Orders of the Day — Emergency Laws (Re-Enactments and Repeals) Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 3 June 1964.

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Photo of Mr Douglas Houghton Mr Douglas Houghton , Sowerby 12:00, 3 June 1964

I repeat—almost certainly a Labour Government, coming in in the autumn, being left with this question of what to do about the 1959 Act.

I think that the Government thought it would be considerate on their part to do something about that Act before the General Election. As I say, I am charitable enough to assume that that was in their mind. Why have the Government thought it necessary to introduce a Bill on these detailed lines instead of a holding operation, an extension of the date 31st December, 1964, by a single, small, one-Clause Bill that would at least have given the incoming Government time to think and act without being committed on the lines of the Bill before the House at the moment?

In 1958, when the previous Bill was introduced, the Government by a Motion of the House, extended the life of many of the controls covered by the Measure for a further period of 12 months, or the date of the passing of the Bill into law, whichever was the earlier. I recognise that no similar method of extending the life of the 1959 Act can be adopted this time. It would need legislation. The question I am putting to the Government is: why have they chosen to legislate in this detailed fashion so close to the end of this Parliament, instead of providing, as an interim measure, for the extension of the life of the 1959 Act, and giving the incoming Government the time and the opportunity to decide what they want to do about the future of these emergency powers?

I said a moment or two ago that we on these benches must be forgiven for a little suspicion about the time and circumstance in which these Bills come before the House. In November, 1958, when the previous Bill was introduced, I think that it will be generally agreed—I hope to have the assent of the Financial Secretary—that there was a Machiavellian touch about the way the Government acted. The Emergency Laws (Repeal) Act, introduced in November, 1958 and which became law in March, 1959, was described by the then Economic Secretary, now the Minister of Power, on 12th November, 1958, as follows: The Bill is, therefore, an exercise in constitutional propriety. That was just pious humbug, because the cat was let out of the bag by the then Lord Privy Seal, now the Foreign Secretary, who, at the annual meeting of the Central Council of the National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations, had said—I am quoting now from an account of his speech in column 426 of the OFFICIAL REPORT on 12th November—that the Bill was intended to prevent a Socialist State being brought in, as it were, by the flick of a switch."—[OFFICAL REPORT, 12th November, 1958; Vol. 595, c. 415 and 426.]The Times, to which we look for moral guidance in many matters these days, rebuked the Government for introducing a Bill with any such intention, because, they rightly pointed out, if a Socialist Government did come to power it would be by the will of the people, and an outgoing Government had no right to put any handicap or hindrance upon the activities of a freely-elected Government.

The circumstances in which this previous Bill was introduced led my right hon. and hon. Friends to vote against its Second Reading. We challenged some of its provisions in Committee and we voted against the Third Reading. I do not know what it is in the coincidence of arranging the business of the House that brings obscenity immediately after emergency powers Bills on two occasions. The Third Reading of the Emergency Laws (Repeal) Act on 16th December, 1958, was followed by a debate on obscenity, and this debate is to be followed by one on obscenity. Is this a sense of humour that the Leader of the House has acquired, or is it just coincidence? Whatever it may be, it is of interest to note how these things happen. It may be an association of ideas; I do not know.

This Bill, too, is being introduced in the last months of this Parliament. On the first occasion, the Government had from 1951 to 1958 to decide what they would do about emergency powers, and they decided to do something in the last months of the last Parliament. This time they have decided to do something—admittedly, in present circumstances they must do something—and they have decided to do it this way fully and completely in the last months of this Parliament.

I do not know whether the Government think that there is any political advantage in doing this now. I do not know whether they think that the headlines in some of the newspapers have been politcally helpful. The Times said: Most wartime laws to end". The Guardian said: Emergency ends at last". It may be that there are some unsuspecting people who think that the Tories are good for "knocking Whitehall in the eye" and "Down with bureaucracy" and all that sort of thing, but it would have been better had the Government introduced a holding operation instead of trying to legislate for the next Parliament at this late hour of this Parliament.

I now turn to the Bill and enter a protest. The introduction of the 1958 Bill was accompanied by a White Paper. No similar White Paper accompanied this Bill. The Explanatory Memorandum to the Bill is confined to a Financial Memorandum of only a few lines and figures. Yet in the newspapers, in The Times, for example, appeared a full-length account and explanation of the Bill's Clauses. Virtually the Financial Secretary's Second Reading speech was reproduced in The Times and in the Guardian there was a fairly full summary of the Bill's provisions.

I inquired where was to be found an explanation of the contents of the Bill. I was informed by the Library that there was no White Paper and no memorandum available to hon. Members, but there was a Press handout, a Lobby document given to the newspapers at the time of the publication of the Bill. Unfortunately, no copy of that was available. The Library got on to the Treasury; unfortunately, no copy was available. When the Treasury was asked if there was any hope of getting one by this afternoon, the reply was that there was no such hope. It is an outrageous scandal that Members of Parliament cannot even have an explanation of the Bill which we are to consider this afternoon, even though it was handed out to the Lobby several weeks ago. When is this nuisance to stop?

I will give this positive assurance to the House: under a Labour Government hon. Members will not be treated with this contempt. We will see that hon. Members are better served than this. We are entitled to have before us any explanation which is available of legislation to be brought before the House. I have complained time and again about this, but nothing has been done. That is all I have to say about that, but I feel very deeply about it because it is an insult to the House. Why should newspapers be better served than hon. Members? Lobby? Forsooth! Hon. Members cannot even have a document addressed to them.

The hon. Gentleman has told us that the Bill is divided into three parts—powers to be given up, powers to be retained for a limited period and subject to renewal, and powers to be made permanent. Consideration of the Bill's Clauses may be undertaken with better advantage in Committee, when we can look at them more closely, but there are one or two comments which I should like to make now. As the hon. Gentleman has explained, to some extent the powers to be given up are to be replaced by alternative powers regarding the emergency in which the Government may be called upon to act to safeguard the essentials of life of the community.

Prompting me a few moments ago, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) suggested that I should ask the Government if they would kindly say what an emergency was. I suppose that an emergency is what Her Majesty's Government at any time think is an emergency—if there is a threat, if there is a danger or fear, it is in the judgment of the Government to act to use the powers which an emergency gives them.

On the powers to be continued temporarily or subject to Parliamentary control, the subject of jute will certainly receive close examination. It rather looks as though the Government are proposing for the time being to retain the power to buy and sell jute yarn, jute cloth and jute bags and to extend that power only to the end of 1969, subject to renewal, while the power to trade in raw jute is to lapse at the end of the year. I am not sufficiently acquainted with the jute industry to be able to say how important discarding the latter power is, though I notice that it is said that it has not been used of late. My hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, East (Mr. G. M. Thomson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Doig) will undoubtedly seek to catch your eye on this matter, Mr. Speaker.

Hire-purchase control is to be made permanent, along with a number of other very important provisions. We all recognise the significance of hire-purchase debt in the economy today and the need to retain power to regulate it, in conjunction with the other regulators of the economy which the Chancellor of the Exchequer may feel it important to have at his disposal; similarly with transactions in gold and securities.

I am sure that hon. Members on this side of the House agree that the power of control of welfare foods should be made permanent, though it rather looks as though, in practice, this is of greater significance in relation to welfare milk than orange juice and other welfare foods. A few years ago, the Minister of Health lifted the controlled price of orange juice and similar welfare foods, which are now issued at cost price. To that extent, I suppose, it constitutes a price control. We would agree that this control is now a built-in feature of our welfare services.

I now come to Health Service medical supplies. I feel rather ashamed to confess that I was unaware that this control existed. To think that I have gone through many hours of work as Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, grilling the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health on this tiresome question of pharmaceutical services, drug prices, monopolies and the rest, without being able to produce the ace of trumps and ask him, point blank, "Why have you not used these powers to control the price of medical supplies?"

I have heard a great deal about the voluntary price regulation arrangements, which appear to have been more or less voluntary. Some of them have not been watertight, because there have been suppliers outside the scope of the agreement, and not long ago we were asking questions about the activities of certain firms who were outside the voluntary price regulation arrangements.

The House should not only confirm this as a permanent arrangement, but should ask the Minister when he is going to use these powers. Safeguards, precautions, and other forms of reserve power are important, and sometimes very influential, but it is surely no great credit to the Government that they have never been used if circumstances exist—and I rather believe that they did and do—when these powers should be used.

One of the most difficult things to explain to e Americans is this curious hybrid National Health Service which we have. They talk about socialised medicine, but we know that it is not socialised medicine really. It is private doctoring at public expense, and the weakness of the Ministry in keeping control of drug prices lies in the fact that in the normal course of events the order for the supply of goods is not given by the Ministry at all. It is given by the thousands of individual doctors in the Service. When they write out a prescription, they give an order on the account of the Ministry of Health to a private supplier, and that constitutes the main difficulty about price control in drugs, medicines, and appliances in the National Health Service.

I will not dwell any longer on this, because I do not want to go too deeply into the merits of the matter, but it is clearly a power which the Government should have. I think that it is for the Minister to consider when is the appropriate time, if not to use it, to pull it out of the drawer and to begin to finger it ostentatiously during the course of negotiations with the other side. That might save him having to use the power. If he brandishes it before people, it may be enough. Anyhow, one way or another, something has to be done to keep under control the price of drugs and all the monopoly tendencies in the world of medicine.

The maximum price of milk is another control to be written permanently into our law, and I think that the House will agree with that, too. It follows the recommendation of the Thorold Committee that the Government should continue to control the maximum retail price of milk, and recent circumstances have shown that that is a desirable power for the Government to have.

That, I think, will do for my initial review of the provisions of the Bill. I hope that I have not made too much mischief in the minds of hon. Gentlemen opposite, but they cannot expect to get away with a completely clean bill of health in respect of emergency laws, having regard to the very doubtful ancestry of the Bill.

It will be for the incoming Government to consider the whole machinery of government, the powers which they have, and the powers which they may need, to carry out policies in the best interests of the country. We do not feel that we need to have any serious quarrel with the Government about the provisions of the Bill, although, as I indicated earlier, we would have preferred not to have a detailed Bill before us at the moment, but some acknowledgement of the transient nature of the phantoms opposite and the prospect of a Labour Government being elected in the near future.