Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am 12:00 am ar 12 Rhagfyr 1973.
Hon. Members will not be surprised that I welcome the Bill. I should like to begin by thanking both my right hon. and learned Friend and the hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Alan Williams') for their very kind references to my previous efforts. We certainly seem to have come a long way since I gave the Speaker a tube of toothpaste in March 1972 when I first introduced this as a Ten-Minute Bill. In fact, this is the third time that we have been in a Committee Room discussing it. We got it through Committee in 1972, but at that stage the Government were not prepared to give it a fair wind, and of course Parliamentary time was short. We got it through Committee last Session and the Government were indeed prepared to give it their blessing, for which we were all grateful, and then, because of the fatuous procedure to which the hon. Gentleman so accurately referred, my hon. Friends dozed off, objected at the wrong moment, and the Bill did not become law. It could have been law by now.
However, there is always some advantage to compensate for a disadvantage. I think that this is a better Bill than the one which I produced, and it was amended with the advice of my hon. Friends as recently as July. It is slightly more comprehensive; it gives proper scope for dealing with fresh foodstuffs and so on, and I think it represents a gain. All I am bothered about is that it should become law and that it should be implemented as quickly as possible. In that context I endorse what the hon. Gentleman has just said.
My right hon. and learned Friend was absolutely right when he said that this legislation was not a panacea for all ills. Of course it is not, and I have never pretended anything else. It is a small, but, I suggest, significant, weapon in the fight against inflation and gives the discriminating shopper some more information to which she is absolutely entitled. Just as the shopper is entitled to know the ingredients of foodstuffs when she is buying a bottle of, say, sauce, so she is entitled to know what weight she is getting for her money.
Some shoppers are not discriminating, are not discerning, they do not care what is in the sauce or what the weight is, but most of them these days do and they are entitled to that information. As a result of the Bill, they will be able to have it.
I do not want to make a long speech because so many of these things have been said before by others and myself, but there are difficulties for a housewife in a hurry in a supermarket. To go into a supermarket—this is essentially a Bill that affects the supermarket—is almost like going in for shoppers' roulette. The poor housewife, often harrassed by children, pushing a trolley and trying to decide what is the best value and confronted with jars some of which are 12 ounces and some of which are one pound, and with an amazing complexity when she reaches the so-called toiletry section, is at a great disadvantage. It is essential that she should be given further help.
With regard to the small shopkeeper and the valid points made by the hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Alan Williams) I would say only that I should like them brought within the scheme but we shall have to think carefully about where the responsibility should rest. Manufacturers should not be entirely absolved of responsibility; it should not be put entirely upon retailers because—I am sure the hon. Gentleman would endorse this—there are many small retailers up and down the country who are performing a real social service and making very little money. Often the corner shop or the village shop is operating within a very tight budget and the proprietor gets little out of it, but it does provide a real social service.
It has never been any part of my endeavours or intentions to make life more difficult for those shops, or for the customers whom they serve. In industrial areas like mine there are many corner shops which are highly valued and in many of my villages there are small shops which are also highly valued. They cannot carry the range of goods which the supermarket carries. They cannot even begin or pretend to compete, but they offer a personal service without which this country would be much the poorer. So I hope detailed thought can be given to this.
It is within the fields of fresh food, detergents and toiletries that the maximum advantage of the Bill will be gained. Tremendous advantage, too, will be gained during this period of metrication. I was delighted to receive this morning, as I believe did all hon. Members on the Committee, the communication from the Consumers Association in which it welcomes the Bill,
particularly so on the eve of metrication. Consumers will be confronted with unfamiliar weights and measures and it will be even more difficult to relate 148 g and 173 g to a price and assess whether the product is 'cheaper' or 'expensive.' Fixed benchmarks of quantity or price per quantity will be even more desirable.
Perhaps it would be appropriate at this point to pay a well-deserved tribute to the work of the Consumers Association in this field and in many others over a long period. It is as much as anything else the pressure from this and other kindred bodies that has created a real awareness of consumer needs within Parliament. We should none of us omit to mention that. Succeeding administrations have become more and more consumer conscious because of the work of bodies like the CA.
But, just as it would be churlish not to mention that or to pay tribute to the work done by both the previous Government, with the Trade Descriptions Act, and the work of many private Members, so it would be extremely churlish of me not to pay particular tribute to the work of my right hon. and learned Friend, who has done a great deal in a short space of time to help the consumer. The Fair Trading Act, which is now on the Statute Book and the consumer credit legislation which is going through now are indicative of the very real importance attached to consumerism. Indeed, the appointment of my right hon. and learned Friend was, in itself, perhaps the greatest tribute that a Government could have paid to the importance of this subject.
So I sincerely congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend on what he has done, and thank him for bringing this forward. At the same time, I want to refer again to what the hon. Member for Swansea, West, said—that passing the legislation is not enough. There has been a great deal of time for consultation and I know that there have been many consultations, over two years now, since I first introduced a Ten-Minute Bill on this subject. I hope that such consultations as must inevitably and properly follow from the passage of this Bill will not be unduly protracted. I hope that it will be implemented as soon as possible, and that this session of Parliament will see the first effects in the shops of this Unit Pricing Bill. Then the shopper, particularly the housewife, will have this extra small, but potentially very effective, weapon in her armoury against inflation. It will assist her to make more discerning, discriminating choices and it will give her cause to be thankful that it is on the Statute Book.
With those words, I give the Bill every possible welcome and thank hon. Members on both sides of the House who have assisted me in my endeavours over the last two years.