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

In rising to move the Second Reading I am conscious of the good fortune that I have enjoyed at an early stage of my parliamentary career in coming so high in the Ballot. I am equally conscious of the responsibility which the conferment of this privilege places upon me and, above all, the responsibility of seeking to uphold the high traditions of this House.

I shall not burden the House with the detailed reasons why I chose this particular subject for my Bill. The choice was not easy and I had to think long and hard before making it. The licensing of public service vehicles is an esoteric area of law. I say that with some feeling as one who has had a fair amount of contact with the law in my professional capacity.

What is more, PSV licensing pervades the rights of ordinary people in ways that few of them would recognise. Occasionally they can find themselves tripping over it in unexpected places. This has happened to a large number of head teachers and their staffs, to members of voluntary bodies serving a whole range of disadvantaged groups in the community, to youth leaders, parish priests and to many others who were trying to help people get about by providing informal transport facilities. They have begun to discover over the last year or so that what they are doing may well be illegal, for in the eyes of the law they may have brought themselves within the scope of an intricate and far-reaching licensing system for buses and coaches which, as likely as not, they did not realise existed, and that there are august bodies called the traffic commissioners who may feel obliged, if certain things come to their notice, to prosecute through the courts.

What was it all about? Where had those various groups gone wrong? To set the answer into proper perspective one has to go back about 50 years. Let me say straight away that I do not speak from personal knowledge but with the benefit of material supplied by various people with whom I have been discussing this subject.

Before 1930 public road passenger transport was chaotic and, frankly, a danger to life and limb. Motor-driven buses and coaches were suddenly operating on the roads in appreciable numbers. I believe that they were well known in some places as omnibuses and charabancs. Sometimes they were licensed by local authorities, sometimes not, rather in the same way as now happens with taxis.

Where they were licensed or not, there was no control over the routes at all. Competition was cut-throat. Buses raced down the street to be first to the bus stop to grab the available passengers. One group of passengers would be turned off a vehicle so that that vehicle could pick up a more profitable-looking group further down the street. Highly profitable routes were creamed off. With all this thrust and parry the not-so profitable routes were served after a fashion perhaps but for the rest no one bothered very much. There was no universal system of checks either on drivers of the vehicles with all the dangers with regard to safety.

Against this background the Road Traffic Act of 1930 set up a country-wide system of licensing to bring order out of this chaos. Any vehicle carrying members of the public against payment was to be classified as a public service vehicle and be subject to licensing. Its operator would have to show that he was a fit person to run the vehicle and the vehicle itself had to meet certain standards. If the operator wanted to pick up and set down passengers on a particular route. or run regular services between two points, he would have to justify his proposals and put in an application to implement them if they were accepted. As a quid pro quo he would be given protection against unlicensed competition.

So the PSV, the PSV driver's licence and the road service licence came into being—the PSV and PSV driver's licence to ensure that the operator, vehicle and driver were fit to offer a service to the public and the road service licence to ensure stability and continuity in regular and diverse services.

For the purposes of administering this system the country was divided into eleven traffic areas. For each area an independent body was created by statute to be known as the traffic commissioners. They would be the bodies to exercise licensing powers within a generally wide but closely specified series of criteria set out in the Act and they would be generally responsible for enforcement of the system.

The formula used to define a public service vehicle involved the concept of carrying passengers for hire or reward. The test whether a road service licence was needed turned on whether the passengers were carried at separate fares. Essentially, we still have embodied in Part III of the Road Traffic Act 1960 the exact system which the 1930 Act introduced. Thus, any vehicle which is adapted to carry eight or more passengers and is used to carry passengers for hire or reward is a PSV. If a smaller vehicle carries passengers at separate fares, it is likewise a PSV.

The definition in the 1960 Act of the key words "for hire or reward" and its interpretation give the licensing net a very fine mesh—certainly far finer than the layman would ever imagine at first sight. Operation for hire or reward occurs if any payment is made in consideration of someone's being given a right to be carried, even if the payment covers other things as well, even if the right is not exercised, and no matter who makes the payment or to whom it is made. To become liable to PSV licensing, therefore, one does not need to be a commercial bus operator.

It is not my intention to pass judgment on the system I have just described as a whole, nor to seek to do anything about changing its across-the-board impact. Such a complex structure covering such a wide field is essentially something for Government to review. In my view, any general changes should be initiated by Government.

I have identified a particular specialised area in which the effect of public service vehicle licensing law has unforeseen and inescapable consequences for people who are tapping voluntary effort in a worthwhile way. They do not seek to serve their own immediate interests or to offer services to the public at large. What they do benefits the community in ways that could not realistically be achieved by any other means. It is my conviction that these areas of activity—illustrated so well in the report "Fare Deal for Minibuses", published in December by three organisations, including the National Council for Social Service—should be lifted right out of the ambit of PSV licensing. It could not have been intendted to cover them. They did not exist when the law was framed or even when it was consolidated in the 1960 Act. They have developed o meet needs which have long been recognised but which could not be met to any significant extent because the resources to meet them did not exist. That they are now being met is due primarily to the arrival on the scene of the minibus as a relatively low-cost means of carrying small groups of more than family size.

So we reached the stage where there were thousands of minibuses throughout the country carrying specialised small groups of people for 101 different purposes, all involving voluntary effort applied for the benefit of the particular group and all probably on or over the boundary of legality. Yet no one seemed in the least concerned, until questions asked by the relative few who had some inkling at least of PSV licensing began to raise doubts. Perhaps it was a niggling worry about insurance—what did the policy mean by "hire and reward"; was it the same as "hire or reward"; was a contribution to costs a fare; surely it did not matter if no profit was being made; and so on?

By the end of 1975 concern about where they stood in relation to the law began to nag at many people using minibuses. The National Association of Youth Clubs called a one-day conference in London in January last year. Its attention was drawn to an Adjournment debate in this House about 10 days previously. In that debate, initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton (Mr. Emery), the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment had explained the background of PSV licensing and EEC regulations as they affected people using minibuses for social purposes. That answer helped, but it was not sufficient to allay the doubts.

My hon. Friend the Member for Shoreham (Mr. Luce) introduced a Bill part of which was designed to meet that situation. I have asked him to intervene towards the end of the debate to sum up various points, if he catches your eye, Mr. Speaker.

As a result of that conference, a working party was set up by the National Association of Youth Clubs, the National Council of Social Service and the National Council for Voluntary Youth Service. It investigated the problems and considered possible answers. The report I mentioned earlier, "Fare Deal for Minibuses", contained its findings and recommendations.

I have taken some time dealing with the problem and its background. I make no apology for that. I think that it will make it easier to understand what I am seeking to do in the Bill, with the invaluable help of my sponsors, and why I am tackling the matter along particular lines.

I took "Fare Deal for Minibuses" as my starting point. I found myself in general agreement with the intentions of its recommendations, but I thought that they needed development to provide a firm and effective base of law which would enable each organisation to see exactly where it stood.

The working party clearly knew the kind of bodies it felt should be covered by an exclusion from PSV licensing. Just as clearly, however, it was in difficulty in producing a water-tight definition which would make the scope just right. I thought, and I still think, that such a definition is unattainable. Therefore, I propose to work on the basis of a very broad definition of areas of activity eligible for consideration, but to limit the actual exemptions from licensing to those bodies which apply for and are granted a permit.

The permitted uses would exclude carriage of the public at large and commercial operation. This would be prevented and have no place in any exclusions that I am seeking to bring about in the Bill. I believe that that would provide for the necessary flexibility, clarity and protection against abuse. There would be provision for standards to be laid down for the vehicles in the interests of safety.

Clause 1 provides the framework for a permit system covering vehicles which seat between eight and 14 passengers, which do not carry members of the public at large, and which are not being used with a view to profit. The permit would identify the vehicle to which it related and the body to which it had been issued.

The exemption from public service vehicle licensing would apply only so long as the minibus was being used by the body holding the permit, and in accordance with whatever conditions were attached to the permit. These would cover, for example, the passengers of the kind who could be carried in the vehicle. Permits would then be issued by the traffic commissioners for the area where the vehicle was ordinarily kept to bodies which in their view were concerned with education, Churches, social welfare or other activities for the benefit of the community.

The commissioners would have to have regard to any directions given by the Secretary of State. In addition, there would be provision for the Secretary of State to designate bodies coming within this general description, which could issue permits to their local member organisations, for example.

This would be done by means of an order subject to the negative resolution procedure in both Houses of Parliament, which would lay down detailed criteria within which the designated bodies would be able to carry out this function. Orders could be varied or revoked.

Clause 1 also incorporates a safeguard to ensure that vehicles released from PSV licensing through the permit system do not accidentally get caught up by hire car licensing.

I support my hon. Friend's Bill, but have the tight conditions in Clause 1 caused any fears on the ground of unfair competition among existing minibus operators who have PSV licences?

I know that my hon. Friend has considered this point carefully, and he has mentioned it to me on other occasions. I believe that the Bill contains the necessary safeguard, but it is an important point to which we shall return in Committee. I shall bear the matter in mind in the meantime.

Clause 2 lays down that the permit must identify the body to which it is issued and the vehicle to which it relates. It provides for the attachment of conditions defining the classes of passengers who may be carried and other matters which may be laid down by the Secretary of State in regulations.

There are provisions for the variation of conditions attached to a permit, and for its revocation by the traffic commissioners or the issuing body. Otherwise, the permit remains in force until the vehicle changes hands or, where issued by a body other than the traffic commissioners, that body ceases to be designated. The final part of Clause 2 caters for the situation where it seems appropriate to issue permits to named persons rather than to bodies.

The powers of the Secretary of State to make regulations are contained in Clause 3. They can cover the form of the permit and matters to be covered by the conditions, fees to be charged by the traffic commissioners, documents to be carried on the vehicle and conditions as to fitness which vehicles must fulfil. This is an important point which brings certain aspects to bear. Before any fitness regulations are made there must be consultation with a range of people, including representatives of vehicle owners, local authorities, the bus industry—operators and unions—and the motor vehicle manufacturers. Transitional provisions can be included in these fitness regulations to allow for a gradual changeover to the new standards.

Finally, the clause deals with the interpretation, commencement and extent of the Bill. There would be a period of three months after Royal Assent before the Act came into operation to allow time for the making of orders and regulations.

I have sought to make the Bill as simple as possible, given the basic objectives that it must seek to achieve. First, I seek certainty for the bodies concerned about where they stand, secondly, safety of vehicles, and, thirdly, safeguards for the bus industry against possible abuse of these provisions. The scope of the Bill will make it possible to achieve all three objectives.

Will the hon. Gentleman say a few words about the question of possible revocation where operators fail to come up to fitness standards? Does he expect that such a matter will be dealt with by regulations?

My hon. Friend is right to raise that matter. It will be dealt with by regulation. Such regulations will be drawn up only after fullest consultation with the various interests. I did not lay down those standards in the Bill because standards may vary, but I wish to leave it to the Secretary of State to make regulations following the fullest consultations with affected parties.

I have sought to avoid imposing any unreasonable burden on voluntary bodies or creating additional demands on the public sector. I was impressed by the emphasis, in many of the comments I have received, on the desirability of making use of the existing expertise and machinery of the traffic commissioners for the issue of permits. If this function were allotted to county councils—and I floated this idea as an alternative because some of my hon. Friends feel that it would be a better mechanism—they would have to create machinery which does not exist, with the inevitable public expenditure repercussions.

The same considerations led me to develop the idea that certain national bodies might be empowered to issue permits to their own offspring as it were. This would help to spread the load and keep down costs in the public sector. I know from discussions with some national bodies that they now see a good deal of merit in this approach.

I should like to saw a few words about the size of vehicle covered by the Bill. The document "Fare Deal for Minibuses" talked in terms of an upper dividing line of 18 seats, including the driver —that is, using the normal convention of our law, vehicles adapted to carry not more than 17 passengers. The Bill as drafted has a cut-off point of 14 passengers. In selecting that figures I was influenced very much by what I understood to be the probable outcome of negotiations in Brussels on various EEC regulations. At the same time I thought that it would be unfortunate to appear to be offering a special framework under domestic law for a certain size of vehicle when a proportion of them would become subject to fresh requirements under EEC rules.

Despite this, I have been urged strongly in a large number of replies to my consultation letter, to raise the upper limit to 17 passengers. This is a matter that can be usefully discussed in detail during the progress of the Bill. There is nothing that I can do directly to determine where EEC requirements bite, because that is entirely a matter for the Community. But I know that the Secretary of State has some sympathy with those who would like to have 17 passenger seats at the cutoff point. Perhaps the proceedings on this Bill may strengthen his hand in the negotiations in Brussels. At least, one can only hope that that will be the result.

I broached the idea in my consultation letter that larger vehicles, outside the immediate scope of my Bill, might for safety reasons be subject to PSV requirements, even though they were not being used for hire or reward. After some further research and in the light of responses to my letter, I have come to the conclusion that this is not something I could usefully seek to tackle in this Bill.

I should like to make some general comments on the outcome of my consultations.

What reaction has my hon. Friend had from the insurance companies over his proposals? I speak as a strong supporter of this Bill, because I come from a rural area that is suffering from the cutback of support for school transport, which is one of the urgent features lying behind this Bill. What is the view of the insurance companies about the safety factor, bearing in mind the size of these vehicles?

I know that my hon. Friend is concerned about this area. Consulta- tions with the insurance industry are proceeding. I hope that what will come from these consultations will be a desire on the part of the insurance companies to have a permanent insurance which can readily be granted where safety standards are observed under regulations and under which the premium is comparatively low. That is a matter on which I shall continue to consult. I repeat that I have already had some consultations on the subject.

In addition to oral consultations, I wrote to a large number of representative organisations and I sent copies to constituent bodies. There was a good response to that effort. I have not had time to study all the replies in detail, but it is true to say that none of the organisations that commented raised any objections in principle to the approach described in my Bill. Certainly the voluntary bodies backed my Bill wholeheartedly. A significant number expressed concern about safety factors. The Confederation of British Road Passenger Transport indicated strong support for the traffic commissioners as the body to issue permits. It urged a high degree of precision in legislation and expressed concern about the threat of abstraction of passengers from existing services. The matter of vehicle safety standards was one on which it felt strongly. The confederation also suggested that driving ability might be coupled in some way with insurance requirements. I am awaiting its further comments after it has had an opportunity to study the Bill.

I have also been able to have consultations with some of the trade unions concerned. I welcome their acceptance of the principle of voluntary organisations being able to run their minibuses without inappropriate restrictions. They have raised a number of points which I am studying carefully.

I turn now to the response I have had from local authorities. The Association of Metropolitan Authorities welcomed the Bill and the Association of County Councils indicated its general support but stressed the need to avoid imposing additional expenditure on local government or causing loss of business to licensed bus operators. The Association of District Councils expressed concern lest exemptions from licensing ran too wide, but was otherwise sympathetic towards the objectives of the Bill. Responses are still coming in, and while I am grateful to the bodies which have replied, I do not want to create the impression that it is too late for anything else to be considered. I hope to continue consultations with my sponsors beyond Second Reading. There is still much to be mulled over.

I shall mention three matters which are likely to be raised in Committee. The first concerns drivers. No mention of drivers is made in the Bill. My view, as indicated in my consultation letter, was that the degree of skill needed to drive a minibus was not such as to call for a formal qualification. Some of the replies that I have received support my view, others question it and one or two people have opposed it. We shall certainly need to discuss that question further.

The second matter deals with whether the reference to Churches is wide enough to cover all the groups which clearly qualify for consideration. It is not my intention to exclude anyone connected with religious activities, but some concern has been expressed about the choice of words. I think that I already have an alternative formula which would meet any difficulty. We can discuss that in Committee.

The third matter is a specialised problem concerning the difficulties faced by bus preservation societies. It is a highly technical issue. I have been urged to do something about it in the Bill. There is nothing in the Bill at present to deal with it. Had we been dealing with larger vehicles, I would have wanted to do something about this problem, but because we are dealing with smaller vehicles, I doubt whether it is feasible even to try.

I have already taken up a fair amount of the House's time, and I am grateful for the indulgence that hon. Members have shown. I am confident that we shall have a constructive debate on this small but worthwhile measure. I have had encouraging responses from several Ministers to whom I have written. I hope that the Government will be able to indicate their full support and that the House will be disposed to support the Bill.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Wirral (Mr. Hunt) on the way he has so ably explained the purposes of the Bill, and on his luck in obtaining a place in the Ballot. I recall that on a previous Friday I was sponsoring a Bill which was second on the list, but on that occasion the Bill was talked out. I am pleased to congratulate the hon. Member on a Bill which I am sure will be universally supported.

I know from my own experience that there are many organisations such as Churches, schools, youth organisations, old people's clubs and so on which use this type of vehicle to carry out their work. If the Bill reaches the statute book it will redress a situation which has for a long time harshly affected such bodies because of the effects of the Road Traffic Act 1960.

Many of these organisations already possess this type of vehicle or would hope to acquire one to help them in their work if the law were made much clearer. I am particularly thinking of a day centre for the elderly not far from my constituency, in which I have an interest. The people who attend the day centre are often taken to and from the centre by voluntary car drivers or by minibus. The minibus is essential for carrying the physically disabled and those who cannot travel easily in ordinary cars. It has enabled many people to enjoy new activities and has in many instances given them a new lease of life. I am not suggesting for a moment that the way in which the bus is being operated is strictly within the terms of the law. As for the hon. Member for Wirral has pointed out, there is uncertainty about the present legal position. This Bill can overcome that difficulty.

The Bill is widely supported. I am particularly aware of the support from the London Federation of Boys' Clubs. There is a voluntary club in my constituency which caters for young people and there is another club not far from where I live, and not far from my constituency, which also does a magnificent job among young people. Both clubs have written asking me to support the Bill because it would greatly assist their work.

These organisations have tremendous difficulty in carrying out their work because of a lack of funds. Most of the money has to be raised through fundraising activities, which are becoming more and more difficult. Any help which can be given, either financial or by changing the law, will be greatly welcomed. We must also realise that, in these times of financial restraint, help from local authorities is becoming more and more difficult to obtain.

A letter from one of the clubs, which opened comparatively recently, pointed out that it was already being overwhelmed by the demands made on it for such things as rates and other overheads. Too little recognition is given to the valuable social work carried out by voluntary organisations. Part of a letter which was sent to me states:

"We are providing a very important service to youth in this part of the borough at very little cost to the borough."

I am making this plea today because I think that we should help voluntary organisations in every possible way.

As I have said, uncertainty will be swept away by the Bill, and this will be of great help particularly to clubs for the elderly. Such people do not completely appreciate the ramifications of the law. I do not wish to develop the point about whether the minibus to which I have referred is being operated strictly within the law. From what I have heard from the hon. Member for Wirral, I should think that such difficulties as the competence of drivers and the fitness of vehicles will be attended to in Committee.

I have great pleasure in commending and supporting the Bill, and I hope that it will shortly reach the statute book.

No one who has had anything to do with road accidents and their results can doubt the essential requirement that the strongest and most sustained laws should govern the use of public service vehicles to ensure that they are safe on the road. The appalling results when a bus load of people is involved in an accident and the question of compensation which follows, quite apart from the family misery caused, make it essential for us to maintain the strictest rules and regulations in connection with public service vehicles. In no instance is that more important than in that of smaller vehicles, the use of which is becoming so prevalent. Many minibuses and small vans converted to carry passengers are using the roads and the control of them is just as important as it is in the case of larger vehicles.

Such control implies cost and, as my hon. Friend the Member for the Wirral (Mr. Hunt) has properly said, because of that cost we have given protection to the users of such vehicles, just as we give protection, although sometimes I wonder whether it is very good, to taxi drivers, who must maintain their vehicles at a much higher standard than the standard required for other vehicles. Perhaps that standard has been eroded with the advent of minicabs, but it is important to make clear that the Bill—which I strongly support—is not a means simply of opening up competition or of subjecting those who, naturally and properly, must spend a lot of money on their vehicles to unfair competition.

I therefore welcome the approach of dealing with the matter flexibly so that the commissioners may consider the question of a broad definition and then go a stage further and say not only that the vehicles which we are discussing come within the definition but that, for example, school masters and school mistresses may be carried in them.

Will there be any necessity for prior publicity to be given to any applications which are made so that other people who may feel that they will be affected may have the opportunity of making representations? Also, will there be a right of appeal—I presume that there will be—if an application is turned down by the commissioners? I hope that if the application of a person or organisation is rejected there will be a right of appeal and that there will be advance notice of applications so that people who may be affected by them may have the chance to make representations.

The Bill will be of great benefit to my constituency. It is difficult to think of a town in which there are more organisations which would wish to run community service vehicles. With the exception, I think, of a ward in Bournemouth, we have the greatest proportion of retired people in the country. We have clubs, churches and schools which would wish to run community service vehicles. Such vehicles are costly. A Rotary club, for example, may donate a vehicle worth £2,000, £3,000 or £4,000 but the cost of running it amounts to £20 or £30 a week.

Members of Parliament receive 12p a mile when driving their vehicles on parliamentary duties. When I said to my accountant that that seemed quite generous, he laughed. He said "You are not paying your way". The minimum amount with which any vehicle can be kept on the road is 12p a mile. When translated into terms of running a minibus for community service, one can understand the cost involved after the initial capital provision has been made. For that reason, I welcome the possibility of making a realistic charge so that the vehicles which we are discussing may not only be purchased but kept on the road and used by as wide a section of the population as possible.

The hon. Member for Wirral (Mr. Hunt) spoke extremely cogently and most persuasively on his most commendable Bill. As he properly said, the details of the Bill can be argued in Committee, but it is right that some of us should say a few words in support of it.

I wrote to the Minister's predecessor about this problem some time ago when the matter was brought to my attention by a number of constituents, among them headmasters of the large, successful comprehensive schools in my constituency. I received a helpful and reassuring reply from the Minister and that helpful attitude was maintained. However, the Minister realised, as the headmasters in my constituency and myself realised, that such helpfulness could be only temporary since there was no adequate statutory base. The Minister was helpful in the short term, and I hope that the present Minister will be equally helpful when the question of the solution to the problem presented in the Bill arises for his consideration in Committee.

One reason for my support of the Bill is the activities of schools in my constituency. In the eighteenth century it was customary for a few sprigs of the British aristocracy to be taken on grand tours, while the majority of people never left their home localities.

The schools in my constituency engage in extensive overseas travel. Some of the youngsters travel long distances. Parties went to Greece and Yugoslavia only a few months ago, not because the parents of the children cannot afford the air fare or the cost of package tours, which is almost prohibitive, but because the schools possess buses. Such travel makes a useful contribution to the education of the young people in my constituency. For that reason, my constituents and I are grateful to the hon. Member for Wirral for introducing the Bill and to those who have worked so hard on it.

I marvelled at the request of the hon. Member for Wirral for further mail. Those of us who have been involved with Private Members' legislation—I have had the good fortune, or misfortune, to take three Bills through the House—hesitated to applaud the hon. Member's request because, unfortunately, people write to Members in large numbers when Bills of this sort are before the House. I am not sure that it is good parliamentary practice for the hon. Gentleman to be seeking to increase our burdens in that way. However, I hope that the mail which has descended or will descend upon him will not prove too burdensome.

The hon. Gentleman has referred to the National Council of Social Service and the other bodies that were involved in the working party. It is right that tribute should be paid to them.

One headmaster from my constituency, the headmaster of Wales Comprehensive School, which has a great interest in this matter, shares the hon. Gentleman's view that ideally the seats on the minibuses should number 17, rather than the figure proposed in the Bill. I recognise the reason for the number in the Bill but I am a little concerned about the temporary arrangement for existing minibuses. I hope that in Committee, if not today, the Minister can offer reassurance and explain that the Government will seek to ensure that when the Community next considers the detailed regulations in this matter it will take steps to satisfy the United Kingdom need.

The headmaster to whom I have referred did not mention Clause 3, which includes the provision that fees may be charged by the authority. The hon. and learned Member for Blackpool, North (Mr. Miscampbell) referred to the very expensive nature of road traffic today. Although under the Bill minibuses may not be run for profit-making purposes, they will be inevitably expensive to run. Schools very often have difficulty in carrying out their activities, particularly if they have in mind the children from poorer families who are equally entitled to join in school excursions. As they are not out for profit, I hope that the Minister will ensure that no excessive fee is charged by the licensing authority.

I do not wish to say more, except that the hon. and learned Member for Blackpool, North was quite right to say that the Bill must not be and is not a measure that will in any way weaken the standards of road safety, which must be maintained at a high level. I know that such a weakening is not in the mind of the hon. Member for Wirral and that he seeks, without lowering standards, to resolve a problem that has continued for some time. I hope that the Bill will resolve the problem and that the House will give to the Bill the support that it deserves.

I rise to support the Bill. I have a constituency interest in this matter, and I must disclose it straightaway. I have an area where we once had trains. The trains were taken away on the promise that we would have buses instead. I am afraid that the buses do not service the community.

In my constituency there are many villages in which people are virtually prisoners, with no possibility of going anywhere—including housewives with children. In this situation, naturally many societies of the kind envisaged by the Bill have arisen. Good minded people have created a possibility for the elderly or for disabled people, and indeed, even for housewives to go shopping, of travelling elsewhere. All these things have come into being.

I just wonder, although there is obviously a great desire on the part of the hon. Member for Wirral (Mr. Hunt) to help all categories, whether the Bill goes far enough. In areas such as mine we have the problem that a person might not fit into any of the proposed categories yet there is a need to benefit the community simply by enabling people to move from one place to another when otherwise there is no possibility of their doing to.

The minibus in my constituency is also the norm for children to get to school. It is an area in which there is much snow in winter. Without the minibus being protected, many things would come to a total stop. The minibus is almost our safety valve for communication of all kinds.

Therefore, I support the hon. Gentleman's Bill. I congratulate him on the very thorough way in which he has put it forward.

I should like to add another constituency interest. It goes beyond the Bill, but it may be of interest to the House. In a region in which public transport virtually does not exist, and in whch we have the problem of a lack of sufficient jobs for males, there is the area called Ardersier. Many people will travel a long way to get jobs there. I am afraid that we could not form the Ardersier Historical Buildings Society, because it is an area that was reclaimed from the sea by the oil companies. We might be able to form an Ardersier bird watching society, because the pond where the famous ducks go has been kept. We must do something about this transport problem.

From surrounding villages men bought minibuses so that other men could get to work. That was done by community self-help. It was done so that men could get to their work, because public transpirt would not go and collect them. That situation is not covered by the Bill.

I ask the House to consider this matter, because I am not lucky in getting my name pulled out of the hat to promote a Bill. It is not the EEC idea of minibuses that counts. It is, perhaps the Moray and Nairn idea of minibuses that should count.

Two good men in my constituency who bought minibuses to take their mates to work, in a co-operative, will be coming before the criminal courts as criminals in a month's time. I really wonder whether the Government could not lean on the Lord Advocate in this matter and say to him, "Why should men such as these, who are just trying to get to work when there is no public transport to take them, be penalised?"

In a way, I should like the Bill to go further. However, we all know how difficult it is to get a Bill through the House. This Bill will do so much good in so many fields, and I am already indebted to the hon. Gentleman, on behalf of my constituents.

I rise to support the Bill and to congratulate the hon. Member for Wirral (Mr. Hunt) on the introduction of such a constructive measure.

It may be surprising that a Member for a North London constituency should regard minibuses as a matter of great import. I am all too well aware that some of the benefits that obtain in rural areas obviously do not apply in an area such as Enfield. Nevertheless, one should recognise that even in an area such as London, which is comparatively well served by public transport, there is the problem that although radial roads are well served, local lateral routes are much more difficult. For many local organisations, it is getting about the borough that presents the problem, and not the advantages of getting into and out of the city.

This public transport problem presents great difficulties for a number of organisations in my constituency that are concerned to run minibuses firmly within the framework of the law. As has been mentioned today, a number of organisations have found to their horror that in carrying out their voluntary work on behalf of the community they have often strayed somewhat from the literal position of the law with regard to the use of these vehicles.

I hope that I shall not be accused in any way of supporting a measure that might detract from the rôle, value and importance of public transport. I should certainly like to disavow myself of that position, having in the past had the honour of helping London Transport with certain private measures that have been introduced in the House, and being concerned with the development of things such as bus lanes, and so on, which have greatly improved and added to the effi- ciency of London Transport—although many motorists take a rather different perspective on the matter.

Having said that, however, I believe that minibuses for voluntary organisations play an important rôle. When a previous measure proposed by the hon. Member for Shoreham (Mr. Luce) was about to be introduced, I received several letters from schools and organisations urging my support for it.

Although I am enthusiastic about the measure, I have one or two minor reservations about it. We ought to pay a great deal of attention to safety. I do not regard driving minibuses in the same way as driving a private car. It is not right to suggest that it is an easy transfer from one to the other. Even if it were, the fact that a minibus carries passengers raises the issue of responsibility, which we ought to look at closely.

Many years ago, I had the hair-raising experience of driving a small minibus over the Simplon Pass when the brakes failed. I hasten to add that it was in the lower reaches, otherwise I would not be here to tell the tale. A frightening experience of that kind raises the importance of safety with regard to the servicing of the vehicle and safeguards in that respect, and the competence of the driver.

I recognise that the hon. Member for Wirral has introduced into the Bill some provision for the certification of drivers but it looks a fairly loose concept. Although I recognise that the spirit of the Bill would be lost if we insisted that all drivers of minibuses should hold public service vehicle licences, we ought to consider who should be entitled to drive these vehicles and what level of competence should be expected of them.

During the last 18 months or so there has been a number of accidents involving motor coaches, in which highly skilled and professioal drivers have been unable to avoid mechanical or road difficulties. There has been much public concern about the safety of large coaches and that they should operate under the strict provisions laid down for public service vehicles. I fear that, if we pass this measure, we might witness a minibus disaster involving many people, especially if we yield to the pressure, against which I can see little argument, calling for buses which will hold as many as 17 rather than the restrictive number provided in the Bill. I recognise some of the issues which will arise from EEC regulations but I have had difficulties with EEC regulations from time to time. But it seems that, for example, the Bill will discriminate against rugby clubs but not against soccer clubs. I am opposed to that kind of discrimination.

We should recognise the development of the use of minibuses in educational institutions. For one institution which has written to me—St. Ignatius School, in my constituency, where the lower school is some distance away from the upper school—the minibus performs a service for the sports team on Saturdays and for other school outings, and is also a means of communication between two fairly distant sites.

There has been a lot of activity by parent-teacher associations to help to provide minibuses. That is to be welcomed. I look forward to the day when parent-teacher associations do more than raise funds for schools. I see a more important part for them in the development of education for our children. Nevertheless, a great deal of attention has been given to this.

One of the worries these organisations face is that having worked hard to provide the money to buy a minibus, the high costs of running it are becoming a great barrier. Unless we try to help to cover the running costs by some form of charge, much of this work will be greatly hampered.

I do not wish to detain the House further. I commend the Bill, and I hope that the reservations I have adduced will be considered seriously and carefully in Committee.

I fully support the Bill and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for the Wirral (Mr. Hunt) on the pains he has taken to consult all the interests. He has brought out some of the limiting factors in a pioneering Bill which has its hazards as well as its advantages. All of us are grateful to have had the issue put so plainly before us.

I was a sponsor of an earlier Bill with a similar purpose, presented by my hon. Friend the Member for Shoreham (Mr. Luce). I sponsored it, because, like him, I found a tremendous demand in my constituency to remove doubt and to bring in certainty about rights to operate transport of this kind. I had strong support recently from Surrey County Council for this Bill. Its anxiety was that there should be delay. It felt that legislation on these lines would help mobility within the county. Equally, I have had strong support from the Surrey Voluntary Services Council, which is involved with many groups which organise their own activities and will be greatly helped when this Bill becomes law.

I represent a rural constituency. It is made up of a number of villages, which can become fairly isolated, especially for those who do not have cars or who are getting too old to want to drive any more. This isolation is becoming worse as rural bus services are being limited by rising costs to themselves and their passengers.

Surrey County Council has recognised the problem and in recent years has spent a good deal of money on subsidising rural bus services. But it is now being forced by central Government and its own financial problems to reduce public expenditure and to reduce its support to the rural bus services. The reduction of services is increasing the isolation of the villages. It is having not only that general effect but also the particular effect of cutting down the bus services available for school children. These bus services are particularly important at this time when village schools are tending to be removed to central locations.

I am concerned about the very young who now will have to travel away from their villages to their schools and who are not yet old enough to ride bicycles on the road, which their elder brothers and sisters can do, provided the journeys are not too far. This is a real problem and an anxiety for parents who are trying to get their children to school.

This is the urgency behind the Bill in our part of the country. Parent after parent, and groups of parents, have written to ask me to protest about the cutting of subsidies for bus services and to ask whether we cannot do something to hurry the passage of a Bill of this kind. I am all in favour of getting on with this and helping the Bill to become law as soon as possible.

But there is the real problem of safety, which has been mentioned before in the debate. We have a responsibility, when we support a new advance in community enterprise, to help people to stand on their own feet. We also have a strong responsibility to the drivers of minibuses and the people they carry and to the rest of the travelling public to see that safety standards are as high as is reasonable to ask.

I am especially impressed by the care which my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral has taken to see that standards of vehicle maintenance and driving skill shall be strict and shall give confidence to the public. The attitudes of insurance companies will be important. I hope that the close support which the Government have given in the latter stages of this movement towards licensing minibuses will result in good safety standards.

I end with a plea to the Government to get on with it. Many people look forward to the day when some mobility will be restored to those groups of people who are determined that they shall not be isolated and who are prepared to stand on their own feet and go to the expense of helping themselves.

I wish all good fortune to the Bill.

There is insufficent understanding in this House and certainly in the Department of Transport about the need for radical innovation in the provision of transport services in both urban and rural areas. That need for innovation and for radical reform has come about because of dramatic changes in the price of oil and in the cost of providing transport in urban and rural areas, to say nothing of a rate of inflation hitherto unknown in the country. These factors have led to many people, who in the past were able to afford bus services no longer being able to afford them today.

This is bad news, of course, for the bus companies. It is bad news for the National Bus Company which in 1975 made an unprecedented loss of £19 million. The reason why the National Bus Company made that record loss of £19 million was the twin evils of the dramatic increase in the cost of operating buses and the extent to which there was passenger re- sistance to an increase in fares which the Minister and I agree was inevitable.

In urban and rural areas today, the buses are providing less and less frequent services at higher and higher cost. In my constituency—and I suspect that the same is true of those of other hon. Members, especially those representing constituencies like my own which are partly rural—it is possible to see single-decker or double-decker buses driving round the countryside with one or two passengers on board and sometimes with only two people on board—the driver and the conductor. It is those large buses, which are often superfluous to the needs of the people whom they are supposed to serve, which are draining the National Bus Company and its subsidiaries of resources and whose charges are so great that very many people can no longer afford to travel by bus.

Who are the people most hit by this state of affairs? They are not the comparatively rich who still have motor cars. they are not those who can afford to take taxis. The people most hit are the elderly, the young and those who wish to participate in sporting and social activities.

Who are the people who will benefit most from my hon. Friend's excellent Bill? They are precisely the people whom the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Fowler) wish to help.

The Bill should be warmly welcomed. It recognises the need for innovation. It recognises that the National Bus Company and its subsidiaries, which have been so resistant to change, need to be spurred on. Happily, my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral (Mr. Hunt) is pioneering a measure which I believe will be one of the significant features of the development of transport over the next two decades, namely, the advance of the minibus. This is right. Over the coming two decades and more, we shall see the development and expansion of the minibus because it is the minibus which is more likely to meet the needs of the public over the next 20 years than those large South Down buses which trundle three-quarters empty between Polegate and Willingdon, Eastdean and Jevington and between Pevensey and Pevensey Bay in my constituency.

Despite the welcome which I give to the Bill, I have one or two reservations about it. Why was my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral not sufficiently bold to make it a pioneering exercise in favour of the minibus? Why has he called the measure the Passenger Vehicles (Educational and Other Purposes) Bill? It would be difficult to think of a more forbidding and less exciting title. I hope to serve on the Standing Committee which considers this Bill and, although it will be taken very late in the Committee stage, I shall propose an amendment to the Title. Let us be bold and call it "The Minibus Bill". After all, it is about minibuses. In this place, we become accustomed to all the jargon of the day which is usually cooked up by the bureacracy represented by Ministers. We all become extremely perplexed by this bureaucratic nonsense. Let us call this measure "The Minibus Bill". If I am fortunate enough to serve on the Committee, that is the first change that I shall propose.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wirral said that, if a minibus could take more than 14 passengers, it would not come within the scope of his Bill. Again, let us be bold. Let us extend and liberalise these laws as much as we can. My hon. Friend hinted that he might seek to amend this provision to 17. But why stop at 17? What is there so magic about that number? The single-decker buses which trundle around his constituency and mine can take between 40 and 50 passengers. The double-deckers can take 80—

Those are maxibuses.

Yes, they are. But I am saying that we should extend the carrying capacity of the minibus a bit above 17 passengers.

In the Bill, under my hon. Friend's very splendid proposals for relaxation, still we have the traffic commissioners. We must not be unkind to traffic commissioners, of course, I could almost become the founder president of a society for being kind to traffic commissioners. But we have to remember whose creatures they are. Traffic commissioners are appointed by the Secretary of State, by county councils and by district councils. It is not the fault of the traffic commissioners that they have to administer the licensing system. But, because they are the creatures of the bureaucracy, they are not given to great innovation. Let us take away from the Traffic Commissioners the powers which the Bill confers upon them. It would be much better if the powers my hon. Friend seeks to confer upon the traffic commissioners were conferred on certain selected Tory Members. That would ensure that we had a more original and more dynamic approach to the granting of permits.

I would like the Bill to go a lot further. In the development of a transport policy we need far more operation of the free market and far fewer restrictions, subject to one key element which was referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Dorking (Sir G. Sinclair)—that is, the overriding need for safety. Provided there are proper safety provisions we should liberalise still further the licensing laws which so often operate against the public interest. But even one step forward in this vale of tears is to be welcomed. I congratulate my hon. Friend on his Bill.

It may be for the convenience of the House if I intervene in the debate at this stage to give the Government's view of the problem we are considering this morning, and of the Bill sponsored by the hon. Member for Wirral (Mr. Hunt).

If it is any comfort to the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Gow), my brief for this debate is headed "Minibus Bill" From the trend of his speech I should think that the title should be "Minibus, Traffic Commissioners and Tory MPs Bill." But perhaps we can talk about the measure in a less formal fashion by referring to it as the Minibus Bill.

I would like to say straight away that the Government are seriously concerned at the problems facing voluntary bodies and schools in this regard. The hon. Member for Wirral has described these vividly and fully, and I do not want to add to what he has said. However, I would like to congratulate him on choosing this issue to bring before the House, and also to congratulate the voluntary bodies on the serendipity of publishing their report—hardly by chance—on the very day of the Ballot.

My congratulations are made all the more valid by the fact that I was third in the Ballot last year, and I introduced a Bill which probably would not have appealed to many hon. Members in the House today—the North of England Development Agency Bill—which was blocked by the Administration of which I am now a member, even though it received a Second Reading.

The problem has a complex background, because anything concerning bus licensing is complex. The Government are tackling current problems pragmatically, with the intention of seeing what actually happens on the ground with modified licensing arrangements in experimental areas before deciding how to proceed for the country as a whole. To facilitate this we have prepared a short Experimental Areas Bill, which was introduced in another place last week and will have its Second Reading there on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, as the hon. Member has amply demonstrated, the problem of voluntary body and school minibuses is separate and urgent, and can and should be tackled by separate legislation, without damage to public services or in any way prejudging the position on bus licensing and bus services as a whole.

This is not because of the vehicles. There is nothing particularly magical about minibuses, although they are extremely useful vehicles. The reason why this issue can be treated separately is the use to which the vehicles are put, carrying pupils of the school, or the client group of the charity or voluntary body.

For this reason I think that the provision excluding carriage of the public at large from arrangements under the Bill is a key one. This is not because I disapprove of volunteer services for the general public, such as the Norfolk Village Bus Service. These are very valuable initiatives. I wish there were more. There are plenty of opportunities for them. But they need to be considered in the same way as commercial bus services. Indeed they have already been relieved of the need to go through the full procedures of the licensing system by the streamlining provision in Section 30 of the Transport Act 1968, and this simplified procedure was the one used by the Norfolk village Bus Service in particular.

But even that simplified procedure is not appropriate for the kind of operations we are considering this morning, and I am convinced that it is right to tackle this problem separately, and to tackle it now. The hon. Member's Bill and our own Experimental Areas Bill do not in any way conflict, and there is room for both of them—indeed a need for both—in the present situation. I think it particularly appropriate for them to be going through Parliament at the same time.

I would now like to make some general comments on the content of the Bill, without straying into Committee points. A Bill on this subject needs to meet the three basic considerations set out by the hon. Member. First, it must give simplicity and certainty to the people operating these minibuses. One of the worst evils of the present situation is that they are often in doubt whether what they are doing is within or without the law. It would have been attractive if the beneficiaries of the Bill could have been simply defined in the measure and left to get on with it. But they are so diverse that this is not possible, so that kind of approach would have replaced one uncertainty with another. The hon. Member has therefore gone for a permit system. It think this is unavoidable, and agree with this part of his proposals.

The second requirement is that the Bill should protect the legitimate interests of commercial operators, particularly by preventing abuse by bogus voluntary bodies. For this purpose the arrangements need to be assimilated to the general enforcement arrangements of the law. The use of permits also facilitates this, and the assignment to the traffic commissioners of the task of issuing permits for the great variety of local bodies, where the risk of bogus organisations arises, clinches the argument. For clearly identified bodies such as scouts and guides, Age Concern, and other bodies of that kind, the same problems do not arise. Here I think the proposal for the Secretary of State to designate major bodies to issue permits, subject to necessary safeguards, is right. No doubt we shall be returning to the question of safeguards in Committee, but the general approach is correct.

The third general requirement concerns safety. This was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, North (Mr. Davies) and the hon. Member for Dorking (Sir G. Sinclair). It is a particularly difficult issue because instinctively one feels special safety requirements are necessary, but in fact what we are concerned about here is clarifying the law about the financial arrangements that are permissible for operations that have already been undertaken for years. This is not a change that affects the safety of the vehicles or their drivers.

When considering the safety record of these bodies we find that the national accident statistics do not differentiate minibuses at all, much less those operated by charities and voluntary bodies. For the future we are putting this right—at least in collecting separate figures for minibuses as a whole, of which these minibuses for charities are a substantial proportion. Meanwhile all I would say is that we have no indication that any particular hazards have arisen in the operation of these vehicles.

I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Hardy), who made a welcome speech, that of course we all take account of his remarks about the number of passengers. A number of hon. Members mentioned this aspect.

Finally there is the question of costs. I see that the hon. Member proposes that the Secretary of State be given a power to fix fees for permits issued by the traffic commissioners. I would expect him to exercise this power to fix a fee designed to cover the administrative costs. This would avoid expense falling on public funds, whilst requiring only a modest fee from the voluntary body receiving the permit.

I would like on behalf of the Government to commend the hon. Member's Bill to the House and wish it a quick passage to Royal Assent.

May I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral (Mr. Hunt) on this Bill and on the exceptional way in which he presented it to the House? May I also congratulate him on the speed of response to the working party's report on the voluntary organisations which appeared last year? My hon. Friend's progress has exceeded the hopes even of that working party, which proposed a 12-month consultation period. My hon. Friend has shown that a private Member, given the luck of the draw, can cut through the delays of Government legislative timetables, and he has had the advantage of some extremely valuable preparatory work done not only by the working party but by my hon. Friend the Member for Shoreham (Mr. Luce).

This is an uncontroversial Bill which will be welcomed by voluntary organisations and schools alike. Before coming to the particular points of the Bill, I wish to make a few general remarks. The difficulties that voluntary organisations are encountering stem from the public service vehicles licensing provisions as laid down not by an Act of 1960 or 1950, but by the Road Traffic Act 1930. It must be a source of wonderment to many of us that the provisions of that Act, relevant to a bygone age, figure so prominently in our discussions of bus and coach services in the late 1970s. Yet the position is that that Act has remained largely unreformed through decade after decade.

Anyone who really doubts that the provisions of the Act were designed for a bygone age should read the Second Reading debate of the Bill on 18th February 1930. Mr. Herbert Morrison was then the Minister of Transport, and then, as now, speed limits were being discussed. Dealing with the options open to the Government he said:

"Supposing we indicate that the speed limit should be increased to 30, 35 or even 40 m.p.h., what are we saying? We are saying that in the ordinary run of driving a motor car it is reasonable to run at 30, 35 or 40 m.p.h. I venture to say"—

said Mr. Morrison—

"that that is an exceedingly dangerous thing to say and that it is dangerous to get it into the motorist's head." [Official Report, 18th February 1930; Vol. 235, c. 1209.]

It so happens that the Under-Secretary is probably one of the few Members of this House who still agrees with Mr. Morrison, but for the rest of us the quotation gives some indication of just how outdated is the 1930 model of legislation that the hon. Gentleman seeks to preserve.

The hon. Member has raised the question of Herbert Morrison's enormously prescient statement in 1930. I would have thought that his prophecy of carnage on the roads had been amply fulfilled, so I do not see why the hon. Member should draw consolation from criticising what he said.

If the hon. Member wishes to advocate speed limits of 30 m.p.h. or thereabouts, that is his option, and he will have the opportunity in later discussions to do so. I was giving the example, however, to illustrate that most of us would consider that the attitudes of the 1930 Act are slightly dated by this stage.

As I was saying, even worse than that was that the 1930 Act was based upon the 1928 Royal Commission on Transport. In other words, the Commission's conclusions were based on the transport conditions of the mid-1920s, and there is little doubt that some of the conclusions it reached then would send a collective shiver through the Department of Transport and might even worry the hon. Gentleman. One of its unanimous conclusions at that time was that driving tests were totally unnecessary and that we should not take the slightest notice of the experience of those curious Americans across the Atlantic who had introduced it.

It is easy enough to take examples of this kind that sound quaint and perhaps amusing. But they are amusing only up to a point because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Gow) said, the shadow of the 1930 legislation still hangs over much of passenger transport today, and, frankly, I think that reform there is long overdue. It is overdue because the present laws stifle innovation, because they prevent services developing naturally to serve public needs, and because they are based on transport conditions which have changed out of all recognition.

When pressed on this question the Under-Secretary invariably resorts to defending his position by saying that we should not throw out the baby with the bath water. It is about time he came to realise that the baby he is so fond of protecting is now almost half a century old. I shall be fair to the Minister: today he gave a welcome to the Bill, and we were very grateful for his reasonable attitude and his reasonable speech; perhaps we may hope at some later stage for a total conversion on this question.

The position which has been created for voluntary organisations with this Bill is one further example of the defects of the 1930 legislation. Few in 1930 could have envisaged the kind of minibuses we have today, let alone that voluntary organisations would have been making use of them to the extent that they are. The minibus is an ideal form of transport for voluntary organisations. Some idea of the number of organisations that use them is given by the last two reports on the one-day conference organised last year by the National Association of Youth Clubs, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral referred.

First, let me deal with voluntary organisations. But for their efforts there would be gaping holes in our social service provision. There is not the slightest doubt of that, and I think that the point was put extremely well by the hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Shaw). One of the tragedies of inflation is that it has struck a double blow at these voluntary organisations. It has sent up their costs and it has caused their incomes to level out or fall because the public cannot give as generously as they would like. This has affected the whole range of voluntary organisations, those which deal with children, those which deal with the elderly and those which deal with the disabled. Many such organisations face major crises and are being forced to curtail their activities.

There is today, therefore, a particular duty on the House to look with great attention at the needs of voluntary organisations. The Government have a role to encourage the voluntary effort and the work of these bodies, and they have a part to play in reducing the burden of restrictions upon them.

Similar factors apply to schools, and I know from my own constituency how concerned are the headmasters and parent-teacher associations at the position. Again, the position is that voluntary contributions have supplemented the State's provision, and once again the context is one in which the educational budget is being cut.

However, here we come to a problem. At present the strict letter of the law would appear to prevent voluntary organisations from making individual charges to cover their running costs. Yet, according to the joint survey which has been referred to today, more than half the voluntary organisations need to make charges if services are to continue. In other words, they cannot cover their costs from their general funds and it is, of course, no wonder.

On the other hand, if they make charges, according to the strict letter of the law it would seem that they come within the scope of the licensing laws, and that brings more problems and more expense. That will often mean that it will be prohibitively expensive to adapt existing vehicles to meet the requirements of public service vehicles. The voluntary organisations estimate that the large majority of these vehicles could not be made to comply with the PSV requirements without structural alterations of such a radical nature that the cost would exceed the value of the vehicles concerned.

It is those sorts of problems that are now causing great concern both to the voluntary organisations and to schools. There is confusion about what is expected of them, and about how the law should be interpreted. Twenty per cent. of the inquiries coming into the legal department of the boy scout organisation now concern the licensing of minibuses.

I understand that two county councils have issued circulars to voluntary organisations stating that, in view of the confusion over the legal position, voluntary organisations should not make charges for services. Other organisations have reluctantly sought ways round the law. I gather that in one case a youth club offered its members a journey costing 50p by charging 55p for a bag of crisps immediately before departure. The bag of crisps was, in fact, the price of the ticket for the journey. By any measure that is an unsatisfactory situation and it cries out for a commonsense solution. It is precisely that kind of commonsense solution that my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral has provided.

The details of the legislation can be discussed in Committee, but I want to point out now that it will contain safety requirements. That point was well made by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Blackpool, North (Mr. Miscampbell). One of the criticisms made against those who advocate delicensing is that it will lead to unsafe vehicles being on the road. The Bill answers that by enabling the Secretary of State to make regulations, after consultation with interested bodies, while protecting the interests of organisations owning vehicles. There will be safety standards. That is of particular importance since many of these vehicles are used for carrying children.

Another point that we shall want to examine in Committee is that the Bill imposes limits of eight to 14 passengers. A point has already been made about the upper limit but I want to refer to the lower. It means that car sharing schemes will not be included. I should have thought that car sharing would be of value to voluntary organisations, particularly for the transport of the elderly. That point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Dorking (Sir G. Sinclair).

We should remember that 55 per cent. of households now have cars, and 70 per cent. of households in rural areas have them, but the group most frequently without cars is the over-65s. There is a well defined need here. Sometimes public transport does not exist, and when it does it is often difficult for an old person to manage with a shopping bag or trolley. There is great potential for voluntary organisations to organise trips making use of volunteers' cars, and I am reluctant to see excluded from the Bill an opportunity for such voluntary work. But we can return to that point in Committee.

It is possible that some people believe that the Bill goes too far and that it liberalises the position too much. I hope that those people realise that many Opposition Members would like to see the Bill go much further than it does. We question the whole basis of the licensing laws and would like to see experiments in such services as the commuter coach service.

But this is not the Bill to enable such reforms. We are here presented with an important and specific area of concern. This is a compromise measure to help the position of organisations that the House has a duty to help. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral on his initiative and I hope that the Bill will be speedily placed on the statute book.

As a sponsor of the Bill and as a sponsor of the earlier Private Member's Bill presented by my hon. Friend the Member for Shoreham (Mr. Luce), I am delighted to welcome the Bill. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral (Mr. Hunt) on choosing this subject for his Bill and on the excellent way that he has prepared it. I was pleased to hear the Minister's generous response.

My interest in the problem was aroused by my general interest in the problems of transport in rural areas, to which other hon. Members have already referred. My constituency is a large one of 550 square miles. The population is fairly large but widely scattered, and the constituency has 160 towns and small villages. Some of the towns have large populations which have only some transport problems because they are on major networks.

But there are many small isolated villages and it has become clear that the ordinary National Bus system is usually not the answer to the transport problems of those areas. Such a bus system requires a large subsidy that we are increasingly unable to afford and, with the best will in the world, a reasonable service cannot be given to isolated villages.

This is a difficult problem to solve. Hon. Members, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Fowler), have referred to this. They hit the nail on the head in identifying flexibility as the way in which the problem should be tackled, especially flexibility in relation to our licensing system, which is ossified, obsolete and a major obstacle to solving rural transport difficulties.

It was through my wider interest in the matter that the problems experienced by voluntary bodies and schools over their minibuses were drawn to my attention. Eighteen months ago a youth centre in Diss in my constituency wrote to me to say that it had considerable misgivings about the use of its minibus and about whether the bus could be used to its full potential. Other organisations in my constituency then wrote to me, including a secondary school in a rural area that was forunate enough to have two minibuses. Teachers were worried that they were incurring risks and using subterfuge to make the best use of the buses for not only school purpose but theatre trips and long journeys at high cost for camping and holidays abroad. Since then, the Scouts and the St. Raphael Club have been in touch with me.

I have checked with some of these organisations during the last 24 hours and I find that they still have the gravest doubts about their present position and that they feel inhibited in their use of minibuses. The Bill would make an important contribution to their operations. It will make only a small but important contribution to solving wider rural transport problems. I am sure that my constituents are eager that we should agree to the Second Reading of the Bill today and it looks as though, with the general good will of the House, the Bill will be put on the statute book shortly.

There are one or two points that I hope the Minister will reply to in Committee. Some of these points have already been raised by other hon. Members, but I want to refer to them again to indicate that there is an area of serious concern.

The upper limit for the number of passengers laid down in the Bill is 14. A minibus owned by a youth centre in my constituency and a company minibus that the centre uses accommodate 17 passengers—or maybe 16 passengers plus a driver. I imagine that it would cost a fair amount to adapt the minibuses and I do not know whether the owners are willing or able to do that. I am not sure that we should be persuaded by possible threats from the European Community into fixing the limits laid down in the Bill. This is a point that we ought to look at again, particularly—as has been said earlier—since the working party referred to 17 as the limit. There is worry about this figure and it may be possible to get it amended in Committee.

I also want to ask the Minister whether other bodies—that is, bodies other than the school or voluntary body owning a bus—will be able to hire such a minibus for their own purposes. For example, will the Women's Institute in a town such as Long Stratton—which is a small town in my constituency—be able to hire the minibuses belonging to the school there? They are probably the only minibuses in the area. I can see the possible difficulties in this and we must be careful not to be unfair to commercial operators, But there are advantages in terms of covering the costs, and high overheads of the minibuses that the voluntary organisations have to pay. When large amounts of money from public funds go into school facilities, we ought to make sure that the widest possible use is made of those facilities. I hope that that matter will be looked at in Committee. I am not sure what the position is under the Bill but, subject to safeguards, there would be an advantage in enabling voluntary bodies to make use of the one minibus which may exist in their own area.

Other queries have arisen as a result of correspondence that I have had with the Norfolk County Surveyor. I have not sought the wide representations that my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral has, but I have done some research locally. The county surveyor, who has wide experience of these problems but is also deeply interested in the Scout movement in Norfolk, has drawn attention to two additional problems.

First, he asks whether those who drive vehicles carrying up to 16 passengers—if the maximum is adjusted—should have a more severe driving test. Perhaps the Institute of Advanced Motorists or some other body could assist. Obviously, we do not want to go anything like as far as the PSV licence test.

Second, there will be a problem for some voluntary bodies in adapting their vehicles to come within the terms of the Bill. That is why I welcome the provision for a transitional period. I hope that that period can be used to help in this area—although I share the general concern that safety standards should not be relaxed.

I give the Bill the warmest possible welcome in the context of the wider problems of rural transport. It makes some difference to a deteriorating situation, although in some respects it may make the position worse. I have been in correspondence with those concerned with the National Norfolk Community Bus Service, to which the Minister referred. The secretary says that at present a teacher living in his village may regularly drive 40 children up a motorway at night with no licence but an ordinary car licence simply because the children do not pay fares. But he cannot drive the secretary's minibus one mile between two villages with 12 children on board because they do pay fares. Under the Bill, the voluntary body's minibus will be able to be driven between the villages whereas his own minibus will not.

So there is a problem there. We must move as quickly as possible to greater relaxation in other directions—for example, in car sharing, which would make one of the biggest contributions to the most isolated villages.

The Minister has often expressed his anxiety about these matters and he is at present encouraging experiments. I wish much more power to his elbow. If he shows a greater sense of urgency, he will find ready support on this side of the House.

My hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, South (Mr. MacGregor) referred to the limit on numbers. It never fails to amaze me how often we run into petty-mindedness in the EEC. I did not support the grand concept of membership of the EEC simply to run into petty difficulties like this. It is much more important that the Common Market should concentrate on the important matters of life and not this sort of thing.

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral (Mr. Hunt) on introducing his Bill so well and on his good fortune in the Ballot. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Shoreham (Mr. Luce) on his initiative in this respect in the last Session.

This is an excellent Bill on a subject well suited to a Private Member's Bill. If my hon. Friend had not been so fortunate in the Ballot and no one else had taken up this subject, we might have waited many years for a Government to introduce such a reform.

The Bill deals with a limited area which has involved increasing difficulty for schools and voluntary organisations which the House will normally want to go out of its way to assist. It corrects a situation in which many of the schools and voluntary organisations previously assumed, until not many months ago, that the law more or less accorded with what the Bill proposes. Therefore, incidentally, the Bill legalises what was previously assumed by many people who, are now horrified to discover that they were, unwittingly, probably breaking the law.

Of course, many people would like the Bill to go much further. I would welcome the sort of reforms to which my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Fowler) referred. Not least, The Wiltshire Association of Parish Councils is deeply concerned about what it regards as the "deteriorating public transport situation." It has pointed out that recent steep rises in fares make a mockery of the licensing system in so far it was devised to stop some private bus companies creaming off the profit and leaving the loss-making services for other companies.

The association goes on to say that it has become increasingly convinced in the light of changing needs

"of the essential role of the local entrepreneur in his ability to work up economic services"

for local people in a variety of forms of contract.

At the moment the licensing system inhibits progress in that direction. Meanwhile, many loss-making services are being withdrawn and many bus services which were profitable are becoming less so. In consequence there is much less money available to subsidise the marginal bus services, which in any case become steadily more marginal, if not unprofitable.

There is therefore a strong case for reform. I was pleased to hear what my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Cold-field said. However, my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral was entirely right to limit the scope of the Bill. It is only in that way that a Private Member's Bill has a chance to success.

I don't know whether this will be of any help to my hon. Friend the Member for Dorking (Sir G. Sinclair), who mentioned insurance, but when I was first approached eight months ago about this problem by a school in my constituency, the headmaster said that he had had "a reassuring paragraph" inserted into the minibus certificate of insurance.

"to the effect that the company will not regard contributions towards petrol as 'plying for hire'."

He said that this did not alter the legal position, but it allayed his qualms about the insurance company ducking respon- sibility in the event of an accident because the school was technically breaking the law. After the passage of the Bill it will not be breaking the law. Meantime, this point might be of help to my hon. Friend the Member for Dorking and others.

I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for the Wirral on introducing the Bill. I hope that it will pass into law very quickly.

I join the chorus of praise to my hon. Friend the Member for the Wirral (Mr. Hunt) on introducing a Bill so skilfully and modestly drawn that even this Government, with all the fetters placed upon them by the corporate sector, could not find it in their hearts—if it is possible that they should have such a thing—to opposed it.

As a lawyer, when I see a Bill, I look first not for what it does, but for its flaws. I confess that I can find none. It threatens no trade union interests; it lowers no standards of road safety; it deprives no State or municipal body of income; and, above all, it adds nothing to public expenditure.

The Bill certainly satisfies some important social needs: first, by making a modest contribution to halting the decline of pleasure in our rural life; secondly, by giving some heart to local charities which are facing crisis, by removing a serious obstacle to the functions of so many of them; thirdly, by preventing the making of criminals out of local Church leaders and the organisers of parent-teacher associations and old people's societies.

Those who represent rural areas know what current misery is caused by the sheer inadequacies of public transport today. Trains no longer run or stop; bus companies can no longer afford to run their buses, even with vast public subsidies; and local authorities feel that they can make no further demands on the ratepayers. Many people in rural areas who have left the towns because there was not the availability of good housing or because it was too expensive are therefore the poorer people who cannot afford cars. Indeed, the proportion of car owners in some country areas is extremely low. As a result, the elderly and disabled are not only physically cut off, but are mentally and psychologically extremely distressed by the lack of contact with the centres of society in any area.

The psychological distress is also felt by children. We sometimes forget that they suffer from the emotional and psychological disturbance which is occasioned when their parents cannot easily get them to school or when the whole business of travelling to school is so fraught with difficulties and takes so long that when they arrive they are not in the frame of mind to absorb the teaching that they should receive. The psychological distress to local communities by being cut off from the centres of towns and cities is an important factor which should not be overlooked.

It is astonishing that, however intractable transport problems in general may be, the problems of rural transport are probably the easiest to solve. Yet this Government—indeed, not only this Government, but previous Governments—have not got round to doing very much about it. A Conservative Bill, which would have had far more radical effects than this Bill, unhappily fell because of the February 1974 General Election.

In this area there is a vast amount of waste of existing public resources. Post Office vans and vehicles sit empty for long periods of the day. Emergency ambulances and other vehicles lie unused in municipal garages. There is far too much red tape and conflict between local licence concessions affecting school transport.

I received a letter this week from a constituent saying that she has difficulty getting her children to school and that other residents in the area have the same difficulty. Apparently there is a municipal bus which comes so far and no further because some other municipal road transport concession has been given to another bus company. A private bus cannot pick up her friends and relations because of the restrictions on its licence. There is another transport restriction for another school bus which does not allow it to pick up children from another area. Therefore, although there are a number of buses with empty seats going to and from this fringe part of the town into the centre where the schools are, nothing can be done. That is pure red tape. It is bureaucracy gone mad.

I commend the Bill not only for what it patently will do for children, the old, the disabled, and the charitable and religious institutions, and for the modest restraint with which it avoids all the pitfalls, but because it will break through the incredible inertia which has grown into the activities of Governmental and bureaucratic control of transport. Once the dead hand of State control has been lifted, be it ever so little, I know that the fresh air will rush into the subject and that the result will in the end be a more sensible and flexible approach to transport as a whole, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Fowler), in a characteristically dynamic and powerful contribution, told the House.

This may be a small first step, but its effect may well be great. It is high time that transport policy again became the servant of the people and ceased from being the gaoler, tormentor or, in so many cases, the destroyer of community life.

I join in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for the Wirral (Mr. Hunt) on his good fortune in the Ballot, his assiduity in consulting people and his appetite for work by soliciting still further correspondence about the matters which he has brought before us in the Bill.

I should think that most hon. Members have had representations from organisations, schools and others about the problems underlying the Bill. I shall not attempt to recite the representations which I have received as we have already had a good run for this debate. I join in welcoming and giving the Bill support.

Apart from the representations which have been made to me, I should mention that a fortnight ago today I had my regular meeting with social workers at the Essex County Council Social Services Department in Braintree. They had indicated to me in advance that the subject in the forefront of their minds—I had expected that it might be some aspect of social benefits—was rural transport. That was the subject about which they wanted to talk to their Member of Parliament.

Social workers have become increasingly aware over the last few years that the lack of transport for many groups—particularly the disadvantaged, whether disadvantaged by reason of being old, mentally handicapped or disabled—is one of the main problems facing them. Therefore, in an area which has many villages and small towns they are concerned about transport problems, some of which are tackled in the Bill. The Bill will not resolve all those problems, but it will go some way to alleviating them. I hope that, together with the Minister's proposed legislation on experimental areas, we shall now begin to make progress along these lines.

I should like to make one general observation and one plea about the Minister's approach to the Bill. The general observation will be clear from the debate, perhaps not least from the fact that the hon. Member for Enfield, North (Mr. Davies) took the trouble to take part. This is an important matter. It is not just a question of the Tory villages. There is increasing difficulty about transport not only in villages, but in suburbs of major towns and on estates which are quite close to the centres of major towns, particularly for old people and mothers with young children who do not have access to the family car because the husband uses it for work. It is a myth to believe that it is only in remote isolated rural spots that these problems exist.

It is a problem not only of the availability of conventional public transport, but of its growing cost. Although it is an expensive business my family is lucky enough to be able to run two cars otherwise my wife—although she lives only four miles outside Chelmsford—would have a more difficult life. I use the other car for other activities, and when one of the cars is being serviced my wife and children are forced to use public transport. What surprised me was the sheer cost of it and the staggering amount that now has to be paid even for quite short journeys. Indeed, I wonder how people who do not happen to be as fortunate as my wife and I manage to get about at all. It is a very important social problem.

If I have one criticism of the Minister and of the existing and previous Governments it is that the motion that we should now be having experiments in this area instead of actually doing something is an indictment of the whole governmental system. This is not a problem that has just appeared. It has long passed the experimental stage. If we have to wait another two or three years before action is taken about the growing erosion of public transport in suburbs and rural villages, a great deal more damage will be done.

I come finally to my appeal to the Minister. Although I am doubtful after the tone of his speech, I hope that he will not be too defensive in his approach to the Bill and in the use of the regulations and powers that are given him. I accept the reasons that led my hon. Friend to limit the scope of his Bill and I understand the difficulties and possible controversies that he could have got into had he taken it any wider.

I equally well understand the objections that, for example, some bodies, such as the Transport and General Workers' Union, have to some aspects of the proposals for taking de-licensing further. I can understand their worries about the safety of jobs. The busmen in my constituency put these points to me in another context. I take them well and I in no way want to undermine their jobs or livelihoods or the existing conventional public transport services.

I sometimes wonder whether this defensive frame of mind—it is something that we must accept and take into account—is not becoming self-defeating. Because the absence of innovation in our transport services while the conventional services have been declining has produced a vicious circle. This has forced more and more people who cannot afford it to have cars bcause that is the only possible way in which they can be mobile. It is forcing more and more elderly people who would like to live in rural communities and use public transport actually to ask to be moved into the towns, because that is the only way in which they can solve their problems.

Propping up public transport by this defensive mentality gets us into a vicious circle in which defensive attitudes themselves are undermining the concept of public transport and making it more and more difficulty for people to use it. It also makes it difficult for many people to get to a major centre where they would use the normal conventional public transport services.

I hope that the Minister will use the Bill adventurously rather than in a restrictive way. I am not clear about how large the scope of the Bill can be. Clause (3) refers to bodies concerned with:

"other activities for the benefit of the community."

That is apart from education, Churches and social welfare. Potentially the scope can go very far indeed. So far as I can judge from a hasty reading of the Bill it could cover a community association or a residents' association on an estate. If that is the case, I hope the Minister will not seek to prevent that simply because they may run a bus partly to help people travel to their jobs.

I am not saying that the Minister should use this Bill to solve all the prolems and undermine what he is trying to do with the experimental areas legislation. I hope that he will make the maximum use of the powers in the Bill rather than the minimum use.

I strongly support the suggestion about car sharing. That is an important point and I hope that it will be possible to look at it in Committee. I hope that the Minister will not be defensive in his approach to the size of the buses. Obviously 40 seats, which is the size of a normal bus, would be too high. Whether it should be 14, 15 or 16, or any number up to 25, I do not know. But I hope that the Minister will make it as high as possible to ensure that the Bill gives the maximum flexibility possible and makes the biggest possible contribution so that it is capable of solving a problem that is very serious.

I am pleased to have the opportunity of speaking briefly in the debate, especially since I am a sponsor of this excellent Bill and because it follows from the Bill that I introduced in the last parliamentary Session.

I join with other hon. Members in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral (Mr. Hunt) on the magnificent way in which he presented the Bill and on the fact that he has decided to introduce it. This is the kind of occasion that sees the House of Commons at its best when both sides of the House support a measure that offers a practical form of help for people who need it. Unlike so much of the legislation that we pass, the Bill will lead to a simplification of the law, rather than further complications. That in itself is a reason for giving it strong support.

The Bill deals with part of a much wider general transport problem, referred to by many hon. Members, including my hon. Friends the Members for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Fowler) and Eastbourne (Mr. Gow). It is a growing problem which arises from outdated, complicated and bureaucratic laws, the 1930 Act setting up the traffic commissioners and the Road Traffic Act 1960. Many complications have arisen in modern circumstances. In addition, in recent years there has been a substantial growth in the use of minibuses for certain purposes, or the desire to use them.

There are urgent transport problems in rural areas, where there has been a decline in public transport services and fares are becoming more and more expensive. There is growing social isolation in many villages, where the evidence of the consultative document is that about 30 per cent. of all households in rural areas are without cars. There are great difficulties over school transport particularly for those outside the statutory limit. We know the problems of travelling to work and the question of sharing private cars.

The most urgent problem is that of the voluntary bodies. The Bill that I introduced last Session sought to deal with three issues—relaxing the law with regard to the use of private cars and with regard to rural transport and relaxing the licensing regulations with regard to voluntary bodies. That Bill was designed to deal with some of the wider problems. It would be churlish of me on this occasion to indulge in strong criticism of the Government over those wider problems, having just heard the Minister willingly accept this Bill. I warmly welcome his doing so. We can deal with the wider problems on another occasion.

There have been experiments in places such as Norfolk and Oxfordshire. We have seen the use of post buses in various parts of the country and experiments with community buses. In my constituency the Community Minibus Association for West Sussex covers 15 villages in the Pulborough area. With a membership of about 300, it helps the elderly and disabled in the area to go shopping, see their doctors, go to libraries, visit the chemist and collect their pensions from the post office. The association discovered that one man had not been outside his house for seven years, until transport was made available. That kind of effort undoubtedly meets a great social need, but such bodies may find themselves unknowingly breaking one regulation or another. The Bill will remedy that.

When I introduced my Bill the overwhelming support from all parts of the country was for that part dealing with voluntary bodies. Organisations that gave their support and urged immediate action included Age Concern, the National Consumer Council, the National Federation of Consumer Councils, the National Association of Youth Clubs, the Youth Hostels Association, the National Federation of Women's Institutes, many county councils, bodies to do with the handicapped, private coach operators, the AA, many schools, the National Association of Local Councils and a whole mass of local voluntary bodies.

This Bill will meet an urgent social need by helping the handicapped, the elderely, schoolchildren and a whole range of other people. I think that the National Council of Social Service did a great job in the working party document that it produced. "Fare Deal for Minibuses". The key question that is posed was how voluntary bodies could operate their minibuses on an economic basis and within the law. It revealed the enormous complications of the present regulations, the inhibitions to innovation and experiment, and the fact that a number of organisations might unknowingly be breaking the law, and it sought to find answers.

The voluntary bodies at present have only two options. One is to try to obtain a public service vehicle licence from the traffic commissioners, which means enormous expense, and even then they may not obtain it. Secondly, they can have an enormous fund-raising operation, which is very difficult to sustain, even if they succeed in raising enough money to pay for the vehicle. The Bill will allow voluntary bodies running minibuses to change an economic cost for the service.

I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral will agree that the Committee stage is the time to deal with a number of important points raised by many hon. Members. The most important of those points concern safety. I am glad that Clause 3 empowers the Secretary of State first to consult all the interested parties and then to draw up regulations which are satisfactory in terms of standards. There is a great deal of concern that safety standards should be adequate, but it is right that there should be a degree of flexibility. If the present regulations were implemented, they would be totally inhibiting to many people who run a minibus today, or who want to run one, because, for example, their seating arrangements do not meet the requirements. I am glad that the Bill also allows a transitional period so that there is time for voluntary bodies adjust to the new situation.

Concern about insurance was expressed by, among others, my hon. Friend the Member for Dorking (Sir G. Sinclair), who has given great support to the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Wirral is in close consultation with the insurance industry, as I am sure the Minister is. I hope that the industry will be able to make arrangements which are favourable to those who are exempted from the PSV licensing system.

Great concern was also expressed about the question of the number of seats in minibuses. I join those who hope that in Committee we shall consider extending the regulations to cover vehicles with 17 seats. The survey by the National Council of Social Service revealed that a considerable number of voluntary organisations ran minibuses with more than 14 seats. Nearly 30 per cent. of all those who answered the survey's questions had minibuses with 15 seats and 3 per cent. or 4 per cent. had minibuses with 17. As my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Morrison) rightly said, we must consider the discussion in Brussels, but we must act in the interests of those people who matter very much, the disabled and the handicapped. They must come first.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Blackpool, North (Mr. Miscampbell) referred to the need to publicise applications and to consider an appeal system. The purpose of the Bill is to make the procedure as simple as possible and to avoid too many appeals. I do not know how much of an open mind my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral will have on this matter in Committee, because the one thing we must avoid is too much complication.

My hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, South (Mr. MacGregor) raised a significant and valid point about the possible hiring of a minibus by a voluntary body or the sharing of a minibus by a number of voluntary bodies. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral has an open mind on that matter, which we should consider in Committee, and I hope that the Government will also have an open mind.

I am pleased to be able to give my warm support to the Bill. I am convinced that with the support of both sides of the House it will reach the statute book. My hon. Friends will have done a great service, because he will have helped those in need and he will have helped to relax and simplify some of our laws.

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

I should like to congratulate the hon. Member for Wirral (Mr. Hunt) on the way in which he presented his Bill, and particularly on the final outcome which resulted in its being given a Second Reading. I feel that not the mailed fist but the hand in the velvet glove found its way into the Ballot box and enabled me to have the opportunity of presenting my Bill on the extinguishment, apportionment and redemption, of rentcharges.

It would be ungracious of me if I were not to pay a very warm tribute to all those who have carried out the immense amount of work leading up to the presentation of this Bill. A great deal of effort over a period of years has been expended on this subject, and all will agree that it is a vexed and contentious matter. I should like to refer to the efforts made by my right hon. Friend the Patronage Secretary, the Member for Bristol, South (Mr. Cocks) who unsuccessfully tried to introduce two Private Members' Bills on this subject, and by my hon. Friend the Member for Accrington (Mr. Davidson), the Parliamentary Secretary, Law Officers' Department, who has made similar efforts to remedy the situation.

Above all, I wish to commend the Law Commission for its untiring work in seeking to reach a solution to these problems. I hope that a little later some hon. Members will be present for this debate who have furnished material to the Law Commission which eventually resulted in an authoritative publication which is now known as Law Commission Document No. 68. That was the result of extensive inquiries throughout the country involving the taking of evidence and full consideration of these matters by lawyers eminently qualified to deal with this subject. That was a fair attempt to reach a solution, and I can see no better way of dealing with this matter than to take the recommendations of the Law Commission, plus the draft Bill that was published at the same time as Law Commission Document No. 68, and to incorporate that material into the present Bill.

I have had letters on this subject from solicitors, estate agents, valuation officers and others, and, no doubt because of the thorough way in which the Law Commission prepared its material, I have had not one objection to the Bill. Some points have been raised, but they can only be described as Committee points and not matters for a Second Reading debate. Nobody has tried to question the principle behind the Bill.

One solicitor who wrote to me suggested that the period for the total extinguishment of rent charges could well be 30 instead of 60 years. One letter from a valuation officer suggests that the way in which to approach these matters is not via the formula mentioned in the Bill—in other words, through redemption—but by means of using the existing market value and to let that be the basis of negotiation. However, these are fine points of argument and they can be dealt with in Committee.

I hope that the House will endorse that this historical and geographical anachronism should disappear and be replaced by the system outlined by the Law Commission. This Bill is very much the work of the Law Commission and its thinking will dominate my approach to the matter.

Many hon. Members have made various attempts at reforming the present situation which have gone to the heart of the problem. Members on both sides of the House represent constituencies in which there is a deep-felt need for such a Bill. Many Opposition Members have intimated that they would have no objection if I were to give their names as supporting this Bill, but I do not propose to do so. Let it suffice to say that there are Labour Members who are very much affected by this Bill. For example, my right hon. Friend the Patronage Secretary still has a rent charge on his house, as does my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Marks), the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment. We even have in the House a Minister who has the misfortune of having to collect rent charges, and if he fails to collect the sums due from recalcitrant rent payers, he has to foot the bill. I hope that he will put in an appearance and tell us about his experiences when meeting recalcitrant rent payers.

At one time there was some sense in the way in which the rentcharge system arose, but I shall not go back to the medieval times in which these charges had their origin. In more recent times, as a way of avoiding large amounts of capital passing from hand to hand, land owners gave developers the necessary rights to land, the houses would be sold freehold, and rentcharges would be recouped. Certain matters required close examination.

The rentcharge is a charge in perpetuity except for some recent changes in the redemption of rentcharges which are not well-known and which are somewhat obscure legally. In recent years massive rebuilding and development have taken place in many parts of the country, and more and more people wish to become owner-occupiers. However, when they buy the freehold of even a terraced house they often find that it is not truly freehold because it carries a rentcharge.

Owner-occupiers cannot understand the nature of the rentcharge. People can understand rates and taxes, and what they get for them. When a person buys a house, he wants to be able to say that he owns it completely, but often he has to pay a rentcharge without knowing why he is paying it. This leads to enormous frustration, anger and deep resentment.

The problem does not affect all parts of the country equally. For example, when the Patronage Secretary introduced a Private Member's Bill in 1970 he estimated that about 80 per cent. of residential properties in the Bristol area carried a rentchange. With development taking place around Bristol and extending into Somerset, great anxiety was being caused by the creation of new rentcharges.

The Greater Manchester area has an even more serious problem, namely, that while on paper the percentage of houses carrying a rentcharge does not appear to be as large as that in the Bristol area, the charges are more serious because Manchester is subject to overriding rentcharges rather than rentcharges on particular plots of ground. This aspect of the problem and many others are dealt with authoritatively in the Law Commission's Report on Rentcharges—Law Commission Document No. 68. The Law Commission decided as a result of its examination to draft a Bill, and its recommendations have been incorporated into this Bill.

The purpose of the Bill is to abolish the common rentcharge. This, along with many other matters which involve property and the law and the question of possible appropriation, must be considered very seriously. It is easy to state the objective but it is not so easy to achieve it. Above all, the Law Commission has been aiming at a solution which can be seen to be just and which strives to be eminently fair to all parties concerned.

It is probably this self-evident fairness of approach which has led to the response I have had from organisations I have mentioned. There is no opposition to the Bill in principle, but there may be matters which need to be ironed out in Committee. I think that the Bill goes a long way to meeting most of the possible objections.

Rent charges could be interpreted as a kind of debt. Declaring a general amnesty for debtors would amount to and would seem to amount to an expropriation of the creditors. Whatever political charges may be flung across the Chamber from time to time, I do not think that any hon. Member would deny that the idea of expropriation as a method of social reform is alien to this country. Expropriation is not a socially acceptable method of reform in Britain.

The nature of rentcharges is defined in Clause 1. The rentcharge is a periodic payment charged on land which is not payable under a tenancy or mortgage, so that although the rent payer has an interest in the land, the rent owner need have no interest in the land except his right to the rentcharge. Most rentcharges are perpetual but some—I understand that they are comparatively few—are offered for a fixed period.

The problem is further bedevilled by the fact that different terminology is used in different parts of the country. In the Bill they are referred to as rentcharges, but in other areas, such as in the constituency of my hon Friend the Member for Gorton, they are called chief rents and in the Bristol area they are referred to as ground rents. Calling rentcharges ground rents is totally misleading because in my part of the world, Wales, the term "ground rent" means rents payable under a lease. It is fatally easy for the ordinary person to confuse the rentconnection with leasehold, but there is no connection whatever. I have found that many intelligent people have been confused about this.

Therefore, the Bill is not concerned with altering the leasehold system. Any alteration in that respect would have to be the result of a political decision by the Government, who would have to draft and introduce their own legislation. The Bill is entirely outside the ambit of an exercise of that sort.

The Bill deals mainly with the common rentcharge which is usually charged on a dwelling house. Other rentcharges are designed for special purposes which are expressly exempted from the Bill's provisions, as in Clause 2(3), and they have been safeguarded.

Let me now deal with some of the defects of the rentcharge system mentioned in paragraphs 24 and 29 of the Law Commission's Report. They are normally historical. Rentcharges were once used to finance the purchase of land, thus avoiding large capital payments and providing the vendor with an income investment in place of a lump sum.

Such is the frustration of people that in certain areas different names are given to rentcharges. In some parts of the North rentcharges are known as "the builder's pension fund". In the Bristol area they are known as "the Bristol twist". People who own a house and land cannot see any logic in their having to pay a charge which does not meet any of the yardsticks applied to rates and taxes. I understand from people closer to the problem than myself that in many areas strenuous efforts are often made to keep the identity of the vendor or receiver of the rentcharges as secret as possible.

The most convenient method of financing purchases is by means of mortgage and yet rentcharges are perpetual. Many rentcharges remaining attached to properties can involve terraced houses when people decide that they have saved enough money to become owner-occupiers. Regrettably, developers sometimes create rentcharges which become an additional bonus on the sale of a house. That is reprehensible.

The system is a geographical anomaly because common rentcharges are confined to certain areas. Apart from the high incidence of the system in Manchester and Bristol, there are pockets of it in Newcastle, Bolton, Stockport, and so on. The system has a muddled history, not one of logic. Members representing what I might call rentcharge constituencies will be familiar with its history.

The third objection is that rentcharges are inconsistent with freehold ownership. People easily understand what it means to own a house or to be a tenant, but they find it bewildering and unfair when they are told that they own a house and yet have to pay a charge in respect of which there is no tenancy or lease. This is not to attach blame to the owners of rentcharges. It is the system itself and the historic roots from which it sprang which should be critically and objectively examined, and that is what I hope the Bill, based on the Law Commission's findings, does.

The incidence of the system can be complicated and burdensome because the rentcharges stick to the land even when the land is divided. The rent owner can collect all his rent from any householder and that householder must achieve reimbursement by collecting from the other house owners who are liable for a share of the rent. Therefore, one unfortunate householder among many often is forced to become, willy-nilly, a rent collector and to suffer all the unpleasant experiences which rent collectors experience when they carry out their duties. He collects rent that does not belong to him. If he fails to collect the rent, it can cost him in reimbursing the vendor.

Rentcharges can be apportioned—that is, they can be assessed—in relation to a particular house or piece of land forming a whole, and they can be redeemed by the payment of a capital sum. However, unless apportionment and redemption are arranged by agreement with the rent owner, that must be done through statutory procedures under the Law of Property Act 1925, and unfortunately these procedures have proved to be complicated and costly. Therefore, if the person who is liable for rentcharges tries to redeem, he may find himself involved in complicated legal matters, and it will cost him quite a bit of money. Often people adopt the attitude that it is not worth the bother of going through the statutory procedure if the rentcharge is small and that it is best left alone.

I turn to the question of the Law ComMission's solution. The Law Commission considered the problem of rentcharges with great care and carried out wide consultations. Its basic conclusions were three: first, that there should be no new rentcharges; secondly, that existing rentcharges should be terminated after a specified period; and, thirdly, that the procedures for apportionment and redemption should be improved.

There is, of course, a possibility of arguing about the length of period after which these rentcharges should terminate. I have had a letter to say "Why not make it 30 years? We think that it would be far better and there would be more justice in making it 30 years." The Law Commission's recommendation is 60 years, in order to avoid any possibility that there could be a charge of expropriation, even a shadowy charge, over the whole question.

An algebraic formula has been fixed. It is based on market values to a certain extent, but market values based on the yields of Government stock. Using the algebraic formula, the value of the redemption at a given point can be arrived at. It had been the intention of the Law Commission—indeed, it was a recommendation—that this should be done through the local authorities, so that the whole transaction could become almost an over-the-counter kind of arrangement once the redemption figure had been arrived at. However, with the burdens being carried by local authorities today, quite obviously there would be resistance—and probably rightly so—to the imposition of any further burdens on the authorities.

It was therefore determined by the Department of the Environment that the administration of the redemption side of this matter would be carried out by its own formula, which was evolved after a great deal of thinking and which is contained in the Bill.

The Bill is desirable. No new rent-charge is a simple proposition. It is achieved with simplicity in Clause 2. In the termination of existing rentcharges we must see that justice is done as between the rent owner and the rent payer.

There are certain possibilities. First, it is possible to abolish all existing rentcharges at once and force the rent payer to compensate the rent owner by capital payment. This would bear very hardly on people of limited circumstances and particularly heavily on the old, the infirm and people in various special categories.

Second, it would be possible to abolish existing rentcharges after a fairly short period, but in order to do that we should have to increase the incidence of the rent-charge in order to compress it within the more limited period to see that the rent owner was adequately compensated.

Third, it would, we hope, be possible to abolish existing rentcharges after such a period that the rent owner suffers no significant loss.

Because of the movements of inflationary forces or movements in the values of money, it is not possible to say that at any given period a rent owner would be marginally better off or marginally worse of. What we can say is that he would not be significantly affected. It was in this kind of approach that the Law Commission reached its assessment of a 60-year period for the phasing out completely of the charges.

Finally, among these options is one that I have already mentioned. That is that we could choose to abolish rentcharges without compensation. However, as I have explained, that is a method that is alien to the concept of social advance in Britain and one that we have not kept up. The Bill adopts the third solution, and I suggest that it is the fairest.

I should like to deal more thoroughly with procedures for apportionment and redemption, but those can be very much matters for adequate discussion in Committee. At this stage, I express the hope that the House will see fit to give the Bill a Second Reading.

Before I call the hon. Member for Stockport, North (Mr. Bennett), I should like to inform the House that there is a difference in the times that are shown by the clocks in the Chamber. Because at 4 o'clock on a Friday the exact moment can be critical for various Members, I want the House to know that we shall be guided by the two clocks with the green symbol on either side of the Chamber. If speeches are reasonably brief, the hon. Member will stand a chance with his Bill.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I should like to begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Evans) on his success in gaining a place in the Ballot, on choosing to introduce a Bill on rentcharges, and on the way in which he has just presented his Bill.

It seems very good that a Member representing a constituency in South Wales should come to the aid of Members from Manchester and Brisol who were not successful in the Ballot by bringing forward a Bill that deals with the problems of those two areas—although it is a little dangerous to say that the problems are of those two areas because no sooner has one said it than one receives a letter from someone pointing out that the problem exists in many other parts of the country. It certainly exists in the South-West, towards Mine-head, and examples in East Anglia come to mind.

Although the Bill talks of "rentcharges", in most areas they have a regional name. We have heard one or two of the colourful names by which they are called, such as the "Bristol twist" and the "builders' pension fund", but there are many less reputable names by which rentcharges are called in the Manchester area. I am sure, Mr. Speaker, that you would not want me to repeat those today. Perhaps the more reputable names are "chief rent", "chief" and "ground rent". The "ground rent" title is particularly misleading when it is applied to freehold arrangements, because it is much more widely known as a leasehold arrangement.

My first experience of the system of rentcharges was as a small child. The system that applied, at least in my neighbourhood, was that the charge was always collected on the first fine Sunday in the new year, when a man rode around on his bicycle and from each house in my road he collected £1, which was the charge. That always caused annoyance in my parents because the knock on the door and the demand for £1 on a Sunday morning was often not particularly convenient, and often there was not that much money in the house to pay it. As the man came only when the weather was fine, one might be waiting for him for a few weeks.

I still resent paying the rentcharge on my house. I know I have to pay it, but I feel that I do not get any benefit from it, and, as inflation continues, neither does the person who receives it get anything like as much benefit by the time he has paid postal charges and the charges for billing the amount.

Many constituents come to my advice bureau who are angry and perturbed about the system. I am fortunate in having at least one of my constituents sitting in front of me. He has certainly experienced some of the difficulties of overriding rentcharges which are a problem in Stockport and the North-West.

I am aware that the rentcharges cannot be redeemed and that they can be apportioned, but it is a costly and difficult business. There has been a steady campaign to get the whole system reformed. I am not quite sure what touched it off. It could have been the Finance Act 1963 which removed Schedule A tax. It may have been that which made its opponents more vocal. Since then. perhaps because of inflation, the charges in many instances have been hardly worth collecting. This may be because large rows of terraced houses were bought by their occupiers. The problem has grown steadily and become more and more of a sore in those areas where it is relevant.

By 1969, the Law Commission produced a preliminary report on it. It produced a final report in 1975. Between the preliminary and the final reports there was a great deal of activity in the House to try to get the process reformed. Reference has already been made to the work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South (Mr. Cocks) in bringing forward two Bills, and of my hon. Friend the Member for Accrington (Mr. Davidson) in bringing forward what he described as a "two-minute" Bill because it was so simple. But it did not manage to get on to the statute book. I should also mention my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Marks) who worked hard to persuade builders in the Manchester area to stop putting on new charges. It was significant that he managed to persuade the builders voluntarily not to put on any new charges, so we would be causing no hardship by this Bill in preventing the establishment of new rentcharges.

There is also the problem of establishing the title to a property. This is particularly difficult in the Greater Manchester area where there is a complicated system of overriding rentcharges. Once a property is registered with the Land Registry, most of these problems disappear. But, until it is registered, there can be difficulties in establishing title. Not only are there difficulties in establishing title, but often solicitors do not understand the system. If a solicitor comes from Manchester or Bristol he will understand it because he has grown up with it, but a solicitor acting for a buyer from another part of the country will find the system baffling and confusing.

It is quite common for a constituent to come to my advice bureau to tell me that he has bought a house which he understood to be freehold and having no problems but sooner or later, someone knocks on the door and says "May I have 50p for your chief rent?" The householder does not know what it is and asks me whether it is a charge which can legally be demanded. I have to explain the system to him.

The problem of inflation becomes particularly bad where the charge was fixed many years ago. There are instances of charges still being collected in Greater Manchester which amount to the old five shillings. Collectors cannot afford to send out many demands for money if the amount due is only five shillings. It may be best in those circumstances simply to forget the charge.

A gentleman in my constituency is responsible for collecting 10 overriding charges of £1 from each of his neighbours and passing them on to the person who imposes them. For a pensioner, £10 is a significant amount, but he finds that asking his neighbours to pay £1 is not an easy process. They are rather reluctant to pay it, and he has to remind them. It does not improve relationships on a street for someone to have to keep nagging his neighbour to pay £1. One of the problems of inflation is that the small amounts seem almost significant, but an overriding charge is quite substantial.

The problem of overriding charges is my next objection to the present system. It may have been logical originally to put a charge on a field or a plot of land, but when it is divided, to place a sub-charge on each sub-division produces a complicated process, with one person having the responsibility of collecting the charges and paying them on. It can produce difficulties in a neighbourhood. Many problems come to light in the Stockport area. One argument I have heard is about new estates. Most builders would be prepared to put the charge into the cost of building the estate.

Often the costs of going through the legal process for redeeming charges are greater than the original charges.

I hope that we can give the Bill a Second Reading, in Committee we can look at possibilities for improvement, including, perhaps, reducing the period of time for eliminating these charges. We might also consider the leasehold provisions to ensure that we do not create new leaseholds as an alternative to rentcharges. If we can look at these in Committee and pass the Bill in the present Session, the people of Manchester will be grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly for introducing it.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Evans) on introducing this Bill. During the election campaigns of 1974, I discovered that this was not simply a problem that I faced as a rent payer, but that many other people did who asked me whether the Government would take steps to resolve it. I know that many of them are now delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly has introduced this measure. I should also mention the work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South (Mr. Cocks) who tried on many occasions to deal with the Bristol "twist". My hon. Friend the Member for Accrington (Mr. Davidson), my neighbour in the next-door constituency, introduced what he described as a "two-minute rule" Bill in 1972 which unfortunately did not see the light of day.

I ought to correct the geography of my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly. Greater Manchester does not yet cover the whole of the North-West—

They are working on it.

There are many people who are determined that it will not cover the whole of the North-West. There are places in the North-West outside the Greater Manchester area, including my constituency—Rossendale—and the neighbouring constituencies of Accrington and Burnley, where this problem exists and where resentment at having to pay rentcharges would be matched only if the people were called Greater Mancunians. We have to get our geography right.

It has been mentioned that this is an outdated system. When I went to live in the North-West 15 years ago, I was amazed that a system of this kind could exist. I remember buying my first house after I had been there three years. After I had been there a while someone knocked on the door, on a fine day, and asked me for £2·50. I gave him a short answer to begin with but he came back the next day to explain the system. I realised the tremendous burden which this chap had to face in collecting eight or 10 ground rentcharges of this kind. I felt angry that I had bought a house and yet someone could collect this money from me for as long as I lived there.

When I moved to a second house, I found that the same system existed. Here I declare an interest because I have just moved to a third house and have escaped this iniquitous system.

I recall being asked to visit a blind old lady, about 12 months ago, to find that she was extremely distressed because she could not get out of the house, her son had moved away from the area, and she had to collect ground rent. It was so difficult for her to do so that we finally calmed her down and some of my colleagues from the local party collected the rent for her. It was obvious to me then that she had been in distress for a long time because she no longer had the help of her son.

On another occasion, I had a request again from a pensioner who had the problem of collecting ground rent from a house which was no longer occupied. The people had simply disappeared from the area. No one knew where they had gone. The house was still in their names, but they had vanished, and my constituent had the problem of collecting the ground rent. It was entirely his responsibility.

Incidentally, I hope that my hon. Friends will accept the term "ground rent", because that is how it is described in my constituency.

Yet another problem, which in some ways was the most difficult to deal with, concerned a gentleman who had had a dispute with his son. The old gentleman had the responsibility of collecting the ground rent which his son flatly refused to pay. They were not speaking, so it is obviuos that the son would not contemplate paying the ground rent to his father. This again caused a great deal of distress.

The impact of this outdated and iniquitous system on old people and those with a physical handicap which means that they cannot go out to collect the money which they are required to provide disturbs me greatly.

I notice that, in an earlier debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Eccles (Mr. Carter-Jones) described the system as being "lawful but immoral". It is that aspect to which we should turn our minds. There is a considerable feeling of unfairness among those people who have the problem of collecting rentcharges.

New householders will welcome the proposition that no new rentcharges of this kind should be created. In my area, the charges are referred to as "the builders' pension fund". I have discussed with a builder this aspect of his income. He assures me that he regards it as being of great importance. It is worth noting, incidentally, that he is about to retire. He is not a great deal older than I am. I do not know how many rentcharges he owns. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport, North (Mr. Bennett), one aspect of the Bill that disturbs me is that the system is not to be ended for 60 years. I should have thought that it was possible to bring the date forward. I welcome the proposal to end it, but we ought to look at this proposition in Committee to see whether we cannot shorten the period.

For those who have these responsibilities now, perhaps the most important proposition is the one saying that the new apportionment procedures will be much more simple and, therefore, that the responsibilities can be removed that much more easily. I welcome that. Although I understand the position of the district councils, I regret that it cannot be done by means of a simple over-the-counter procedure. I wonder whether, instead of the district councils doing the work, it would not be possible to place the responsibility on the Post Office. No one can say these days that the Post Office has not got much money. I think that we should consider that possibility, although I am sure that my hon. Friends in the responsible Government Departments will see difficulties that I have not anticipated. The possibility of doing this at local level is important, and it should be examined in Committee.

The problem about the Post Office taking it on is that the Post Office would charge for it. It would charge the rent owner or the rent payer. The Department gives the service free of charge.

I am pleased to hear that observation. I thought that, when we came to the Committee stage, difficulties would be put in the way of this suggestion. My hon. Friend is very quick off the mark. I note his point about the Department of the Environment providing the service without charge.

My constituents will be delighted with this piece of legislation. I have pursued my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Law Officers' Department on this issue. For some time, we have had discussions about it, because I know that he feels strongly about it as well since it affects his constituency. It is appropriate that as Parliamentary Secretary to the Law Officers' Department he has elected to reply to this debate, because I know his great conviction about the need for some action in this area.

I hope very much that the Bill will be given a Second Reading, and I look forward to seeing it on the statute book this year.

I want at the outset to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Evans) on introducing this Bill and on the very thorough way in which he outlined its provisions.

The Bill seeks to remedy a land tenure anomaly which has existed for far too long in areas round the big cities of Bristol and Manchester whereby residential properties are freehold but subject to rentcharges. It has been unfair to constituents like mine living near the large city of Bristol, and one can only conclude that, if this had been a nationwide problem affecting perhaps the City of London, the matter would have been dealt with by previous Administrations in a more thorough manner.

In the Bristol area, these charges are commonly known as "ground rent" charges, whereas in the Manchester area they are known as "chief rents". It is not, of course, a true ground rent. It is a rentcharge on freehold property.

These Charges now concern some 80 per cent. of properties in the greater Bristol area and, as houses have overspilled into the areas formerly known as South Gloucestershire and North Somerset, all of them have been subject to ground rentcharges because this practice has been adopted by builders building in those areas.

This iniquitous practice has got to stop, and I am sure that the Bill will be widely welcomed by many of my constituents in Kingswood and the areas round about. It must be welcomed also by many of my right hon. and hon. Friends.

Reference has been made already to my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South (Mr. Cocks), who twice, in 1970 and 1971, tried to introduce Bills to abolish rentcharges. Previously, in the early 1960s, when he was a candidate in the South Gloucestershire area and when I happened to be his agent, we were inundated by people moving into the new towns growing up in South Gloucestershire who could not understand why they owned their houses but were subject to rentcharges.

The hon. Member for Gloucestershire, South (Mr. Cope), who is unable to be with us today, has indicated that he supports this measure and that he gives the Second Reading of the Bill his blessing.

To my mind, it is high time that this iniquitous practice was legally stopped. Many of my constituents in the Oldland Common area have tried to petition over many years to make sure that these problems were highlighted.

No one has ever explained to my satisfaction why I should have to pay a rentcharge on freehold land for which I have paid the full price in a lump sum. It is an anachronism. In other parts of the country where the system is unknown, people find these charges totally incomprehensible. If the Bill is passed, I believe that it will be of great help to many people who cannot understand the present system.

My hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly said that his Bill prohibited the creation of new rentcharges. People who are now struggling to buy their homes want to own them root and branch. When they buy freehold, they want freehold. When they make rate and mortgage payments, there is always something to show for them. But when they pay these rentcharges, there is nothing at all to show for them. That is why they have to go.

I come next to the provision for the extinguishment of existing rentcharges without compensation after 60 years. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale (Mr. Noble) that the period is far too long. However, I accept the Law Commission Report in the interests of seeing the Bill passed into law.

I know that the Department has done a lot of work on the redemption of rent charges and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State who has worked hard to assist my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South. I would have liked to see the redemption procedure made more simple for people to understand. Perhaps this could be looked at again.

I am sorry that the Government have not found time to present this Bill as part of the Queen's Speech, but we are indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly for bringing it forward today. Of course we hoped that the Government would present a Bill implementing the recommendations of the Law Commission's Report which gave a full account of the defects in the rentcharges system and recommended the reforms contained in the Bill. As a sponsor of the Bill I hope that we can rely on Government support to get the Bill, so long overdue, and so long awaited, on to the statute book.

I join in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Evans) on this Bill. He is a good Welshman like yourself, Mr. Speaker, and like me, and we are grateful for the way in which he presented his case. He did his best in a short space of time to present it effectively and at the same time give plenty of opportunity to other hon. Members to get this off their chests.

I declare an interest in that I am a rent-collector. People think that I own half the houses in Mayfair and in other parts of the country. I will tell the House the history of my rent-collecting.

Having been adopted as parliamentary candidate for Stockport, South, I knew that I would be the first Labour Member to be elected in that town, so I decided to buy a house there. My house was one of four of a terrace. It was a reasonable house, for which I paid a reasonable price. I still have the original deeds, which are magnificently drawn up. The house is just over 100 years old and has two bathrooms, two kitchens, three bedrooms and two reception rooms, apart from the basement. I have lived there since 1963–64, and in general my neighbours have been quiet and restrained and I am very happy with most of them.

But I am in the unfortunate position of being the one who has to collect the rents from the other three. Having already paid the chief rent over half a year, have to send a notice in writing to the others, because most of the time I am down here. I hope that they will reimburse me with their rent payments, and up to about four or five years ago they all behaved in an exemplary fashion. Within a week, the mony was forthcoming, it was placed in the bank, and the tax I had to pay went up and up. Then a few years ago one man did not pay me, and he has not paid since the last election.

Did my hon Friend canvass in that street and, if so, what was the response?

I think that this man got scared because I put up window posters on behalf of my colleague. I did not canvass the street because it is not in my constituency.

This bloke has not paid since the last election. During the election period I ran into him and he said to me, "Are you Mr. Orbach?" When I said that I was, he said that his name was Mr. Stalton, the owner of No. 324 Manchester Road. I then asked him why he had not answered my letters and paid his rent. He laughed and pulled out a wad of £20 notes and gave me one. He is one of the great self-employed and does not live in the house. I gave him a lashing with my tongue but I was determined to get rid of this burden.

Although I am an old-age pensioner it does not affect me in the same way as it would affect someone who was perhaps incapacitated and might find considerable difficulty in going from door to door. It annoys me that a man like that has not paid his rent. He is an entrepreneur who buys houses, lets them, and makes a satisfactory profit. In just the same way I find that the notices I get refer to a lady whose name was not in the documents when I bought the house. There is a market organised by estate agents whereby people can buy the chief rent at a particular price—15, 20 or 30 times the rent, or whatever it might be.

I applied to the Department of the Environment, which sent me back a lot of documents to complete at a cost of £150. There were 15 series of questions, apart from two parts of a schedule and as well I had to get maps drawn up to a certain size. In the end I just gave up. I decided to get it registered with the Land Registration Office. I paid money and sent off the documents, but on my title deeds it gives the name of the previous owner and refers to

"the freehold property at No. 322 Manchester Road, Heaton Norris, Stockport, in the county of Lancaster."

Underneath there is a rubber stamp, which says:

"H.M. Land Registry, Lytham St. Annes, Leasehold title registered."

Is it leasehold or freehold? I bought a freehold property. But the Government say that it is leasehold. All I can do is to support this Bill.

This bloke who owes me money thinks that he owes me £12·50. I told him I would name him today, and that £12·50 is not acceptable. I employ two secretaries and have to pay postage. I want £30·50 from him—£12·50 plus expenses incurred and annoyance money. At the moment I am paying not £18 a year but £30·50 because of his failure to pay his rent. A lawyer friend gave me a warrant to distrain but I cannot distrain on furniture of people who live in his property and pay him rent.

This is a good Bill but, like some other hon. Members, I am worried about Clause 3, paragraph 1, which says:

"Subject to this section, every rentcharge shall (if it has not then ceased to have effect) be extinguished at the expiry of the period of 60 years beginning—

(a) with the passing of this Act, or

(b) with the date on which the rentcharge first became payable,

whichever is the later."

What does that mean? It means 60 years, anyway, does it not? The fact that I have lived there for 10 or 15 years means nothing. Sixty years is a long time, and, given the support of colleagues on both sides of the House in connection with the Bill, I am sure that I can make it.

For all the humour that I have tried to inject into this matter, it is very serious. I might be one of the halt, the blind or the deaf, and I might have this burden thrust upon me. It is not a burden to me. It causes annoyance and it makes my secretary rile. When she first came to work for me she was a good Tory. She is justice of the peace in High Wycombe and was a leading light in the party there, but she has given up the party because of this sort of thing. That is why I keep employing new secretaries every 10 years. Every 10 years I take on a new one and I turn her into a Trotskyite or Marxist, or whatever.

This is a good Bill. A 30-year term I could probably manage, but to expect me to manage 60 years is a little much. By then I would be unable to sing the "Mae Hen Whad fy Nghadau" as I used to. However, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly and I hope that everyone will join in ensuring that the Bill is given a Second Reading so that it can be examined in Committee.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stockport, South (Mr. Orbach) has made a speech which is difficult to match. His was an enjoyable and constructive contribution, and it showed that this House does not have the power and influence that it once had. One would have thought that, having been threatened with being named in the House, the individual concerned would have put a cheque in the post immediately. It seems clear, however, that the individual was not withholding payment because of any political principle. It was obviously just a question of the money.

I want to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Evans) for introducing the Bill because it will be greatly welcomed by my constituents and by people in other parts of Bristol. Many of our constituents still face the incredible situation of having to pay the rent-charge. I, too, believe that the 60-year period is far too long. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Mr. Walker) was right to say that if the practice had operated in London it would have been abolished long ago. Frankly, I cannot see why the Government have never got round to abolishing the rentcharge at a stroke. It would be ludicrous if in the year 2037, when there is property on the planets, if we colonise them by then, the tenants are still paying the rentcharge.

I would prefer that the local authorities were brought in to deal with this situation, as has been recommended. But it has been suggested that if the local authorities had an over-the-counter scheme it would mean an increase in public expenditure. We know that at the moment the Government are almost psychopathic about even the slightest increase in public expenditure, rather like the militant monetarist on the Conservative Benches. However, if this matter is not dealt with, it will mean far greater expenditure in the long run.

I hope that the Government will consider this possibility in Committee and will see whether it is possible to involve the local authorities. I believe that my city council in Bristol and the Kingswood Council know far more about this problem and could handle it much better. Even if that involved a slight increase in public expenditure, it would be worth it in the long run.

This arrangement is almost a feudal obscenity, and it is amazing that it has lasted for so long. I am pleased to support the Bill, which will knock down one feudal anachronism. There are many more to go, including the Honours List and the unelected Chamber at the other end of the Corridor.

I wish to join the other hon. Members in offering my congratulations to the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Evans) both on his success in obtaining time for the Bill and on using that time to such good effect by bringing forward a measure long since overdue. As hon. Members have said, the whole concept of rentcharges or chief rents is an anachronism, and in the past Parliament has tried to dispose of it.

The hon. Member for Caerphilly mentioned the Law of Property Act 1925 and, of course, there was the Landlord and Tenant Act 1927. Both tried to give the payers of these rents the opportunity to enfranchise by making a lump-sum payment and thus removing the whole of the continual annual charge. That has not been a terribly effective method, because the complications and costs involved far outweigh very often the annual sum which has to be paid, as was graphically and entertainingly expressed by the hon. Member for Stock port, South (Mr. Orbach). He has shown how he wished to buy himself out of this situation and how he found the procedures laid down by the Department of the Environment so cumbersome and expensive that it was not worth the trouble. Yet he has these continual fiddling amounts to deal with, the collection of which far outweighs their worth. As time passes and inflation continues, these annual payments become less and less significant and more and more of an irritation to the people concerned.

In adding my welcome and that of my right hon. and hon. Friends to the Bill, therefore, I ask the Government whether, when considering the procedures to be adopted, either through local authorities or central Government, they could make those procedures as simple, cheap and expeditious as possible. I do not think it helps anyone to have to prepare answers to an extremely complicated form couched in the best Civil Service language, and then to have to append to it schedules of descriptions of property, maps and all the rest of it. It is not beyond human ingenuity to adopt a for more simple system. Surely in dealing with titles of property, and particularly in areas of compulsory registration of land, a simpler method could be used than is apparently the practice at the moment.

Clearly, perpetual rentcharges have long outlived their usefulness from the point of view of the recipient of the money and of the payer, and also of professional people who, every time there is a transaction in a property, have to investigate the title of the rentcharge and make provision for it and advise their clients. This adds unnecessarily to the cost of the whole transaction. I know that the legal profession wishes to see this anomaly rapidly disappear as well.

I would like to give a word of caution to those hon. Members who have suggested that the 60-year time limit is possibly too long. The prospect of people having to continue paying for 60 years is seemingly intolerable but, as the hon. Member for Caerphilly mentioned, what must be avoided is any suggestion of expropriation.

It is extremely difficult to reach the right balance in these matters. It may be that 60 years is too long and that that period could well be shortened. I would like to see some calculation and evidence produced in Committee to show some justification for the 60-year period. We could then examine whether a shorter period would be more appropriate, perhaps coupled with some extra payment to dispose of the extra period of time. I ask the Government to look at the matter from that point of view.

Another matter that disturbs me is that at a time when house prices and the cost of house construction are in equation and when the average industrial income is such that it can meet the cost of new constuction without too much strain there is no need for any kind of rentcharge to be made. But when there is a situation, as there possibly is now, where house construction costs have increased so rapidly that they have outstripped the industrial wage in terms of accessibility to new housing—and I believe that we are in that situation because builders have had to stop building on finding that there is no market and that is an undesirable thing—then in attempting to solve the housing problem of the country it may be necessary to look at schemes for producing low-cost housing.

One method is by reducing standards. That approach has its own dangers and one must be extremely cautious. On the other hand, the rentcharge system could possibly perform a useful function if it meant that the capital sum demanded of the buyer could be reduced to less than it would otherwise be. At the same time, the buyer could be charged an annual recurring sum. That is why the rentcharge system originally came into existence, possibly in circumstances similar to those of today. It became an anachronism and outdated because of the way that the market money market evolved and because the rent charges were perpetual. No one would now wish to argue in favour of a perpetual charge.

But a builder might calculate that he could sell a house at £9,000 instead of £12,000 if, in addition to the £9,000, he also received an annual payment for a period of years. I do not know about the economics of that, or whether the argument is indeed fully valid, but it is something that we should not completely exclude as a potential weapon for producing low-cost housing. Therefore, I have certain reservations about that aspect of the Bill. Without wishing to prevent the Bill doing away with new rentcharges, I would like the Committee, before coming to a final conclusion, to be given some evidence by the Department of the Environment about whether we would be denying ouselves this means of obtaining low-cost housing through a combination of a capital charge and periodic payments over a fixed term of years.

The Law Commission touched upon the problem and said that it could be dealt with through the leasehold system by which builders give 99-year leases. But Parliament has destroyed that as a means of dealing with the problem, because we have given the right of enfranchisement after five years on properties below a certain rateable value—and are talking here about low-cost housing. Therefore, if a builder wishes to build on that basis, he can only be guaranteed payments for five years and he will ask for a greater annual sum than if the payments were to be made over a longer period. I am simply throwing out these points for further discussion.

One of my constituents has been asked for a rentcharge of £25 a year. It would be much more satisfactory if that sum were included in the original price of his home to be paid off through his mortgage, because that is tax allowable, than for him to pay the sum each year, together with additional legal costs.

I agree completely that if someone has the opportunity or ability to buy his home freehold without any strings attached, he should take that opportunity. I do not quarrel with that. But I am referring to cases where the cost of a house is beyond the reach of some people because of the initial capital outlay, and it may be—and I do not put this point dogmatically—that by a combination of annual payments and a mortgage such housing could be put within their reach. I put that forward as a matter for further inquiry and I put it no higher than that.

I have added a word of caution without wishing to impugn the excellent work that has been done by the hon. Member for Caerphilly. On behalf of my party I welcome the Bill.

I assure my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Evans) that the Government wholeheartedly and warmly welcome the Bill. I hope that it foreshadows the end of an antiquated and—as I think the House will agree—by now largely discredited system of land tenure. It is a system that over the years, as a number of hon. Members have pointed out, has produced unnecessary hardship. Certainly many people in my constituency, throughout North-East Lancashire and in other areas, have suffered badly from it. It has also produced unnecessary complications in our land law.

I therefore congratulate my hon. Friend on his public spirit in introducing a Bill that does not affect his own constituency, although it does affect constituencies of many other hon. Members who are in the Chamber today. I also congratulate him on his mastery of a difficult subject, brimful of legal technicalities and they, as everybody knows, are the worst technicalities of all. I am particularly pleased to welcome the measure on behalf of the Government because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale (Mr. Noble) pointed out, I myself introduced what might be called a mini-Bill on the subject, but unfortunately it did not get very far.

My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Marks) introduced a Bill and has done a great deal of work on this subject. Also, my right hon. Friend the Patronage Secretary has introduced two measures—and anything that pleases the Patronage Secretary pleases me. My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Moss Side (Mr. Hatton), who is unfortunately ill in hospital, has also taken a great deal of interest in the subject. I know that, were it not for the fact that he is in hospital, he would be here to support the Bill.

The Bill is based on the Law Commission report. As such, it is welcome as a useful and timely measure of law reform. Its purpose is to get rid of an inefficient and, certainly for the unfortunate rent payer, unjustifiable system.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stockport, South (Mr. Orbach) graphically and amusingly set out his personal difficulty. Perhaps I can dispose of that at the beginning. If my hon. Friend would like to show me the confused document to which he referred, I shall have a look at it, so long as he does not name me if I give him the wrong legal advice. I cannot possibly attempt an answer now. It may be that he has a leasehold ground rent and not a freehold ground rent. However, I shall certainly have the document looked at.

It is difficult to justify a system by which someone who buys a house freehold spends the rest of his life paying a rent, albeit a small one. What is far worse, he is responsible for collecting the rent from many of his neighbours—possibly of a whole street. It is very difficult to explain to someone who might just have moved into the house next door why one has to collect a rent which he did not previously know that he was obliged to pay. It is difficult to justify something that one believes to be unjustifield. In human terms, this can cause complications and bitterness among neighbours.

On the problem of existing rentcharges, everyone would agree that it is right that there should be no new rentcharges created after the passing of the Bill, but it is less easy to know what should be done with existing rent charges. There are three ways in which one can get rid of them. First, they could be abolished at once without compensation for the rent owners. I am sure that the House will agree that that would be unfair, depriving the rent owners of a right. It would be pure expropriation, and, I am sure, totally unacceptable to the House.

Second, rentcharges could be abolished at once with the rent payer or possibly even the taxpayer having to provide the rent owner with a capital sum in compensation. That has about it the ring of forced redemption and as such would be not only unacceptable but difficult for the rent payer to carry out. It would involve him in a capital sum that he might not be able to afford. A rent payer can already redeem by paying a capital sum, but this often involves—certainly in my area and I am sure in others—the payment of a sum beyond the means of many rent payers, usually between £35 and £70.

The third method would be to abolish rentcharges over a period of years and to compensate the rent owner by increasing the amount of the rentcharge. That is the method that my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport, North (Mr. Bennett) possibly had in mind—shortening the period and making the rentcharge more over that period. One must make a choice. I think that it could produce complications in both calculating and collecting the increased rent. Many people would find it difficult to understand why suddenly they had to pay a higher rent. That can be discussed in Committee.

The Law Commission has come forward with another solution. I should like to take this opportunity of congratulating the Law Commission on its work, on producing an excellent well-argued report and on finding a solution to what over the years has proved an intractable problem. The solution with which it has come forward, and the one adopted by my hon. Friend as in his view being the most reasonable and fair method, appears in paragraphs 58 to 61 of the report. The Commission states that, on reasonable assumptions as to interest rates, the difference in value between a perpetual rentcharge and a rentcharge for 60 years is so small as to be negligible. The Commission concludes that there is no need to extend the period beyond 60 years, but that to make it shorter would involve rent owners in a less negligible loss.

I think that the Law Commission's solution is right and fair. That is a personal view, though it is the Government's view as well. I accept, as the hon. Member for Hornsey (Mr. Rossi) rightly said, that 60 years is a long time and that it will not bring much comfort to people, many of whom are old and not in as good health as they used to be, who are having to pay. But, long before then, I hope that many rentcharges will have been redeemed either by agreement or under the procedures laid down in the Bill. It is worth remembering that the price of redemption of a 60-year rentcharge will diminish as the years go by.

I turn now to the procedures for apportionment and redemption. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. Thomas) and others have expressed their regret that the law Commission's suggestion, that the procedures for apportionment should be dealt with by the district councils on an easy over-the-counter basis, has not been implemented and does not appear in the Bill. The reason is that it would mean an increase in staff and expenditure by local authorities at a time when the Government are endeavouring to keep down public expenditure.

I assure my hon. Friend that the Department of the Environment—my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment is here to answer any points on that matter, if necessary—will ensure that the method for apportionment is considerably simplified and less expensive than it is at the moment. For example, when an apportionment order goes through now it is necessary to notify all the rent payers who may be affected. In future, after the passing of the Bill, that will not be necessary. Only the rent owner will have to be notified. That will mean not only fewer forms, but a speeding up of the process.

In addition, the rent payer will be liable only for his own legal costs. At present, he has to pay both his own and the rent owner's costs. In future, the rent owner will be liable for his own costs. The procedure will be considerably cheaper and simpler.

Will my hon. Friend explain why he or his colleague feel that this procedure will not mean an increase in expenditure or use of resources by the Department of the Environment, but that it would by the district councils? I am still not convinced.

The district councils would have to take on new staff, whereas the Department of the Environment is used to dealing with such matters. As I mentioned, far from having to do more work in the sorting out of apportionment applications, the Department of the Environment would have to do considerably less.

I should also point out that under the new procedure it will be less necessary—perhaps not necessary at all—to seek legal advice. The Department will help with that. I can also assure the hon. Member for Hornsey that the language will be considerably simplified. From my own experience I know that when people apply for apportionment, and when they get the order from the Department of the Environment that the apportionment has been granted, it is absolutely meaningless because it is couched in legal language. Frequently they have to come to me, or to some other hon. Member, to have it explained to them. Both the forms and the language itself will be considerably simplified.

I am grateful to the Minister for what he has just said. One thing troubles me. I agree that it is wrong that the payer of the rentcharge should have to pay both sides' costs on a redemption. I can envisage a situation where there are 100 owners with rentcharge and if there are appeals each will have to pay his own legal costs. Does that mean that the owner of the rentcharge will have to pay 100 times because he will have legal costs for each transaction? Can the Government simplify the procedure so that the owner of the rentcharge does not have to pay a multiplicity of legal costs every time one of his chargees seeks to redeem?

The procedure from the owner's point of view will be considerably shortened and simplified as well. He will merely have to state that he is the owner. He will not have to make a declaration of any sort. It is also envisaged that the rent payers will find this type of method so simple that they will not have to go to a lawyer at all. I certainly do not think that the situation to which the hon. Member for Hornsey has referred will arise.

The hon. Gentleman raised a number of general points and perhaps these can be dealt with in Committee. There is no evidence that the imposition of rentcharge decreases the cost of housing, but I am sure that if the hon. Gentleman returns to this in Committee these matters can be dealt with there and then.

There is general agreement about the desirability of the Bill. On behalf of the Government I welcome the Bill and hope that it will shortly be on the statute book. Many people throughout the country in constituencies far away from my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly will have reason to be very grateful to him.

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

The object of the Bill is to protect people and animals from the irresponsible use of firearms by young people. It seeks to do this by raising the age limits currently in force for the possession and use of firearms and, in particular, air rifles.

The Green Paper produced by the last Conservative Government in 1973 underlined the need for action to tighten up the regulations on the use of air weapons. As the Green Paper stated in paragraph 79:

"Air weapons account for a high proportion of the offences known to the police involving the use of firearms".

It went on to say:

"The misuse of air weapons occurs predominantly among young people".

In the four years 1968–71 there were 1,482 offences in which air weapons caused slight injury and the age of the offender was known. On average 68 per cent. of the offenders were under 17. The percentage was rising over the years, to reach 78 per cent. in 1971. In that year 119 children between the ages of 10 and 13 caused fatal, serious or slight injury to other people, usually other youngsters, and the number of offenders between the ages of 14 and 16 was 347. The total number of offences of this type committed by young persons under the age of 17 was 533.

In the last year for which we have statistics, 1975, the total number of indictable offences with firearms resulting in injury and committed by children under 17 was 806, an increase of over 50 per cent. in four years. The vast majority of those offences were committed with air weapons.

Furthermore, in 1975 air weapons were used in well over 60 per cent. of all indictable offences connected with firearms, including burglary, robbery, violence against the person and criminal damage. They were by far the most used weapons in cases of violence against the person and criminal damage. In 1975, in all indictable offences in which air weapons were used and the age of the offender was known, 70 per cent. of the offenders were under 17.

Let me bring these grim statistics a little more to life by citing a particular case just across my constituency border. Eleven-year old Julie Rose was shot in the head with an air pellet last September. I have here a picture in the local newspaper. For weeks she was in a deep coma, and for a time it was thought that she would not survive. Mercifully, she is now improving and has recovered the power of speech, but it was only last Sunday, months after the event, that she walked again for the first time. That is an extreme example, perhaps, but it is always a possibility. How much more frequently is there the kind of case that happened to me in my youth, when I received an air gun pellet on the cheekbone, not far from my eye? As the voluminous statistics of the RSPCA indicate, animals and domestic pets are even more at risk then human beings.

The starting point of the Bill for me was the problem of air rifles. As those figures indicate, the problem of air rifles is basically a problem of young people. From a legislative point of view, this gives rise to two issues. First, althouh air weapons are firearms under the 1968 Act, their possession does not require a firearms certificate, unless they are classified as specially dangerous, but what is specially dangerous? I have here an advertisement in a shooting magazine for an air rifle claimed to be the most powerful 0·22 on the market and described as "mean, menacing and magnificent". The advertisement adds:

"Its sniper's barrel provides maximum striking power and penetration, yet no licence is required."

That seems to me almost a provocative advertisement to a teenager. That air rifle could not be purchased by anyone under the age of 17, but there is nothing to stop its being given to any teenager over 14.

The first legislative problem is to bring all air weapons under some control. The second legislative issue is that in logic and common sense one cannot tighten up the laws on the use of air weapons by young people without also tightening up the laws on more dangerous weapons, such as shot guns, which they are also legally entitled to use under certain conditions. The Bill tries to grapple with both problems.

Clause 1 revises two sections of the 1968 Act relating to the acquisition and possession of firearms and ammunition by minors. First, it raises from 17 to 18 the age at which a person can purchase or hire firearms and ammunition. Secondly, it raises from 14 to 18 the age at which it is an offence to have firearms and ammunition in one's possession.

Certain exceptions provided for in the 1968 Act remain unaltered by the Bill. Briefly, they relate to the use of firearms at rifle clubs, by cadet corps, in shooting galleries or rifle ranges, or where instruction is being given. None of those permissions is revoked by the Bill. Only one proviso is added, in Clause 2, that in cases of instruction, here more precisely defined, the instructor should be over 21. That is the standard age of supervision under Section 23 of the 1968 Act.

To return to Clause 1, subsection (3) raises from 17 to 18 the age at which a person is allowed to have an air weapon and its ammunition in a public place, and the provision includes shot guns. Subsection (4) raises from 14 to 16 the age at which a person may have an air weapon in his possession, and shot guns come within that rule. But the exception provided for under the 1968 Act are maintained—that is, if there is supervision by somebody over 21, or if the gun is so securely covered that it cannot be fired.

It may be asked whether these provisions are tough enough. I have asked myself whether one should introduce a licensing procedure for air weapons. The problem about licensing is that the basis for granting a licence is normally some valid reason for possession of a weapon. Casual target shooting is generally the purpose of the use of air weapons, and if that were to be accepted as a valid reason licences would seldom be withheld. If it were not accepted, few would be granted.

The main objective of licensing is to prevent as far as possible firearms getting into the possession of those who might use them for criminal purposes. Although the statistics I have cited show that air weapons are used in a large number of indictable offences, they are rarely used in serious crimes. Consequently, I have decided that it would be better to try to get on to the statute book what I hope is a relatively less controversial Bill providing for increased adult supervision and to see how that works, instead of almost certainly failing to get on to the statute book a Bill providing for licences. The statistics which I have cited are too serious not to take immediate steps.

Hopefully, these clauses will be strong enough, but are they too tough? Will they inhibit country pursuits—particularly that of shooting? It is not the objective of this Bill to inhibit the responsible use of firearms for sporting purposes by, for example, members of the Wildfowlers Association, WAGBI. There may be some hon. Members who might want to follow such a course, but this Bill is not designed to do that—and I can think of at least one of its sponsors who would not have lent his name to the Bill if it had that effect.

I have had strong support from the Derbyshire NFU in my desire to bring air guns under greater control. The County Secretary of the Derbyshire NFU reported that one of his branch members had a cow whose leg became infected as a result of an air-gun pellet. The farmer concerned still has a cow with a deformed hock from the same incident. Another member in the area had a similar experience. One cow was struck by an air-gun pellet which resulted in the loss of a quarter. Last year it was reported that two boys had been found on a farm "stalking" cattle and aiming air guns at them. Animals had been found with lumps under the skin which subsequently proved to be pellets.

I understand that the attitude taken by the Derbyshire NFU branch is mirrored by the NFU nationally. I cannot think of a more obvious group of country people who would be more likely to protest at attempts to restrict country pursuits. Yet obviously they do not fear the provisions of this Bill.

I turn to Clause 3, which seeks to bring crossbows within the parameters of firearms. I have decided with some reluctance, to seek to withdraw the clause in Committee. I have taken this course, first because I am advised that crossbows are rarely used by young people and, secondly, because in all cases where offences have been committed the offenders were prosecutable under other legislation. Nevertheless, although the crossbow is still a minor problem compared with the air gun, it is one on which I believe hon. Members and the Home Office should keep a wary eye. I have heard a recent story involving an Alsatian dog which just managed to survive a four-inch bolt piercing its skull; happily, the bolt just missed its brain. Only ten days ago the Western Mail carried an editorial demanding that crossbows should be controlled by regulations. The editorial said:

"Crosswbows are primarily used as poachers' weapons. They must not be allowed to become anyone else's."

Eventually, I feel that the regulation of crossbows may be necessary, but for the moment I believe that this House will have taken an important step forward in firearms control if it tightens the regulations on air weapons in particular, and that is why I commend the Bill to the House.

It gives me great pleasure to be called to speak following the speech of the hon. Member for Belper (Mr. MacFarquhar). I congratulate him on his luck in the Ballot and on his able and effective introduction of this Bill.

Shortly after coming into office, the last Conservative Government decided that the increasing use of the firearms in the pursuit of crime made necessary a comprehensive review of the law controlling firearms. A working party was appointed to study this subject under Sir John McKay the then Chief Inspector of Constabulary and a person of some standing. In May 1973 a Green Paper entitled "The Control of Firearms in Great Britain" was produced, based on the report of the working party. It set out the Government's original proposals for changes which they thought should be made in the law. Public comment was invited on those proposals.

The Green Paper pointed out that crime involving the use of firearms had been rising rapidly in recent years. It showed also how shot guns were increasingly becoming:

"the preferred weapon of the serious criminal."

I commend that phrase to the House. I quote what I regard as an important part of the Green Paper. Paragraph 28 says:

"The extent of crime involving firearms is growing. There is evidence that, in a significant number of cases, firearms are used criminally or irresponsibly because they happen to be available rather than because those concerned were determined to obtain them by hook or by crook. In its present form the law in some circumstances allows unsuitable persons to possess firearms, or persons to possess firearms without having a legitimate use for them, or to possess more firearms than required for such uses, or to take inadequate precautions against theft or misuse. The main objective of firearms control should be to ensure, so far as is practicable, that the possession of lethal weapons, which can be and are used criminally and irresponsibly to the danger of the community, is restricted to suitable persons who have legitimate use for them and who will keep them safely. The present law has certain inadequacies which prevent it from giving full and consistent effect to this objective."

That is a pretty fair summing up of the case.

The last Conservative Government wanted shot guns to be made subject to the same stringent controls as rifles and pistols. At present, chief constables can refuse shot gun certificates only in limited circumstances. The last Conservative Government wanted to shift the onus on to the applicant to require him to prove that he had a good reason for wanting a certificate and to show that he could he trusted to use the weapon safely. The proposals of the last Conservative Government and the hon. Member's proposals were not, and are not, aimed at the legitimate sportsman but rather at the irresponsible, the careless, the thief, the criminal, who use a gun because it is available.

My interest in this matter arose when a senior police officer had words with me at an official function. He drew my attention to what was happening in the South-East of London. He pointed out that there were far too many cases of armed assault involving the use of shot guns. He also pointed out that one person with a shot gun certificate can purchase any number of shot guns. That seems a crazy state of affairs. The local papers are full of stories of armed robberies involving shot guns. The KentishIndependent, which circulates in my area, carried a story on 27th January headed:

"Armed raiders rob supermarket safe—but miss another £2,000 in the tills"

It quoted the manager as saying:

"One of the men pulled out a shot gun and pushed me on to the floor. The other made me give him the safe keys. I was terrified. When they got the safe open and found only £150, they asked me where I had hidden the rest of it. I was pleading for my life and one of the men threatened to blow my legs off."

Another report concerns a Blackheath youth who was jailed for 27 months after pleading guilty to four charges of handling stolen goods and a charge of burglary. He had earlier been found guilty of possessing offensive weapons, namely an axe and an air riflle—a rather significant combination. This week in my constituency—in The Broadway, Bexleyhealth—a commercial firm was raided by thieves and several rounds were fired from a shot gun. We all know that these incidents are far too common. There is no need to repeat the official statistics which the hon. Member has given.

I much regret that the Government have not been able to find time for a Government Bill. The hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith), in March last year, asked the Government whether they would

"introduce any new limitations on firearms".

The then Home Secretary replied:

"Amending legislation will be introduced when the parliamentary timetable permits, which I am afraid will mean not in this Session."—[Official Report, 18th March 1976; Vol. 907, c. 613.]

I received a Written Answer yesterday to a similar Question. I was told:

"It remains our intention to bring forward amending legislation on this matter when legislative time permits; but I see no prospect of time being available during this Session:—[Official Report, 10th February 1977; Vol. 925, c. 778.]

When one thinks of some of the measures being pushed through, I regret that the Government cannot find time for such an urgent measure as this.

The Police Federation has made it perfectly clear to me that it strongly supports the Bill. I have been told that it also accepts the general recommendations contained in the Green Paper entitled "The Control of Firearms in Great Britain". On air weapons, it was disappointed to note that, with the exception of pump-up weapons, air weapons would remain free. It recommended that this category of weapon should come under the same restrictions and limitations as other weapons and should include gas cylinder operated weapons. That is important evidence on our side. It has said that it was essential that there should be a prolonged, well-advertised period of amnesty before new legislation came into force. That is a point for us to consider later.

I strongly support the hon. Member for Belper in putting forward these important and long-overdue proposals, and I recommend them to my right hon. and hon. Friends. Our party has a reputation second to none in supporting those whose job it is to uphold the law.

Perhaps I may mention a recent experience. I decided to apply for a shot-gun certificate, so I went to the local police station in Rochester Row where I was given a form. My application had to be supported by a Member of Parliament or a bank official. I am not sure that that is a very difficult hurdle to overcome these days when there are so many High Street banks and humble bank clerks in possession of bank notepaper. I filled in the application form and handed over the required sum of money. I was told that I would have to wait a month before I received a certificate. No one asked what I wanted a shot gun for in central London. No one seemed particularly interested in me personally. Had I been a well-known villain I doubt whether the sergeant at the desk would have reacted any differently. I was told that the application would be processed by the civil servants at Scotland Yard, which hardly suggests that there is highly effective vetting of applicants.

I am not woolly-minded about firearms. For 12 years I was a regular soldier, and I was responsible for instructing in the use of weapons. I have owned a shot gun, an air rifle, and ·22 pistol.

We must always examine most carefully the balance between the freedom of the individual and the need to protect our society against the rising tide of violence in our cities where 80 per cent. of the population live. The balance needs to be tilted in favour of greater control of shot guns and air rifles. The nub of my case is that there is an increase in crimes of violence. The shot gun is becoming the preferred weapon. There is an alarming increase in juvenile crime. We have become a violent society. The Bill is a sensible measure to contain that violence.

I should like to apologise on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Drake (Miss Fookes), who, regrettably, cannot be here today as one of the Bill's sponsors.

Every sensible person must welcome the Bill. There is no doubt that animal welfare societies, the police and, indeed, many members of the public will have cause to be grateful to the hon. Member for Belper (Mr. MacFarquhar) for introducing the Bill.

There is one point that causes me concern. From Clause 1 it would appear that an air gun is a firearm. I find that difficult to understand, as an air gun is discharged by the release of compressed air. It is possible that the word "firearm" is used because an air gun is a barrelled weapon. However, it is rather difficult to describe an air gun absolutely accurately as a firearm.

Nevertheless, I fully welcome the Bill, which controls the purchase and use of both shot guns and air rifles. What really concerns me about the Bill is that I gather that there is some reluctance on the part of the Home Office to accept in the restraints upon weapons any inclusion of the use of crossbows. Although the Bill proposes that there shall be such control, I hope that the Under-Secretary will not say that the Home Office is opposed to the Bill because it contains that provision. If on consideration in Committee and, I hope, more mature consideration at the Home Office it is still considered that that provision must be deleted, I am sure that none of us would wish to see the other excellent parts of the Bill held up because of that.

It would cause me concern if the crossbow were not included. I want to make one or two observations about the matter. When one remembers that the crossbow was used as a weapon of war, it seems extraordinary that the crossbow should be excluded although the air weapon is included. Had the air gun been available at the time when the crossbow was used in war, it would certainly not have been used in preference to the crossbow in battle. Therefore, I find it extraordinary that if the Home Office is anxious, as we all are, to ensure that there is much greater control of lethal and dangerous weapons, it should want to exclude the crossbow from the Bill.

I know from records of the RSPCA, as we all know from various references, that the police are very concerned about the omission of the crossbow from controls. The point is—it is perfectly valid—that we have talked today about boys who use air guns either carelessly or deliberately with the intention of inflicting harm or wounds. Is it not likely that if those young people are now denied the opportunity of purchasing and using an air gun they will then straightaway buy a crossbow, which can be lethal and is much more dangerous and can cause much greater harm to human and to animal alike? It is a favourite poacher's weapon.

I appeal to the Under-Secretary to give this matter extremely serious consideration before the Bill reaches its Committee stage. I hope that any reluctance on the part of the Home Office until now about including the crossbow in this excellent Bill will disappear when we reach the Committee stage.

Again, I thank the hon. Member for Belper for bringing forward the Bill, which I am sure is acclaimed by the whole House. The fact that it is supported by hon. Members of the three largest parties in the House is an indication of its general support, and it is also supported by the Scottish National Party, I think—

The Welsh National Party.

Most unusually. That indeed illustrates how unanimous is the House in supporting the Bill. I hope that the hon. Lady will allow it to go through.

I should like quickly to remind the House of Mr. Speaker's ruling. There is some discrepancy between the clocks in the Chamber. We are working on the green digital clocks, which conform to the clock at the Table. The main clocks at the ends of the Chamber are slow.

Previously I have said that decisions on matters affecting country life and rural activity should not be taken without sensitive and adequate consideration. My hon. Friend's Bill and his speech showed a proper regard for these matters, and I believe that his approach has been sensible and fair.

I am interested in rural life and nature conservation. That sometimes brings me into arguments with those who would abolish all field sports, including shooting and fishing. However, I accept that man abuses his natural heritage and that protective arrangements are necessary in certain areas. The Bill will serve that purpose. It will not prevent the use of weapons and shotguns, but it will suggest and require responsibility. That is timely.

Some may imagine that the Bill is concerned only with the countryside. This is far from the case. The greatest material benefit may arise from the contribution which will come to reducing the cost of vandalism. Air weapons are misused. Often they are a tool of vandalism, and I believe that these proposals will assist to reduce the incidence of destruction of public and private property. A lot will depend on the courts, and many courts are realistic in their approach. But not all courts are. Only this week, we have seen the report of a disgraceful case when a group of poachers were fined a total of £92 for shooting deer illegally, the venison being worth more than £1,000.

It is no good complaining about justice not being done if the law does not provide the vehicle for justice. The Bill will fulfil the need. It may also serve another useful purpose. During the period of the last Conservative Government a Green Paper was produced. Some parts of it were quite unreasonable. My hon. Friend proposes sensible arrangements and, if this Bill is enacted, there is no need in my view for the Home Office to produce another document of the kind which I criticised and which many of my constituents found offensive. My hon. Friend recognises the major need and proposes to serve it. We need not see the implementation of other parts of the Green Paper.

There may be one or two aspects of the Bill which will need to be sorted out in Committee. The proper activities of young rural workers should not be prevented and, to ensure this, we may need to examine carefully and to define the words "public place", as well as to ensure that the Bill does not prevent the pursuance of country reponsibility. I hope that, if this means a minor amendment to secure this, my hon. Friend and the Minister will be agreeable.

This hope is more than reasonable. My hon. Friend has not sought to serve any intolerant or impracticable purpose in his Bill, which I believe most sensible people will welcome.

In some ways, it is regrettable that the Bill is necessary. Perhaps we should not need to enact provisions to control the purchase and use of firearms by quite young people. However, parental example and responsibility might not always be all that they should be. It is of course only a small minority who commit abuses. But that small number can be a costly nuisance. It means, therefore, that the Bill is necessary to the community.

I was pleased to see that the crossbow was included. Some people may not like its inclusion, believing that it encroaches upon freedom. However, the point was made that my hon. Friend is not making the crossbow illegal. He is merely providing society with certain safeguards.

History lessons may be remembered vaguely, but most people will remember learning about the English longbow, a weapon which was a major cause of victory in battles in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, battles such as Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt, when small, rather sickly English armies defeated larger lists in France.

Because of this tradition, there may be echoes of contempt for the crossbow. However, the latter weapon has killed and maimed many people in the past. It is still capable of doing so. It is a lethal weapon. I believe that it can be much more powerful than an air weapon and, since it may be sold in quite large numbers and through mail order catalogues, I believe that we ought to see that the crossbow is included in these provisions if only to ensure that there is a contribution to a general realisation that it is a dangerous weapon. I hope that the Government will reconsider the inclusion of this weapon. I shall need some convincing that its inclusion is unwise.

As I have said, my hon. Friend's proposals are neither intolerant nor inequitable. They are not insensitive to rural activity, and I consider that the Bill offers four advantages. First, it can help to reduce and deter vandalism. Secondly, it can improve society's insurance against parental irresponsibility. Thirdly, it provides some additional security in the cause of public safety. Fourthly, it removes the need for further initiatives on the lines of the Conservative Government's Green Paper, parts of which were received and deserved to be received with such a critical response.

My hon. Friend has produced a useful if modest measure. If it can be improved to cover the point that I made earlier, I shall be relieved. But the Bill deserves support, and I hope that the House will give it a fair wind today.

I am sure that the House will be grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Belper (Mr. MacFarquhar) for introducing this Bill. It gives the House an opportunity to consider the problems arising from young persons having lethal weapons, as well as the misuse of air weapons and crossbows. I hope we can consider to what extent these problems could be overcome, or at least mitigated, by legislation and to what extent they stem from a failure to educate and supervise young people in the safe use of various weapons.

With regard to the point raised by the hon. Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend), it remains the Government's intention to introduce tighter controls over shot guns, but it is not possible to introduce legislation this Session. As the hon. Gentleman knows, I cannot anticipate the Queen's Speech for the next Session.

The number of indictable offences recorded by the police, in which air weapons were reported to have been used, has been rising steadily in recent years. There were 888 cases of this kind in 1971, 1,653 in 1973 and 2,518 in 1975. In 1975, air weapons were involved in nearly two-thirds of all indictable offences recorded by the police in which a firearm was reported to have been used.

As the House has appreciated, an air rifle or air pistol is, above all, a teenager's weapon. Most offences involving the use of such weapons arise not from criminal intent but from misuse by younger teenagers who have not acquired sufficient maturity to use them sensibly without supervision. The solution to this problem lies not in any heavy-handed machinery of a certification procedure aimed at minimising the use of firearms in serious crimes, but in legislation to promote more and better adult supervision.

I am pleased that this Bill seeks to raise the minimum age at which a young person may be in possession of an air rifle without adult supervision from 14 to 16. The age of 16 is not without significance in terms of school leavers, employment, social security and parental responsibility. There is no other significance about it and it could be argued that the age could have been raised even higher to, say, 18. But if the Government had introduced legislation amending the Firearms Act in the present Session we would have proposed that the age should be raised to 16 as well.

The remaining provisions relating to age limits in the Bill are designed to simplify and rationalise some but not all of the complicated age limits specified under the 1968 Act. The Bill does not deal with sales to young people. Its effect on purchases and possession would be to specify two age limits.

These are 16 for air weapons and shotguns, unless under parental supervision, or unless the weapon is securely covered, and 18 for the purchase of a firearm or ammunition and for possession of rifles and pistols and uncovered air weapons or shot guns in public places without adult supervision.

I am confident that the proposals in the Bill when suitably amended and publicised will go a long way towards easier comprehension of the age limits. The Government's attitude to the age limits is therefore sympathetic. There are certain defects in the Bill, some much more serious than others, which will have to be put right in Committee if the law is not to end up even more confusing that it is already.

We believe that this is a sensible Bill but we cannot accept the inclusion in it of control of crossbows. Our first objection to the crossbow provision in Clause 3 is that this is not a firearm within the meaning of the 1968 Act. It would be a major departure from the scope of that Act to amend the definition of firearm to include a crossbow. If we contemplate that we shall find ourselves submerged in uncharted quicksands. Crossbows are used mainly for organised target shooting.

I should stress our other objections to the Bill. The hon. Member has undertaken to include appropriate provisions in respect of sales and gifts but he would be prevented from doing so by the terms of the Long Title. The Bill makes no specific provision for commencement. It makes no provision for penalties, and Schedule 6 of the 1968 Act will require suitable amendment.

The Government's view is that the Bill is rather like the curate's egg—it has a number of unsatisfactory features, but it is not so bad that we would reject it. We should like to see it in Committee, and if my understanding of my hon. Friend is correct, he intends to make amendments there to delete the crossbow provisions and to insert suitable provisions in respect of sales and gifts, the commencement date, penalties and minor consequential amendments.

I give my hon. Friend that assurance.

I am pleased to have such co-operation from my hon. Friend.

Object.

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Did I hear aright that this socially desirable Bill, which has all-party support, was objected to by the Government?

That is irrelevant. It is not yet 4 o'clock. I see that it is just 4 o'clock now.

Object.

What day? No day named.

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It may be asked why we are discussing the rate support grant so soon after Parliament discussed the total settlement on 22nd December last year. I am here today to make a last ditch attempt to persuade the Government to change their mind about the savage and selective way in which the people of Surrey believe that they have been robbed this year, for the fourth year running, by an unprecedented cut in Surrey's rate support grant.

This is not the occasion—because we have not much time—to mince words. Ratepayers in Surrey are extremely angry with the Government and their anger is rightly directed at the Secretary of State for the Environment. My right hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Atkins) wants to be associated with me in this. Of course we recognise that the distribution formula for the rate support grant is something that has been used over a long time, but at the end of the day the responsibility lies with the Secretary of State to make the final judgment. It is his responsibility and his decision.

We are right in saying that the block formula is the responsibility of the Secretary of State in the final allocation after all the formulae have been worked out. Let us look at the decision about which we are complaining so strongly. Our rate support grant for 1977–78 is minus 12 per cent. Other counties have had a 0·8 per cent. increase, London a 7 per cent. increase and other large cities a 9 per cent. increase.

There has therefore been a violent switch from Surrey to the great cities and I am bound to say—and the Minister will appreciate this—that the people of Surrey believe that there appears to have been a deliberately political switch of grant from the Conservative-controlled authorities to city authorities now mostly Socialist-controlled. That is not the way in which to run local government finance.

Our loss in Surrey, due to the redistribution formula of the needs element, is £8 million. On top of that we have lost £3 million from the national rate support grant settlement. There has been another switch of a further £3 million in the change of the resources element and I would have thought that the Minister would apreciate that. In the current year Surrey faces a total loss of £14 million, and that is severe.

We all recognise that there is a crying need to cut public expenditure. Both sides of the House are agreed on that. In common with all parties we have tried our best. In the difficult financial situation throughout the country we deplore the severity with which Surrey has been apparently selectively treated. That is part of the case.

The other part of the case is equally important. It is the cumulative effect of the cuts over the past four years. In the financial year 1973–74 Surrey enjoyed 1·89 per cent. of the total rate support grant. In the current financial year 1977–78 that has dropped to 1·17 per cent—that is a drop of nearly one-third and in terms of money it is a masive £26·73 million. That is something that will be with us for ever and that will continue.

We have been especially hard hit this year on top of what happened last year. An important part of our case is the violence of the change at a time of high inflation. We recognise the need to cut expenditure, but Surrey has cut its own expenditure hard over the past two years by £9·5 million and has made no mean effort. I am sure that the Minister will pay tribute to that. In the past year we cut capital spending from £14 million to £5 million and in the current year it is being cut from £18 million to £5 million. That is hard, but we have done it in the national interest, and I am sure that we were right to do so.

But this has meant some severe cuts in local services. It has meant no more old people's homes, which we badly need, no more capital expenditure in the social services department. These have been painful and difficult decisions for county councillors in Surrey. I applaud the way in which they have taken them and the loyal support that the staff have given. After all, staff numbers have been cut by 1,900 compared with 1975.

What effect has all this had on the rates levied each year? After two increases of 34 per cent. and an increase of 20 per cent. this year, by squeezing everything and raiding all the balances, the county council is managing to keep the increase down to 17·9 per cent.—but that is still an increase of nearly 20 per cent. We are entitled to say that the ratepayers of Surrey have suffered exceptionally. The Department of the Environment is not entitled to believe, as it apparently does, that Surrey is a rich county. My hon. Friend the Member for Dorking (Sir G. Sinclair) knows this from his own experience.

I am sorry to have been late for the start of this debate. Would my hon. Friend accept that what rankles with the ratepayers in Surrey is that they believe that the incidence of these cuts by central Government and the savings that they have had to make are unfairly distributed on their backs, that they have had to put up with huge increases in rates while suffering a bad cut in services, especially in such things as school transport subsidies? In the end, it is the unfairness that gets under their skins when such big sacrifices have been made to bring down the rates.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Part of our case is that the average level of take-home pay in Surrey is no different from the average throughout the country. The differences in the country are much less than they used to be. Along with this trend goes a very high rate of inflation. The Minister is a member of a Government who told us a couple of years ago that inflation was down to 8·4 per cent.; we know that it is now three times that level.

At the same time as these cuts in the rate support grant there has been a virtual standstill in income. Those earning less than £8,000 have had modest increases. Those earning more than £8,000, which is not an exceptional income nowadays, have had no increase at all. Where will those people find the extra money for the rates and for the high and rising commuter fares?

People in Surrey are becoming progressively alarmed about how they will pay these rates. I have heard it said at meetings that there should be a rates strike. I deplore and am not in favour of that, but I am reporting what people are saying. It shows the real strength of their feeling on this matter.

We understand that redistribution must take place. The big cities have problems, and county areas understand them. However, we protest strongly at the violence of the shift and the fact that no safety net—no maximum loss in any one year—has been created by the Government.

Some of us from Surrey went to see the former Minister for Planning and Local Government, the present Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, on 1st April 1976—possibly a significant date. The right hon. Gentleman told us that he had not liked the violent shift effect that it ensured this year. That was last year. Therefore, he was sympathetic, and we went away thinking that there would be another shift, but that it would not be so violent.

What have we found? We have had another even more violent shift away from Surrey this year. There is a genuine case for a safety net—a maximum loss of perhaps 5 per cent. either way—for the counties most adversely affected. That would prevent a severe disruption in a few of the counties concerned and need not significantly disturb the achievement of the Government's objective. A safety net among a few counties would have, if anything, only a small disruptive effect on the Government's overall objective.

We do not necessarily quibble with the redistribution element. It is no part of my brief to do that. However, it underlines the validity of the clear promise of the Conservative Party to abolish domestic rating when it gets back into power. All the unfairnesses have been underlined.

On the resources element, Surrey has lost £3 million this year. The resources element is distributed on the slightly incredible assumption that the rateable value per head of population rather than the income of the occupants of a house is not a fair way of judging ability to pay. Many would say that the rateable value is not a fair way of jurging ability to pay. How does it affect pensioners and others living on small retirement incomes? They are finding their resources stretched to such an extent that they have an almost complete inability to pay.

Surrey has been adversely affected. I hope that this point has got home during the debate. I ask for two things today. The first is an urgent and immediate review of this year's rate support grant settlement for the county of Surrey. That is my first clear message. Secondly, a pledge from the Government to provide a safety net for the maximum loss in any one year is an important part of our case.

It is unusual to have a debate on the rate support grant on the motion for the Adjournment. If the Minister can give that message to the people of Surrey, I believe that they will be right to say to the Government that they have been fairly treated. We shall listen with great anticipation to what the Minister will say and with hope swelling in our breasts.

I am glad that the hon. Member for Surrey, North-West (Mr. Grylls) has given us the opportunity of discussing the rate support grant particularly, as it affects his own county. The hon. Gentleman has explained fully and forcibly why his constituents feel aggrieved about the impact of the Government's decision on rate support grant on Surrey. I cannot satisfy the hon. Gentleman on the things that he asked for. But I hope that I shall at least be able to explain why the Government have taken the decisions that they have taken, and not for some of the reasons that the hon. Gentleman suspects.

Rate support grant is a complex subject and the reasons why there are variations year on year in the share of grant which local authorities receive are not always clearly understood. They are certainly not straightforward.

The House debated and approved the 1977–78 Rate Support Grant Order on 22nd December. Perhaps I can answer the hon. Gentleman straightaway when he asks for concessions. Now that the order has been approved by the House this is quite impossible.

I think it would be helpful if I briefly review the main points about the grant. The rate support grant is a block grant paid as revenue support to local authorities. This year the grant, including specific and supplementary grant, represents 61 per cent. of total local authority relevant expenditure in England and Wales. Last year it was 65½ per cent., but a rate of grant at 61 per cent. is not out of line with the recent levels of grant—57½ per cent. in 1971–72, 58 per cent. in 1972–73, 60 per cent. in 1973–74. In the next three years the figures were higher—65 per cent., 66½ per cent., 65½ per cent.—but that was necessary to deal with problems arising from reorganisation, and high rates of inflation which have now been markedly reduced. Relevant expenditure is broadly current expenditure by local authorites together with the cost of financing capital expenditure.

The rate support grant consists of three elements—the needs element, the resources element and the domestic element. In this debate I think we are very largely concerned with the needs element. The main Rate Support Grant Order provides for some £3,700 million to be paid as needs element out of a total rate support grant of just over £6,000 million. The variations in grant received by local authorities are obviously affected to a large extent by the criteria used to distribute the needs element. It is paid to the shire counties and the Metropolitan districts.

There is no doubt that the 1977–78 rate support grant settlement is a tough one for local authorities. The Government are determined to keep to their public expenditure plans and local authority expenditure is an important component of public expenditure.

We are asking local authorities to reduce their expenditure by 1·6 per cent. in aggregate in real terms from the estimate made in the autumn of 1976 of what they were to be spending in 1976–77. Such a level of expenditure in 1977–78, taking account of the rate of grant, the expected impact of inflation on local authorities, and the level of balances available implies a national average increase in domestic rates of no more than 15 per cent. The Government have made it clear that there would be variations around that average, depending amongst other things, on the distribution pattern of grant.

It is widely accepted on both sides of the House that the distribution of grant should take account of the spending needs of the harder pressed authorities. The hon. Gentleman suggested that might have been done on the basis of political considerations. I deny that. There are examples of authorities which do not have Members of Parliament who support the Government which have done reasonably well out of this settlement. It is a simple fact that there is a wide variation in the social problems faced by local authorities and it is surely right that any Government must recognise this. Therefore what the Government attempt to do is to measure individual local authorities' need to spend and to distribute the needs element of grant accordingly. The regression analysis formula, which is used as the basis for distributing the needs element of RSG, attempts to relate the spending needs of local authorities with measurable economic, social and demographic factors.

Many factors are tested to determine whether they are significant determinants of expenditure need, that is whether there is a correlation between variations in expenditure per head by authorities and the factors tested. The factors finally selected are set out in the rate support grant order. The formula indicates that the greater the incidence of school children, and of elderly people living alone, the more bad housing, and so on, the greater will be the assessed local authority spending need.

Other approaches to the assessment of needs have, of course, been suggested. The Layfield Committee recommended a unit cost method but this is not without its own problems. In our discussions with the local authority associations on the 1978–79 RSG settlement we are considering alternative methods of needs assessment, but at this stage I cannot give an indication of what method may be chosen. I should emphasise however that we do have extensive discussions with the associations on rate support grant and its distribution and we greatly value the associations' contribution.

On the distribution of grant this year there was a sharp difference of view between the associations. In essence the choice was straightforward. Should the needs element continue to be distributed on a basis which, in general aids those harder pressed authorities where social problems are more prevalent—predominently but not exclusively in the urban areas? Or should the distribution in the 1977–78 settlement be carried out with minimal change on the 1976–77 pattern? The Association of County Councils was strongly in favour of minimal change. But the Government decided that such a course implied the abandonment of the objective to aid the needs, often increasing needs, of those authorities having to tackle very difficult social problems.

Will the Minister concentrate on the question of the safety net for the few counties most adversely affected? This would not affect the redistribution in the cities that he is rightly talking about.

I should like to cover that point in a moment.

To conclude what I was saying, the Government decided that they could not agree with the ACC's proposals.

I realise that the hon. Gentleman was, rightly, primarily concerned with his own county. It is to that subject that I now turn. There is no disguising the fact that, as the hon. Gentleman has naturally stressed, Surrey has not come out well in the 1977–78 distribution arrangements. Indeed, as he has said, the county has consistently been a relative grant loser since the 1974–75 settlement. The basic reason for this is simple enough. The incidence of social and economic problems in Surrey is lower than practically anywhere else in the country. Since the needs element compensates for differences in expenditure needs, and since Surrey has a relatively low expenditure need, Surrey's share of grant will fall in 1977–78.

But I want also to put this in a historical perspective. The formula for distributing rate support grant was radically changed by the Conservative proposals introduced in the House in 1973. This was done because there was recognition that the distribution of rate support grant in previous years had simply not recognised the variation in the distribution of social problems and spending needs which local authorities had to meet. Our distribution proposals are built directly on those 1973 proposals, which were first used in the distribution of the 1974–75 rate support grant.

But I want to mention two points which to some degree help counties such as Surrey. First, the changes in distribution in 1977–78 will, as in 1976–77, be combined with the changes in the two previous years. This is the method some have described as "damping". It is not the safety net for which the hon. Gentleman asks, but it lessens the impact of the change based merely on the assessment of the needs element on the basis of factors as they are measured in a particular year. To lessen the impact of the change in grant, we take account not only of the changes which fall out from this year's regression analysis, but also of the changes in the two previous years. This has a marked effect in lessening the impact of the change in grant on grant-losing authorities such as Surrey.

Second, the hon. Member will know that for the first time we have introduced a labour cost differential factor into the regression analysis formula, after discussion with the local authority associations. The purpose of this factor is to compensate authorities such as Surrey which have higher than average labour costs.

Let me now give some figures which put the points I have made in perspective. In my answer to the hon. Member of 17th January I said that Surrey's percentage reduction in receipt of the needs element would be 12 per cent. in 1977–78 as against this financial year. This is a provisional figure because, with the agreement of the associations, the data on which the expenditure need analysis is based are up-dated during the grant year. There will therefore tend to be some minor changes in the final amount of needs element received by authorities.

In 1976–77, in terms of the change in share of needs element in 1975–76, Surrey was the heaviest loser of needs element. For this coming financial year, on the provisional figures, it looks as if Surrey will be by no means the largest loser in these terms. I admit, of course, that this will be small comfort to the hon. Member and the hon. Member for Dorking (Sir G. Sinclair). But it would be wrong to suggest that Surrey is the unique sufferer.

The average domestic rate payment in Surrey in 1976–77 is £155. This is above the national average of £101. But this figure should also be compared in the light of some of the things the hon. Gentleman said, with Surrey's London borough neighbours. For example, the average payment in Bromley is £166, Croydon £152, Hillingdon £156, Kingston £154, and Richmond £158.

We should also remember that what ratepayers pay is a reflection of the standards of service provided by the local authority. It is one of the aims of the RSG system to equalise rate poundages for a common level of service. In fact, Surrey enjoys a fairly high level of services, and its staff-pupil ratio is the highest in England and Wales, so one would expect its precept and rate pound- ages to be significantly above the national average.

I am conscious that as we begin negotiations for the 1978–79 distribution, one matter that will command our close attention again this year is the best means of limiting the effect of changes in an individual authority's share of grant. We shall be discussing with the local authority associations the various methods available for achieving this aim.

I hope that the hon. Member has found these remarks of some help. I am fully aware of the feeling that some authorities, not only shire counties, are being treated harshly over rate support grant. I have agreed to receive a number of deputations from authorites, who feel particularly hard hit, and who are asking for more favourable treatment in the 1978–79 settlement.

In view of what the hon. Gentleman said about the deputation to my right hon. Friend, I am not sure that he will be pleased with the offer, but if after this debate he would like to lead a deputation from Surrey, I shall be happy to receive it and, with my officials, to go in more detail into what I have been saying. I shall not be able to make any promises, but I am merely saying that the points that he and his delegation may raise could be brought into our discussions with the local authority associations. Therefore, if he would like further discussion of these issues, I shall be happy indeed to meet him.

We shall want to take advantage of that offer. Will the hon. Gentlemen also examine the safety net factors, which is a worrying aspect? I shall be grateful if he could look into that matter before we see him.

I am grateful for the notice given me on that subject, and we shall examine that suggestion. When the hon. Gentleman brings his deputation to see me and my officials, perhaps we can discuss that matter also.