Mr Ian Orr-Ewing: Would my right hon. and learned Friend in any event be prepared to undertake to examine the methods which are now used to bring to the attention of those who occupy the bench in any capacity the records of those who have passed through their hands after sentence? Secondly, would he also institute an inquiry to discover whether it would be advisable or not to give publicity to second and...
Mr Ian Orr-Ewing: Is the hon. Member suggesting that Sunday political meetings, which are not organised by those on this side of the House, are commercial enterprises? Is not that a new conception of a political meeting?
Mr Ian Orr-Ewing: I have one or two questions to put on this aspect of the Supplementary Estimates. There is an increase of about £4½ million shown in regard to aircraft. Is that increase due to late stage alterations in design, alterations which might or might not have been devised at some earlier stage? If the Parliamentary Secretary would turn to the Report of the Select Committee on Estimates on that...
Mr Ian Orr-Ewing: I am sorry, but I simply cannot read any other meaning into the words as they appear on the paper. I do not doubt that my hon. Friend is weighing his words here, but we must accept it that the Committee are considering something rather different from what is set out on the paper. I hope we are. As the words are set out, they clearly mean that there has been a quite considerable reduction of...
Mr Ian Orr-Ewing: Before my hon. Friend leaves the number of men, will he give an assurance that if ever he has to come to the Committee again and places the facts before the Committee, he will see that they are set out in a different form in order to make them absolutely clear to everybody?
Mr Ian Orr-Ewing: I am sure the hon. Gentleman does not wish to mislead the House, but has he not overlooked one particular point, that if the producers themselves do not like the scheme on which we are asked to give a vote tonight, they need not enter into it at all, and that if they do not like these proposed powers they need not vote for them, and that equally if, having accepted those powers, they do not...
Mr Ian Orr-Ewing: I beg to move, That this House calls attention to the need for a comprehensive policy for the planting, extraction, conversion and marketing of timber grown in the United Kingdom, especially with a view to assuring that the best use is made of the large quantities of such timber which will be ready for the market in the next few years. There are a great many hon. Members of this House and, I...
Mr Ian Orr-Ewing: I think the hon. Gentleman is dealing with a reference in the Report that is not really the matter on which I was speaking. The subject dealt with on that page is the timber felling quota, which is quite a different matter to the amount of thinnings coming forward, which is not subject to that procedure, but comes under a different procedure altogether.
Mr Ian Orr-Ewing: Will my hon. Friend tell me whether it is easy or difficult to fit a guard to a gas or electric fire to protect the children? My own experience is that it is an extremely difficult thing to do with the majority of the gas and electric fires that are on the market today.
Mr Ian Orr-Ewing: My hon. Friend is laying great stress on the value of publicity with the object of reducing the number of accidents. Would he agree with me that an immense amount of publicity has been undertaken in connection with road accidents—there has been a vast campaign over many years—and has it really had the desired results in reducing the number of accidents? Surely the evidence is all the...
Mr Ian Orr-Ewing: I listened with great interest to my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, South (Sir W. Darling) wrapping his flannelette shirt around the proposals contained in this Bill, and I thought he did it successfully and neatly. Then he raised little doubts, and went on to mention one rather dangerous point. He, in fact, suggested that the publicity from this debate would be enough. In spite of the...
Mr Ian Orr-Ewing: My hon. Friend informs me that he has three children. I am well aware of it, but apparently these children are not of the age when they are likely to bump into electric or gas fires unprotected.
Mr Ian Orr-Ewing: Exactly the same argument can be used about all road safety measures. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend that it is deplorable that the advance of science and the invention of the electric fire and the gas fire have driven us to take all sorts of physical precautions against accidents from them. It is also horrible to see hundreds of yards of railings on the footwalks, and thousands of...
Mr Ian Orr-Ewing: The right hon. Gentleman keeps insisting that this is a London enterprise. The whole excuse for it is that it was a national festival.
Mr Ian Orr-Ewing: Would it not be better, then, if we were quite honest about this and called it a London Bill?
Mr Ian Orr-Ewing: Mr. I. L. Orr-Ewing rose—
Mr Ian Orr-Ewing: In spite of the remarks of the right hon. Gentleman, surely the hon. Lady recognises that there is a very considerable difference between extracting money voluntarily subscribed for a public company and money extracted from the taxpayers, either locally or nationally. In the expenditure of that money there is a very great difference indeed.
Mr Ian Orr-Ewing: This is very important. My hon. Friend is stressing the fact that he wishes the House to vote a Bill to enhance the amenities of London, and London only. This is not the L.C.C. Will he explain?
Mr Ian Orr-Ewing: I was interested in the speech of the hon. Member for Bilston (Mr. Nally). I should have been even more interested had he devoted the major part of his remarks to the Bill. I gathered he would only support this Bill if anybody who went to the Festival Gardens was a teetotaller. I would refer him, in that matter, to the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. J. Hudson), who could possibly put him...
Mr Ian Orr-Ewing: I think the right hon. Gentleman should do me the justice of listening to what I am saying. I said that the evidence of maladministration and bad estimating certainly entered into the case for the presentation of this Bill, because the case would not be so strong if the losses had not been so great as a result of bad estimating in the first case. The right hon. Gentleman must admit that that...