IS IT MORE IMPORTANT to allow your political supporters to
use as many cars as they like at elections or to introduce some overdue measure of social reform? The Government evidently does not find that question difficult to answer, and its sense of priorities was well illustrated in the House of Commons on Tuesday. On that day the House continued its extremely unedifying debates about the electoral use of cars, and Mr. Roy Jenkins, because the Government had not included it in its programme, introduced his Bill to reform the law of obscenity. There are, of course, a great many other things in need of reform; Sir Alan Herbert has pointed them out in his letter to The Times. But for the reasons Mr. Jenkins gave on Tuesday the obscenity Bill has a certain legislative prece- dence: a similar Bill was given a second reading eighteen months ago and then was considered by a Select Committee; from that ordeal it emerged strengthened and improved and with the unani- mous support of the committee. If, therefore, the House rejects the Bill on its second reading in a week or two's time, it will, as Mr. Jenkins said, be showing that our legislative procedure is not a rational process but a haphazard obstacle race. It will also be showing that it has no higher stand- ard in these matters than the Government.
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