bill. This is purely a technical matter and is a right and proper function for the council to perform.

I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

With this amendment we can discuss the following Lords Amendments: No. 73, in page 28, line 13, leave out "by the Secretary of State".

No. 75 in page 28, line 39, leave out from beginning to end of line 46 and insert:—

"9.—(l) The Council shall elect a person to serve as chairman from among the members of the Council and notice of his election shall, as soon as is reasonably practicable, be given in writing to the Secretary of State by the secretary or other person for the time being authorised by the Council in that behalf."

No. 76, in page 29, line 4, at end insert:

"(3) If any member appointed by an assay office is elected as chairman of the Council, paragraph 8(2) of this Schedule shall have effect as if that member had ceased to hold office otherwise than upon the expiration of his period of office."

The House will recall that on Report there was considerable debate about the composition of the council. The matter was then fully covered, and as a result there were further consultations with interested parties. In the end an extremely reasonable compromise was arrived at, whereby the Government will continue to nominate 10 out of the total membership of the Hallmarking Council, three of whom will be specifically interested in consumer matters and four specifically interested in trade matters. The assay offices will be consulted about the four trade members.

It is important that in the Hallmarking Council all those deliberating on these matters should have some knowledge of them. No one who has interested himself in the passage of the Bill will need much convincing that this is a technical matter and one in which it is necessary to have considerable expertise. The assay offices should be able to give their opinions. There will be three totally independent nominees. The assay offices will nominate six, and two will be co-opted. If the chairman is a nominee of the assay offices, the assay offices will have the right to nominate another to fill his vacancy, to ensure that the offices have full representation.

I thank my hon. Friend for the way he has tackled this problem. I know that he felt strongly about it at one time. The compromise is sensible. The assay offices gave up a considerable amount of their autonomy in this matter. It is probably correct that consumer organisations as such should be singled out but I am rather doubtful about "statutory consumers" for there are arguments for saying that everyone is a consumer in these matters.

I join my hon. Friends. n congratulating the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Wiggin) on bringing forward the Bill and I hope that it soon reaches the statute book. However, I must express concern about the amendments, particularly No. 72. This rather long amendment seeks to replace paragraphs 2 and 3 of Schedule 3 with some other way of constituting the British Hallmarking Council. My criticism which I hope can be removed by my hon. Friend, or the Minister, is that, while a compromise may have been reached, the position of the council is vague, imprecise and may cause trouble. This part of the constitution, setting up the council is, to say the least, rather cumbersome.

As I understand it, the council shall consist of not fewer than 16, or not more than 19, members. I was doing my arithmetic in the previous amendments and the total came to only 18. That point has been solved by my hon. Friend because in addition to the 10 nominated by the Secretary of State and the six from the assay offices two can be co-opted. If the chairman happens to be one of the assay offices' nominees then an additional person can be nominated in his place. That explains what I thought was a rather vague position.

The addition to the Schedule states that of the 10 members who shall be appointed by the Secretary of State, three shall be versed in the protection of the consumer and four shall be suitably qualified in the trade or manufacture 91 articles of precious metal.

I notice, from the next paragraph, that before appointing these four people the Secretary of State has to consult the assay offices. It is rather vague as to what happens if the assay offices and the Secretary of State do not agree. Obviously the Secretary of State has the last word, but this paragraph is rather meaningless. Since the assay offices between them can nominate six people to serve on the council, this requirement is not needed, although I see the diplomatic point for introducing it.

It is stated that the Secretary of State can nominate 10 people and we are told how seven of these are to be appointed. What about the other three? Are they deliberately not to be versed in the protection of the consumer, or are they to be people never thought of by the assay offices? This is imprecise and vague.

I do not wish to be churlish. I was not happy about the original position of the council before the Bill was amended. The new method of appointing people to the British Hallmarking Council could cause trouble. It could be made much simpler.

This is a technical and complicated Bill. Surely it is the duty of the House to see that complications and technicalities are reduced to the minimum. I fear that the proposed new part of the schedule will have the opposite effect.

I very much respect the reservations which the hon. Member for Birmingham, Hands-worth (Mr. Sydney Chapman) expressed. I respect the formidable way in which he put his reservations and the series of formidable questions which he has put to the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare.

The hon. Member for Handsworth made the point that there was bound to be some argument. Of course, three already has been a great deal of argument. I am certain that he is right in saying that there will be further argument. Argument has arisen to a considerable degree in this House and in another place because of the proposed composition of the Hallmarking Council. That was the only great issue of contention in the whole of the Bill.

I regret that a non-elected House has to change the decisions of the elected House of Commons on important issues such as these. Nevertheless, I at once acknowledge that the amendment from their Lordships meets most of the objections to the original proposals which the Opposition made in this House.

I remember that the Opposition thought that the original proposals made in Committee by the Government were authoritarian and gave the Government too much control. We thought that the amendment which was brought by the Government on Report—it was tabled supposedly to put the situation right—was even more authoritarian than that which it was supposed to remedy.

I accept that the amendment goes a long way towards meeting all the objections which were made in this House. I recollect that I said on Report that the Opposition would want three assurances relating to the Hallmarking Council. First, we required that the Government would take the maximum advice and engage in the maximum consultations when making appointments to the council; and second, that the council would be an independent body when it was appointed. By that we mean independent of day-to-day Government interference. That point is made all the stronger by the discussions which we have had about millesimal marks, which is put as the first priority for the council to consider.

The third assurance which the Opposition wanted was that the council would be represented not only by all branches of the trade but by consumers. I think that the Lords amendment meets all those assurances.

I recognise, as I have already said, that the assay offices have done a good job for centuries. I recognise and congratulate them upon the graceful way in which they have acceded to what might be felt to be some derogation from their previous responsibilities. Above all, I welcome the appointment—I see that that is a matter of some amusement to the Minister, Perhaps I am being a little too kind in presenting the Opposition's view of this matter. If so, I stand corrected because of the Minister's inside knowledge, which I do not share.

I believe that the proposed composition of the council meets all the objec- tions which were made in this House. It meets the assurance which the Opposition requested. I welcome the appointment of three members specifically from consumer organisations. With those words I welcome the amendment.

I, too, welcome the amendment. As this will be the last time on which I rise to speak, may I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Wiggin) on piloting the Bill through to this stage with considerable skill. For years the assay offices, the United Kingdom Silverware and Cutlery Manufacturers and the Company of Cutlers, of which I am a searcher, have been pressing the Government to introduce a Bill of this type. However, there has never been enough time for the Government to do so. My hon. Friend, who has an interest in these matters, has found time. It is a great achievement to have piloted a Bill through what I can describe only as tempestuous seas riddled with many rocks. This is one more example of reaching a compromise with those who are interested. It is one more example of the co-operation which has been achieved with the Government of the day.

My hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare and I will be going to Sheffield on Tuesday for the 200th anniversary of the Sheffield Assay Office. That assay office, like the Company of Cutlers in Sheffield, has been engaged in establishing and maintaining quality. It has been by maintaining quality that Sheffield, and other cities, but Sheffield particularly, has maintained its reputation over the years.

The Sheffield Assay Office, like other assay offices, is an autonomous body. The fact that it must lose some of that autonomy is obviously of concern. However, many changes will take place. I refer to these matters only because I want to draw out that the amendment at subsection 3(d) says:

"one of those members shall be appointed by the Sheffield Assay Office".

There are 30 Guardians. They have been responsible for maintaining reputation and quality in Sheffield as have other Guardians in other assay offices. I welcome the amendment. I welcome the fact that a Guardian can appoint one person to the council in consultation with the Minister. That reflects itself in the whole orientation of the council. It is a suitable compromise which I endorse.

I recognise that a considerable amount of suspicion was expressed in Committee and on Report about the Government's wish that all the appointments to the council should be made by the Secretary of State. I do not believe that there was any justification for that suspicion. The Government's intention throughout was to provide for the creation of a strong and independent council whose members would be and will be suitably qualified for the job which they will have to do.

The basis of the Government's attitude was that in the creation of the council it would be necessary to exercise wide influence in the hallmarking of articles of precious metal. It was essential not only to ensure that it was independent but to ensure that, like Caesar's wife, it was seen to be independent. Some independence could have best been guaranteed in such a way. We took such a view to begin with. The present amendment gives the assay officers the right to appoint their own six members to the council. It would seem rather unnecessary to have such a provision but if that pleases them, fair enough. The Government have no strong feelings.

It has been possible to make it clear that the assay offices will not represent only vested interests or the interests of the trade. As long as that is the case the Government have no power to intervene. But if ever it should not be the case, the Government and the Secretary of State will be able to take specific action.

I believe that it is right that the Government should accept the position which has been put forward by those who have done so much for the trade in the past and who now in some ways will be losing some of their traditional rights in having to be subservient to the Hall-marking Council. The spirit of the council is to regulate the whole of the hall-marking business and the business of the precious metal industries within the country in a way which is not one-sided but which is to the benefit of the industry, the assay officers, the trade and the consumer. That is what I have every hope will be done.

The composition of the council is the second point of contention but I shall not add much to what has been said. I think that in the end there has been a happy compromise. It has recognised the responsible rôle which has been played by the assay offices in the past and the way in which they have worked with the trade throughout their long history. The hallmarking they have carried out is probably the earliest form of consumer protection to have been introduced. The compromise is also a recognition of the fact that the assay offices will be meeting the full expenses of the council, and therefore perhaps it is just that they should have this say in the selection of a number of members of the council.

I am certain that the present Secretary of State would in any case have chosen similar or perhaps the same people who will now go on the council as representatives of the assay offices, out one was worried earlier and was perhaps right to maintain a slight suspicion not about the motives of the present Secretary of State but of a future Secretary of State. However, the amendment provides the safeguard.

Four members of the council are to be appointed from the trade by the Secretary of State. It is probably fair to say that the assay offices have been closer to the manufacturing side of the business than to the retail side, for obvious reasons—it is the manufacturers who send in articles for assay. If the assay offices; were to lean in any direction or more to one side of the trade, then it would be the manufacturing side. I asked my hen. Friend the Under-Secretary of State to ensure that as far as possible the retail end of the trade is represented in this category of members of the council.

As this may be the last opportunity on the Bill, I add my tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Wiggin). It will be much briefer and less eloquently phrased than that of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State. My hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare is to be congratulated on putting on the statute book a measure which is probably long overdue which will be on the statute book for very many years and which will be of tremendous benefit to the consumer and the trade alike.

I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (Mr. Adam Butler) is treading on rather dangerous ground if he says that assay offices are closer to one part of the trade than to another. While they may be in daily dealing with manufacturers, the slightest divergence from the competence of their function would affect: the retailers much more closely. The assay offices have taken substantial steps to see that official bodies such as the Guardians in Birmingham, Sheffield and the Goldsmiths Company in London do have ail sections of the trade at heart. I know that the voice of the retail trade will be heard when it

No. 90, in page 36, line 17, at end insert:

I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

It will be convenient at the insert:

"28 Geo. 3. c. 7.

The Gold and Silver Thread Act 1788.

The whole Act."

No. 92, page 37, line 6, column 3, after "c. 26" insert:

"15 Geo. 2. c. 20."

"1 Geo. 3. c. 9. (Ir.).

The Gold and Silver Thread Act (Ireland) 1761.

The whole Act."

No. 95, page 37, line 32, column 1, leave out "Geo. 5. c. xi." and insert:

"8 & 9 Geo. 5. c. lxi."

No. 96, in page 37, line 35, column 1, leave out "6" and insert "16".

No. 97, in page 37, line 36, column 2, leave out "Confirmation Order" and insert "Order Confirmation".

This provision is typical. The amendment would repeal the Gold and Silver Thread Acts of 1741 and 1788 and the corresponding Irish Act of 1761. I cannot believe that in this day and age the quality or otherwise of gold braid would deeply concern the average consumer.

I must thank the many people connected with the passage of the Bill, as well as my private advisers in the capacity of Mr. Wharton and Mr. Francis and the Department's advisers. It is unusual for a civil servant to be so closely involved in the birth of a Bill from a suggestion some years ago to the Royal Assent, which I hope it will get next week. All those involved warmly thank Mr. Budden for his work.

My hon. Friend the Minister has taken a great interest and put in much work although he had to deal with other important legislation. On behalf of all those interested, I thank him primarily for the way in which he received the Bill on behalf of the Government and for his help and advice as it has progressed.

I thank, too, my noble Friend Lord Sandys for the way in which he piloted the Bill in the other place. It is easy to forget that Bills have to go through the other place and the time and trouble necessary.

I thank my hon. Friends for their kind remarks. It is only with their sup- same time to discuss the following Lords Amendments:

No. 91, in page 36, line 19, at end insert:

No. 93, in page 37, line 7, column 3, after "c.52" insert:

"28 Geo. 3.c.7."

No. 94, in page 37, line 12, at end insert:

port and that of hon. Members opposite that we have been able to progress this long and complicated Bill and get it through by the skin of our teeth on the last day of private Members' business.

I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

I hope that I will not be out of order if I add my words of praise and tribute to those hon. Members concerned with the Hallmarking Bill. It is an important measure.

The supporters of this Bill are grateful for the work that their Lordships undertook.

Amendment No. 1 is entirely technical and I need not detain the House about it. New local authorities in Scotland come into operation under the Local Government (Scotland) Bill on 16th May 1975, not on 1st April, as do the new local authorities in England and Wales.

1 beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

This, too, is mostly technical. It arose primarily because of the suggestion of the Department of the Environment, but Home Office officials also endorsed the suggestion by chief officers of police that these words should be inserted.

The amendment is to ensure that the enforcement aspects of any local authority plans are taken into consideration at the earliest possible stage. Hon. Members will agree that in parking and other traffic regulations enforcement is one of the key factors. Without enforcement, even the most grandiose legislation can be an empty shell and. therefore discredited by definition. Chief officers who considered the matter were right to say that enforcement should be emphasised.

The amendment's purpose is to ensure that in their consultation processes local authorities consult chiefs of police, in the American language, what we would call chief superintendents or chief officers. I urge the amendment on the House because of the need for the police to have the full support of Parliament and so the nation in establishing a clear delineation of responsibilities for enforcement.

I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

One inevitably repeats the theme that 1 set out earlier and again I commend the amendment. This amendment shows how useful is the process of scrutinising Bills in both Houses. The work in the upper House has been tremendously useful.

The Bill deals with the parking of heavy commercial vehicles on pavements. It will remove the curious anomaly—put in simple terms and without too many complications—that it is an offence to drive on a pavement but not to park on a pavement. The clause has widespread support in and outside Parliament.

Their Lordships have introduced a measure of common sense by making a necessary exception. It is a perfectly understandable exception that arises, because without the amendment, if a lorry were parked in a narrow road and legally unable to be driven on the pavement to be parked there, if the street were narrow, traffic would be literally brought to a halt.

There is another and related theme that their Lordships took upon themselves. Their Lordships also sought, as I think correctly, to deal effectively by amendment with the question of parking on the verge in the country. There are many informal operations performed by farmers, agriculturists and others in which such parking is, at the most, unavoidable, or, at the least, highly desirable, and therefore necessary in relevant terms.

The amendment would mean that under closely controlled conditions the established exceptions such as loading and unloading of a vehicle, could mean activities in a wider sense than the narrow definition such words suggest and could not be undertaken properly if the vehicle were obliged to remain on the roadway. The provision that the vehicle must not be left unattended is important, because if the amendment were drafted too widely it would, without difficulty, remove the force of the new prohibition of parking on pavements which has been widely welcomed.

In other debates here and in another place we have had many examples cited of the enormous damage in all senses which can be caused by parking on pavements. Under the clause as amended, it would be clear that the offence of parking on pavements remained a grave offence, and people would find it difficult to commit it without penalty, but that the necessary exceptions in closely controlled circumstances would be permitted in a clearly defined way.

I believe that the amendment goes all the way to meeting the legitimate objections of traders, operators of fleets, users of delivery vehicles in towns, and operators of commercial vehicles in the countryside. For that reason, I commend it to the House.

I have listened closely to the reasons advanced by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Dykes) for inviting the House to agree with the Lords in this amendment and for myself I would certainly be prepared to follow his recommendation and have these words added to Clause 2, amending Section 36 of the Road Traffic Act 1972.

I do so, however, with some qualified enthusiasm. The clause as originally drafted—that is to say, as it enacted a new subsection (2) for the new Section 36A of the 1972 Act—was very tightly drafted to prohibit the nuisance or mischief at which the clause is aimed, which is that of the parking of heavy vehicles on verges or footways. The only exceptions in the original draft of the Bill certainly merited my hon. Friend's description as exceptions under strictly controlled conditions. First, the vehicle had to be parked in accordance with permission given by a constable in uniform. There can be no debate about that: it is a matter of simple fact. The other condition related to such emergencies as fire, and so on. Those are already statutory words, being taken from the text of the Road Traffic Act 1972.

What we are now adding to the Bill is a provision of somewhat wide and looser drafting, and that is important in this context. My hon. Friend in moving an earlier amendment very properly said that in this sort of legislation the key factor is enforcement and the efficacy of enforcement. As those of us who practise in the law well know—my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dulwich (Mr. S. C. Silkin) well knows—or perhaps, in accordance with the technical usages of the House, I should not refer to him as my hon. and learned Friend, though he is so in every other sense, but as the hon. and learned Gentleman—the efficacy of enforcement has a very direct relationship with the precision of draftsmanship in the legislation. Therefore, we look at this amendment and see that it considerably enlarges the tightly controlled exceptions given in subsection (2) in the present draft of the Bill.

Looking at the three conditions which have to be met according to this amendment, we first of all see, and this is a fortunate circumstance, that they are cumulative, not alternative. All these conditions have to be satisfied. The conditions contained in paragraphs (a) and (c) are reasonably simple of factual assessment, but (b) is a good deal less so. That paragraph states

"… that the loading or unloading of the vehicle could not have been satisfactorily performed if it had not been parked on the footway or verge …".

Those words lend themselves to subjective judgment and are obviously the sort of words that can give rise to debate and discussion both on the site where the offence has been committed and thereafter, indeed, as a defence in a prosecution brought under this provision. That being so, I cannot help feeling some measure of regret that the clear and precise language of my hon. Friend's original draft is being to that extent broadened and made less imprecise by the introduction of this condition. Having said that, I must in all fairness concede that members of the other place were dealing with a practical and actual problem, and that some provision had to be made for this circumstance of loading and unloading in these narrow streets. It may well be that this is the best draft that could be devised to deal with that situation.

I think, however, that this new provision which we are in process of adding to this very important clause should be watched pretty carefully in its implementation and effect when on the statute book. Again, all of us who practise in the law and are familiar with its processes, know that when legislation leaves the House, however much and however carefully it has been debated in Parliament, the practical difficulties can be seen only with the unfolding of time and the canvassing of interpretation of statutes in the courts according to the cases that arise under them.

I agree with the qualified support which my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith) has given to the amendment. I do not quarrel with its intention or purpose, and I agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Dykes) said. The amendment is fair and reasonable. However, I do not agree with it for a number of reasons.

First, it opens the interpretation of the Bill to abuse. It provides that the vehicle must not be

"left unattended at any time while it was so parked".

I question the interpretation of the word "unattended". When I park my car on a yellow line and go into a shop to buy something, when I come out must I say to the policeman that I was loading or unloading? Equally paragraph (b) of the amendment can be open to abuse. However, I do not press those points, because they are self-evident.

The main reason that 1 am against the amendment, although I would not press my opposition because I want the Bill to reach the statute book at the earliest possible moment, is that it is unnecessary as it is covered by Clause 2(2)(a). It is far better to leave the matter to the discretion of the constable in uniform.

I concede that the amendment clears up two points. First, there may not be a policeman in the vicinity and, therefore, an offence can be committed without its being detected. Secondly, it specifically provides that the parked vehicle should not be left unattended. That is a good thing. I am prepared to accept the amendment, but I must make those qualifications about it.

I take part in this debate partly because, representing an industrial constituency, I feel that I have a particular experience of the matters directly relevant to the amendment.

The prosperity of my city is very much involved with the question of road transport. We have a number of estates, such as the Euroway estate, which have been built because of the potential of road transport. However, I am deeply conscious of the factors to which reference has been made which can broadly be described as interpretational or environmental factors. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hands-worth (Mr. Sydney Chapman) has particularly valuable experience in these matters as the sponsor of the "Plant a Tree 1973" movement. Perhaps he is as apprehensive as I am about juggernauts mounting the pavements and squashing the young saplings. The question of the state of the pavements is of political significance, certainly since the Sutton and Cheam by-election. We are therefore debating important matters.

The city of Bradford is largely dependent on the wool trade. As with many other northern industrial cities, and particularly textile towns, it was laid out in the middle of the last century and the design of the industrial and business premises and mills is antiquated. The street layout in particular is antiquated. There are some exceedingly narrow streets and there is little room for large commercial vehicles to park. The wool textile industry is particularly dependent on road transport for the delivery of bales of raw wool and for the removal of the waste and noils and the delivery of the tops and cloth at the end of the process. Therefore, at every manufacturing stage, the wool textile industry depends on road transport.

We have a word for the narrow streets —snickets. They do not lend themselves easily to road transport, and in order to reach the mills big lorries must often park on the pavements and infringe the pathways in order to deliver their loads. The apertures through which the wool bales must be delivered are special. The bales must be delivered by crane. They are hoisted up to the top floor because it is only from that floor that the sorting process of the raw wool can be completed. It is there that the light is adequate for this procedure.

Therefore, although I realise the environmental arguments, and, coming from an inner city, I value them, and although I am appreciative of the learned legal arguments about the question of interpretation adduced by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith), from the practical point of view of the industrialist in cities such as Bradford, without the flexibility which the amendment affords, grave damage could be done to our industry. I am aware that it is impossible always to get a policeman to give permission. The flexibility which the amendment affords will obviate what would otherwise be a serious difficulty.

The amendment provides that a vehicle should not be left unattended at any time. If the snickets become blocked or if inconvenience is caused to pedestrians, the driver will always be at hand to move his vehicle and to ensure that no inconvenience is caused.

I apologise to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Dykes) for not being present at the start of the debate. I have been in the building all morning since the sitting started but did not realise that the debates on the Hallmarking Bill had ended.

We studied this problem in Committee. I am interested to observe that it has arisen again. I am not a lawyer, and I am grateful that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith) has contributed to the debate. The amendment opens the door to the possible commission of offences. We are encouraging the lorry driver to take his vehicle off the highway and on to the pavement or verge and in so doing to damage the pavement or verge. I hope that my hon. Friend will take note of my reservation and my concern that we do not open the door to offences which result in physical damage to pavements and verges in a way that is detrimental to our towns and villages.

Much more important than damage to the pavement is the danger to persons on that pavement or in houses bordering it. In Committee it was explained that vehicles are sometimes parked on the pavement—in the East End of London, for example—where the streets are very narrow. My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Wilkinson) called them snickets. I used to live and work around Bradford and I know the situation which my hon. Friend has described. In Committee it was said that vehicles parked so close to houses could be a danger to people in the houses and people trying to walk past the vehicles.

I am not seeking to defeat the amendment so long as it introduces into the Bill an element of reality, pragmatism and common sense. But, at the same time, we must protect those who use the verges and pavements and those who live alongside them. Vehicles which are loading or unloading goods cause inconvenience, distress and even danger to those who use the pavements or live in the houses alongside. I hope, therefore, that my hon. Friend will take note of my slight reservation.

I do not like the amendment. We must have it, because we want the Bill, and we are indebted to the sponsors for having produced the Bill and carried it through Committee.

The main trouble is with the parking of heavy lorries on pavements rather than on verges. Whenever vehicles are parked on pavements they are always in the narrowest part of the most crowded roads. The police do nothing about it because the drivers claim that they must park there to load or unload the vehicle. They say that the job cannot be satisfactorily performed unless the lorry is parked where it is, by which they mean that they are not prepared to carry any part of their load even for a distance of 3 ft. if they can avoid it.

I have had many years' experience of motor cases—at one time my experience was almost excusively of motor cases. This is a penal clause, that is to say, a clause in which the burden of proof is upon the complainant or prosecutor, who has to show that the loading or unloading could not have been satisfactorily performed without the vehicle being parked in that particular place. The lorry driver will say, "Well, guv'nor, I parked it there because it was immediately opposite the warehouse at which I had to deliver my load. I have parked the lorry on the pavement because the road is narrow and it is better to park it on the pavement than on the road." The result will be parking not only on the roads but on the pavements as well. The amendment will render the Bill nugatory in its effect and will positively encourage lorry drivers to park on the verges and footways.

Every morning the area off Bond Street is completely blocked by lorries parked between Hanover Square and Bond Street. The police do nothing about it. The lorries are either loading or unloading at immediately adjacent premises. The Bill will enable a lorry driver, instead of parking on the narrow street, to park on the pavement and to cause obstruction to passers-by and inherent danger to those who try to dodge the vehicle. I mention that part of London because it is easily accessible to anyone who wishes to check the accuracy of what I say. The Bill does not apply to London, but I am sure that hon. Members will confirm this illustration from their experience in other towns—for instance, Canterbury, which has extremely narrow entrances and many areas in which lorry drivers would prefer to park on the pavement rather than on the road.

It is a pity that this provision is not governed by the words in Clause 2:

"A person shall not be convicted of an offence under this section with respect to a vehicle if he proves to the satisfaction of the court: (a) that it was parked in accordance with permission given by a constable in uniform; "

I would add to that—

"or a duly accredited traffic warden who has had proper directions."

This is a job that should be done by traffic wardens.

I do not intend to take up much time of the House because there are other important Bills to follow. Conservative Members have at least advanced a case for saying that the amendment is not wholly satisfactory. That applies to all three paragraphs of the amendment, bearing in mind that magistrates frequently have to construe in a common sense way the wording of Acts of Parliament which are not always as precise and unambiguous as one would like.

I feel that subsection 2(a) would not have been an adequate alternative to what is now proposed. I assume that the permission of a constable cannot be retrospective and, if that is right, it is not very practical to insist on all occasions that permission should be given in advance. I agree that something on these lines is necessary. The only question is whether what has been inserted in the Bill is as satisfactory as it should be.

I shall not tread paths which have already been trodden in this discussion by Conservative Members, but I can visualise circumstances in which there would be a question of doubt. For example, there is the question whether if a vehicle were parked 25 yards away it would not need to go on to the verge, but if it were parked directly opposite the building, where loading or unloading is to take place, it has to go on to the verge. This is the kind of problem magistrates are likely to face.

However, I am unable to follow how paragraph (c) helps in the context of the mischief which is being dealt with. Perhaps the Minister will be able to advise the House about that matter. I agree that it would not be right to press this matter to a Division for it is important that this valuable Bill should go through the House this Session so that no time shall be lost. Nevertheless, I hope that the Department will consider whether the wording is ideal and, if they feel that an improvement could be made, will return to the House at a later stage with another piece of legislation containing their amendments.

Like the hon. and learned Member for Dulwich (Mr. S. C. Silkin), I wish to intervene only briefly for I know that the House wants to move on to other important business.

This amendment was discussed and agreed between my Department and the Bill's sponsor to meet strong support in another place for an amendment tabled in Committee which proposed an exemption to Clause 2 in relation to loading and unloading of heavy commercial vehicles in rural areas. In preparing a suitable amendment to meet their Lordships' wishes, it was considered necessary that a special exemption should be made for loading and unloading in rural areas. There were genuine problems in terms of delivery vehicles in many town centres.

I carefully noted the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Wilkinson) on problems within his knowledge and experience within that city. There is not only the difficulty in law to be considered, because these areas have to be defined rather unsatisfactorily by reference to speed limits. It seemed to be sensible and reasonable that such an exemption should apply equally to urban and rural areas.

I must admit that I am very sensitive to the reservations so firmly expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies) who appears to have left the Chamber for a moment or two. I assure my hon. Friend that my colleague the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment who deals with transport matters will carefully consider his request that the attention of the Greater London Council should be drawn to the difficulties which he specified.

In the amendment drafted and agreed in another place the provision was included that the vehicle should not be left unattended at any time while so parked. This has the effect of retaining the force of Clause 2 in restricting indiscriminate parking on pavements and verges. We are concerned about this matter and I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Crouch) will be reassured on the important point he raised. A person remaining in charge of a vehicle should be able to prevent the blind, the old or the handicapped from inadvertently walking into it. He can also move it quickly or arrange for this to be done if he is not the driver, should a policeman or traffic warden arrive on the scene and decide that this may cause danger or inconvenience even if only temporarily.

I carefully note the reservations and fears expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Mr. Sydney Chapman). He appeared to fear that the effect of the provision will be that vehicles will need two drivers or at least an extra person to keep attendance in those circumstances. This should not be the case. If somebody is working on loading or unloading the vehicle, it is thought that the vehicle should not be regarded as being left unattended. It is only where such work is interrupted for an interval of some duration when the driver is absent from the vehicle that the vehicle could reasonably be regarded as being left unattended. If the work is so interrupted and the vehicle has to be left parked in this manner for some time, permission for it to be left unattended can be obtained from a police officer under Clause 2(2)(a).

The House may recall that there was some support for an amendment of this kind during our previous discussions on the Bill. The Government believe that the amendment would do little practical harm to the main aim of the clause which is to prevent the damage and danger caused by indiscriminate parking of heavy lorries on verges and pavements. Undoubtedly there are many situations, for example, in narrow streets and in country lanes, where for the purposes of loading and unloading it makes sense for vehicles to park temporarily in this manner. This point was referred to with special emphasis by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East, to whom I offer my congratulations on the skill with which he has piloted his Bill through its earlier stages.

As for the caution delivered in such elegant style by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith), of course we shall heed his advice in this matter. I assure him that my Department will watch carefully the operation of this legislation once it gets on to the statute book.

I offer the same assurance to the hon. and learned Member for Dulwich, who raised a similar point.

On that basis, I ask the House to agree to this amendment.

I intervene at the end of this debate with some trepidation. However, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Dykes) has piloted through his Bill very skilfully, and I have no doubt that there will be opportunities to review this and many other matters when we consider road traffic legislation next Session.

When we debated these subjects the other Monday, the problem turned on the loading and unloading of heavy vehicles outside commercial and retail premises. Like many other hon. Members I am conscious of the number of complaints from citizens about the damage done o pavements and concrete kerbs when private vehicles let alone heavy vehicles mount them and come off them again.

The fact that we have made this easier is necessary in the commercial sense of cutting down the cost of distribution of the goods that we need for our high standard of living. However, the price in terms of the damage done to kerbs and pavements is considerable. There is an additional danger involved when pedestrians are directed off the pavement on to the road, perhaps in narrow streets where there is not room for pedestrians to move both ways. That may be a hazard that we shall regret.

The Committee was in a dilemma, and this is the solution which has been evolved. I hope that there will be further opportunities to reconsider whether the content of the amendment is one that we ought to welcome. Obviously it is desirable from the point of view of those engaged in trade or business. It is not so good from the point of view of the pedestrian.

It occurs to me to question whether our town planners are insisting sufficiently forcibly that commercial premises should have proper access for loading and unloading not on main roads but behind them. In my view, this clause ought not to be allowed to go through without more attention being given to town and country planning aspects in order to achieve this end. To do otherwise will be to allow the Bill to go by default. However, we all want the Bill. All that we can do is accept the amendment until we find other ways of dealing with what is a very difficult problem.

With the leave of the House, perhaps I might come back to express my own gratitude for the response of the Minister and his Department to the very understandable anxieties raised by hon. Members, especially my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith) and my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies).

After so much effort and travail going into solving this very important problem of the damage done to pavements by heavy vehicles, it would be totally unacceptable if hon. Members felt that an exception was to be made by way of this amendment allowing drivers and owners to continue a practice which has existed for some time.

I am also grateful for what the hon. and learned Member for Dulwich (Mr. S. C. Silkin) said in expressing the feelings of the Opposition about the Bill as a whole, especially about this clause.

With the advice and encouragement of the Department, I feel that their Lordships have selected a form of words which provides tight exceptions. The rôle of the police is not changed. I believe that the exceptions are tight enough for no significant abuses to take place.

My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Thanet, in my view rightly, grumbled about this "grotesque abuse". However, I believe that it can be dealt with in consequential ways arising from the legislation itself. These are matters for enforcement by an alert police force. They are matters for the courts to deal with strictly if offences are committed. It is very difficult for this House to devise suitable words to guarantee the essential coverage of all the many possibilities in a very complicated area of traffic movement and parking. But I feel that we shall cover the vast majority of potential abuses. I believe that their Lordships' amendment brings home to drivers, operators and owners the fact that from now on parking on pavements will be a very serious offence.

I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

I need not take up the time of the House on this suggestion from their Lordships. I say merely that again it arose out of a discussion in the other place prompted by the Department and the experts advising on the Bill as a whole.

The amendment is considered desirable for two reasons. First, the wording is needed to bring into line this provision with Section 57(9) of the Road Traffic Act 1972 which at present provides for a notice to be given to the person in charge of a vehicle, and not to the driver. Therefore, this is a very important difference in wording, even if it may seem a very slight one to any hon. Member considering it today. Normally, the driver would be the person in charge. This move to bring matters into line is essential.

The other reason why the amendment is desirable is that their Lordships felt strongly that the provisions should be the same for the direction to be provided in writing as it is in the Road Traffic (Foreign Vehicles) Act which was passed last year.

I commend the amendment to the House for those reasons, and I hope that hon. Members will find it acceptable.

I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

I think that the House might feel that it is reasonable for me not to dwell at length on the amendment, which is admittedly a little more than merely technical, but to deal with a subsidiary although relatively important part of the Bill.

Again, I am grateful to the Department, as their Lordships were, for this suggestion. I hope that the House will find it agreeable if I merely point out that the reason for the amendment is that primarily the only offence provided for in Section 57(9) of the Road Traffic Act 1972 are those of driving a goods vehicle in contravention of a prohibition or causing or permitting it to be driven. This addition in the amendment is correctly regarded as necessary and, indeed, indispensable. Otherwise we could get into difficulties. It is also necessary to make failure to comply with a direction to remove a vehicle to a specified place an offence. Otherwise, there would be an obvious gap.

I remind the House that this is a separately mentioned offence in the Road Traffic (Foreign Vehicles) Act. Therefore, it is again necessary to tie up, as it were, all the legislative loose ends. The provisions in the clause as a whole are, by and large, modelled on that Act. That Act, albeit still in its early stages, has proved very useful in a specific and narrow sphere.

The inclusion in column 2, Part I, of Schedule 4 to the Road Traffic Act 1972 will mean that the maximum penalty for the offence will be £50. This is in line with the existing penalty for driving a vehicle in contravention of a prohibition or again causing or permitting it to be driven. In practice, it will generally be to the benefit of the person in charge of a vehicle so prohibited to comply with a direction which would enable him to remove the vehicle to a place where it can conveniently be off-loaded.

Whilst perhaps the explanation that I have given may sound a little too legal for most of my hon. Friends, apart from my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith) and one or two others, I hope that it is regarded by hon. Members on both sides as being clear.

I should add that in those circumstances it is necessary to provide for the possibility of non-compliance. If not, the power could in certain circumstances be literally unenforceable.

I think that most hon. Members will accept that the amendment concerns a very small matter relative to the rest of the Bill. Their Lordships rightly pointed this out at the suggestion and with the encouragement of the Department. Therefore, I hope that the amendment will be accepted.

I wonder whether I might conclude at this juncture by widening my remarks to express my grateful thanks, the thanks of all the other sponsors of the Bill and those of the sponsor of the Bill in the Lords, for the encouragement that we have received in taking the Bill through all its stages. It could not have been done without the tremendous help that we received from the Department and Ministers concerned.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary for his presence today. I know that he will agree with what I have said about the work and effort put in by his hon. Friend the Under-Secretary responsible for transport industries who has been of great support to me.

I will not prolong my remarks. The encouragement that we have had from hon. Members on both sides of the House for what is regarded as a welcome and in many ways overdue measure, the support that we have had from outside and the enthusiastic reception which those in another place gave to these provisions, have been of great assistance to my fellow sponsors and myself.

I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

I hope that I am in order, in my opening remarks, in expressing my deep thanks to the noble and learned Lord Simon of Glaisdale for his handling of the Bill in another place and doing so with such constructive help to the purpose of the Bill.

A number of right hon. and hon. Members on Second Reading and later in this House recalled the colourful words of the Master of the Rolls when he said that the existing state of domicile, whereby a wife's domicile was dependent on that of her husband, was the last barbarous relic of a wife's servitude.

I have never claimed that the Bill goes as far as that, but it does at least correct what I regard as a substantial injustice to women in the present state of the law.

The amendment, moved by the noble and learned Lord Simon of Glaisdale in another place and accepted by their Lordships, affects Clause 16. The House will recall that Clause 16 has an important bearing on the matrimonial lives of the immigrant communities in this country. Because of that the Government were good enough to announce that there would be a programme of publicity between now and the end of the year to call the attention of immigrant communities to this change in the law. Therefore, I think it is right for me to remind right hon. and hon. Members of the central purpose of Clause 16, which affects immigrant communities, and to explain, not at great length but I hope adequately, the nature of the change which Lord Simon of Glaisdale proposed in another place.

The House will recall that on Second Reading I explained that the central purpose of Clause 16 was that those who reside in this country should obtain their divorces in a court of law just as they have to marry in accordance with the Marriage Acts.

I suggest that non-judicial divorces are objectionable for several reasons. They can enable a wife to be discarded by the unilateral action of her husband. They deprive a court of jurisdiction over the financial arrangements for the wife and children of the marriage. Further, they can produce evidential difficulties in proving a person's matrimonial status—for example, that he is free to re-marry.

Therefore, Clause 16 invalidates non-judicial divorces obtained in the British Isles. But that provision is open to the comment that it could in some cases be evaded by a man who made a brief and fleeting visit to a nearby country for the sole purpose of divorcing his wife by pronouncement of a non-judicial formula there.

I am told that the availabilty of this evasion would be restricted to a very few cases. Nevertheless, it would exist and I understand that the possibility is very real.

If the parties were domiciled as well as resident in the United Kingdom—there is a distinct difference between the two words which we thrashed out in extenso in the earlier stages of the Bill—our law would not recognise a divorce obtained overseas unless it satisfied the requirements of the Hague Rules. That would rule out the recognition of what I describe as a "day trip" divorce—for example, by means of a trip to Calais or Dublin. which can be done in a day —unless the parties had some real connection with the country in which it was pronounced. But if the parties, though resident here, were domiciled in a foreign country which recognised a non-judicial divorce obtained in those circumstances it would have to be recognised in the United Kingdom under Clause 2 even if the parties had no real connection with the country where the divorce was pronounced.

I am advised that that situation, which is that persons resident here may still be domiciled in their country of origin such as Pakistan or Egypt, is thought to be not uncommon, and there is therefore a real possibility that the clause might be evaded in this way. I suggest, therefore, that it is desirable to forestall such evasion in so far as it can properly be forestalled in the Bill. That is the purpose of the amendment which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, moved in another place I understand that the terms of the amendment had to be drawn with great care to make sure that it does not offend the Hague Convention as reflected in Sections 2 to 5 of the Recognition Act 1971. Section 2 of that Act makes no distinction between judicial and non-judicial overseas divorces for the purposes of recognition in United Kingdom law. The factor which determines recognition is whether the parties had the necessary jurisdictional connection with the country in which the divorce was obtained. The House will know, of course, that the term "non-judicial divorce" covers a wide range of proceedings, including divorce by the administrative machinery of the State in addition to informal procedures such as talak.

If a Muslim of Egyption or Pakistani nationality—and there are other groups, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Advocate said in Committee in a colourful intervention—who is habitually resident here goes back to his country of origin and obtains a divorce under Muslim law there, it would have to be recognised in the United Kingdom by virtue of the Recognition Act, whether it was obtained by judicial or non-judicial means. I am told that it is neither possible nor desirable to alter that situation in the light of the Hague Convention.

I am also advised that the most that can properly be done in a Statute of the United Kingdom without offending the Hague Convention is to invalidate non-judicial divorces obtained in the British Isles and, secondly, to prevent United Kingdom residents from evading that provision by a fleeting day trip visit to a neighbouring country with which they have no real connection sufficient to satisfy the Hague rules. The first of those objects is achieved by subsection (1). The second object would be achieved by the new subsection which the other place inserted on the proposal of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale.

By confining the amendment to cases where the parties have been habitually resident in the United Kingdom for one year the amendment avoids any criticism that it might be making it impossible for some people to obtain divorces at all. Where that condition is satisfied, the courts of the United Kingdom will have jurisdiction under Clauses 5(2), 7(2) or 13(2) and there is nothing to prevent them from obtaining a judicial divorce if the necessary grounds can be established.

I believe that the amendment makes a small but desirable improvement to the clause, and I invite the House to agree with it.

It is important that the Bill should receive the Royal Assent this Session, and therefore nothing that I say about the clause should be taken as indicating that I should advise the House to vote against it. Getting the Bill through is a desirable end in itself, because this is a valuable and important measure. It is also desirable to get the Bill through because of the excellent and careful work that has been put into it by the hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. MacArthur).

None the less, having said that, I have to tell the House that I do not feel the utmost enthusiasm for the amendment. I have the highest respect for the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale—indeed, I regard him as a personal friend—but it seemed to me that when the hon. Gentleman explained the purpose of the amendment he clothed in the courteous language that he used the fact that the amendment is intended to deal with circumstances that are likely to be extremely rare, and therefore this is an amendment that is really for hard cases rather than for altering any principles of our existing law.

One sees that by looking at the examples which the noble and learned Lord gave in another place when he spoke about taking a day trip to Calais, or going from Belfast to Dublin, and one wonders whether, in such circumstances, there are likely to be many people who will have the necessary qualifications by domicile to pronounce a Talak or other informal divorce in those countries.

Nevertheless, there are occasions when there could be evasion, and having recognised and realised that advantage of the clause one ought to consider the difficulties from other points of view. The most usual case is where a husband and wife living in this country fall out and the husband departs, leaving his wife here. The fear that is expressed in the clause is that the husband will go somewhere where he is in a position to obtain an informal divorce and but for the clause that divorce may be recognised in this country. But if the husband goes somewhere where he can obtain a divorce by the informal method of talak, or whatever it may be, then the clause is producing a limping marriage situation which both the Law Commission's Report and the Bill are designed to eliminate so far as possible.

The husband will be divorced in his own country and in other countries which recognise the divorce, but unless the conditions that are regarded as valid in this country obtain the wife will not be regarded as divorced. The party who has gone may be the party responsible for the breakdown of the marriage and he may be free to marry again in some other country, whereas the party deserted and living in this country will not be able to marry again, and that seems to be an undesirable situation.

I am grateful to the hon. and learned Member for Dulwich (Mr. S. C. Silkin) for the assurance which he has given that the passage of this legislation on to the statute book will not be delayed. I think that he and I recognise the value of this legislation. I think that all hon. Members will wish to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. MacArthur) on the way in which he has piloted the Bill through the House and on the way he has promoted the Lords Amendment.

The loophole which Lord Simon of Glaisdale seeks to close is one of almost minimal significance having regard to the everyday facts of life. On the other hand, the noble Lord was intimately concerned with case law on this subject. As the hon. and learned Gentleman well knows, it was the decision of the court in Qureshiv. Qureshi which gives rise to the introduction of the clause to which the amendment relates.

With those qualifications, I am bound to say that I endorse what my hon. Friend said and what my noble Friend the Lord Chancellor said in another place. I am the first to recognise that in this sphere whenever a change is made the door is being opened to the possibility of other complications. I should not seek to deny the validity of that observation. I shall certainly read with interest what the hon. and learned Gentleman has said. I noted what he said about further consideration of this issue and I will take up that matter with my noble Friend the Lord Chancellor.

I commend the Lords amendment to the House. The important thing is that it does not offend against the agreed principles of the Hague Convention as embodied in the 1971 legislation. If it did so it would be entirely unacceptable. The relevance of the amendment to the legislation following on the Hague Convention has been examined with care and we are satisfied that it does not conflict with recommendations which have been made and does not impinge on the provisions of the Recognition of Divorces and Legal Separations Act, 1971. I commend the Lords amendment to the House. I express my appreciation to the hon. and learned Gentleman for the co-operation which he has shown throughout these proceedings and my appreciation of my hon. Friend who has promoted the Bill.

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

The purpose of the clause is to deal with the penalties which may be inflicted following an infringement of the new licence condition which is created by the Bill. As I said on Second Reading on 11th May:

"The aim of the Bill is commendable …".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 11th May 1973; Vol. 856, c. 902.]

Today I would go further and say that the prevention of cruelty to live animals is a good cause and one which deserves the serious attention of the House. Like many other hon. Members I have received and have read with interest the July-August edition of Animals Defender, the journal of the National Anti-Vivisection Society, which welcomes the Bill. I am pleased to note the following passage from the editorial:

"Unquestionably the concept and practical application of non-animal research (in vitro techniques) has signposted the way to a rapid reduction in the number of animals now involved in experimental tests."

I have also read the memorandum by the Research Defence Society which has been sent to hon. Members. I am pleased to note that it also makes the point:

"Generally speaking test-tube methods, when possible, are preferred by investigators to experiments on animals, and used, not only for reasons of humanity but because they are 1) cheaper, 2) quicker, 3) more reliable. It is the scientists themselves pushing forward the frontiers of knowledge who have devised, are devising and will ever continue to devise such methods. This applies especially in pharmaceutical research which is governed by expense."

The Royal College of Surgeons of England, in its notes of guidance to research workers on the use of laboratory animals, gives this advice:

"Before embarking on a project entailing the use of animals, a research worker should satisfy himself that no alternative technique (e.g., cell culture) will meet the needs of his investigation."

From these quotations, it seems clear to me that the objective of the Bill is broadly in line with current trends towards a reduction in the number of live animals used in medical research and recognises the increasing use of alternative means of research which are the goal of all enlightened research workers.

In considering the Bill as it stands, the House must consider the very strict regulations governing animal experiments which already exist under the 1876 Act. Moreover, we must consider whether this simple Bill is adequate to deal with the objective and whether the penalties which apply to the new licence conditions created are adequate.

What concerns me today is that the Bill is somewhat defective as it stands because it does not deal adequately with penalties for offences against the 1876 Act as it would be amended by the Bill. By Section 14 of the Act, offences are tried summarily by lay or stipendiary magistrates and offences against Section 2, dealing with illegal experiments, are liable to the maximum penalty of £50 for the first offence and £100 or three months' imprisonment for the second or subsequent offences.

My new clause would have the effect first of all of making an offence of contravening the new licence conditions created by the Bill triable on indictment by the Crown court, and, secondly, of making the fine of an unspecified amount. I feel certain that if a prosecution is brought for contravening the new licence conditions created by the Bill the issues which will have to be argued are of extreme complexity and subtlety.

The very nature of sophisticated parts of research work requires a judgment to be made on the frontiers of present knowledge. This is an area where hypothesis and supposition are the rule and established and firm truths are the exception.

In my view, these are not matters upon which the lay bench should properly be asked to adjudicate. Even the higher courts may be in serious difficulty. But it seems right that the issue should go to them in the first instance so that it can be argued by first-class counsel before a professional judge. It also seems right to give the higher courts the discretion to award a fine without stipulating a maximum. It could be a very serious offence to break the conditions of a licence if it were done deliberately. On the other hand, inadvertent contravention of the conditions should attract a lighter sanction.

For those reasons, I believe that. he new clause is essential if the Bill is to be meaningful and if it is to be acceptable and workable in the context of this legislation.

If the House wills it, the Bill can pass its Report stage and Third Reading by four o'clock and I appeal to the spirit of co-operation in the House for that to happen. No superfluous word of mine or provocative comment will delay the Bill by a single minute.

I say straight away that I am obliged to the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Shersby) and I will accept the new clause. I agree entirely that in certain respects the Bill could be improved, and most of the amendments on the Order Paper today would improve it and would meet some of the objections to it.

I shall not complain—I utter no reproaches—but it is a pity that some of these proposed changes were not brought forward earlier. After all, 11th May was the date for the Second Reading and 23rd May the date of the Committee stage. No amendments were forthcoming then. The Bill has twice received an unopposed Second Reading.

I shall not delay the House. The Bill can be passed if the House wills that it should be on the statute book. It would allay at least some of the fears of many people about the conduct of experiments on live animals. I therefore notify the House that I will accept the new clause and I hope to have co-operation in putting the Bill through.

There is one consideration to be borne in mind by those concerned with the law relating to this subject. It is that the subject is far too complicated for ordinary lay magistrates to understand. We have to decide whether we are making it impossible for people to obey the spirit of this and other laws.

The hon. Member is not dealing with the new clause. He is dealing with the Bill.

The Bill asks lay magistrates to decide whether a man carrying out experiments is breaking the law if he obeys the Animals Act 1950, or the Therapeutic Substances Act 1956, rather than the Bill.

The hon. Gentleman is not dealing with the new clause.

I shall not argue, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It is asking a lot of any lay bench to ask it to decide whether to sentence a man for breaking this law. It is not within the capabilities of the average doctor, grocer, or other magistrate to decide whether a man is wrong to break this law, but right to break another, or right to break this and wrong to break the other.

This clause takes that decision out of the scope of magistrates and gives it to the higher courts where there would be people much more learned and able to get sound advice. They would be medically and legally briefed and the problem would not arise.

The clause would mean that lay magistrates would not have jurisdiction over people doing a job that the magistrate did not understand. Both legally and medically, this is a difficult technical matter and it is wrong and unfair for lay magistrates to be asked to judge.

The hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Shersby) and the hon. Member for Norwich, South (Dr. Stuttaford) have not referred to Section 21 of the 1876 Act, which provides:

"A prosecution under this act against a licensed person shall not be instituted except with the assent in writing of the Secretary of State."

That, I suggest, is a very full safeguard against the kind of thing to which the hon. Member for Norwich, South is referring.

Is it a safeguard? What is worrying everyone is the number of experiments that have to be carried out. Is it possible for the Secretary of State to consider all these problems? If we ask him to consider them, is medical research to be held up? There is no doubt that if this Bill is passed and if the numbers of animal experiments continue to rise—

Order. Will the hon. Member explain to me how what he is now saying is related to the clause?

If the new clause is accepted, cases will be tried by the ordinary magisrates' courts which, as we know from experience—

Is it not the position that under the present law as applied any prosecution forthcoming would have to be undertaken with the fiat of the Secretary of State—the Home Secretary—but it would have to be undertaken before a court of summary jurisdiction and not on indictment, but I believe the essence of the Clause to be that even it that fiat of the Secretary of State still remains, as it presumably would, and were given, the case would be tried in the High Court, which would be in a quite different position from that of a magistrates' court to adjudicate on the issue. If I understand my hon. Friend correctly, he is arguing that this would be a far better way of trying very detailed, difficult and complex issues, and would give much greater security to scientists and others engaged in research. In those circumstances, they would have much less to fear, because of the nature of any court trying such an offence, whereas the people who would be put—

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Are we all invited to make speeches in an intervention?

I understand that this is an intervention.

My more learned colleague and I have tried to deal with the point. We do not feel that the magistrates' court is the proper place in which to judge these matters. If we ask magistrates to judge them, nonsenses will certainly be committed. If they are too severe, medical research will be held up. If they are too lenient, the Bill will become meaningless. If they are severe, there is the danger not only that medical research will be held up but that more and more experiments will be carried out not only on animals but on humans, who are excluded by the 1876 Act. In medical research, more and more human volunteers are being used. This is a regressive feature of modern medicine. We would much rather see animals used than humans, but the tendency is for more humans to volunteer as guinea pigs. A severe magistrates' court could increase this tendency.

There can be little doubt that this is complicated law, and the reason is that the Bill runs contrary to the Therapeutic Substances Act 1956, the Animals Act 1950, and the Medicines Act 1968. Those three measures conflict with this present Bill, which cannot be right. If these paradoxes are to be solved they will be solved only by a higher court decision, and the higher the court the better, but such a matter as this is not something for the decision of the local grocer, greengrocer or baker in a magistrates' court one morning.

I must apologise for the length of the intervention. I hoped to help you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, in establishing the purpose behind the introduction of the new clause.

I understand that the purpose of the Bill, which I applaud, is to distinguish between necessary experiments—I emphasise" necessary "—on living animals and the true furtherance of research and the dubious activities of some fringe so-called experimenters who do things of which most of us disapprove. This new clause gives much greater protection for those people, who we do not wish to be looking over their shoulders all the time and hesitating to perform an experiment, feeling that they might be inadequately judged before a court. That is why, at the end of subsection (2) of the clause, we talk about offences" "triable on indictment". This is a reasonable protection which should reassure those who are legitimately, properly and unavoidably engaged on research using live animals.

However, a higher court would be able easily to distinguish the fraud from the true and the false from the real. The false investigator who knew that he was overstepping the bounds would be deterred without the necessity of proceeding to a court. For that reason primarily I recommend the clause to the House.

I cannot support my hon. Friends in the promotion of the new clause. Nor can I accept the suggestion made by the right hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) with his length of service and wisdom, that we should truncate the debate. Much as I respect the sincerity with which he has presented the Bill and what it stands for, there are some elements in it which need further discussion. But, above all, this clause needs discussion. I am surprised that the right hon. Gentleman should even have thought of accepting it in the interests of trying to speed the debate. It is completely contrary to his advocacy of the Bill on Second Reading.

I wish to quote what the right hon. Gentleman said on Second Reading because it describes exactly his intentions and aims. He said:

"The Bill itself deals with only one single, but important, issue. That is the need to encourage"—

I emphasise "encourage"—

"and, indeed, to enforce"—

I emphasise that, too—

"wherever possible the use of alternative methods to carry out this work".

That is laudable, but the right hon. Gentleman went on to say—and here I must declare my interest because I am, as I think the House knows, a director of a pharmaceutical firm—

"It is a statutory obligation upon the pharmaceutical industry to test many of its drugs thoroughly before putting them on the market. We are fully aware of the tragic risks that can be run if that is not done."

Referring to the responsibility of the experimenter, the person who carries out the tests, the right hon. Gentleman said:

"The experimenter would have to take the responsibility for his own actions and it would be up to him, no doubt with necessary consultation, to discover whether there was a satisfactory alternative."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 11th May 1973; Vol. 856, c. 884–92.]

I accept all that. The right hon. Gentleman made wise observations to remind us of the difficulty. But how can he accept the clause, which puts a terrific restriction and a great burden on any experimenter—much more severe than he would seek to impose because he speaks of the tragic dangers and difficulties which may arise if an experimenter does not carry out an experiment when there is no alternative. But the experimenter must make the decision. The onus is on his shoulders.

If my hon. Friend studies Amendments Nos. 6 and 7 in my name, he will see that it is proposed to remove the onus from the experimenter and to place it on the members of the medical profession and the Home Office. The Secretary of State is answerable to the House in the final analysis.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, but I must speak about the new clause, which I want to see voted down. It would have the effect of imposing too severe a restriction on the experimenter which is not in accord with the wishes of the right hon. Member for Sowerby.

I am not a lawyer and, as there are not many lawyers on my side of the House today, I shall have to do my best without their guidance or intervention. The clause says that the experimenter" shall be triable on indictment". I have made inquiries about what that means. It means that the experimenter triable on indictment would have committed an indictable offence, which is a more serious offence. It would mean that he could, therefore, elect to be tried summarily, not by a lay bench. He would have the advantage of a professional judge and counsel but, having elected to be tried summarily, he would impose upon himself the danger of a much more severe punishment. If he is tried summarily, the maximum penalty is six months in prison. We are talking about imprisonment for a man who has had to make a judgment for himself about an experiment. He would also be subject to a fine not exceeding £400, or to both a fine and imprisonment up to six months.

I further find in my amateur investigation into the legal situation that it is normal for an offence triable on indictment to be punished by an unlimited fine. I need advice, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will give me advice when he responds to the debate. I also understand that it is unusual for an indictable offence not to be punishable by a period of imprisonment. I confess that I do not know what is the situation. Is the offender to be punished by a heavy fine or by a period of imprisonment. and is that the normal situation?

If the new clause is accepted, the experimenter, having made his difficult decision to go on with an experiment, will be subject to trial on indictment. If he chooses to be tried summarily he is virtually choosing a much more severe punishment. He is choosing, possibly, to be sent to prison. This restriction will apply to people who want to carry out experiments but fear to do so because they do not know what decision to take.

That is not so. It is not necessary for a higher court, even if it finds him guilty, to impose a heavy fine. It depends on the degree of guilt. He could easily be fined only a nominal amount. The whole purpose of the clause is to protect genuine investigators. My hon. Friend is wrong on this ground to oppose the clause.

I oppose the clause because it is badly drafted and has been insufficiently studied by lawyers. I hope that my hon Friend the Under-Secretary of State will be able to satisfy not only me but the whole House on this important point in law—whether a man is electing to be tried for a more serious offence than would otherwise apply. The clause cannot pass the House today.

I came here this afternoon in response to a considerable number of letters from constituents asking me either to help the Bill in its passage or to vote against it. I have replied to all the letters saying that I wished to listen to the arguments and the debate.

I had not intended to intervene until I heard my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, South (Dr. Stuttaford) speak in such low terms of lay magistrates. He spoke of grocers and butchers. This may apply to Norwich, though I doubt it, but it certainly does not apply in the rest of the country.

Having sat for ten years on a lay bench in London, I know that the overwhelming majority of offences are dealt with not by lawyers, stipendiaries and high court judges but by lay magistrates. I deprecate my hon. Friend's remarks and, if the clause goes to a Division, I shall vote against it.

Before saying a few words specifically about the clause, I wish to make two points in response to the general remarks made by the right hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton). Since the Second Reading of the Bill and its Committee stage in this House, I have received a great many representations about the measure, nearly all of them critical and pointing out some of the dangers and snags which I tried to point out in earlier stages of the Bill. I have received the views of national organisations and from my own constituents.

I wish to join in the spirit of the right hon. Gentleman's remarks to the extent that, whether or not the Bill goes through today, we all want to allay unnecessary fears about the operation of our present legislation dealing with experiments on animals. We are all at one on this aspect of the matter. It is right that I should take the opportunity of saying that we should do all we can to put the matter in perspective and allay unnecessary fears.

My advice to the House on the clause is that there is advantage in having offences which involve difficult matters of judgment triable by a higher court rather than by a magistrates' court. I do not want to enter into the controversy that broke out a few moments ago.

Will my hon. Friend give away?

I would rather not give way. I do not want to detain the House. I want to conclude my argument so that we can move on.

Would my hon. Friend the Minister, as he referred to me, give way?

I did not refer to my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead (Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg)—I referred to no hon. Friend by name.

I hope my hon. Friend will give way.

I would rather finish what I am saying. I want to be brief.

I wanted to help my hon. Friend.

Let us have these offences triable by higher courts, and on those grounds we think that it would be a good idea to add the new clause to the Bill. On the other hand, there is the difficulty pinpointed by my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Crouch) about the apparent anomaly which would result by which somebody who elected to be tried summarily might in certain circumstances, be liable to imprisonment, which would not be the case if he were tried on indictment. This point should be con-

I beg to move, Amendment No. 1, in page 1, line 11, leave out from beginning to second ' the' in line 14 and insert:

'The Secretary of State shall not issue a licence if he is satisfied that'.

I do so briefly because I have no intention of attempting to talk the Bill out. I propose the amendment because I have severe reservations about the Bill as it stands. It imposes a quite unfair burden upon the experimenter. It would enable the Secretary of State to issue a licence to the experimenter and at the same time to say to him, "On your head be it if you do anything which brings you in conflict with the law" —as set out in the Bill. He would be able to say, "I have the power as Secretary of State to prohibit the remedy coming into operation and prohibit your being prosecuted for any offence you might commit but I cannot

Although I appreciate the point of the amendment and agree with the objects that the hon. Member for Islington, South-West (Mr. George Cunningham) is after, it is—

Order. I ought perhaps to have said that it will be convenient to take at the same time Amendment No. 2 in page 1, line 12, leave out:

'it shall be a condition of every such licence'

and insert:

'the Secretary of State may if he deems it expedient attach to any such licence a condition'.

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I understood that it was your wish that we might speak on Amendment No. 2 before concluding Amendment No. 1.

Yes. That is perfectly right.

I will be brief. There is a flaw in the wording of the amendment which would make the whole Bill meaningless and ineffectual in meeting its target in both framework and language.

Section 8 of the 1876 Act deals with the licensing power of the Home Secretary. The licensing is done in terms of persons. Licences are given to persons; they are not given for particular experiments. There is no mention in Section 8 of licensing experiments. The reference is to licensing a person to perform experiments under the Act. If we were to amend the clause in the way suggested it would not refer to anything in Section 8 of the main Act. Therefore it would be meaningless. Accepting the amendment would add to Section 8 of the main Act a wholly ineffectual provision. That is why I said that it would make the Bill miss its target. I mention that now so that the right hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) and the House may realise that there is this basic flaw in the amendment, however much we may sympathise with the purpose behind it.

I do not wish to talk the Bill out, but, having been a Member of this House for some years, I sense that we shall not reach a decision upon it. I hope, therefore, that my right hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) will allow me to make a point which I think is fundamental to the whole Bill.

The amendment does not get us out of the basic problem of how a decision is to be reached, whether the alternative method is right or not. My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South-West (Mr. George Cunningham) brings the decision forward—before the granting of the licence—instead of leaving it where it now is so that the Secretary of State has to decide whether to allow a prosecution. Whenever this decision has to be taken, it cannot in practice be taken without imposing undue delay and discouragement on vital research work. I have reached this conclusion with great reluctance.

I appreciate the objective of the Bill. Those who promote it are sincere and have done their best, within the limits of the Bill, to protect the rights of vital research. However, the amendment would lay on the Secretary of State, if it were practicable, a wholly inappropriate and impossible decision to make.

I will illustrate what I mean by a quotation from one of many letters that I have received from scientists. This shows how in practice the operation of the Bill, though it is not intended to do so, would delay and discourage research. Dr. Lewis, of CIBA, writes:

"…if the amendment was passed, one must ask who would be the ultimate authority to decide whether or not 'the purpose of the experiment can be achieved by alternative means not involving an experiment on a living animal'. The quality testing of one of our products, Synacthen, illustrates one difficulty which would arise as a result of the amendment. I was a member of the Biological Products Committee which was responsible for formulating the BP monograph for this product which laid down the tests considered necessary to ensure its safety and efficacy. The Company did not want to include a bioassay which involved many animals because their experts felt that the alternative chemical tests were adequate. However, the Committee finally decided that a bioassay was necessary and insisted that the product be tested on animals. This was a difficult decision to reach and took some two or three years of negotiation between highly qualified specialists".

That decision is one example of the difficulties of the Bill. The question is not whether one supports the Bill. It is a matter of judgment whether, administratively, the operation of the Bill would result in undue delay in and discouragement from undertaking vitally needed medical research. With the greatest possible reluctance I come to the conclusion that it would, and I therefore question whether my hon. Friend's amendment, by having the decision made earlier, would remove the vital defect of the Bill.

I support the motives behind the Bill and the purpose of the amendment. I understand, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that you wish us to take Amendments Nos. 1 and 2 together. May I speak briefly to Amendment No. 1 and then go on to propose my Amendment No. 2?

That is not my wish. It is the will of the House.

I shall accept that as the wish of the House.

I have to declare a special interest in the Bill, in that I am a serving member of the Medical Research Council. My hon. Friend explained that there is a legal fallacy in Amendment No. 1 in that in the end it would make the framework of the Bill and the detailed application of the clause meaningless. I implore the House not to rush into any legislation in this complicated matter that would be unworkable.

Turning to the amendment in my name, as the Bill is phrased it would apply the condition of seeking an alternative means in any experiment to every licence. It is not clear who should decide whether the purpose of the experiment can be achieved by alternative means not involving a living animal, and that is the fallacy that is worrying us all. My amendment would remove the requirement that every licence would automatically be made subject to the new condition. Instead, it would rest with the Secretary of State to impose the condition only where he considered it expedient to do so.

It may be argued that that would weaken the Bill, but many of those who support the measure have acknowledged that no alternative method exists for many experiments. Moreover, I suggest that the supporters of the Bill have argued that its principal purpose is to encourage experimenters to satisfy themselves by diligent inquiry that an alternative method is not available before undertaking animal experiments.

If the Bill were amended in the way that I propose, the Secretary of State would be empowered to impose this condition in any case that he thought appropriate. For example, if he had reason to believe that the licensee was conducting animal experiments unnecessarily he could impose a condition, or where it seemed to him that there was a satisfactory alternative, again he could impose a condition.

I suggest to the House that the very existence of this power specifically spelled out in the Bill would have the effect of making every licensee look very carefully into the matter before undertaking animal experiments and it would have the additional advantage of removing entirely the shadow of prosecution for carrying out an unlawful experiment.

I do not think that the Secretary of State should have this power without being able to call on a panel of specialists working in the field, and it is for that reason that we have put down a list of organisations which would nominate people to sit on an advisory panel for the Secretary of State. I too have had a large number of letters, most in favour of this Bill. I do not want anyone to—

The hon. Gentleman and I have a vested interest to declare on this—

Further consideration what day? No instruction.