Commons Chamber

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House Of Commons

Friday 6th February 1976

The House met at Eleven o'clock

Prayers

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Orders Of The Day

Congenital Disabilities (Civil Liability) Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

11.5 a.m.

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

The origins of the Bill lie, as all those present will know, in the aftermath of the thalidomide tragedy. Sadly, the horror of that tragedy hit a society which was totally unprepared to cope with it, save in the natural human response of sympathy and the wish that somehow compensation should be made available.

Unfortunately, even in that respect the state of the law was such that liability and fault were difficult to determine, and in any event the rights of as yet unborn children were extremely vague, to say the least. Although I am not a lawyer, I believe that, given the dubious state of the law and the protracted difficulties of the children involved in the thalidomide tragedy, we should take urgent and necessary steps at least to ensure that in future children born with disabilities believed to be due to fault or negligence have a clear and unequivocal right to seek compensation through the courts.

There is no doubt that lying at the heart of the Bill is the wish of all of us—industry, science, legislators, politicians and parents—at all times to protect the future generation. That is an observation that large numbers of people will say is so obvious and consciously acted upon that it is foolish to state it. However, recent research and tragic experience have revealed that so rapid has been the advance of modern science-based society that we fail to take note of the fact that products, processes and practices thought to be not only without harm but positively beneficial can and do have effects on us, both physical and mental.

No one can be blamed for this. In the circle which is closed by the meeting of needs and the means by which they are satisfied we all play a part. This legislation seeks to ensure that those who have no place in that circle—the unborn—are accorded a place in our thinking. That must of necessity limit our activities by controlling our efforts in the scientific and industrial fields.

It could be suggested, of course, that the Bill, because it clearly defines liability, will put a brake on development in, say, the field of drug manufacture. But if that were true it would affect the whole field of usage and there is no evidence to support the contention. However, there is ample evidence already that children are being born with deformities that can be traced to faulty processes and products. Even if the thalidomide tragedy had never occurred, there would be a need for urgent legislation.

In the aftermath of the thalidomide tragedy, at the end of 1972, two important steps were taken. At the end of November, the Law Commission was asked to advise what the nature and extent of civil liability for ante-natal injury should be. Subsequently, a Royal Commission under the chairmanship of Lord Pearson was appointed to consider and make recommendations on the whole topic of compensation in respect of death or personal injury, including ante-natal injury.

The Law Commission was no doubt asked to consider this topic because experience in the thalidomide case had disclosed that liability for ante-natal injury was a dark corner of the law. Some authorities considered that there was no such liability; and, though the Law Commission disagrees with this view, the case law is scanty and inconclusive and no one can be sure what is the nature and extent of liability under the existing law for something which happened before the victim was born. Clearly, there is a strong case for clarifying the rules which should apply in such circumstances within the framework of the present law.

The task of the Royal Commission is so much wider as to be quite different. It has to consider our whole system of compensation and, perhaps, recommend fundamental steps and changes in it. In particular, it might recommend that schemes of no fault compensation should operate generally or in specific areas.

I expect that every hon. Member present shares my wish that we should make provision for every child born disabled to receive compensation without proof of fault, but that is not possible. Not only would it pre-empt the work of the Royal Commission, but it would require financial and administrative arrangements quite beyond the scope of the Bill. Compensation cannot be pulled out of the air. Methods of funding no-fault compensation must be carefully considered, for if they are not properly worked out, they may be disproportionately expensive and difficult to operate. But at this stage we could cast some light into this dark corner of the law and make whatever improvements are possible within the confines of the tort system.

The Royal Commission might recommend a system of compensation which removes the need for fault to be proved in these cases. I hope that that will be possible, but it will be some time before any recommendations by the Royal Commission can take effect. It does not expect to finish its work until the end of this year. If its recommendations call for fundamental changes, they will take some time to implement. It is therefore likely to be some years before they can come fully into effect. In that period, as the statistics show, many children will be born with disabilities.

In a small but appreciable proportion of cases the disability may be ascribed to a pre-natal occurrence. In such cases it is essential that any doubts as to the state of the law should be removed. That is why it is important to introduce the Bill, even though it may prove to be no more than an interim measure.

It has been said that the causes of disability apparent at birth are often hard to trace. This was certainly true in the past, but with the progress of medical research it will become more often possible to trace the cause. The fact that the Bill clarifies the nature of legal duties to parent and child will in itself give an impetus to the drug manufacturers and others to have regard to their duties. In any event, in a number of cases the cause can be traced. I do not believe that we shall be wasting our time if we ensure that in those cases the law is made clear.

I turn now to the effects of the main provisions of the Bill. The first three subsections of Clause 1 contain the central provisions. They set out the circumstances in which liability to the child will arise. The Law Commission pointed out that there are major differences between claims for damages for pre-natal injury and claims for injuries inflicted upon living persons. In particular, the victim in the case of pre-natal injury has no legal existence at the time of the occurrence which causes the injury and no life separate from its mother. The child is born with disabilities because of something which happned to one or both parents. The Law Commission proposals, which are contained in these subsections, reflect this situation. Just as in life injuries to the child may be ascribed to an event involving the parent, so in law liability to the child is derived from liability to the parent.

Clause 1 provides that if the parent is affected by a pre-natal occurrence which causes the child to be born subsequently with disabilities which would not otherwise have been present, any person who is or would have been liable in tort to the parent for the occurrence will be answerable to the child whose injuries are to be regarded as damages resulting from the the occurrence and actionable accordingly. The Law Commission described this form of liability as derivative liability. Liability to the child is derived from liability to the parent.

Liability arising in this way has certain features which call for a particular mention. First, there is liability only to the living child. No legal rights are given to the foetus. The only question is whether the child born alive suffers from disabilities which could be relevant to a wrongful act affecting the parent. It follows that the Bill is neutral about abortion. Its purpose is not to deal with abortion, but to clarify the remedy available to the living child for the disabilities caused by the fault of another.

The question of whether abortions should be permitted does not arise under the Bill. It confers no action for what the Law Commission called "wrongful life". By this is meant that the disabled child will have the right of action only for disabilities caused by a pre-natal occurrence and not for the fact of being brought into the world. In this respect, too, the Bill is neutral. It is not concerned with any question relating to the rights of the foetus, but it is concerned with disabilities suffered by a living child which result from a wrongful act committed before that child's birth.

The potential liability of parents calls for a particular mention. The Bill imposes liabilities to the child only where there is liability in tort to the parent. A person cannot be liable in tort to himself, so there can be no liability in respect of what I might call self-inflicted injury to the parent. Clause 1 expressly provides that it imposes no liability on the mother to her own child in any circumstances. The mother may be liable in cases governed by Clause 2, which I shall explain. The considerations which led the Law Commission to this conclusion are fully set out in its report and I believe that its conclusions are sound.

It is said that the Bill will increase the stresses that are bound to arise when a child is born disabled. This may be so to the extent that making a claim at law involves a measure of stress, but the Law Commission was careful to frame its proposals to reduce the risk of stress to a minimum.

The remaining subsections of Clause 1 provide certain defences to an action at the suit of a child. Subsection (4) applies where the child's claim arises from a pre-conceptual event. It is clear from its report that the Law Commission shared with a number of those it consulted some hesitation at imposing liability for an event occurring before conception. It came to the conclusion that it was right to do so particularly because it is medically difficult to fix a point at which conception occurs, and also because, thanks to modern scientific and technological development, there are occasions when a child may need a remedy for a pre-conceptual event.

The Law Commission considered, however, that the extent of such liability should be limited. It recommended that no claim should arise in a case where one or both of the parents knew before the child's conception of the risk created by such an occurrence. I am advised that this reflects existing legal principles, described, of course, by a Latin phrase, in which there is no liability for wrongful act if the injuries suffered can be ascribed to some later supervening cause.

Subsection (5) provides a defence for any act done or treatment given in a professional capacity. This provision, I am advised, reflects the existing law. Its purpose is not to give an additional defence to professional men, but merely to confirm that although the nature of the liability to the child—derivative liability—may be novel, the Bill does not affect the extent of a professional man's duty. It serves also to reassure the medical profession that the Bill is not intended to impose new duties and heavier burdens upon them when treating pregnant women.

Subsection (6) provides for the case in which the parent affected by an occurrence has made a contract which affects his right to claim in respect of it. In accordance with the principle that liability to the child is derived from liability to the parent, any agreement by the parent which excludes or limits liability to him will similarly exclude or limit liability to the child.

There is the question whether terms excluding liability for negligence should be permissible. The Government have said that they hope to introduce legislation in due course to implement recommendations made by the Law Commission for the control of exemption clauses of this sort, and it would not be appropriate to include any special provisions in the Bill to deal with this. Liability for pre-natal injuries should follow the general law for for the time being.

Subsection (7) makes provision for the case in which a parent affected by a prenatal occurrence is partly to blame for it. The mother can never be sued either by the child or by the other wrongdoer for her part in the occurrence, the father probably only rarely. Therefore, just as the parent's damages would fall to be reduced on the ground of his or her share of the responsibility for what happened, so the child's damages may be reduced also.

Here, again, it is said that it will add to the parent's distress if one of them is found to be partly to blame for the occurrence. However, this is a situation which may face any parent whose very young living child is injured. Given that the Bill must operate within the frame-work of the existing law, we must accept that in a case of pre-natal injury parents will face the same emotional problems as do the parents of a living child injured by accident.

Clause 2 deals with the special case in which the Law Commission thought that a mother should be liable for negligence causing injuries to her child. In this case alone the Law Commission thought that it would relieve rather than increase the stress naturally imposed on her if her child could recover damages against her. Because she is bound to be insured for liability while driving, there should be no question of inability to pay the sum awarded, and this provision accords with the general policy that the blameless victims of road accidents caused by negligence should recover compensation. For those reasons motor accidents are treated as a special case. From a legal point of view, I understand that there may be said to be some inconsistency between the provisions of Clauses 1 and 2, but I believe that the provisions are based on common sense and reflect the realities of everyday life.

Clause 3 is concerned with the Nuclear Installations Act 1965. In general, the provisions of Clause 1 will cover cases where liability in tort arises from breach of statutory duty. The 1965 Act is a special case. It lays down a self-contained code of compensation. When that Bill was debated in the House, it was accepted that compensation would be payable if a child were born with disabilities resulting from a nuclear incident occurring between conception and birth, but it was not clear that compensation would be payable in respect of an occurrence before conception. As the genetic effects of nuclear incidents are well known to constitute a risk, this doubt should be removed.

Clause 3, therefore, provides that "injury" for which compensation may be payable under the 1965 Act includes prenatal and pre-conceptual injury. Consequential provisions are made, on the pattern of the provisions of Clause 1, for cases in which the parent, by a deliberate or reckless act, was responsible for the incident, and in which one parent was or both parents were aware before the child was conceived of the risk arising from the incident.

I need not take up the time of the House in explaining in detail the remaining provisions of the Bill, but I shall pick out one or two of the more important. In Clause 4 the definition of "born" makes clear that the Bill will apply only in cases where the child is born alive and that liability under the Bill is to be treated as liability for injuries occurring immediately after the child's birth. Further provision is made that damages for loss of expectation of life may be claimed only where the child survives birth for 48 hours. The Bill will take effect in respect of births occurring after it is passed. Liability for a pre-conceptual event is limited to one generation, and the provisions of the Bill replace whatever rules of law exist relating to liability for pre-natal injury.

There are two matters which I wish to mention in conclusion. First, there is no doubt that the implications of a measure of this kind require careful and detailed study. I am told that the consultations carried out by the Law Commission on this topic, although it was dealt with as a matter of urgency, were probably the most extensive it had ever undertaken. The lists of participants in the discussions arranged by the Law Commission bear this out. They include the Lord Chief Justice, the President and former President of the Family Division, leading members of the medical and legal professions, and representatives of the Churches. I know that the House will wish to join me in paying tribute to the work of the Law Commission on this topic.

Secondly, I emphasise that I shall be well content if the Bill proves to be no more than an interim measure. If some means can be found by which all disabled children can be given the support they need, regardless of proof or fault, I shall welcome it. For the time being, all we can do is to ensure that the present law operates as it should in cases of prenatal injury. If in the present state of the law only the wrongdoer need pay compensation, at least we must be sure that the wrongdoer will not escape his liability through any doubt as to the state of the law.

I should like to thank all those who have supported me in the presentation of the Bill, all the sponsors, the Ministers involved, those outside who have offered valuable advice and information and, in particular, those who have guided me—a non-lawyer—through a legal minefield.

I commend the Bill to the House.

11.27 a.m.

I am sure that all hon. Members on both sides of the House will join me in congratulating the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Carter) on his good luck in obtaining the first position in the Ballot, so much coveted by us all, and on his courage in adopting for his Bill a measure which is badly needed on a subject which is so daunting to the experts. I further congratulate the hon. Gentleman on the manner in which he introduced the Bill. I am fortunate enough to be one of its sponsors and in general I go along 100 per cent. with its implications and purposes.

The Bill hinges on Clause 1 and 2 in which appears the nub of what the House seeks to do. Although I shall support the Bill through any Division Lobby at any time, I hope that in Committee amendments may be secured to the wording and the purport of Clause 2. It seems strange that Clause 2 should single out a woman who is driving a motor vehicle. Why is this specific risk selected?

I feel sure that the Bill would be improved in Committee by the alteration of Clause 1 to include the mother's responsibility for any occurrence or risk. As the Bill is framed, that responsibility is specifically excluded, but in Clause 2 the hon. Member for Northfield seeks to put that right by singling out the mother's responsibility when driving a motor vehicle.

Why not also make the mother responsible when she is using other forms of transport—for example, when she is riding a horse or a bicycle? To seize on this particular form of transport alone is illogical. The terms of reference of the Royal Commission led by Lord Pearson, the appointment of which was announced by the Prime Minister on 19th December 1972, included other kinds of transport.

Is it not clear that unless a mother is comprehensively insured, which she would not necessarily be if she were riding a bicycle or a horse, any action could create severe tension? Is it not a matter of common sense that when a mother can be insured, as she can for driving a motor car, it is then, and then alone, that we should allow a right of action?

I am grateful for that helpful intervention, but it is a Committee point. People are not insured only for driving motor cars. Many other activities are covered by third-party insurance.

As the Bill stands, if the mother has led a life of great extravagance during pregnancy, perhaps contracting a disease which she passes on to her unborn child, she cannot be held by the court to be liable.

There is another significant feature of Clause 2. There are numerous examples of women who give birth without having been aware of their condition until the time of the event. We cannot hold a woman responsible for her activities during pregnancy unless it is confirmed that she was aware that she had conceived. Medical literature is littered with case histories of women who have not known until the day before giving birth, or even until the day itself, that they were pregnant.

There is an anomaly in the Bill which I wish to highlight, but I cannot recommend what the House should do about it, if anything. If a child is born deformed due to the carelessness of the mother, perhaps while she was driving a car with the child in her womb, the child can subsequently claim damages. But if the prenatal injuries are so severe that the child succumbs to them, there is no liability on the mother's part.

I again congratulate the hon. Member for Northfield on his magnificent attempt to introduce this controversial measure, which has my full support. I am aware that Lord Pearson announced in January that the Royal Commission was likely to report within a year or two and that in a letter to The Times on 28th January he pointed out that some parts of the Bill might conflict with the Commission's recommendations. Nevertheless, I regard what the hon. Gentleman is trying to do as so important that I hope that he will press on with it. He has my 100 per cent. support.

11.36 a.m.

I pay a warm tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Carter) for presenting the Bill to the House. He has clearly spent a great deal of time and effort in preparing for today, and his speech reflects his sincerity and the depth of his concern for the handicapped child. Like the hon. Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr), I congratulate my hon. Friend.

I am glad to say that the Government support the Bill and that my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General intends later to deal with the more general issues which arise in the debate. I think it would be helpful to the House if I, as Minister responsible for the disabled, briefly set the Bill in the context of what we are trying to do for disabled children as a whole. The Bill is concerned with legal liability and it will serve the important purpose of ensuring that a disabled child whose disability results from the wrongful act of another will not be impeded in claiming damages by any doubt or obscurity in the law.

Is my hon. Friend intent on conferring third-party insurance status upon the unborn child?

As I explained, my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General intends to deal later in the debate with detailed points. That is clearly one point with which he will wish to deal. For my part, I am seeking to set the Bill in the context of what we are trying to do for disabled children as a whole.

The Bill relates only to legal wrongs and legal remedies. The problems of disabled children are imemnsely wide and varied. For the majority the solution to their problems does not lie in legal remedies. The Government are therefore anxious to maintain and improve all available means of support. The Bill provides for no extension of public support of this kind and it could not be expected to do so.

Press reports have been causing me concern, because they are leading some people to believe that the Bill will provide for compensation to be payable to all children who are born handicapped. This is not so, as my hon. Friend the Member for Northfield made clear. I hope that such reports have not raised expectations among parents which go beyond the provisions of the Bill.

In the main, handicapped children will still rely for help on statutory and voluntary agencies. A wide range of help is available and the House will wish to know about it to set the Bill in its full context as part of the overall provision.

Whilst I accept what the hon. Gentleman has said as being correct, he should make it clear that the passage of the Bill is subject to the usual Committee stage. It is quite possible, as I indicated in what I said, that at the Committee stage the contents of the Bill may be changed slightly.

In whatever form the Bill emerges from the Committee, it will still have to be considered as part of the overall provision we make for disabled people. I accept the hon. Gentleman's point that we cannot at this stage seek to anticipate what the Bill will look like as it emerges from Committee.

In a number of cases, compensation recovered by way of a claim at law will provide the principal means of support for the disabled child. In most cases, however, the child must look elsewhere for the support he needs. To a great extent the disabled child is dependent on his family for financial as well as for emotional support.

I have the profoundest admiration for the parents and families who respond to the birth of a disabled child in the way described in a most moving letter that I saw recently. If I were to give details of the case, it would be seen to be one which must come very near the top of any conceivable scale of severity of handicap—and heartbreak. The letter quite simply says:

"To all of us, she is not a problem, or a sorrow. She is just Felicity."

There is a name and a thought for us to conjure with in this debate.

There is little we can do to lighten the burden of sadness and emotional strain imposed on parents with severely handicapped children. In a sense, they confer a benefit on the rest of us by the inspiration we may draw from their courage and devotion. Yet we can do something to ease their financial burden by way of cash benefits and services.

Concerning cash benefits, we are in the second half of a decade of quite remarkable change, and the second half of the decade is to be the more significant part. There is greatly enhanced provision for the children of longer-term beneficiaries, notably of invalidity pensioners. In addition, there are—or soon will be—attendance allowance and mobility allowance for disabled children, and also child interim benefit, and then child benefit for children in general. We are moving a very long way in recognising the burdens on parents and the child's needs and potential.

I follow the argument that my hon. Friend is advancing, but would it not be true to say that from the same global sum—if the Bill becomes an Act and money is paid to the parents of these children—the sum of money we vote will go further and will do more good?

I agree with the point made by my hon. Friend. It is very difficult for me to quantify in money terms the effect of the point he makes. My hon. Friend, I am sure, will be seeking to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and to make what I know will be an important contribution to the debate.

Concerning services, a family with a disabled child may need more than one form of help. It may need housing or special health provision. Very probably it will need help from the local social services department. The need may be for a home help or for assistance with one or other of the many forms of help listed in Section 2 of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act. For example, there are aids to daily living or adaptations to the home.

My estimate is that there are about 100,000 severely handicapped children in Britain today. I am fully aware that the Bill has reference to a potentially much greater number of less severely disabled children. It is impossible for me to quantify all that the statutory and voluntary agencies have been able to do for these children. The records are not kept in that way, and clearly we must not let record keeping get in the way of doing.

There has been steady growth in the total provision made. In the two years 1973–75, there was a doubling of the total number of items of assistance to families in which there was a severely handicapped child, under the provisions of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act. This remarkable increase in provision has taken place against a background of severe financial difficulties, and illustrates how most local authorities within their resource constraints give due weight to extending help to handicapped children and their families.

Another form of help which is directly relevant to any debate on disabled children is that provided by the Family Fund administered for the Government by the Rowntree Trust. Help from the fund is now available not only to congenitally handicapped children but to severely handicapped children as a whole. This is another form of cash help and is unique of its kind. In the three years since it was launched, some 22,000 families have been helped at a cost of well over £6 million. I am glad to be able to say that current economic difficulties have not been allowed to stand in the way of increased Government help for the fund.

The Rowntree Fund has indeed provided a very valuable service. As the Minister may know, I had a part in raising the original Government contribution to it. I ask the Minister to look into the functioning of the fund, because my experience is that the parents of handicapped children find it very difficult to approach the fund. They are not sure of the possibilities of help from the fund, and the whole procedure is far too cumbersome and involved. It is very difficult now for them to receive assistance from it.

I accept the hon. Gentleman's important standing in this matter. He has done a great deal for severely handicapped children. I shall gladly take into account the point he has made.

We are continuing to give the fund support, in recognition of the extremely valuable contribution it can continue to make to the welfare of many of the most severely handicapped children. I know that the hon. Gentleman will accept that the fund is still a most important source of help to some of the most hard-pressed families in this country. Nevertheless, we shall take very carefully into account what the hon. Gentleman has said, and I shall be writing to him on the point he raised.

The Government will have added by the end of this month an additional £5 million to the original grant of £3 million given by the previous Administration.

In November 1969, the family of a severely disabled child received family allowance, and that was all. When he or she reached 16, there were no non-means-tested benefits payable, because there was no contribution record on which to base these benefits. By November 1975 "nothing" had become an attendance allowance of up to £10·60 per week, plus a non-contributory invalidity pension of £7·90 per week.

In the matter of services, one example of measurable progress is the new help available to hearing-impaired children. In the past year there have been many clear indications of our resolve to improve the quality of service delivery for this very vulnerable section of the child population. A number of health authorities have set up working parties to review local screening and follow-up arrangements.

Our Advisory Committee on Services for Hearing Impaired People has set up a sub-committee to consider how services for pre-school children and schoolchildren can be improved. Another sub-committee has been looking at social services provision for all age groups. We are in touch with the Department of Education and Science with a view to making available the expertise of our Advisory Committee on Audiological Equipment, to maximise the use of equipment in schools for the deaf and partially hearing.

We are supporting research into the detection of hearing loss in the newly-born child. Yet another project is a study of the relationship between the behavioural problems of profoundly prelingually deaf and disturbed adolescents and their deafness. Hearing aids are now more widely available, especially for adolescents. They can continue to receive commercial hearings aids up to the age of 18, or 21 if they continue in fulltime education. Taken together, these moves reflect our desire to plan a more integrated and comprehensive service. We believe that this can be achieved by better use of existing resources as well as by increasing staff levels.

A further important initiative affecting disabled children about which the House will already know is the committee of inquiry under the chairmanship of Professor Mary Warnock which is examining the educational needs of handicapped children with full regard to the medical and social aspects of their disabilities. The committee's deliberations are now well advanced. It has appointed a subcommittee to look in depth at problems affecting the under-fives, and this includes in its membership medical, educational, nursing and social services representatives as well as parents of handicapped children. I believe that the committee's work, when it is complete, will be a significant and valuable contribution to thinking on the needs of handicapped children and will point the way to future progress.

I turn now to the crucial importance, wherever possible, of prevention. This is the ultimate goal for which we must continually strive. Here again, my Department has recently been concentrating its search for further improvements within the limits of current medical knowledge and skills. Opportunities for preventive action arise at several stages both prior to and immediately following the birth of a child. For example, there is the importance of vaccinating girls between 11 and 14 years and women in the child-bearing age groups against rubella because of the relationship between this disease in pregnancy and congenital malformation in the foetus. Doctors have been encouraged to ensure the maximum coverage of rubella vaccination programmes.

Good genetic counselling is important for those at risk of giving birth to babies with inherited congenital defects. This is currently provided by general practitioners and paediatricians. Specialist advice is available as necessary from the regional genetic advisory centres. Much useful research has taken place in recent years into genetic disorders, and my Department is concerned that this is translated as early as possible into widely available preventive services for those who might be affected. For some, this will take the form of ensuring that good genetic counselling is provided before they start a family. This is an area in which significant growth is anticipated in the coming years and from which an important contribution to the prevention of handicap is expected.

Regular monitoring of foetal growth and development during pregnancy is also necessary, and this is already offered routinely at ante-natal clinics. My Department is anxious that health authorities should ensure that all pregnant women are given every opportunity to take advantage of ante-natal services. Birth itself should take place in the safest possible environment where all the benefits of modern obstetrics are available. To this end, my Department continues to encourage the move from home to hospital confinement, where some 94 per cent. of births now take place, and also the improvement of the hospital facilities available. Following birth there is need for early paediatric assessment and the use of special care facilities where appropriate. My Department has expressed its concern that such facilities should be made available as necessary. As the child grows, his development is monitored through the child health service to ensure that any problems are spotted at an early age and that any necessary treatment is started as soon as possible.

These are but some indications of our concern to ensure that handicap is prevented wherever possible and of our anxiety to improve services to this end.

A further area in which we are active at present is research into the problems of handicapped children generally. The House will recall an undertaking given in my right hon. Friend's House of Commons Paper on social security provision for chronically sick and disabled people in September 1974 that the Government would be sponsoring research to help answer some of the hitherto unanswered questions about disabled children and their needs.

Since that undertaking was given, we have made plans to finance a programme of research and have had the benefit of the work which has already been done by the research workers employed by the Rowntree Trust in connection with the Family Fund. The research unit forms part of the Social Administration Department of York University and has been employed by the Trust to monitor and evaluate the Family Fund research programme. It has already carried out a great deal of useful work on child handicap. Our initiative has developed out of this, and I am proposing to use the unit to operate a programme of research into social policies connected with child handicap. Initially, it will be concerned with two main issues—the income and expenditure pattern of families and disabled children and their needs and services.

This Bill deals with children who are born disabled. The number of such children is still large, but we must all hope that, with improvements in medical diagnosis and techniques over the years, the number will decrease. In the meantime, advances in the ante-natal care which is available for all mother-to-be help to keep avoidable handicaps among children to a minimum. I take this opportunity to urge all expectant mothers to make full use of these facilities.

Before I return to the narrower issues raised by the Bill, may I explain to the House that later today and tomorrow I am chairing a seminar on disablement at the Civil Service College at Sunningdale. The seminar is an important and unique occasion. Certainly it is the first occasion of its kind ever held in this country and, I suspect, in any country. It will be attended not only by several Ministers and by hon. Members from both sides of the House but also by disabled people and their organisations. There will also be many experts on child disablement at the seminar. The House will appreciate, therefore, why I cannot be here for the whole of this debate.

I want now to make a few observations about the misgivings expressed by Lord Pearson, for whom I have the highest respect, in his letter to The Times of 28th January. The hon. Member for Harborough also referred to the letter. My right hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General will be seeking later to deal with the detailed matters raised by Lord Pearson in his letter to The Times.

My concern here is with Lord Pearson's suggestion that implementation of the Law Commission's Report should not prejudice the much wider issues of social policy with which the report of the Royal Commission on Civil Liability will be concerned. The Government are anxious further to improve the support for disabled children which I outlined earlier in my remarks. This can be done only gradually, as resources allow. Clearly the recommendations of the Royal Commission will be of great importance. But we must remember that they are concerned with what may loosely be called injuries resulting from accidents rather than with sickness. Many of the cases of deep concern to me cannot be ascribed to a traumatic event like an accident.

Just as the Royal Commission's terms of reference were wider than those of the Law Commission, so my concern extends to all disabled children and not merely to those whose injuries fall within the ambit of the Royal Commission. Undoubtedly in dealing with an important aspect of this problem, the Royal Commission's recommendations may come to have a large part to play in future provisions. I am sure the House will agree that nothing we do in relation to the present Bill should be taken by the Royal Commission, or anyone else, as in indication of the view that the only recourse open to a disabled child should be an action for tort.

The Government support the Bill. We take the view that the work of the Royal Commission does not remove the need to clarify and improve this branch of the law, albeit on an interim basis. We know that the provisions of the Bill cannot deal with many distressing cases, and we are deeply mindful of the need to continue seeking improvements that will benefit disabled children as a whole. I know that that aim and purpose is shared by right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House. There is much more for all of us to do before we arrive at anything approaching full and satisfactory provisions for disabled children. There can be no complacency in the present situation.

All of us are aware of the severe strain that the birth of a disabled child can impose upon the family. Caring for such a child is sadly very often a difficult and exhausting task. I have sought to show that we are doing much, and I hope to do more, to ease this burden. In the area of law the Bill offers a further step forward. Its provisions, although limited, are in the right direction. Its purpose is sound and its underlying intention is good. As such I commend it to the House and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Northfield.

12.2 p.m.

I rise to make a short intervention because, like the Minister, I recognise that the underlying intention of the Bill is good. I know the history of the Bill and the care with which its sponsors have prepared it. Therefore, what I have to say is perhaps rather difficult. However, I should like to add my congratulations to the sponsors of the Bill—especially to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Carter)—on the great care they have taken over this important and sensitive matter. The main intention of the Bill is to try to alleviate in the future any recurrence of the prolonged and tragic trauma which took place during the thalidomide cases where the law was far from clear.

The House should shoulder its responsibilities and examine every aspect of this matter. It should show a great deal of care when introducing legislation which, in the words of the hon. Member for Northfield, will remove doubts about the law as an interim measure only in those cases where the cause can be traced.

My fears arise in connection with all those cases where parents feel that a cause might be traced but they are unable to prove it. I am also concerned about those cases where a cause cannot he traced at all. This is an area of great human distress. My task has been made much easier because during the course of the Minister's speech he sought to set the whole context of disabled children much more widely than the Bill.

I believe there will in practice be more parents of severely congenitally disabled children who will be unable to establish a claim than those who will be successful and that will cause considerable distress among certain families. I have been associated for a long time with a family who I know would have been unable to establish a claim. The family has suffered great stresses within itself amongst the remaining children. Those stresses would be greatly increased if the family and their relatives took the view that the parents should have sought an action in order to try to prove a claim.

I should like to give a word of caution to those who will examine the Bill in Committee. The Bill must not be framed in such a way as to give false hopes to many people who think that they might have a claim for tort. I am sure that the sponsors of the Bill will accept my point of view. There is so much distress in this field, and I should hate to feel that anything this House did might increase it.

I support completely the view that we should push ahead as fast as possible to try to improve the measures we have already set in motion for children who are born severely subnormal or handicapped. I am referring especially to the Rowntree Trust Fund. This is only the beginning of the scheme. Much more can be done. The parents of these children are finding it extremely difficult to get what they had expected to get out of the fund. Moreover, having received something, they cannot get any more. Their appetite is whetted. They feel that there is some compensation somewhere to be had but they do not know how to get hold of it.

I know that we have limited resources. However, we have raised a certain amount of false hope in families who already have severely handicapped children. We must tread carefully. Before we announce any further measures until we are sure that we have the resources available to implement them. It is easy to raise hopes amongst these people who cling to any faint chance of getting more compensation or help.

One of the great gaps in our social provisions concerns the education and training facilities for severely handicapped children. The amount of educational time we are able to give to assist these children to overcome their severe handicaps is pitiful. When I see what can be achieved, admittedly at enormous expense, in private institutions—there is a large one in my constituency—it is worrying to know how little we are able to achieve for those who have to rely entirely on State services.

With those words of caution I accept that the Bill is a stepping stone along the way to clarifying this dark corner of the law. Clarification is badly needed, but I should certainly echo the Minister's words and the warning given in Lord Pearson's letter, that this must not prejudice anything which the Royal Commission may do. The Royal Commission on Civil Liabilities is extremely important and I believe that it may be a milestone in this country's social provisions. However, the Minister was absolutely right to underline that it must not be thought that the only recourse to help available to the families of those unfortunate children lies in bringing an action for tort. That must not be put into the minds of these people. I know that the sponsors of the Bill will have this matter very much in mind.

We must not raise false hopes. We must try to clarify the law in this small area but make sure that all the other provisions for disabled children over a much wider field are pushed ahead as fast as possible.

12.11 p.m.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Carter) on introducing his Bill, which he claims to be an interim measure, and I am delighted to be a sponsor of it.

Basically I rise to support the Bill because I am getting tired of delay. We are always waiting for some report. It is a strange coincidence that three years ago to the day we debated the Dangerous Drugs and Disabled Children Bill. These children are still not covered.

I want to talk about delay in specific terms. What worries me intensely is that the thalidomide victims gained financial reward after a long struggle, not because of the law but because of the work done by right hon. and hon. Members, particularly my hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) and Manchester, Wythenshaw (Mr. Morris), now the Under-Secretary of State with special responsibility for the disabled, and the hon. Member for Reading, South (Dr. Vaughan) and the tremendous campaign carried out by The Sunday Times.

As is well known, I am an unpaid director of the charity Possum Controls. I should like to illustrate the significance of delay. Some 40 or 50 severely handicapped thalidomide children can now produce the written word faster than their able-bodied counterparts of similar ability. That has been achieved by the intelligent application of technology, because the money has been made available through the thalidomide fund.

However, the consequences of delay are tragic. The hon. Member for Reading, South served well as the chairman of the committee looking into the problems of Y children. Who are the Y children? At the time of the controversy, they were those children whose mothers had taken or were suspected of having taken the drug, whether in this country or overseas, and are now in the cloud-cuckoo land of uncertainty about getting equipment. But those children are now 13 years old. There has been a delay of 13 years. Unless we prod the Rowntree Fund, or give it more money, we delay the time when those children can be given help.

The hon. Gentleman has referred to Y children. There are 98 children on that list who still have not got their problems sorted out.

I am delighted to have that intervention, because the hon. Gentlemen a knows this problem extremely well. I am sure he will agree that there are also children not on the Y list who might be covered by this Bill.

We talked about this matter three years ago. The Rowntree Fund was given its initial money because the House felt that there were victims of congenital injury at birth who should be helped but had no claim through the thalidomide fund. At the time, the Secretary of State for Social Services gave £3 million. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State added £3 million and he has now given a further £2 million. This is the only source of hope for some of these children. I assure the House that children in this category could benefit from having the equipment which is denied them because the Rowntree Trust either does not recognise it or has not the funds to provide it.

I agree wholeheartedly with the hon. Member for Wells (Mr. Boscawen) that we should concentrate our efforts as far as possible on giving aid to all who are disabled. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary was right to point out what had been done over the last eight or nine years since the passage of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act. There have been constant improvements. However, hon. Members who have spoken in the debate have talked about limited resources. That is correct. The Minister would like to go faster, I am sure.

I am not saying that the Bill, if it becomes an Act, will do a great deal more than has been done, but it will ease some of the financial burden and allow us to reallocate scarce resources. Therefore, it will be of benefit not only to those covered by the Bill but to other disabled children, because more resources will be available.

Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that those who win an action for tort and get compensation should not benefit from the State provisions and that we should reallocate the funds in that way?

Not in that sense. Often in such cases the parents are able to equip the home and there are then no great pressures on the local authority to provide facilities. They get the financial help as of right. The children about whom we are concerned need access, communication, mobility and the ability to earn a living. All these things can often be provided in the home by the family. That type of resource could be made more freely available. I am not suggesting that pensions and allowances should be taken from them. I am saying that they can do more for themselves and that therefore the pressures on scarce resources will be reduced.

I ask the Minister to look more carefully at the working of the Rowntree Trust. If, because of limited financial resources, it cannot do as much as it would like to do perhaps he could shift a small amount of his scarce resources into that area.

I want the Government to give a fair wind to the Bill on the ground that the sooner we start helping the young child the better. The delays to which I have referred regarding the provision of equipment has meant double disability—the initial disability at birth and the consequential disability of not being provided with the means by which these children can be educated and subsequently earn a living. It is those two areas that I am attacking.

The Minister has clearly stated the Government's intention. I hope that he can widen it. At the same time, I hope that the House will give full backing to this worthwhile interim measure.

12.19 p.m.

I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Carter), who has so courageously introduced the Bill, and all who have the privilege of being its sponsors, will take account of the cautionary note which has been struck emphasising that expectations must not be excessively raised by the passage of the Bill. Indeed, we could hardly do otherwise, aware, as we must be, that each week 1,000 handicapped children are born in Britain. That awful, painful and cruel statistic is not hopelessly intractable, as we have heard from the Minister, but it must continue to be in the forefront of our minds and never permit us to believe that, by the passage of any law, it can be remedied overnight.

It is, however, true, as the Minister emphasised, that as a result of living in an era of rapidly expanding knowledge, we are revealing more and more of the origins of aetiology, of congenital defects; and, to console the brave parents and those in the caring professions who are dedicated and giving their support to the handicapped, there is the heartening knowledge that increased medical knowledge—diagnostic radiology, and so on—is rapidly increasing the capacity to diagnose foetal deformity and take, at best, remedial action and, at worst, preventive action before birth.

This House, even if it is not in a position, alas, by laws to wipe out the terrible tragedy that disabled birth brings, and even though we cannot act, at second best, overnight to create a society, much as one would wish, where the handicapped could know that in financial terms they will never be disadvantaged from the cradle to the grave, can deal with certain matters immediately. What we can do, and what we should do speedily within the framework of this Bill, is to ensure that those who, by their negligence or their recklessness, ignoring the increasing knowledge that is coming into existence spelling out how congenital disability may be avoided, provoke the disasters take the responsibility for them. No longer, as a consequence of this Bill, which is not quite as modest as its sponsor has suggested, will those who, by recklessness or negligence, provoke those disasters be able to shield themselves from the financial consequences of their indifference which they can possess because they feel that our laws remain ambiguous.

It would be a grim irony if, at a time when we are aware that about 1,500 teratogenic drugs are known to be capable of causing damage to the foetus, we as a legislature should be regarded as colluding with the drug manufacturers, greedy for profit, to ensure that the adult may benefit from the benign effects of the drug irrespective of the evil effects on the unborn child. It would be unworthy of us to continue with a framework of law which provides an excess of legal immunity to the innovatory drug manufacturer.

We have no right to buy our selfish search for health and longevity at the expense of the next generation. We need to be confident that our drug manufacturers, so many of them multinational companies making their decisions an ocean removed from those upon whom they push their products, know that a disabled child, because they failed to make exhaustive researches into teratogenic agents, or failed to publicise their findings, or failed to advertise the necessary admonitions, is a child whom they cannot shrug off, that such a child would have a certain remedy in the courts if the drug manufacturers' concern for present palliatives and profits meant that they failed to maintain a high standard of care, taking into account all contemporary medical capacity to identify the dangers not only to living patients but to those yet unborn. One of the main reasons, although not the only one, why thalidomide children are receiving far less compensation than they should get is the ambiguities which, until the Bill is passed, exist within our present law.

But those thalidomide children, upon whom quite naturally the House has dwelt today, are, tragically, only one group of children being denied justice. When a pregnant mother is knocked down by a drunken driver, the mangled child she eventually delivers has today no certain claim to damages. If a woman receives pelvic injuries in a factory where the safety regulations are flouted, the misshapen baby she later conceives may not be able to obtain damages from the errant employers. A sloppy hospital giving a transfusion from the blood of a syphilitic to a woman who subsequently conceives to become the mother of a child cursed with congenital syphilis may well, as the law stands now, have no immunity. And in this nuclear age our courts can provide no confident redress to the handicapped child fathered by a man negligently exposed to radiation.

Indeed, we must all feel some sense of unease that, with the developments in artificial insemination—AID—and at a time when there is so little control over any commercial exploitation of this process, it could happen that a sperm bank negligently controlled could ultimately lead to a disabled child who would have no remedy against those who, for commercial reasons, were in control of such a sperm bank. If a man suffering from venereal disease has intercourse with a woman without telling her that he is infected, surely the afflicted child resulting from the assault should have a definite legal cause of action against him, as the Bill would provide.

If a dangerously negligent doctor recklessly diagnoses a pregnancy as a tumour of the womb and directs X-ray treatment which injures the foetus, surely the resulting feeble-minded and crippled child is entitled to a remedy. Or if a doctor, without reasonable care, in defiance of proper professional standards, unnecessarily gives a drug such as stilboestval to a pregnant woman which later leads, as it can, to vaginal cancer in her adolescent daughter, it cannot be regarded as worthy of our laws that we are not certain that a helping hand can be given by the courts to the unfortunate young woman.

As matters stand, as the thalidomide scandal revealed, the maimed, sightless and mute victims of other people's negligence can too easily be brushed aside by the powerful. I believe that we, as a legislature, have a duty to show that we have the ingenuity so to change the law that it has a much greater capacity to protect injured unborn children who are the most helpless and vulnerable within our society.

There can be arguments about whether the Law Commissioners in this Bill have in all respects chosen the correct pathways to attain that objective. Some may believe that the suggestions made are insufficiently tough on drug manufacturers and that the rules of strict liability which apply in other branches of the law should apply to them. There are others—and I can well understand this—who query the Law Commissioners' recommendations embodied in the Bill that the right of the injured unborn child should not be a separate one but should, for the most part, coincide with the rights of the mother.

All those are points of detail—albeit important ones—which can and should be explored in Committee. I am bound to say that what I find, however, less than tolerable is that there should be any overt attempt—and there appear to me to have been two, one weighty and one slight—to deter the House from passing any Bill at all. One I need not dwell on. It was an article last year by the science correspondent of The Times who unfortunately misled himself on the law and came to some erroneous and extravagant conclusions. But the other one, which has been mentioned, is the intervention of Lord Pearson. His letter to The Times showed a singular lack of political sensitivity. Indeed, if it had not been written by Lord Pearson, one could say that it amounted almost to foolhardiness.

Surely everyone must realise that if another disaster like the thalidomide disaster hit us—it certainly cannot be excluded in this drug era—the electorate would be justifiably enraged to find that legislators and lawyers had again been so tardy that still we had failed to make provision for such a grim contingency. It is in no way to detract from the efforts of my hon. Friend the Member for Northfield or of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) to point out that Mr. Harold Evans of The Sunday Times can surely claim as much credit as the Law Commissioners for this Bill.

Any of us who has been concerned professionally in any of the thalidomide cases, as I have been in Wales, as solicitor and legislator, has felt some humiliation that the uncertainty of the law gave so much opportunity to the Distillers Company, which to its discredit took full advantage of it, to delay, thwart and frustrate parents who had already suffered almost unendurable burdens. To suggest any further dalliance, therefore, in changing our law, although it may risk bringing both the House and the courts into contempt in spreading further cynicism throughout the public about the quality of our justice, is clumsy advice.

The hint—it is no more—that Lord Pearson has given is that the House waits on the Commission since some panacea is about to emerge to solve all the financial problems of the congenitally disabled. Is there indeed some comprehensive solution able by a stroke to be speedily applied, marvellously innovatory, within the dire economic circumstances of today, and, given the pressure on our Department of Health and Social Security and the impossibility of accepting further tasks to be imposed on overloaded social workers, immediately available? Would it be not only available and comprehensive but avoid giving rise to new tax burdens or excessive bureaucracies or too much relief to drug manufacturers or indifferent employers and also not outrage well-tried principles of insurance or breach too offensively tortious principles which, despite their blemishes, have proved remarkably capable of adapting to our changing technological society and which are prized not only by conservative lawyers but by radical trade union legal departments, whose memories of the iniquities of the Workmen's Compensation Acts and knowledge of and distaste for the present workings of many administrative tribunals makes them fully understand the existing strength of our common law to protect the injured?

I do not put such questions as these out of defeatism or scorn of the efforts that the Royal Commission may be making to present the comprehensive solution of which Lord Pearson appears to be writing. But I say bluntly—I hope not rudely—that the clandestine style in which the Royal Commission is operating activates the doubts of legislators when we receive advice from it to postpone present reform since millenarian solutions will soon be with us.

It is now almost two years since, through the Lord Chancellor, I was in touch with Lord Pearson, asking him to follow the example of the Law Commissioners in providing and issuing working papers as the Royal Commission proceeds. The Law Commissioners have done that in regard to this Bill, as is their usual practice, and as a consequence they have been able to move to their much modified conclusions now before us through the intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Northfield, with the benefit, as he said, of widespread and creditable consultations, which included colloquia at the Royal Society of Medicine, inter-disciplinary study groups at the Institute of Legal Studies and meetings with representatives of the Royal Colleges, the pharmaceutical industry and the BMA.

But when I put my view to Lord Pearson—hon. and learned Members will know that it was not merely a personal view but one which was being canvassed in the legal journals and in the legal profession—I received a very dusty answer. In his final letter to me he included these comments:

"We appreciate the advantages of the Law Commission's practice which was also adopted by the Winn Committee, and, of course, we have looked carefully at a number of the Law Commission's working papers. But I think that a Royal Commission, or at any rate this Commission, must work in a different way. Having regard to the broadly-based composition of this Commission, the wide range and complexity of the set of interrelated subjects with which it has to deal, the need for a quasi-judicial approach (receiving and considering the evidence before reaching conclusions) and taking into account economic, social, financial, insurance, medical, etc., as well as legal factors and also the need for statistical research and study of new systems introduced in other countries, I do not see any possibility of producing a working paper at this present stage.

I should have thought that the very fact the Royal Commission was dealing with such a wide-ranging and complex set of interrelated subjects was a compelling reason for working papers, for bringing in the informed public, for sounding out and probing professional and public opinion.

The times are changing and the notion that, after years of private meditation, a Royal Commission can come down from Horeb with the tablets of the laws which the nation then reads as hallowed Holy Writ is long since gone. Opinions need to be canvassed as they were canvassed by the Law Commission before this Bill was published. Groups need to be wooed and cajoled if consensus within our plural and opinionated society is to be achieved.

It is true that Lord Pearson's letter gave me a little ray of hope, because he concluded:

"The question whether at some later stage we might be able to produce something in the nature of a working paper is being kept open for later consideration."

That was in May 1974. Now, in February 1976, all we have is a plaintive letter to The Times in effect accusing us as legislators, and my hon. Friend the Member for Northfield, as sponsor, of being precipitate.

I should think it much more likely that there would have been some resonances in the House about Lord Pearson's letter if working papers were in existence and were being distributed. I hope that, even at this stage, to save any further conflict—there may be continuing impatience over difficulties which exist—the Royal Commission will begin to issue working papers, which are long overdue. In the meantime, with the history of this Royal Commission, the House cannot be expected to place the law in a condition of artificial stasis but needs to take the action which the Bill commends.

Certainly we all accept Lord Pearson's reminder that the Bill falls far short of providing a comprehensive solution. We have no false hopes about a Bill which, by its nature, deals only, but importantly, with children who are born disabled because of a breach of a duty of care on the part of someone else. But small reforms can be cumulative. In the end, as some of us have learned from parliamentary experience, grandiose designs often remain blueprints while less ambitious schemes such as this oft-times reach total fulfilment.

The Bill may be limited and it is certainly illogical, but that does not condemn it. I entirely agree with the Law Commissioners' comment that law is an artefact and that if social justice requires that a remedy should be given for a wrong, logic should not stand in the way. If the Bill is thwarted, only avaricious drug manufacturers and some less scrupulous insurance interests could have a sense of pride. I am deeply grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Northfield for giving me the opportunity to be a sponsor of a Bill of this kind.

12.40 p.m.

I, too, should like to congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Carter) on the sentiments that led him to present the Bill. I am sure that our feelings in these matters are the same. I subscribe unequivocally to the view that if it can be demonstrated that someone has suffered injury through the fault of another, the guilty party should make reparation. That is a basic concept of our common law, which so often accords with common sense. When children have been injured, especially when the injuries are extremely bad, we tend to feel even more strongly. There is no difference between us about wanting to help the disabled.

The hon. Member for Northfield referred to the much wider provisions which he would like to see. As I said to him the day before yesterday, I would prefer society to say that those who are less fortunate—and I refer to those with both physical and mental disabilities—should be fully looked after. This could be done by increasing national insurance benefits to a satisfactory level but that would involve increasing the premiums to the level that would support such benefits and at the moment that is not socially acceptable. It could only be a long-term prospect. Meanwhile we must do the best we can.

The Minister gave the House and the country a useful summary of what is being done. I need not elaborate upon it because one of the good things in this field is that no individual and no party would wish to claim the monopoly of good feelings. We all have a desire to help people. If the Minister had had more time I am sure that he would have pointed out that invalidity benefits and attendance allowances were introduced by the previous Conservative Government. That is how Governments work—each one introduces a measure and the next Government builds on that measure.

But there is another general consideration I want to mention. As a lawyer I have come to hate laws which fail to live up to people's expectations, laws which fail because either they do not do what people thought they would or because, in dealing with supposed doubts, they create further doubts and uncertainties which did not exist before.

The Minister said that the purpose of the Bill is to ensure that children who are injured should not be impeded from recovering compensation by any doubts in the law. More than anyone I should like to be able to say that we are achieving that aim but we should not assume, nor can we allow the public to believe, that we have achieved it. By all means let us try hard to achieve it, but we must recognise, as the Law Commission recognised, that when we try to achieve objectives by changing the law—not by applying the law to a particular set of circumstances—to fit circumstances which will arise in the future, the details of which we do not know but which we are trying to cover in advance, we can run into formidable problems. The Law Commission would be the first to admit, as would the draftsman of the Bill, that they are not claiming to have found the answer to all the problems.

Apart from the personal feelings that arise on a Bill such as this, it raises matters of great public concern and interest. I want to comment briefly on four areas.

First, it is vital that the public clearly understand what the Bill does and, in particular, what it does not do. My hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Mr. Boscawen) made a valuable contribution. His brief message was "For goodness sake, do not let us raise hopes which may then be dashed". The hon. Member for Eccles (Mr. Carter-Jones), who I am sorry to see is not now present, instanced how easily that can happen. During an intervention reference was made to the 98 children who are on the "Y list".

My hon. Friend the Member for Eccles (Mr. Carter-Jones) told me that he, too, wished to attend the conference at Sunningdale and did not intend any disrespect to the House by leaving.

I did not intend any criticism. I assumed that he had a good reason for leaving. I meant that I was sorry that he was not present so that we could pursue the point with him if necessary. I was not suggesting that he said that a large number of people might be helped who would not be helped but the sort of exchange which took place during his speech could give a listener the impression that the Bill would automatically solve the problems of those 98 children referred to. I do not think it would. The whole situation is more complex than that.

The hon. Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse), whose strength of feeling on this and other social matters we know well, inadvertently may have led people to believe that the matters to be dealt with under the Bill are much easier than is the case. He referred to the 1,500 drugs which may have teratogenic effects. That figure comes from the Law Commission's Report which in its next sentence said that it is in the area of these drugs that the aetiology is most difficult. The hope that he expressed that there should be a "certain" remedy will be hard to achieve. The public should realise that the greatest protection in regard to drugs must come through the use and application of the provisions of the Medicine Acts and, if necessary, the strengthening of those Acts.

We may hope that licensing has contributed substantially towards avoiding a repetition of the awful calamity of a few years ago. We must direct our attention to anything that will assist in preventing a repetition of that calamity and it would be misleading for the public to believe that if there were any such repetition this Bill would automatically give a right of action to the children involved. That calamity resulted from the use of a drug which was beneficial to mothers but harmful to children. That is a dilemma with which the medical profession will be faced for a very long time.

In any future case, however, the drug in question would have gone through the testing procedure and would have had to comply with the provisions of the Medicine Acts. To suggest that the proof of fault in such a case would be easy is misleading. We really must be cautious about what we lead the public to believe about drugs. Again, public may feel that deformities resulting from trauma are easy to prove. That is not so. The evidence adduced to the Royal Commision is in line with that of the Law Commission, namely that even if there is a direct injury to a pregnant woman which of itself is followed by deformity at birth, the connection would not be easy to prove, though there is a group of cases where trauma induces premature birth, with all the complications of that, where one can trace the connection. It may be that our knowledge in this area is improving, but on the whole that increase in knowledge merely gives us more questions to answer without necessarily providing the answers.

In order to substantiate aetiology it must be accepted that in most cases there are likely to be great difficulties. Even if one is able to deal with the burden of proving that, there is still the question of proving the fault at the beginning end of the line—if that is not too clumsy a phrase. That is again a matter which could very well entail great difficulties.

Although I do not want to do more than refer to the next matter, in this context reference ought to be made to it. One must have regard to the fact that it is very likely that the acts of a mother during the pregnancy may be material when considering whether the fault can be placed elsewhere. After all, it is the mother who has the longest, most consistent and heaviest duty of care towards the child. There are so many things that she may do during that period which may have in adverse effect. If we are to say to a person "If it is proved that you are liable, you will pay", then in justice to that person we must also have to leave it open for him to say "But it was not my fault; it was something that the mother did during pregnancy. Or, even if I was partly to blame, it was only partly."

We must accept—it is no good shutting one's eyes to it—that the question of the conduct of the mother during pregnancy may have to he raised and laid wide open in the course of proceedings, and that that could have very distressing effects. I do not want to enlarge on that, but it is a further consideration which we must recognise.

The next aspect of the matter I want to mention is the position of the Royal Commission. I am bound to say to the hon. Member for Pontypool that I am sorry that he felt obliged to say the things that he said, because what he said was quite contrary to my experience of and dealings with the Commission.

He should remember that it is not only Lord Pearson who comprises the Commission. One difference between the Royal Commission and the Law Commission is that while both have very eminent lawyers on them, the Royal Commission also has doctors, social workers and a great spread of people. They have made it clear that they are not happy about the timing. It is perfectly fair for them to do that. They have equally made clear the reasons why they are not happy about the timing. However, their main concern is that nothing that we do here should prejudge or prejudice the position pending the publication of their Report.

In my view it is a good thing that these questions have been raised by Lord Pearson and his colleagues because it enables us to say here and now, categorically—and I say it on behalf of the Conservative Party, and I understand that the Solicitor-General will say so on behalf of the Labour Party—that we entirely accept that nothing which we do in this Bill will in any way prejudge or prejudice what emerges in the Report of the Royal Commission or the action to be taken after that.

Having said that, I think that we here should pay close regard to the observations made by Lord Pearson in his letter, written on behalf of the Commission, because that is a body which, as I have said, has so much and such wide expertise. The members of the Commission have heard evidence born of another two years knowledge—for the Law Commission reported in 1974. I understand, in general terms, that far from the Law Commission's expectations that rapid progress in tracing the aetiology was to be expected being realised, that has not happened, and indeed, in some respects matters have got even more difficult.

Above all, we must, I think, bear in mind that the remit of the Royal Commission is much wider than was that of the Law Commission, harrowing as this was bound to be. I think that we can assume that those on the Royal Commission will wish to use the width of their remit to make recommendations which would be helpful to those who have been injured. What we must be very careful about is that we do not ourselves do anything which prejudices their task in doing that. I am sure that we would all agree about that.

With respect to the hon. Member for Pontypool, I do not think that we ought to enter into arguments about whether the Royal Commission should or should not issue working papers. In fact, it published circulars saying what were the principal consideration in its minds and on which it invited evidence, but I hope that our attention will not be distracted from the main considerations by a consideration such as that.

I come to the third area on which I want to comment. I understand that the doctors, or some of them, are concerned that what we are proposing would create more difficulties for them, because in making them possibly liable on a new basis, a basis that introduces new characteristics, it must raise doubts in their minds which, I understand, they fear might affect not only the doctor-patient relationship, but indeed, even their judgment in deciding what treatment to give.

I mention that only to say this. Anyone can understand these misgivings. What we all need to do is to find out whether there is substance in them. If there is, we must do our best to see that the misgivings are removed in Committee. Therefore, I hope that if any medical bodies feel such misgivings, they will write to us. I hope that they will write to Opposition Members if they so wish, and we shall certainly give the most careful consideration to what they say. But I hope, too, that they will feel free to write either to the Law Officers' Department or to the Lord Chancellor's Department, whichever is appropriate. I am sure that in that case—and I anticipiate that the Solicitor-General will be giving me this assurance—any worries so raised will he carefully considered. I would hope, too, that if any real worries were raised, the promoter of the Bill would be able to look to the Law Officers' Department for assistance on what is a highly technical matter, because that would be a question of law and drafting.

However, I gather that my thinking on that is very much in line with the Solicitor-General's thinking, anyway. Therefore, my purpose in raising it is mainly so that the medical profession may know that we understand their concern, or understand that they should feel concerned, that we should like to know from them what worries them, and that we shall certainly do our best to try to meet them on it.

If on those three matters the House is generally agreed, then it is obviously a good thing that the Bill should proceed to a Second Reading. No one, least of all the promoter, has disguised the fact that in Committee some very interesting questions may arise. I have a little list of them, but having regard to the time that I have already taken on the other matters, I shall deny myself the time to go into them. However, I hope that they will be looked at very carefully. For instance, Clause 1(4) raises very difficult considerations. In Clause 1(5) one sees one of a number of new phrases—and I refer to the phrase, "then received pro- fessional opinion." I do not know what it means. I am told that it is not a term of art in the medical profession, and to try to give to it its "natural and ordinary meaning" is not very easy either. I shall not enlarge upon that now, but that is the sort of thing one has to look at.

The last subsection of the clause is closely linked to what I have said about looking straight in the eye the fact that the conduct of the mother is often bound to come into it in actions under the Bill. We must say to ourselves "That will happen, and are we prepared for it to happen?".

Clause 2 is in my view both illogical and very unattractive. The attitude is "There is an insurer, so let us make him pay." That is no basis on which to make law. It proceeds on the premise that in such circumstances every mother would be insured. I am not sure that that is so. Even if it is, it is very unattractive to say that, because there is someone else who can pay, we shall make him pay.

If I am right in thinking that it may not necessarily follow that all mothers would be covered by insurance in such cases, I ask the House to think of the extra misery which might arise if one child who was injured received compensation because his mother was insured whereas another child who suffered precisely the same injury received no compensation because his mother was not insured. It is already bad enough for such children and their parents without our doing anything which will exacerbate matters.

We cannot achieve anything in life without risking something, but we must ensure that the advantages that we seek to obtain and will obtain outweigh any such risks. We cannot do that unless we look the reasons in the eye, weigh them, and see to what extent we shall accept them.

My last point I make in a quick effort to demonstrate how what can look very easy can prove to be very difficult. Damages for loss of expectation of life have been mentioned. I greatly hope that the whole concept of damages for loss of expectation of life will not be very long lived, because it is an artificial one. However, so long as the concept remains with us we must live with it and say whether it is to be applied.

The wording of the Bill is to the effect that the child must live for 48 hours for certain rights to accrue. I ask hon. Members to think of the position of the doctor. Nowadays a person can be "kept alive" by being put on a machine. Is the doctor to put a child on a machine so as to keep him alive for 48 hours? I see the hon. Member for Pontypool wagging his head. To him it may not pose a problem, but he is not a doctor.

I am certainly not a doctor. However, like the hon. and learned Gentleman, at least I can claim to be a lawyer. Surely right of action would remain with the mother irrespective of whether the extraordinary situation envisaged by the hon. and learned Gentleman occurred. Therefore, whether the child lived or did not live would not affect the quantum of damages. I suggest that the hon. and learned Gentleman made an extraordinary suggestion, bearing in mind that we are expecting to hear from the Solicitor-General that before long action will be taken to get rid of the wretched concept of loss of expectation of life.

The hon. Gentleman is not right. I ask him to look again at the Bill. In relation to certain claims, the question whether a child lived for 48 hours would be relevant. Even though this does not seem to be very important to us, we should not overlook the position of doctors. I have been asked seriously by a doctor "What do we do? Does this mean that we should keep a child alive for 48 hours so that all its rights may be preserved?" I do not know the answer. I merely draw the matter to the attention of the House. That is the type of difficulty that we can sometimes make for other people. We should not overlook such difficulties merely because they will be somebody else's diffi-difficulties.

Those are a few of the many points which will arise in Committee. The hon. Member for Northfield made it clear that he accepts that there will be difficult points and will welcome a full discussion—and the fuller the discussion and the better informed it is, the more use the discussion in Committee may be not only to us, but to the Royal Commission in its consideration of the wider problems. I am optimistic that, now that the Royal Commission has the assurance that noth- ing we are doing is intended to prejudge or prejudice its findings, what we do may well assist in the overall picture.

Accordingly, provided that the Solicitor-General can give assurances on what I consider to be the three very important matters which arise on Second Reading I, too, am very happy to support the proposition that the Bill should receive a Second Reading.

1.5 p.m.

I am privileged to be a sponsor of this Bill which was so ably introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham. Northfield (Mr. Carter). I am privileged, first, because of the general interest we all have in children and the disabled and, secondly, because some years ago, as a member of a small working party of the Women's National Committee, I was able to study the working papers of the Law Commission on this complex subject.

The interesting discussion that takes place today will add to the usefulness of the debates in Committee. I can understand the hesitation on the part of lawyers, in particular, about introducing new laws with the complications which may follow. However, in view of the potential risk from the use of new materials in the pharmaceutical industry, in particular, we cannot allow the inflexibility or impossibility of legal action to prevent us from giving serious consideration to the Bill.

I am delighted that the Government have indicated their general support for the Bill. It is essential to realise that especially in the case of medicines it has been clearly shown that changes in human beings could have been predicted by prior research. I cannot see how drug manufacturers can evade their responsibility for placing on to the world markets new forms of medicines and technologies which will in the end affect the next generation who are as yet unborn.

It is now recognised that it is acceptable for chemical additives to be placed in substances used by the general public. I have in mind the fluoridation of water. Once there is that acceptance, the onus does not stop there. It is society's duty and our duty as legislators to go on monitoring the situation. It is also the duty of those who recommend the use of such substances to ensure that machinery is available to undo any imbalance which arises as a result of miscalculation or false judgment about the effect of the development.

In certain parts of Derbyshire, iodine is added to drinking water to counteract certain goitrous growths. There should be a monitoring of the improvements or changes which take place in the local population. The onus is on society to ensure that we do not neglect to follow through the measures which are introduced in all good faith. It is imperative that the person in control of the remedial operation be responsible for giving the correct dosage to secure restoration to normality should damage or imbalance occur.

We should not think only in terms of the pharmaceutical industry. There are such things as food additives, colouring agents and the contents of domestic aerosols, all of which might present a potential danger to the user. They should come clearly within the confines of the Bill where it can be proved that a child has suffered damage as a result of their use. Of course, the problem of children sucking their toys is well known. We should consider the intake of lead implicit in some forms of treatment of venereal disease, although intake from this source has been greatly reduced. There is a risk of lead poisoning to the child through contact with the mother where she is undergoing this treatment.

The medical profession should be able to look well ahead on this sort of problem. I realise the implications of legislating for coming events, but in a sense every Act we pass is anticipatory. It is not possible in most of our proceedings to legislate for the past. We must therefore consider what might happen and seek to protect unborn children from the consequences of actions being taken today.

Mistakes made in the course of surgical activities are not unknown. We appreciate the problems that face doctors. Perhaps what has been happening in the United States over the insurance of doctors in their wonderful private medical services has worried the British medical profession. I hope that we shall not give it cause for undue alarm. Nevertheless, the situation where hospital staff or doctors make mistakes as a result of lack of care or negligence, and that can be proved should be covered by the Bill.

It is absolutely vital that the greatest care should be taken in radiology. Radiographers and radiologists have shown supreme care in the way in which they have monitored this problem since the possible effects on unborn children were first appreciated. They are to be congratulated on their efforts. It is horrifying to think of the consequences which could arise with less stringent safeguards in the use of this technology. It would take only a very minor change in the protective procedures to give rise to the possibility of a terrible thalidomide-like effect on future generations. We would neglect at our peril these risks, together with the risks from the increasing use of nuclear substances.

The important subject of preventive medicine has been only briefly mentioned. Associated with it is the question of industrial protection. Two of my constituents are at present picketing outside a new generating station on the Isle of Grain. They have been dismissed with 11 others because of their protest at not being provided with protective clothing in the lagging of the station. The men are working with new and untried substances. Some hon. Members must have tried to lag the water tanks or the roof spaces at their homes and found themselves infested with tiny fragments of the insulating material. Without protective clothing, my constituents have been able to take home the residue of their work—the insulating material—and generously to give it to their wives and children. One of my constituents has adolescent children who would easily be affected by contact with this substance. It is important for the Government to ensure that chemical substances of all kinds are kept under close scrutiny because of the dangers to future generations.

We must take great care to avoid building high hopes among people whose children are born with a deformity. We must not give the impression that the Bill will mean free gifts for all. Even if the Bill becomes law it will be hard fought in the courts where it will be necessary to establish the burden of proof.

We should not forget, either, that our actions in Parliament can create problems. The Department of Health and Social Security has set up a working party to consider the possibility of increasing the methods of prescribing oral contraceptives. The oral contraceptive market is an example par excellence of the multinational company in action. Over the years, much well-documented research has been ignored in the introduction of these protections against pregnancy. The proposals which the Department has put out for general discussion include the question whether only doctors should prescribe, whether trained nurses might prescribe or whether the contraceptives should be sold across the counter freely and without restriction.

It has been clearly established that a number of physical and psychological changes can take place in women who regularly take the contraceptive pill. Some pills were hurriedly withdrawn from the market when it was discovered that there were disadvantages in their use. What will happen if an untrained person—a chemist's assistant, for example,—is permitted to sell across the counter drugs which carry a potential danger to future generations? There will be no monitoring of changes in the woman's blood pressure or of changes in her sight. I understand that there are indications that cataracts may result from the taking of these contraceptives.

There are serious dangers in reducing the protection which is implicit in the terms of the working paper. There is a good deal of evidence that women might welcome specially trained nurses being available to prescribe for them, but that would be contingent upon the nurses having the responsibility to report back on any consequences from the use of those drugs. I am particularly concerned in this respect at the increase in hypertension and thrombosis. The general reaction of a young mother to the contraceptive pill is very well known.

That is especially worrying because it is the working-class woman who is less likely to seek advice and—I understand from a document recently distributed by the Patients' Association—may be given on one certificate six months' or a year's supply of contraceptive pills, there being no possibility of monitoring any after-effects she may suffer from those pills.

If the House later accepts legislation providing for the compulsory wearing of seat belts, we must bear Clause 2 in mind. When that legislation was last before the House, I had many letters asking whether a woman in an advanced stage of pregnancy would have to wear the seat belt round her neck. If such a law is passed, we must give a thought to pregnant women and also to their responsibilities under Clause 2 of the Bill we are considering.

I wish to return to the responsibility of the pharmaceutical industry. Of all manufacturing industries, the pharmaceutical industry probably makes the greatest profits. I readily accept that much of the pharmaceutical research which has been done over the years has brought great benefit to humanity, but it has also brought tremendous profit to the industry. I end with a word of warning. During the debate last year on our entry into the EEC reference was made to a Council of Ministers' Directive on the harmonisation of legislation dealing with medicine in individual member States. I quote from that Directive:

"It is necessary to protect public health but this must not be achieved at the expense of the drug industry."

We have a duty which far transcends that of the private drug and chemical industries. What we are talking about is a matter of social justice in which a fault against a child as yet unborn should be attributed to where it rightly belongs.

1.22 p.m.

I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Carter) on choosing this subject for his Bill—for which he has been attacked outside the House—and also on the way in which he presented the Bill. My hon. Friend made a splendid and impressive presentation. I also enjoyed the speeches made by my hon. Friends the Members for Pontypool (Mr. Abse) and Ilford, North (Mrs. Miller), which were both glowing testimonials to Back Bench Members. I hope that the House will forgive me for striking a personal note, but if lawyers had anything like the reputation of my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypool there would not be so much criticism of the legal profession.

The Bill is straightforward and is based on the apparently simple proposition that:

"Whenever a plaintiff has suffered pre-natal injury caused by the fault of another he ought to be entitled to recover damages."

Anyone who has studied the Law Commission's Report will appreciate that that is a subtle concept which skilfully avoids a number of minefields. It also avoids the danger of becoming bogged down in the quagmire of passionate argument about the rights of the foetus. That is a controversy which must eventually be resolved, but fortunately, not today.

Misgivings have been expressed because the Bill confines itself to pre-natal injury and accepts the existing law that compensation shall be paid only on proof of fault. One of the most outspoken critics outside the House is Lord Pearson, the Chairman of the Royal Commission on Civil Liability. He is critical of the fact that the Bill may come into effect less than a year before the publication of the Royal Commission's Report which may recommend a different system of compensation. I fervently hope that a different system of compensation will be recommended by the Royal Commission. It is no secret that many hon. Members want a system of no-fault liability to be recommended by the Royal Commission. If that recommendation is made, we wish it to be vigorously followed by the Government.

Under the present system, no proof often means no justice. Far too many people suffer grave injuries for which they receive no compensation. They lose out because of the bizarre legal lottery of the present system. If that is the case, why do the sponsors of the Bill accept the recommendations of a Commission which is confined to the concepts of the existing law? The reason is that a Bill on the book is worth more than a dozen in the distance.

This limited measure will immediately convey clear and specific rights to a child injured in the womb. It defines statutory rights for this group for the first time ever. It also deprives certain lawyers of a source of long and profitable argument, although it does not end the arguments about proof, and the House must clearly recognise that.

It is interesting that the Law Commission thought that it was "highly probable" that there was common law provision for this group of children. Never- theless, the Law Commission also stated specifically that:

"In the absence of an English authority there is doubt whether a child has a cause for action at all for personal injuries caused before birth."

As every advocate, from the brilliant to the bone-headed, knows, doubt has a devastating effect on judges, juries and people seeking redress in a court of law. Doubt knocks the stuffing out of a prosecution and knocks the value off compensation. It was doubt about the law on pre-natal injuries which influenced the legal advisers of the thalidomide children to recommend an outrageously low settlement in 1968, as the hon. Member for Reading, South (Dr. Vaughan), who played a part in that campaign, will readily recognise. The Bill removes that doubt and ambiguity and spells out the children's rights in law. That is why the House should accept it.

Blandishments about possible proposals by the Royal Commission should not influence hon. Members about the need for the Bill. The recommendations and the time scale of Lord Pearson's Commission are in doubt. The Commission may not report until the end of this year—it may not report for a couple of years. We simply do not know. After that report we shall have to await the Government's consultations, the Government's decisions and legislative proposals before any palliative action is taken. All that can take a long time and in the meantime doubts will persist about the law concerning children who are born disabled after being injured in the womb. That is why we cannot wait for Pearson. I hope that the Royal Commission will speed its deliberations. Meanwhile, we must press on with this vital Bill.

Although there are no estimates of the numbers of children involved, every week a thousand handicapped children are born. That is a staggering figure and it means that every two years enough disabled children are born to fill the Wembley Stadium. Many of such children will never kick a ball or wield a hockey stick. They need all the compensation we can give them. The Bill will help the children who are disabled by the 1,500 terato genetic drugs which are now being used and which can damage the foetus.

The Bill would also help if, heaven forbid, there were another outbreak similar to that caused by thalidomide. It could happen. The dangers of more drug-damaged children is by no means remote, however careful the medical profession may be—and it is being careful. As the Law Commission has now accepted, no drug can be guaranteed safe for the foetus. The prospects of a dramatic improvement are gloomy especially as over three-quarters of women in the United Kingdom take prescribed drugs and well over half take self-medication. The possibilities of damage to unborn children are appalling.

I am not very impressed by Lord Pearson's stricture that the Bill:

"falls far short of a comprehensive solution."

One can always make that kind of easy attack on any measure, that it is too narrow or to wide. If we had listened to the critics, there would have been no thalidomide campaign. The critics said that the campaign was too narrow and that we should campaign for all disabled children instead of only for those disabled by thalidomide.

The critics forgot that the people associated with the thalidomide campaign on both sides of the House were already active on behalf of all disabled children in our parliamentary work. The critics overlooked that without that campaign thalidomide children would have endured poverty as well as disability. They overlooked that to have done nothing would not have helped other disabled children. They overlooked that from the campaign emerged the Rowntree Fund for all disabled children, along with a deeper understanding of the problems of disability.

The Bill also emerged from that campaign, as I think my hon. Friend the Member for Northfield will agree. It was inspired by the suffering of thalidomide children and the determination of their parents. It was conceived in sadness and it will be born, I trust, in hope.

Meanwhile, we must hope that the Bill will not be damaged in the parliamentary womb by well-meaning star-gazers with their eyes fixed on the horizon, writing letters to the newspapers and busy in their various Commissions. If the Bill is crippled, it will not be Parliament that will suffer but disabled children. We can help some of these children by the Bill. It will help the innocent and impose obligations on the guilty. To me that is social and legal justice, and I warmly commend the Bill to the House.

1.36 p.m.

I am very pleased to welcome the Bill and to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Carter) on introducing it. A similar Bill was introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (Mr. Lewis) in February 1973. It is not my intention to speak at length in order to destroy the Bill and to talk it out, as was my hon. Friend's Bill by the hon. Member for Barkston Ash (Mr. Alison) when he was Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security in the Tory Administration.

On this side of the House there is a firm intention that the Bill shall become law. The behaviour of the hon. Member for Barkston Ash was in contrast with the way in which my hon. Friend the present Under-Secretary is giving the Bill support.

Although we all have to be impatient for the disabled—and none is more impatient than my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley)—we must acknowledge that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State, with his special responsibility for the disabled, has filled his office in a way which makes us proud.

In office my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary has honoured the words he uttered before taking office, and that is very difficult.

I remind the House of some of the things the Government have done for the disabled. I do so to put the whole debate in perspective. There have been benefit upratings for disabled people costing about £400 million. The Government have introduced the non-contributory invalidity pension for men and single women, a mobility allowance for children and adults, an invalid care allowance, a non-contributory invalidity pension for married women, and a new contributory retirement pension scheme. They have also raised the therapeutic earnings limit. The activity of the Department, under my hon. Friend's guidance, to help the disabled has been commendable.

I take the same stance on the Bill as my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South. I regret that a Bill of this kind has to be introduced. I would rather the principle in law had already been established. My hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General will know of the interest I have taken in industrial injuries. I am interested in the great reform introduced by the last Labour Administration in New Zealand, which provided that those crippled by accident received benefit whether or not they could prove liability.

I do not wish to speak at length on this topic—I hope to catch your eye later, Mr. Deputy Speaker—but I hope that the Pearson Commission will recommend a system of compensation for accidents and so remove the very heavy expenditure on lawyers and specialists of all sorts in processing claims through the courts. I hope that the money provided as compensation will go mainly into the pockets of those who ought to be compensated, rather than into the pockets of the professional people who are having to process the cases themselves.

But we have not yet received the report of the Pearson Commission and, however much I want to have that report and the recommendations which I hope will flow from it, even when we have the report it is likely to take a number of years before we can get on to the statute book the change to which we so eagerly look forward.

The recommendations, which I have strongly supported, about industrial injuries will take time to negotiate and enact. In fields in which I am not so knowledgeable I should expect the same to apply. It is certainly possible that the consequences of that legislation would be that the State itself would have to find finance to implement it. If that is the case—and it could well be—that will be one additional hurdle to be overcome by those of us who want to make progress.

The significant part of the Bill of which Lord Pearson ought to take note—unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South, I agree with Lord Pearson that it falls far short of what is desirable—is that which says that the Bill has no direct effect on public expenditure. It is a Bill, in other words, which could be processed through its various stages to the statute book.

It is for that reason that I am prepared to support the Bill, knowing that it falls far short of what I expect from the Pearson Commission. I hope that within a relatively few years we shall repeal this legislation, but I support it for what it can do for those who, for no reason of their own, have a life of disability.

I also support the Bill because I do not believe that we should hold up progress constantly while awaiting the result of one inquiry after another. If we see an opportunity to correct a wrong and have an obvious remedy, we should grasp it and adjust to it. Later, when the Commission reports, we shall require to do only one small job of amendment or repeal. I therefore strongly support the Bill.

1.44 p.m.

I begin by adding my congratulations to those already accorded to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Carter).

I have frequently complained in this Chamber that very often lay colleagues express criticism of the law, the legal system, the legal profession, sometimes in dramatic terms, but when the House actually discusses law reform they leave the debate to the lawyers. I have said on many occasions that if our lay colleagues complain about the law, they should help us to reform it. Technical legal discussions among lawyers are not for the benefit of the lawyers. They are for the benefit of the public, their clients.

My hon. Friend has taken me at my word. He has looked at a somewhat technical subject and noticed that it has very real practical consequences, for people like his constituents and mine, in terms of real human suffering or of human happiness. He has demonstrated that the practical effect of legal technicalities is not beyond the grasp—and, obviously, the very clear grasp—of a lively mind, even if that mind is devoid of a formal legal training. The House and the public, therefore, have very real reasons to be grateful to my hon. Friend.

I was struck, too, by the fact that so much of this debate has been contributed by our lay colleagues in the House. I particularly noticed the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley). Although he has been somewhat forthcoming in his criticisms of the legal profession—on occasion he and I have had our differences—at least his criticisms are not purely negative, and he contributes to discussions about how to seek positively to remedy the defects.

If this part of the debate appears to be largely a dialogue between lawyers—substantially between the hon. and learned Member for Southport (Mr. Percival) and myself—that is inevitable in a technical legal Bill, but at least we were both assisted by the debate in keeping in mind the purpose of the Bill and what the technicalities are for.

We have reason to be grateful to the Law Commission. I would not like to be a Law Commissioner—even if I were ever in danger of being invited to become one. They are distinguished men with first-rate minds and dedicated social commitments. They take a little-discussed subject and devote years of their time to affording it consideration and a depth of consultation which Parliament itself could never undertake unaided. They produce reports which are models of clarity, and recommendations which are backed by careful argument. And very often they find that the public scarcely notice them and that the House cannot devote the necessary time to legislate about them. That is not always the case, and they have a very good record of work which has found its way on to the statute book. But all too often, unfortunately, the work which they devote to law reform must be very frustrating.

Whatever one's views on the Report we are discussing today, it really is a model of what a report should be. We have been told, as my hon. Friend said, that the work on this topic was undertaken as a matter of urgency. All I can say is that this is not apparent from the Report. The consultations are as wide as those normally undertaken, and the arguments are as careful as the Law Commission's arguments always are.

As was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South, normally legislation is designed to change the law. This legislation is designed rather to fill a vacuum.

The common law does not necessarily deny a right of action in respect of prenatal injuries. The point is that no one knows for certain whether it does or not. As has been pointed, one of the difficulties in the negotiations concerning the thalidomide children was precisely the question-mark which hung over the legal aspects of their discussions.

In that situation there are only two ways in which to resolve the doubt. One can wait until the question arises, and then it will be argued at some length in a succession of courts at substantial public expense—or expense to the parties. Alternatively, it can be resolved by legislation. One advantage of doing it in that way is that it can be resolved not only by asking what the precedents say but by asking what, as a matter of policy, is most conducive to the public interest.

I am sure that the hon. and learned Member for Southport has come across examples, as I have, where the uncertainty of the law, in claims for negligence in particular, operates very harshly against the ordinary person—the man who on other occasions I have called "the little guy." This was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse), who has had extensive experience of these matters.

When we are dealing with cases of pre-natal injury, it is difficult enough in all conscience to establish the facts, to ascribe a cause or to weigh the expert evidence. If we add the uncertainty about the law, the problems of the claimant are formidable. The result in practice is that it is the big battalions, the accomplished litigants, who can impose what are sometimes unequal settlements—not because they are wicked but because they are in the position of being defendants, who can afford to wait because time is on their side. But the claimant, unwilling to face the cost and strain of prolonged proceedings, is often also in fairly urgent need of the money. Very often he is driven to accept a settlement for less than is strictly fair. Where the claimant is an infant, the court will have to approve such a settlement. But, with these difficulties overhanging the negotiations, the court itself cannot offer sufficient protection.

One of the important effects of this Bill will be to enable those responsible for conducting claims on behalf of the people whom we are discussing to know where they stand and to be able to weigh up an offer of settlement for what it is worth. If we urge little guys to apprehend the merits of the rule of law—and many of us spend a great deal of time doing that—there is a heavy responsibility upon us to ensure that there is a method of redressing their grievances within the system. If we urge them to respect the law, we must show that the law respects them.

It has been said more than once in this debate that the provisions of this Bill are limited and that we should not raise false hopes among those who are not helped by it. I agree with that, and I take the point made by the hon. and learned Member for Southport. It was part of the burden of Lord Pearson's much-discussed letter to The Times, and it was emphasised again today by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary. It is true that it relates only to a limited class of children—those whose disabilities can be shown to result from a prenatal event caused by the fault of another, and that sentence in itself indicates a number of question marks. It will not assist those who disabilities result from inherited characteristics or natural illness or what is sometimes called pure accident—meaning accident which is not anyone's fault. It will not assist those whose disabilities result from causes which cannot convincingly be identified.

I do not know how many it will help. I suspect that possibly the majority of congenitally disabled children will fall outside the provisions of the Bill. I agree that we should make that as clear as we can, because it would be wrong to raise false hopes amongst those for whom we are not providing a remedy.

Having said that, there will be those for whom the Bill's proposals will be very important. I do not presume to predict the numbers involved, but an enlightening statistic was quoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypool. The Law Commission thinks that there are something like 1,000 children a week who are born substantially deformed. I do not suggest any arithmetic, but even taking a very small proportion of the 50,000 children in this category every year, that would be a very substantial sector of human suffering alleviated.

No legislation can cure all the ills of the world. Suffice it to say it may remedy injustice for some people who might otherwise have been without redress. The Bill itself contains nothing which suggests that it attempts to do any more than this.

The hon. Member for Wells (Mr. Boscawen), in a very persuasive speech, pointed out that we should not forget those who remained outside the provisions of the Bill. That was the burden of what was said by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary. It does not follow that, if the House passes this Bill, we believe that nothing further remains to be done especially in terms of prevention and safety, mentioned with such expertise by my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mrs. Miller).

It has been said that those matters are often very difficult to prove. I accept what the hon. and learned Member for Southport said about that. It is a consideration which affects many areas of fault liability, and I have no doubt that it will be very present in the mind of the Pearson Committee. But as my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North pointed out, in our legislation perhaps we should take account not only of static facts but of trends, too. The Law Commission did not overlook these difficulties. It set them out in paragraph 28. But it also pointed to the very rapid progress of technology, so that every week the area of doubt is diminishing. It does not necessarily mean that that produces the answers. It may be that it only produces more quesitons. But forensic science is part of the onward march of technology and there is no doubt that it will reduce some of the areas of uncertainty which have lain over the courts in these matters.

No system of law can eliminate the necessity for courts sometimes to make up their minds on evidence which is far from concusive. Our courts many times have had to assume that burden, and they have done it so as to give us a high degree of satisfaction with what they have achieved.

But having said that, I do not seek to minimise the difficulties of evidence, and certainly I do not seek to minimise the difficulties of many solicitors who find themselves acting for clients who are convinced in their own minds about the cause of something, and fail to realise that the cause is not easy to establish on the forthcoming evidence.

There will be many situations left outside the provisions of the Bill. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary told the House that the Government were mindful of the general problem of finding some means of giving adequate support to all children found at birth to be disabled, and a number of other hon. Members followed him in that. It is clear from Lord Pearson's letter to The Times that the Royal Commission on Civil Liability has this problem very much in mind. We all hope that the Royal Commission may be able to propose some means by which all disabled children can be given the support that they need.

That brings me to what has been perhaps the major question which I have been asked—whether, if this Bill reaches the statute book, it will prejudge or prejudice the considerations of whatever Report emerges in due course from the Pearson Commission.

I should be guilty of the most blatant hypocrisy if I recommended to the House a measure which I believe would impede the proper consideration of questions which form the terms of reference of the Pearson Commission. I am on the record, even before the appointment of the Commission, as saying that these questions should be considered fully. I was very happy when the Commission was appointed, and I was especially happy with the appointment of the distinguished chairman. I look forward very much to that Report. I was pleased to hear the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Golding), because I know how hard he worked, again before the appointment of the Pearson Commission, to ensure that in the trade union movement and elsewhere these questions were fully canvassed. So there is no doubt in my mind, and certainly none in that of my hon. Friend, that we are looking forward to the Report of the Pearson Commission.

But, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme said, we have to be realistic. We are told that the Pearson Commission hopes to complete its work by the end of this year. Knowing how these matters work in practice, there will have to be proper consideration of its recommendations, consultations inside and outside Government, consideration of the implications for the wider aspect of Government, and, I suspect—without wishing to give any indication of access to any inside knowledge but simply from a general understanding of how these things happen—we should not be over-optimistic, because legislation is years rather than months away.

This is a specific problem within the present law on liability based on tort. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South said that meanwhile there would be no harm in trying to make the present system work as well as it could in the interests of all concerned.

My hon. Friend the Member for Eccles (Mr. Carter-Jones) in a most persuasive speech said that it seems that we are always waiting for something. There will always be a time when various problems are under consideration. If we said that we would never tackle one problem until we had the results of the full consideration of all the other matters, the cause of reform would indeed be lost.

I do not know how many people will be affected, or how many tragic events will occur between now and when we consider the Pearson Commission's Report. In my view it will do nothing but good to rectify this specific grievance now. Whether today's legislation will have to be amended in the light of the Commission's Report obviously depends on what the Commission reports.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme said that he hoped that this Act would be repealed in the near future. It may not be repealed. We do not know what the Commission will report. There are a wide range of possibilities open to it. It may be—this is pure supposition—that it will report in favour of some form of tort liability surviving in parallel with some other system of no-fault liability. In any event, the Commission's Report may have some substantial financial implications of the kind indicated by my hon. Friend. We may well find that our work today is more enduring than has sometimes been suggested. If not, it is likely to have a useful life, long enough to justify the time we have spent on it.

I turn to the effects on the work of the Pearson Commission. I cannot do better than to emphasise what the Law Commission said in paragraph 6 of its Report:

"It is our view that any legislation based on our proposals neither can nor should prejudge the much wider issues which the Royal Commission is considering."

I am grateful to the hon. and learned Member for Southport for asking me questions in connection with this matter. They enable me to say in the clearest possible terms that so far as this Government are concerned—and I give an unqualified undertaking—anything that we do today and in the course of our deliberations on the Bill will not prejudge or prejudice our consideration of whatever recommendations the Commission may make. This is not an occasion where the best is the enemy of the good. We can have both.

The hon. Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr) asked questions about the responsibility of the mother. As he said, these are probably Committee matters. I shall not delay the House very long on them because they can be discussed in detail in Committee.

Reference has been made to the stresses which are likely to arise within a family if it is suggested that the injuries to a child are to be laid at the door of the mother. That is a matter which obviously weighed with the Law Commission, which sets out the arguments in paragraph 60 of its report. It recommends that normally there should not be a right of action against the mother but that there should be an exception when the mother is driving a motor vehicle. That point is contained in Clause 2 of the Bill. As my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypool pointed out, what was basically behind the Law Commission's thinking was that this was a situation where normally the mother would be covered by insurance because she is required to be so covered. For that reason, it was more likely to relieve family tensions than to exacerbate them. The hon. and learned Member for Southport has said that he has some doubts about that. He thinks that it is an invidious distinction which may be unduly hard on insurance companies and which in any event is illogical. No doubt we shall have to discuss that matter in Committee. I shall not say anything at this stage which might prejudge our discussions in Comtmittee, but I merely comment that my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North also had doubts about it, but for different reasons.

I did not intend to convey the impression that I thought that it was hard on the insurance companies. It is rather tragic that we should give a remedy because someone else will pay. That was my thinking.

I appreciate the distinction between the two interpretations of the hon. and learned Gentleman's remarks. I am quite content to leave the matter there.

The hon. Member for Harborough also criticised the distinction but said that the mother's responsibility should be extended to other situations. He mentioned the case of the destruction of a child in the womb and asked why we do not give a remedy where the foetus is not only injured but actually destroyed. At this stage I can foresee real practical difficulties in providing the type of remedy which he has in mind. Of course, when we are dealing with compensation for destruction, as with compensation for death the person who has actually suffered the wrong is not the person who is compensated, and there is no way of ensuring that that person can benefit from the compensation. Therefore, the compensation will be to the estate—if we can allow some concept of the estate of a foetus. That would mean that the benefit would go to the next of kin who would probably be the mother. Therefore, one would be compensating the mother for a wrong which is attributable to her. I thought it would assist the hon. Member for Harborough if I made that point at this stage before the Bill goes into Committee, so that he can appreciate the thinking at least behind the Law Commission's recommendations on that matter.

The hon. and learned Member for Southport raised some misgivings which apparently have been current among the medical profession. The profession has not written or communicated with me and there is no reason why it should have done so. So I am not sure what the misgivings are. I agree with the approach suggested by the hon. and learned Gentleman. Let us find out what the misgivings are and whether there is any substance in them. Certainly I shall not say anything today which will in any way prejudge the consideration which is given to the profession's comments. I am sure that it will not overlook the provisions of Clause 1(5).

I cannot predict what view the House will take of any suggestions which the medical profession may make. The conduct of the Bill is in the hands of my hon. Friend the Member for Northfield. I can only undertake that if the profession makes recommendations which commend themselves to my hon. Friend, the Government will give every assistance in trying to ensure that they can be incorporated into the Bill. The Government have no intention of foreclosing the discussion at this stage. Indeed, if it would asist the medical profession or the hon. and learned Member for Southport to use the good offices of the officials in the Lord Chancellor's office, they are at their disposal.

I have been asked to mention one other matter. In the course of the debate there was mention of the Rowntree Trust. I think that one hon. Member said something about jogging it into action. I am now moving on to ground of which I claim no personal expertise. The Rowntree Trust obviously cannot spend more money than is available to it. I understand that it has available about £2·7 million to spend in the next 12 months. It obviously is not unsympathetic to all the considerations which have been put forward today and I have no doubt that it will listen to any representations. However, there is a limit to what it can do.

A number of other matters have been mentioned which will have to be considered in Committee. They are matters which law students learn about, which academic lawyers discuss and which textbook writers ventilate. But the cutting edge of the law is not in lecture halls or libraries, nor even in the courts. It is where people live their lives, where they meet their problems and are confronted by their heart-aches. The Bill is not about lawyers nor Members of Parliament. It is about ordinary families suddenly struck down with tragedy who, up to that moment, have usually not given a thought to these problems, because there was no reason why they should.

If the Bill reaches the statute book, some of those families will have reason to be grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Northfield.

This is a modest Bill. Although there was a difference of opinion about that, I am with those who call it a modest Bill. It is of limited application and is possibly for a limited period. But it is by such pragmatic steps that Parliament and the courts have sought always to ensure that our legal system best serves the needs of the public.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

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

Representation Of The People (Armed Forces) Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

2.11 p.m.

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

I should like to start, Mr. Deputy Speaker, by expressing my pleasure at being called by you so soon after you have assumed your present elevated office and to say that I hope not to detain either you or the House at any great length. I hope that this measure will commend itself to the House. The arguments in favour of it are probably familiar to hon. Members on both sides.

I should like to remind the House briefly why legislation of this kind has become necessary. Seven years ago, the Speaker's Conference, in an effort to improve the registration of Service voters, recommended a fundamental change in the system which had prevailed—namely, that in future Service voters should have to re-register annually instead of remaining on the register for as long as they were Service voters.

All the good intentions of that change were, as the Under-Secretary of State knows, sadly disappointing in the event. Since that time, there has been a progressive decline in the number of Service voters registered as such until, according to the most recent figures available to me, out of 400,000 people entitled to register in that category fewer than one in four are so registered. I submit that it is important to restore the opportunity to vote in parliamentary and other elections at the earliest moment to the 300,000 people who are at present unable to do so because they have not been able to take advantage of the system in its new form.

For how long have the 300,000 been denied the opportunity to vote?

The decline has been progressive. I do not think we need worry particularly about how long this situation has continued. Unless there is some unlooked-for change in the use of the present registration system, those 300,000 people will be deprived of the oppor- tunity to vote for perhaps two years from now.

The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence was sufficiently persuaded of the importance of this matter to refer to it in the debate on the Referendum Bill on 22nd April last year. He said:

"the Speaker's Conference on Electoral Law in 1973 recommended a return to the previous system of Forces' registration."

That was widely welcomed by those of us who were there on that occasion. The Minister continued:

"the Government intend at an early opportunity to bring before the House of Commons appropirate legislation to give effect to this recommendation of the Speaker's Conference."—[Official Report, 22nd April 1975; Vol. 890, c. 1252.]

In the light of that undertaking it had been the expectation of the House that the Government would be announcing in the Queen's Speech for this Session their intention to bring in legislation of that kind. There was no mention of such legislation. It appeared that the Government did not believe that there was time in their legislative programme for this measure. Therefore, when I was fortunate to draw a place in the Ballot for Private Member's Bills, this seemed an appropriate subject to take up.

Since making that decision I have been in close contact with the hon. Lady's ministerial colleagues and, as a result of those discussions, the Home Secretary, in a letter to me earlier this week, said that the Government took the view that they

"should not stand in the way of your Bill's receiving a Second Reading on 6th February if that is the wish of the House."

I welcome that undertaking and express my gratitude appropriately to the right hon. Gentleman and to other right hon. and hon. Members opposite whose support I succeeded in enlisting.

I recognise that obligations fall upon me if that undertaking is to be fulfilled. For instance, I recognise that as drafted the Bill may be less than perfect. I concede, and have conceded before, that the draftsmenship is somewhat rough and ready. I was so unwilling to associate other hon. Members with the Bill last time I produced it that I put only my name on the back. I freely and frankly admitted then, as I do now, that I may not be the best parliamentary draftsman in the business. By the same token, I accept that it is important that a Bill of this nature, by whomsoever it may be introduced, should be worded in a way which comes up to the standards required by constitutional issues. Therefore, where there are, as the Home Department pointed out, "technical and complex" matters, I am content to accept its judgment and to be guided by it on whatever is thought to be the appropriate constitutional phraseology.

I understand that there is great pressure on parliamentary draftsmen with other legislation going through this House. I shall not dwell upon that because, apart from anything else, I should be out of order if I sought to do so. However, I hope that I may be able to offer some assistance to the ministerial Bench.

In its wisdom, Parliament has made provision for a sum of money to be made available to private Members who are lucky in the Ballot to enable them to enlist expert draftsmen in the drafting of their Bills. I should be willing, if necessary, to apply that to enlisting the services of any Parliamentary draftsman, or woman, who commends himself or herself to the Department as competent to get right the wording of this Bill, which I hope will get its Second Reading today and ultimately pass successfully through its remaining stages.

I hope that that will help to allay any anxieties which the hon. Lady and her colleagues may have. I shall be glad to discuss the matter further with her if, as I hope, I am successful in persuading the House to give the Bill a Second Reading today.

One of the functions which we in Parliament must always accept is the duty to ensure that any citizen who is entitled to the vote is able to exercise it. From time to time, severe difficulties are to be encountered in achieving this entitlement absolutely. But where we can identify a substantial category of people who are particularly deserving of our help, it is an absolute duty upon every Member, upon whichever Bench and upon whichever side of the House he or she may sit, to make sure that the legislation gets through as soon as possible.

If I am successful today—and that will depend upon the co-operation and support that I receive, and I shall be appropriately grateful for it if it is forthcoming—we shall be able collectively to take credit for the fact that Service voters now disfranchised, or not enfranchised, by not being registered will have the opportunity to exercise their vote, if they wish to do so, at least 12 months earlier because of legislation passed in this Session than they would if we were obliged to leave the matter over to another Session.

I hope that, with the full co-operation of hon. Members on both sides of the House, we shall be able to see the Bill on the statute book in time for it to apply to the next register of parliamentary electors, to be compiled in the autumn of this year. It is in that spirit and in the hope that it will commend itself to the House on that ground that I ask that the Bill be given a Second Reading.

2.21 p.m.

I do not think that the hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Onslow) has presented the arguments for his Bill. It is not a Bill that we have to take lightly. My remarks are not likely to be as brief as those of the hon. Gentleman in introducing his Bill.

The hon. Gentleman has introduced the Bill basically without argument. He has not brought forth, to my satisfaction at least, the reasons why there should be a separate system of registration for Service men from that for civilians. I presume—and I shall be considering the background to this later—that included in the reference to Service men are Service men's wives and dependants who must travel with them. I do not think the hon. Gentleman has taken the trouble to argue the principle. He ought to have done, because this is an amendment to our constitution.

I am somewhat doubtful whether this is to be regarded as an amendment to our constitution. The hon. Gentleman must make his speech in his own way, but as I was able to rely upon recommendations of the Speaker's Conference and on an undertaking by a Minister of a Government whom the hon. Gentleman supports I did not feel it necessary to rehearse the entire argument that has been gone over fairly thoroughly and, indeed, accepted on both sides of the House for some time.

The arguments may have been rehearsed for a considerable time, but not until this morning was I familiar with them. It may be that that applies not only to me but to other Members of the House who have taken a particular interest in the subject.

It is surprising to hear a Conservative Member say that the recommendations of a Speaker's Conference, together with a letter from the Government, are sufficient argument for a Bill. I am one of the most loyal supporters of the Government—if not the most loyal—and yet it is not for me to say that I shall support the Bill today because the Government have sent me a letter asking me to do so. I should expect the Government to state clearly and in detail why there should be a separate system of registration for Service voters.

It is not open to me to ask the Minister about the hon. Gentleman's Bill. Were this a Government Bill, I should be in the position of being able to ask the Minister concerned why it had been introduced. If I were to ask the Minister now on the Front Bench why this Bill has been introduced she would refer me to the hon. Member for Woking who has brought in this measure, and if I were to examine the hon. Gentleman's speech I would find four reasons for it.

The first is that the present situation is unsatisfactory because fewer Service men vote than ought to vote. The second is that there is an agreement with the Government that the situation should be improved. The third is that the Government did not specifically include a similar measure in the Queen's Speech. However, the concluding words of a Gracious Speech are always that other measures will be brought before the House, so it cannot be said that a measure such as this was excluded. There is no suggestion that I know of that the Government have stated categorically and publicly that a Bill such as this would not be introduced in this Session.

The hon. Gentleman has raised the matter, and I should have taken more pains to spell it all out. I have been told that there is no intention to introduce legislation along these lines this year. Indeed, I should have hoped that the hon. Gentleman would give me credit for realising that if a Government Bill was in the pipeline it would be better for me to choose another subject to take advantage of my luck in the Ballot.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. It is possible that by the end of my speech he will have made the speech, by way of interventions, that he ought to have made when introducing the Bill. I accept what he has said, that had he not introduced the Bill we should have had to wait for at least a year.

The hon. Gentleman is keeping me in an agony of suspense. Does he, or does he not, intend to support the Bill?

I think that to some extent that will depend upon the quality of the interventions and whether we ever get a chance to support the Bill. If interventions continue, it is unlikely that we shall have time properly to consider the Bill this afternoon. In my own time I shall reveal the way in which I shall vote if there is any possibility of a vote this afternoon. I do not expect there to be one and I hope that Conservative Members are not thinking of forcing this to a Division, because if they do almost certainly the Bill will be lost because of the lack of a quorum.

I return to the basic principle, to which the hon. Member for Woking did not address himself. There are in my constituency, as there are in others, many people who are disfranchised because they do not get on the register of voters. This is probably true of housing estates that are accidentally missed. It is also true of lodgers. I mentioned my constituency, but this is particularly true of London constituencies in which there are many rooms to let. Lodgers come and go, and people sometimes get left off the register. A number of students in my constituency were inadvertently left off the register recently because they had decided to live off campus. The requirement of annual registration disfranchises many people every year. The hon. Member must argue why that practice should continue while a single act of registration by a Service voter will keep his name on the register. He cannot just wave that away as he has been trying to do.

There is a fundamental difference here. I am sure that the hon. Member's deep knowledge of electoral law has only temporarily deserted him. Anyone with a fixed abode gets an invitation through his letter box every year on a fixed day to put his name on the register. The Service man is not in that happy position. The quality called turbulence in military life—at sea, in the Air Force or in the Army—prevents such orderly procedures as apply in civilian life. It has been accepted for a long time that a special category of registration should be available to Service men, and they have availed themselves of it on the basis that once was enough. Now that once a year is the requirement, civilian turbulence has taken its inevitable further toll and the number of registrations has declined. I should have hoped that the hon. Gentleman would accept that the figures speak for themselves.

I become more bewildered as the hon. Member's argument unfolds. It is not true that every elector gets a form through his letter box in September of each year. Many students at the University of Keele in my constituency do not. The registration is undertaken on a common form by the University. That is not so important for the students, although important mistakes have been made, but in some London lodging houses, where the landlord gets the form, it is often not completed correctly on behalf of all who live there.

Many civilians do lose their votes. The hon. Gentleman must have a safe seat or a loyal band of election helpers, otherwise, he would have had much more canvassing experience and more knowledge of how civilian registration fails than he has shown today.

I confess that I know little about this problem but I believe that the principle is important. The hon. Gentleman has not argued the case—which is not to say that there is not a case to be argued. He owed us a review of the case, but in the absence of his arguments, I will be forced to state the case myself.

We are told that the basis of the Bill is the Speaker's Conference on Electoral Law. It is not enough to say that, because that Conference decided something, it should be done, even though the Government may have told the hon. Member that they went along with it, The registration of members of the Forces and their wives was the subject of considerable discussion and a division in the Conference. The rules of order forbid me to name names in that vote, but by seven votes to 11, the Conference rejected a proposal that a Service man's name should be removed from the register if, in any year, a completed form in respect of his registration was not received by the registration officer. That was a close vote, which suggests considerable controversy.

That is not the sort of background against which an hon. Member can tell the House in five or six minutes that because something is agreed by the Government it should be quickly put through.

The Speaker's Conference, according to the Speaker's letter of 20th June 1973, admittedly said:

"The Conference concluded that too few servicemen were registering and they considered at length whether the present system of annual registration should continue, with additional provisions to overcome the inertia in the Forces against registration, or whether to recommend a different system. The resolution to recommend the change was agreed to by a majority: Ayes 11, Noes 8."

Again, there was disagreement on whether the change should be made.

I should like to know why the Government have changed their minds. By a majority the Conference agreed that the present arrangements for annual registration of members of the Forces should cease. I shall deal with the arguments for that when I look in more detail at the report.

The Speaker's Conference recommended that:

"Each serviceman should in future be registered, and new recruits should be registered on enlistment. Thereafter each serviceman should be required annually to declare that he wishes to make no change in his registration, or to change the details of his registration, or to have his name omitted from the register for the ensuing year."

That point must be emphasised. Later, when I have examined the evidence that was placed before the Speaker's Conference, I shall refer to the details of the Bill because the hon. Member for Woking cannot hide, as he has attempted to hide in his perfunctory speech this afternoon, behind the defence that he is not the best draftsman in the world. If the Bill is intended to implement the recommendation of the Speaker's Conference, he is, far from being the best draftsman in the world, the worst draftsman in the world. However, I do not believe that to be the case. The hon. Gentleman is trying to achieve something in his Bill which the Speaker's Conference did not recommend. I shall return to the wording of the Bill later.

Be it noted that the Speaker's letter of 20th June 1973 specifically says:

"Thereafter"—

that is, after registration in the first place—

"each serviceman should be required annually to declare that he wishes to make no change in his registration, or to change the details of his registration, or to have his name omitted from the register for the ensuing year."

I shall return to that point because, although I have only just discovered it, it is a substantial one.

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Golding) has been speaking for 20 minutes and is threatening to return to a large number of other points which he has just discovered. Is it in order for him to filibuster on an afternoon such as this in order to stop the House reaching the next business, which is extremely important and which may not have Government support?

I have been with the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Golding) in a number of committee rooms at various times and when he is out of order I shall take the opportunity of advising him so.

Mr. Deputy Speaker, I know you as one of the sternest and hardest taskmasters in the House. Were I to see but a flicker on your face I should be on to my next point in a flash. I ask the hon. Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence) to abide his soul in patience because I, too, have a Bill in the queue this afternoon. I know what he is suffering. I have a responsibility to examine this Bill in detail. Had the hon. Member for Woking not displayed the cursory and perfunctory attitude that he displayed, I should not have been given the job of introducing his Bill for him.

The hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme has accused me of being perfunctory and cursory. He can say anything he likes about my speech, and I shall not get very excited. I assure him that I did not give him the job of doing this. I am beginning to wonder who did. If he wants to make my speech, he is doing so without my authority.

No one gave me the job. It is a burden that I have taken on myself. Having heard the hon. Gentleman's speech I thought it was no way for a measure of this signal importance, which involves such an important principle, to be introduced.

This House, as you know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, is a legislature to examine legislation very carefully. That is our function and it is a function that I shall perform whether it be Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. The fact that many hon. Members are absent this afternoon will not deter me from examining these arguments. I do not want to be stopped from pursuing the main argument of the Bill by the constant interjections of Conservative Members.

I make no apology for frequently referring to the Speaker's letter of 20th June 1973. One of the arguments of the hon. Member for Woking for the Bill was that the Bill was based on the recommendation of the Speaker's Conference, together with a letter from the Government approving it. The Speaker's letter of 20th June 1973 makes quite clear the conclusion drawn by the Speaker's Conference. We are entitled to know it. Those who read our proceedings on Monday, having been in their constituencies today, are entitled to know the arguments on which we arrived at our conclusions. The letter says:

"An obligation should be placed on Commanding Officers to distribute forms individually to each serviceman, to provide assistance, as required, in completing the forms, and to collect and dispatch the completed forms. It should be the duty of the Service authorities to give greater publicity and encouragement to servicemen to notify when necesaary any changes in the details of their registration, or to appoint proxies when posted overseas."

That letter puts an obligation on commanding officers to distribute forms individually to each Service man, to provide assistance as required in completing the forms and to collect and despatch the completed forms. I give notice to my hon. Friend the Minister that I want to know how that recommendation ties in with the Bill, to which I shall refer later.

By a significant gesture my hon. Friend the Minister signifies that, again, I should address my questions to the hon. Member for Woking, who has presented the Bill. Again, that is an illustration of the paucity of information which we have been given on which to make a judgment. I do not think that my hon. Friend can shrug away the responsibility so easily.

I am glad to see my hon. Friend the Government Deputy Chief Whip here this afternoon.

If my hon. Friend the Minister has sent the hon. Member for Woking a letter saying that she supports the Bill, she has a responsibility to tell me why she has given that support. What is her understanding of the Bill? How does it fit in with the recommendation of the Speaker's Conference of 20th June 1973? I shall not accept a shrugging off of responsibility by the Minister if she has to admit that such a letter was sent.

The Speaker's letter to the Prime Minister goes on to say,

"The details of a serviceman's registration should be entered on his records which would accompany him to his unit; and the records should be amended when he changes his registration. Service men should be able to claim entry in the register for the ensuing year until 16th December each year. The appropriate forms should be simplified. No military offence should be created as a result of these recommendations. The wives of Service men should be registered as service voters."

Here I pause. I shall look at the argument later, but I want to know specifically from the Minister—not from the hon. Member for Woking—whether her support for the Bill implies that the Government will support this measure applying to Service men's wives as well as to Service men, and, if so, is this to apply whether or not the Service men's wives are with their husbands? Perhaps the Minister will make a note of that question, because she may well forget it if she does not do so.

The Speaker's letter concluded with the proposal that

"a Service man's name should be removed from the register if an any year a completed form in respect of his registration was not received by the Registration Officer."

Having listened to the Speaker's letter, the House will realise that the issue is not as simple or straightforward as the hon. Gentleman tried to imply in his introductory remarks. If one looks at the Bill before looking further at the evidence, one finds that it is in many ways quite different from the recommendation. It is a Bill which makes

"provision for the registration for electoral purposes of members of the armed forces."

Clause 1 starts with the words

"Any person who is a member of the forces".

I see that my hon. Friend the Minister is about to return from getting advice on these probing questions that I have put. I am pleased that she has been forced to seek advice during my speech but had to seek no advice during that of the hon. Gentleman. As the Minister seems inadvisedly, without looking too deeply at it, to have given an absolute commitment on the Bill, I want to ask her what precisely is meant by the words "any person" which I have just read. Are we to say that if someone aged 15, 16 or 17 is a member of the Services, he is to be registered for electoral purposes? That is what the Bill says. It says

"Any person who is a member of the forces".

Is that what the Government are supporting?

I ask about age. I could ask about nationality. If it were possible under other legislation for a citizen of the United States, for example, to be enrolled into our Armed Services, is it seriously being suggested that that person shall be invited to register? That is what this legislation states.

I admit that the Speaker's letter was equally vague, but it is one matter to formulate Speaker's recommendations and another matter to formulate legislation. One must be very much more precise and clear in intention. I ask the Minister to tell me what the Government's attitude towards this is. I know that I could ask the hon. Gentleman, but he seems not quite to understand his own Bill.

The Bill says that persons "shall be invited". How does that tie up with the Speaker's recommendation? Would it be sufficient under the Bill for a sergeant to go around a camp shouting in every room or place there "Do not forget, lads, register. Lads, if you want to, register. Lads, if you want to, please send in your registration"? Would that be sufficient? I would say that it could very easily be said that that had been an invitation.

If the Bill becomes law, as I think it will, the one absolute necessity is that together with the Bill there must be laid down a very rigorous and uniform procedure. We do not want Tory commanding officers to choose those to whom they send gold-edged cards saying "Do not forget to register", and those to whom, instead—

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not pursue that point. I know how anxious he is to make one of his characteristic speeches, but I think that it would be a mistake if he were to try to import into this matter a question of political division within the Forces. There is no political division in this matter on the Floor of the House, and I do not think that he is gaining sympathy by the line that he appears to be about to pursue.

It remains to be proved whether there is unanimity on the Floor of the House. The hon. Gentleman can claim that he as an individual has the support of the Labour Administration. In the last test of parliamentary opinion on this issue, the parties were divided. However, I take the hon. Gentleman's point that perhaps I was insensitive in associating commanding officers with Conservatives. I withdraw my former statement.

It is important to have uniform procedure and that there be no vagueness such as "shall be invited" when the Bill is enacted, as I am sure it will be. It would have been better if there had been a schedule to the Bill laying down a procedure.

Clause 1(1) then says:

"to make a service declaration which shall be transmitted to the registration officer by the service authorities".

The Bill is vague and indeterminate. It prescribes no time limits. Time limits are of the essence in electoral registration. There should be an obligation on Service authorities to receive declarations and to return them within a specified period. The hon. Gentleman may say that this casts a slur upon commanding officers or those in charge of the administration of the Army. I guess that the political apathy of those in command of the Army, except in so far as it relates to matters of defence and Service pay, equals that of the other ranks.

I suppose the hon. Gentleman's tactic of advancing propositions which are self-evident nonsense will succeed in prolonging his speech. I do not think he will draw me more than this once more. I remind him that when the Services had the opportunity of voting in the referendum, whichever way they may have exercised their vote, they took advantage of it in very significant numbers, and it is likely that the Service vote in the referendum was greater on average than that in the hon. Gentleman's constituency and, possibly, that in mine.

I do not know what the referendum vote was in the hon. Gentleman's constituency.

It was 77 per cent.

The vote in my constituency is always very high, and in the referendum it approximated to that of the hon. Gentleman's vote. I welcome the degree of interest the Services expressed in the European issue. At the Speaker's Conference on Electoral Law the strongest argument in favour of the Bill was the inertia—that is the word rather than "apathy"—in the Armed Forces. I am glad that the hon. Gentleman intervened, because it has enabled me to make a correction to my speech which I would not otherwise have been able to make. I should have said that there was inertia, and not apathy, about matters political, amongst those who are responsible for the administration of the Army. It will still be important for there to be a schedule to the Bill setting out time limits. We should have such a schedule at the earliest opportunity. Any person who is entitled to make a Services declaration should also be entitled to have his name entered in the appropriate register for the ensuing year.

There are strong arguments for supporting the general principle of the Bill, if we cannot support the Bill itself. These were fully explained in the memorandum, put by the Ministry of Defence and the Home Office to the Speaker's Conference on Electoral Law on 4th April 1973. We must also take account of the memorandum on the subject of Service registration submitted by my right hon. Friend who is now the Lord President of the Council. My right hon. Friend said:

"Prior to the 1969 Representation of the People Act, Service personnel filled in a form claiming registration as soon as they enlisted—whatever their age. These forms were forwarded to the appropriate registration officer who included them on the register at the address given. The problem was that the registration officer was powerless to remove them until he received notification from the Ministry of Defence that this person was no longer a member of HM Forces.

The system broke down in many instances, particularly where the Serviceman got married or his family moved to another area. The registers contained the names of a large number of Service voters who no longer had any connection with that address, many of whom had already left the Service. Registration Officers even had to continue to record streets which had been demolished because one or two Servicemen were registered at that address.

Some efforts were made on Home Office advice to check these cases and to remove the names from the streets and list them at the end of each register. (They could not be removed entirely.) In some areas where a substantial number of Service personnel were registered, several hundred names were found to have no connection with the address given."

He went on:

"The 1969 Act provided for annual registration of Service voters and they had two options, either to register at the address where they would have been living but for their service (i.e. where their family lived). or at the last address they had in the United Kingdom. In the second case their names were listed at the end of each register.

It is true that the number of Service voters registered in 1970 fell by about one-third, but much of this was due to the registration officer being able to remove the names of those no longer qualified. There was a further fall in 1971, but the 1972 figures showed an increase of about 15 per cent. due to special publicity."

Having outlined the background, the Lord President arrived at his conclusions:

"It would be wrong to return to the old out-dated method of once only registration. All civilian electors have to make application each year. However the system of Service registration should be reviewed. The form should be looked at again to see if it can be simplified, as should the present provision that a Serviceman must sign his application before 10th October. The registration officer is already empowered to register all Service personnel if their form is received before 16th December (the last day for claims) but it must be dated on or before 10th October. While the registration must relate to the qualifying date, there seems no reason why a form received before the last day for claims whenever it is dated should not be accepted.

There is also a need to examine the method by which these forms are made available in Service units and publicity given to serving personnel concerning registration. Far too often they are left in some office and the Serviceman has to actually ask for a form."

I have not had time to study the subject with the care it deserves. No hon. Member, with the exception of the Minister and the hon. Member for Woking, seems to have taken any trouble with the Bill. On a cursory reading, it seems to me that the Bill is out of line with the Speaker's Conference recommendation and with the memorandum submitted by the Lord President in 1973. The hon. Gentleman should have revealed that fact and not have told us, as he did today, that his Bill was based on the Speaker's Conference recommendations. If I had not spoken, perhaps the world would have believed him. The wording of the Bill shows clearly that that is not so. There is no reason why the Bill should be passed into law.

I do not want to weary the hon. Member for Burton with detailed arguments on the question of electoral law for Service men. I have been remiss in not presenting in full the arguments of the conference on electoral reform but I would recommend my hon. Friends to study that document.

I hope that my hon. Friend the pairing Whip has not come to glower at me, as he usually does, for having overstayed my welcome.

I recommend that hon. Members study the evidence from the Ministry of Defence. I will precis its argument but I am sorry that I have to skip over one argument, which reads:

"Service men are frequently required to move at short notice from and to the United Kingdom and to serve under operational conditions, either actual or on exercises, throughout the world. This turbulence leads to situations in which the requirement for the completion of a form annually is not realistic."

That is my argument, and the hon. Gentleman should have presented it to the House. My right hon. Friend may now have changed his mind on the matter after reading the evidence of the Ministry of Defence.

I am sympathetic with every Service man who has to serve in Northern Ireland in these troubled times. The Ministry of Defence said clearly in 1973 that

"Troops undertake four-monthly tours on a rotational basis between BAOR and Northern Ireland. These frequent moves and the conditions under which the Service man operates in Northern Ireland make it difficult to ensure that each man receives a form."

That is a good argument which should have been presented by my right hon. Friend. The Ministry of Defence refers to defence attaches overseas, and perhaps we do not think often enough of them. On this, the Ministry says that the staff of the Defence Attaché in Amman in the summer of 1970 were too busy keeping their heads down to think about the completion of electoral forms. That is an excellent argument which my right hon. Friend could have employed. Who wants our Service personnel under fire overseas to be engaged in the annual completion of registration forms, rather than defending themselves and protecting British interests?

Reference is also made to personnel serving afloat. There are the nuclear submarines, for example, which undertake patrols lasting two months, during which no post is received. Many Members would envy those in jobs in which no post is received for two months, but this obviously makes for practical difficulties in the implementation of an annual registration.

The Ministry of Defence memorandum also referred to personnel serving with sales and training teams. I am very sorry to note that the Minister has fled, and I hope, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that you will bear with me if I continue to speak until she returns. I am sure that the Minister would be interested to hear the point made by the Ministry of Defence—that it is inappropriate for personnel serving with sales and training teams. As rightly pointed out in the Report, these personnel serve in foreign countries, often for short periods, and are subject to frequent movement. The Ministry of Defence also refers—I am not sure that I agree with this—

The hon. Gentleman has now been speaking for about an hour, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is there anything that the Chair can do to stop this disgraceful filibuster, which is designed to stop the next business being reached?

As soon as I hear the hon. Gentleman getting out of order, I shall advise him.

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. If the hon. Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence) really wishes to hear a filibuster, he should invite my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Golding) to try. He is not even trying today.

I bitterly regret the attack made on me by the hon. Member for Burton—a Member with whom I have actually sat in the stocks on a Saturday afternoon. I have suffered with him in the past, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Why should he not suffer with me this afternoon? I am sure that when the hon. Gentleman reads my speech he will agree that it is the speech that should have been made in introducing the Bill.

The Ministry of Defence memorandum dealt with the complexity of forms and instructions, pointing out that

"The forms for the registration of Service voters are necessarily more complex than those for civilians because of the additional information the Service voter has to provide, e.g., the address at which he wishes to register and his proxy requirements."

This is a slur on our Armed Forces. I should not have thought that they would be at all flummoxed by form-filling. I should have thought that, with the high standard of training in the Armed Forces today, they would be more rather than less competent to deal with that situation.

Here perhaps I ought to admit to an error earlier. I agree that I should have spoken of inertia rather than of apathy in the Forces. But according to the Ministry of Defence, as the average Service man spends a large part of his time outside the United Kingdom, is out of touch with events, and can vote only by proxy, this sometimes leads to apathy among Service men. This is exacerbated by the difficulties mentioned in—

With regard to the very interesting point made by my hon. Friend, does not he agree that perhaps there is a case for better communications internally of a political nature so that we do not have these people ignorant about political issues through no fault of their own?

My hon. Friend is trying to lead me astray. I have been desperately sticking to the issue before us, which is that of the Service voter.

I see Whips crowding in on me from all sides—Whips who, despite previous friendship, always press me not to put the point of view of my electors because of their desperate concern to see a piece of legislation put on the statute book. I shall not be intimidated by my hon. Friend the Deputy Chief Whip, sitting there in the Chief Whip's seat, trying very hard to bring my contribution to a halt. Nor shall I give way to the glowers of the pairing Whip, sitting at the end of the Front Bench. But I have to bring my observations to an end because I know that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary has many questions to answer. I do not think that it will take her long to answer the contribution of the hon. Member for Woking, but I have put some very important questions to her which I hope that she will answer today.

Earlier in the debate, the hon. Member for Burton asked me precisely where I stood on this Bill. I have an open mind. I am waiting to hear the Minister's reply—

So are we all.

The hon. Member for Skipton (Mr. Drayson) says, from a sedentary position, "So are we all". That obviously is the truth. But I think that it is very important that every Service man records his vote. It is important that every Service man should vote in every election and that every Service man should see that he is registered. But so, too, should every civilian.

I hope to hear from my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary why the Government believe that there should be this differentiation and what their attitude is towards the wording of the Bill. I am sorry not to be able to go into all the arguments in detail. I hope to take them up later in Committee, if I am fortunate enough to be picked to serve upon it.

3.28 p.m.

On the speech of the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Golding), I make only the comment that I noted that he felt that there should be a time limit incorporated into the Bill—a discipline that he is reluctant to exercise by himself. I also noticed with interest his implication that measures passed by only small majorities apparently have less validity. He was referring to the Speaker's Conference. My hon. Friends and I may have occasion to remind the hon. Gentleman of his remarks in other circumstances in the near future.

I do not propose to pursue the arguments advanced by the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme. The House will have made its own judgment of their quality and whether they are more appropriate to a Second Reading debate or Committee stage—to say nothing of the hon. Gentleman's motive in making them.

I intervene only briefly, first, to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Onslow) both on his choice of Bill and on the manner in which he presented it and, secondly, to express pleasure at the indication that the Under-Secretary may be willing to look favourably upon it.

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I hesitate to make the point, but is it fair to the rest of us who have listened attentively to my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle under-Lyme (Mr. Golding) that the hon. Member for Chislehurst (Mr. Sims) should now be reading his speech? We sympathise with him if he happens to be nervous about it, but, as a matter of courtesy to the rest of us, the hon. Gentleman might indulge in a little "ad libbing", at any rate.

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that it is not unusual for speeches to be read from the Dispatch Box.

I assure the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Mr. Kerr) that I am not reading my speech but simply reading from notes. In any event, I do not see the relevance of that to the debate.

We are rightly proud of the mechanics of our electoral system even though there may be occasional differences about the method. However, it cannot be satisfactory if 300,000 people are unable to vote. If it came to light that, for example, a whole town had been inadvertently left off the electoral register and its population disfranchised, there would quite rightly be an uproar. The principle is surely exactly the same in this case, despite the fact that the individuals about whom we are talking are widely dispersed.

This is a measure which we owe to those who serve us in the Armed Forces and which they are entitled to expect us to pass. It is one to which the Government have a commitment and which was recommended in principle by the Speaker's Conference in 1973.

On all those grounds I commend the Bill to my hon. Friends and I trust that it will have the full support of the House.

3.32 p.m.

As the hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Onslow) explained when introducing his Bill, the House has had the opportunity to debate the important subject of Service voters' registration on several occasions in the past two years. However, I point out to my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Golding), who spoke at some length, that I have some sympathy with his view that the House deserved a rather longer explanation of the Bill from the hon. Member for Woking than was given, if not for hon. Members who are present now, at least for hon. Members who read Hansard and for the Press and public. They will certainly want to know on what grounds the House made its decision on this stage of the Bill this afternoon. They may not all be as fully aware of the quite complicated history of this issue as are the hon. Member for Woking and me. I welcome the searching and inquiring intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme and I congratulate him on the way he has obviously applied himself to this complicated issue.

In 1974 the hon. Member for Woking introduced his Representation of the People (No. 2) Bill, which covered a wide spread of electoral matters but included substantially the same provision on Service voters' registration as that contained in the Bill we are debating today. Last year the hon. Member for Flint, West (Sir A. Meyer) introduced his Representation of the People Bill, which was in substance the same as the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Woking in 1974. The matter was also debated last year in the context of the referendum discussions. There was, too, a debate on the Adjournment in April last year when the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Gow) raised the subject of the registration and voting arrangements for members of the Armed Forces and their spouses.

The subject of today's debate has indeed received fairly regular attention over the years, but I shall put it in its historical perspective.

There has been a separate system of registration of Service voters since 1918 when special provisions were first made. These were aimed primarily at those on active service who were not regular Service men. After that war the continuing need for such provisions was recognised. One principle which governed registration practice until the Representation of the People Act 1969 was that, once registered, a Service man did not himself have to re-register, but was included in subsequent lists until he ceased to be eligible or cancelled his registration. This is clearly very relevant to our debate today.

From 1918 responsibility for notifying Service men each year of their electoral rights rested with commanding officers of units or ships. I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme has returned to the Chamber. If he reads Hansard, he will see the compliment that I paid him. I also draw his attention to my last remarks about units or ships, as he specifically referred in an astute observation to personnel afloat.

Declarations of new voters were made annually, attested at units, and passed, together with lists of current Service voters, to record offices for checking and forwarding to electoral registration officers. Acknowledgments were returned along the same chain. Voting was by post in the United Kingdom and by proxy overseas. During this period it was open to members of the Armed Forces in the United Kingdom to opt out of the system and to claim registration on a civilian basis at their current address. In practice, the system failed to produce the desired results because of difficulties experienced in maintaining adequate data in record offices, but the procedure was kept in use until 1944.

Meanwhile, the Vivian Committee on Electoral Machinery had been considering the matter and in its White Paper in December 1942 recommended the setting up of controlling machinery in the form of a central index for the Armed Forces similar to that available in the National Registration Central Index in respect of civilians. These new arrangements were introduced in 1944 following the Parliament (Elections and Meeting) Act 1943. All members of the Services sent fresh declarations to local electoral registration officers who entered the declarants on the Service Register. Details were then forwarded to the Central National Register Office.

In 1946, the Oliver Committee on Electoral Registration recommended the transfer of responsibility for the maintenance of records of Service voters from the Central National Register Office to the record offices of the three Services and the creation there of additional records. Maintenance of the records at CNRO was, however, not expensive in staff, and the Registrar-General suggested that, if substantial increases in staff in record offices were to be required, it might be better to continue the existing arrangements. This suggestion was considered by the Service Departments and the Home Office, and the then Home Secretary accepted their conclusion that the functions in question could be more economically and effectively discharged by the SNRO than by Service record offices. Accordingly, no change was made in the existing responsibility of the CNRO.

Following principles laid down in the Representation of the People Acts 1948 and 1949, the scheme was again revised in 1949 and was for the first time extended to cover wives of members of the Forces residing overseas with their husbands. In February 1968, the Speaker's Conference made the following recommendations in its final report:

"The present arrangements for continuous registration of members of the Forces and their wives should cease.

The Service authorities should in future be required to obtain information for the purpose of registration from any member of the Forces who appears to be qualified to be registered whenever similar information is required to be given by a civilian householder; and it should be the duty of the commanding officer of each unit to see that this is carried out in time for entries to be made in each ordinary register.

The obligation on the Service authorities to obtain such information at such times should extend to wives of Service men in the United Kingdom who are residing in premises maintained by the Service authorities or by the Ministry of Public Building and Works as well as to wives who are residing outside the United Kingdom to be with their husbands."

Elsewhere in its report the Conference also recommended an element of compulsion in the provision of information which had previously been purely voluntary.

The reasons for these recommendations were apparently that the Conference considered that Service men should have similar rights and duties to civilians, that the percentage of Service voters registered was too low, and that under continuous registration the register was swollen by personnel who had long left the Services but had not been taken off the register. The Conference may also have considered that there were weaknesses in the system because of the divided responsibility for removing names from the register and because of the time gap in many cases between enlistment and the opportunity to sign a Service declaration.

In the event, legislation in the form of the Representation of the People Act 1969 did not implement these recommendations fully. It did not place a direct responsibility on commanding officers to obtain information for registration purposes. Nor did the Act give effect to the Speaker's Conference recommendation that commanding officers should be made responsible for obtaining information for registration purposes from Service wives residing in Service quarters in the United Kingdom. Under the current procedure, commanding officers are responsible for ensuring that a form is handed personally to each eligible member of the Armed Forces each year. Completed forms are then forwarded direct by the declarant or his unit to the appropriate electoral registration officer after attestation by a commissioned officer. Names are entered on the register for one year only. There is no compulsion on an individual to complete or submit the declaration.

This situation was the one considered by the following Speaker's Conference, that of 1973. This found that in recent years the percentage of eligible voters to be registered had fallen to between 20 per cent. and 30 per cent. and recommended a return to what we usually describe as "the earlier system for once-for-all registration". It may, however, be helpful if I once again quote the 1973 Conference's recommendations on this matter. They are:

"The present arrangement for annual registration of members of the Forces should cease.

Each Service man should in future be registered, and new recruits should be registered on enlistment. Thereafter each Service man should be required annually to declare that he wishes to make no change in his registration, or to change the details of his registration, or to have his name omitted from the register for the ensuing year.

An obligation should be placed on commanding officers to distribute forms individually to each Service man, to provide assistance, as required, in completing the forms, and to collect and dispatch the completed forms."

My hon. Friend mentioned that the Service man could either change his registration—presumably because of a change of constituency address—or be left off the register altogether. The ordinary civilian is under a legal obligation to fill in a registration form. There is no question of a civilian opting out of registering for election purposes.

I was in the process of simply informing the House of the recommendations of the Speaker's Conference. I was not saying what is in the hon. Member's Bill or what the Government's view is.

To continue with my quotation from the 1973 Speaker's Conference's recommendations:

"It should be the duty of the Service authorities to give greater publicity and encouragement to Service men to notify when necessary any changes in the details of their registration, or to appoint proxies when posted overseas.

The details of a Service man's registration should be entered on his records which would accompany him to his unit; and the records should be amended when he changes his registration.

Service men should be able to claim entry in the register for the ensuing year until 16th December each year.

The appropriate forms should be simplified.

No military offence should be created as result of these recommendations.

The wives of Service men should be registered as Service voters."

I am sure that the House will agree that even this brief historical survey of the subject indicates that Service voters' registration has been the subject of considerable study over the years. Some may say that there has been too much study and too much tinkering with the machinery which could be got to work all right if only it were left alone. That is a tenable view, certainly, although, as I have shown, the House has refused to leave this matter alone over the years, but it is not a view, I assume, that would be held by the supporters of the present Bill.

The other view is that this is a difficult matter that it is not as straight forward as hon. Members might think and that it is important that whatever system is devised should be right both in principle and in detail. This is a point which was well brought out by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme, who was concerned that, even if we were agreed on the principle, we should apply ourselves rather more to the detail.

It is for this reason that the Government, while expressing general support for the recommendations of the Speaker's Conference of 1973, have previously said that they considered this to be a proper matter for Government legislation. This was not because the Government can make an exclusive claim to wisdom in this area, but because as many hon. Members will know, electoral law tends to be of a complex and technical nature. The complexity derives in the main from the attempt to match the variety of the human situation. The technicality derives from the attempt to achieve some precision in defining one of the most important rights of citizenship. Because it is such an important right, as I am sure all hon. Members appreciate, it has always been felt that a Government Bill would give the legislation a chance of greater discussion.

I said a moment ago that the Government had "previously" said that it considered these questions to be suitable for Government legislation. However, I am very conscious that, in the debate on the Bill introduced last year by the hon. Member for Flint, West, I said that the Government hoped to introduce legislation "at an early opportunity". I had hoped, as I know many hon. Members on both sides of the House had hoped, that room might have been found for a Bill on Service voters' registration in the Government's legislative programme for the present Session, but this has not been possible.

In view of this, the Government consider that it would be wrong to stand in the way of the present Bill. Certain points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme would certainly be matters to be settled in Committee. I think that the hon. Member for Woking is willing to concede that. The Committee would consider Government amendments to the Bill and possibly amendments by the hon. Gentleman.

Many of the other issues raised today by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme were administrative matters suitable for regulations which will in time be laid before the House. I assure him and the House that the Government are broadly in support of the Speaker's Conference's recommendations.

In view of that the Government consider that it would be wrong to stand in the way of the Bill. If the House decides to give the Bill a Second Reading today, the Government will have to consider what assistance can be made available to help its passage.

3.45 p.m.

I do not wish to detain the House long, but I should like to make a passing reference to something I mentioned in an interjection earlier. It is, if I may use the word, the "complementariness" of effective communications and the registration of the Service voter.

I am the first to concede that I have not gone into the Bill in great detail. I have learnt a great deal from listening patiently to my hon. Friend the Minister and to the brisk ad sharp remarks and comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Golding), who has certainly shown a mastery of the subject that took me by surprise. His speech reflected a good deal of mature reading and consideration. I do not doubt that at an early date his splendid effort will be drawn to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and that an early opportunity will be presented to him to make full use of his talents as revealed here this afternoon.

Perhaps the first example of the use of the talents of my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Golding) is that he could be made a member of the Standing Committee to consider the Bill?

That is a tempting suggestion and, were it in my power, I should not hesitate to make that appointment. A gentleman who is capable of a century innings in the style of my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme is certainly someone for whom I have the greatest respect. I doubt that I shall speak for half the time that he took—even if you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, were to allow me to do so.

I want to return to the "complement" of the activity of the registration of Service voters, because the Minister was a little thin in her references to that side of things as opposed to the full and detailed manner in which she was able to describe the Government's thinking about the registration of Service voters. Certain points must be watched and the hon. and learned Member for Southport (Mr. Percival) underlined several.

None the less, we ignore at our peril the subject of proper communications. In saying that I hark back to my experience as a member of RAF Bomber Command Pathfinder Group. We had the great good fortune, at least in the sense that I am describing, to have a former hon. Member of this House—the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed—Air Vice-Marshal Bennett as the head of No. 8 Group, which was the Pathfinder Group. He, God bless him, inaugurated a series of what were called Sunday night discussion groups. They were not in any sense academic.

Those six months, or thereabouts, were immediately before the 1945 General Election when, incidentally, I obtained my first baptism of fire by speaking as a raw recruit for my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Mr. Mikardo). I spoke to one of the biggest audiences that I have ever been honoured to address. I addressed 4,000 or 5,000 people in Reading Market Square in the 1945 General Election campaign. I made a "blinder". I was far too nervous. However, I was sufficiently relieved to be still on my feet after 10 minutes of gabbled comment on the scene as I saw it.

I should like to return to the idea to which my former Service colleague, Air Vice-Marshal Bennett, gave birth—the discussion group. In this group there were no holds barred. We were a tremendously diverse collection of Service men. The only feature that united us was belonging to No. 8 Pathfinder Force, Bomber Command. The variety of subjects was tremendous, as indeed was the day-to-day practical democracy of the group.

I can well remember the first time I went to a meeting of this group. To some extent I was nervous because of Bennett himself, who used to turn up regularly. However, I found myself engaged in a real "knock-down, drag 'em out" struggle with the principal speaker in the—

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is there no way in which you are able to facilitate the business of the House? We have a squalid manoeuvre going on at present to exclude my Bill, which is an important and urgent Bill which will save lives.

I was about to ask the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Mr. Kerr) when this discussion group came to discuss this Bill.

That is a very good point, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was trying to illustrate my basic theme—namely, that it is a good and wondrous thing that we have efficient and, I hope—speaking for the Minister—well ordered registration procedures which prevent the possibility of some crusty old Tory colonel—to give an example—getting the game sewn up from a particular point of view. It is equally important that we attend to the complementary aspect of the matter, adequate communications, so that we are not sending lads "over the top", politically speaking, when they are not informed about the basic issues which, in their citizen role, they are being asked to judge.

I should regard it as a great neglect of our public duty as Members of Parliament if we were to allow the Bill to go forward without ensuring that that side of things was as well attended to and thought about as the registration side. However, I digress for a moment, tempted no doubt by you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I return to the question of registration. I want to finish my observation on how the discussion group used to proceed.

At my first meeting, full of trepidation I found myself in a situation in which, somewhat inadvertently, I had locked horns with a gentleman who was, I believe, Mr. Deputy Speaker, of your former persuasion before you became Mr. Deputy Speaker. This person was a don at Cambridge, which was not very far away from where we were stationed.

The subject for discussion—this will awaken the memories of all hon. Members who are older than about 40—was Munich in 1938—or whenever that happened.

This gentleman had the advantage of being fresh from his books down the road 10 or 12 miles away in Cambridge. He was able to attempt to dazzle me with science, or at least very detailed quotations and references from various documents with which he had been toying. I knew that my theme was right. At least, at the age of 22 I kidded myself that it was—and I still think so. However, there was this attempt to dazzle me with academic researches. I was just holding my own and doing not too badly, still convinced of my own rectitude—

rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put, but Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER with-held his assent and declined at that time to put that Question.

It is not the first time, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that there has been an attempt by the hon. Member for Woking to interrupt the flow of my oratory. He is an old combatant friend of mine from the aviation Benches. Therefore, out of deference to him and to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I sit down.

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

Debate to be resumed—what day?

Monstrous. On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am sure that the whole House will agree that the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Mr. Kerr) had actually sat down before the clock struck four o'clock.

Hon. Members may not be aware that there are certain devices which indicate to the Chair precisely the hour of four o'clock and that hour had been passed.

Further to my point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman did not intend to talk the Bill out. He went by the clock above your head. He and other hon. Members have no other assistance. For the sake of a split second I am sure that it will be agreeable to the House that the Question shall be put.

I am bound by the devices at my command. Debate to be resumed—what day?

Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Are you telling us that there is absolutely no way in which you can exercise discretion in this matter? There was an inadvertent split second mistake in timing by the hon. Gentleman, who I am sure will confirm that it was not his intention to talk the Bill out and to deprive the House of the chance of reaching a conclusion.

Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker—

Order. It is impossible for the hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Onslow) to know what was in the mind of the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Mr. Kerr). We passed the hour of four o'clock. In those circumstances, I ask the hon. Member in charge of the Bill to name what day.

Friday next.

Debate to be resumed upon Friday next.

Detonators Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday 5th March.

Television Licensing (Establishments For The Deaf) Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

Cruelty To Animals Act 1876 (Amendment) Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

Object.

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. How can the Government possibly object to such a good Bill?

Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

Industrial Training (Amendment) Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

Object. Second Reading deferred till Friday 5th March.

Explosives (Age Of Purchase, &C) Bill

Read a Second time.

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

Representation Of The People (Electors On Holiday) Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

Object.

What day? No instruction.

Dangerous Wild Animals Bill

Read a Second time.

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

Social Security (Additional Benefits) Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

I understand that this Bill has not yet been printed and therefore, in accordance with precedent, I decline to put the Question, That it be now read a Second time.

Second Reading deferred till Friday 5th March.

Education (Married Persons Of Compulsory School Age) Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

Licensing (Amendment) Bill Lords

Read a Second time.

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

Adjournment

Resolved, That this House do now adjourn.—[ Mr. Thomas Cox.]

Adjourned accordingly at six minutes past Four o'clock.

Volume 904: debated on Friday 6 February 1976

House Of Commons

Prayers

Orders Of The Day

Congenital Disabilities (Civil Liability) Bill

Representation Of The People (Armed Forces) Bill

Detonators Bill

Television Licensing (Establishments For The Deaf) Bill

Cruelty To Animals Act 1876 (Amendment) Bill

Industrial Training (Amendment) Bill

Explosives (Age Of Purchase, &C) Bill

Representation Of The People (Electors On Holiday) Bill

Dangerous Wild Animals Bill

Social Security (Additional Benefits) Bill

Education (Married Persons Of Compulsory School Age) Bill

Licensing (Amendment) Bill Lords

Adjournment