I sought to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, after the right hon. Gentleman had spoken only because he was kind enough to mention to me earlier that he would refer to new matters affecting the House of Commons, which he did in the last few minutes of his speech. I shall detain the House for only a few minutes, because there is no point in my ranging over the whole debate or the speech of the right hon. Gentleman.

Hon. Members are going away for Christmas under the most melancholy conditions that I can remember during my 25 years in the House of Commons, and there is naturally great anxiety and worry about many matters which will be raised by constituents in the coming weeks. Therefore, they have wanted reassurance and comfort on matters about which they feel uneasy. However, there are just one or two points which the right hon. Gentleman mentioned to which it would be appropriate for me to refer.

The Leader of the House has given us a hint of the possibility that the House may be asked to reconsider its hours of business. He was justified in doing that, though I am sure the whole House hopes that the conditions and circumstances which may give rise to any such proposals will be ended before the House returns on 15th January. We are looking forward to some movement towards conciliation and settlement of these industrial disputes. We are certainly not contemplating that the House and the country will have weeks and months of emergency, of deepening crisis, because of industrial difficulties which confront the nation at the present time. Nevertheless, the Leader of the House was justified in making that tentative reference to the possibility of changing the hours of business of the House.

The only caveat I would enter is that there should be no curtailment of the rights and privileges of the House. We are not asking for a reduction in either our hours of work or the amount of work we do. We must help to save electricity if conditions remain the same when we return. It is a little disturbing for the right hon. Gentleman to have his attention distracted by one of his hon. Friends at this moment. I was saying that we on this side could not agree to shortening the hours of Parliament at a time when the whole nation might be seeking redress for difficulties and grievances and wanting new measures to be taken to meet the difficulties which confront it. We must seek to save electricity, but we must preserve the full functioning of the House of Commons with its customary rights and privileges of debate. People may want the House of Commons to be working more rather than less during the difficulties of the next few weeks. The Leader of the House has promised consultation and a motion in due course, but there can be no three-day week for the House of Commons and this should be made very clear. After all, we are the Parliament of the Realm and we have an overriding public duty and responsibility to safeguard the democratic rights of the people and to be here to deal with problems and difficulties which may arise.

The Leader of the House referred to Members' allowances. This is a difficult matter. We are always diffident about discussing matters which relate to conditions and allowances for Members of Parliament. However, on behalf of the Parliamentary Labour Party I put to the right hon. Gentleman certain suggestions for the adjustment of Member's allowances which under the Boyle Report had their analogues in the structure of allowances payable to the Civil Service. I give one simple example. Members of Parliament who have a home and constituency outside London and who have accommodation in London during the Session are given a subsistence allowance which is related to a payment made in the Civil Service. That was clearly established in the Boyle Report. As from 1st January 1973 the Civil Service received an improvement of the London subsistence allowance from £5·25 to £5·75. We asked the Leader of the House to consent to a corresponding adjustment for the parallel allowance payable to Members of Parliament. I give that as one illustration. There is another relating to the provincial rate of subsistence.

Another problem which I raised with the right hon. Gentleman was the payment of London allowances and the area covered by them, which his predecessors said could be adjusted if they were then found to be inequitable. They have since been found to be inequitable and adjustment could clearly have been made. I am disappointed at what the right hon. Gentleman said, but we all understand that we cannot be furthering our interests at a time of grave national anxiety. I am bound to qualify that, however, to this extent. The country does not expect Members of Parliament in present conditions to worsen the basis of their efficiency and the performance of their duties. I do not believe that any member of the public would expect Members of Parliament to be placed at an acute disadvantage in relation to other servants of the State.

The right hon. Gentleman referred to the allowance payable for secretaries. This is in an entirely different category. The Boyle Committee never thought that the allowance of £1,000 a year would be enough to pay for a full-time secretary. That was never contemplated. Now, of course, the allowance is even more inadequate, in view of current levls of remuneration, than when the Boyle Committee reported. Members of Parliament have not yet had the benefit of any of the stages of the counter-inflation policy. Nothing has happened to give them any additional resources out of which to pay for their secretaries under stage 1, 2 or 3. There is an early-day motion on the Order Paper which expresses the view of many hon. Members in that regard.

Not long ago the Government made sympathetic comments about the employment of secretaries. That was some time ago when we were debating the new Parliament building, construction of which is now to be deferred. Hon. Members are finding it increasingly difficult to retain the essential equipment for the performance of their duties in dealing with correspondence. They are unable to pay secretaries what is now regarded as reasonable remuneration for duties in the House which involve long hours, split duties and all sorts of uncertainties about their engagements and conditions of service.

The Leader of the House has reported the Government's judgment in this matter. The House has noted it. I must reserve the position of my right hon. and hon. Friends because I am not in a position to acquiesce in what the right hon. Gentleman just announced. I hope it will not be thought that I am intruding into a debate on grave matters with domestic issues of relative unimportance to the country, or that I am getting our debate out of perspective. This is the only opportunity I have of raising the matter, and had I spoken before the Leader of the House I should have been unable to comment on the matter.

For the rest, quite clearly we are rising in sombre circumstances. Whether public opinion and the pressure of events will bring us back earlier it is impossible to say. The Leader of the House may rest assured that the House would willingly come back at any date the Government thought right and proper to attend to our business before 15th January. We have quite rightly cut our recess short this year. We have the good news that the Leader of the House will be on duty in person, because many of us will be working in our constituencies and elsewhere and we shall be able to get in touch with him if we are in serious difficulty.

I believe that we face considerable disruption, chaos and confusion in the weeks ahead as a result of the new restrictions on the use of electricity. I sincerely hope that the social and industrial fabric will take the strain, but it will be a severe one. We therefore enter the new year facing a somewhat unpredictable future, but we sincerely hope that good sense will prevail and that the judgment of the Government and all those concerned with this grave situation will lead to a satisfactory settlement of the disputes which plague the economy and cause so much public inconvenience. I sincerely hope, too, that we shall return after the recess a much happier House of Commons than we leave it.