Mr Speaker, Sir, this Bill, may I say from the outset, is unprincipled in its entirety. It is obnoxious and it is discriminatory. Sir, after the last elections, the Prime Minister acknowledged that there was a message from the electorate - that they were sending a direct signal to the Government that the Government was getting very oppressive, making things very hard and that they wanted a relaxation of the rules and conditions under which they were tied down by the Government. Sometime after the general elections, maybe a month, two or three months after that, there was a report of a forum or gathering at which the First Deputy Prime Minister was present. And it was reported that he had agreed with somebody saying, "I think you have a point there" when the man complained about all the unnecessary measures and restrictions and the powers that the HDB appeared to enjoy. So one thought that perhaps the Government having received this clear signal, as the Prime Minister put it, from the electorate, would think a little bit and being an accountable Government that it is, accountable to the people, taking into account the people's wishes and their needs and their desires, it would try and examine all the powers exercised by statutory boards and the Government to see whether there was any area in which these powers could perhaps be reduced or completely taken away. The Government says all this. But what do we find in action? We find that the Government has no such intention of relaxing any rules or conditions under which the people are tied down. On the contrary, it would appear that the Government proposes that statutory boards and itself should arm themselves with more powers so that the citizens may be further ground down, so that whatever rights they even now have may be taken away from them. This is the sort of double talk, talking with a forked tongue, that is so familiar of this Government and of which the people are now fully cognizant, and of which they are getting a little bit sick and tired. Mr Speaker, Sir, this Bill, I said, is obnoxious. It flouts well-known principles of law. It runs counter to all accepted codes of human relationship and conduct, and it is discriminatory. It is not once but several times that I have spoken in this House of the measures of this Government as being thoroughly discriminatory and objectionable. This is another instance. I propose now, Mr Speaker, Sir, to examine, with your permission, the various clauses of this Bill, and to try and point out why, in my view, this whole Bill is obnoxious and should be thrown out. Of course, that is a pious hope. We may have Members of the Government Party speaking in debate against any provisions of the Bill, but when it comes to them being called to stand up, we find nobody standing up. So it is a pious hope that this Bill may be thrown out. But, I repeat that the whole Bill is repugnant to the common law and to the principles under which people should regulate their lives. May I say a little bit about clause 3? But before I do that, may I also say this: that the Minister in introducing this Bill does not, at least to me, appear to comprehend, I am sorry to have to say this, does not appear to comprehend the magnitude of this Bill, in the dangers that are present in this Bill, and in the cutting down of the liberties of the people that are present in this Bill. He makes a cursory presentation of the Bill. He sounded as though he were saying, "Yes, I am asking for all these powers but look at me. Do you think I am the sort of man who will exercise these powers? I have a soft heart. So, please, give me these powers. I am not going to exercise them." But that is not the way that legislation is presented to Parliament. It is not for Ministers to come and say, "Give us these powers. But you can be assured that in the exercise of those powers we will be lenient, we will take into account the feelings, the considerations of the people." Legislation should be precise. It should be certain. The citizen must know where he stands and he must know what the penalty is. He cannot be left to guess what the Minister of the Government may do or may not do in any particular case. I have again more than once spoken about the danger of entrusting arbitrary powers to Ministers, discretionary powers, without limiting them and affording sufficient, adequate, remedies to citizens against the misuse of such powers by Ministers.But, of course, all my pleas, I see, fall on deaf ears. The Government knows best. Nobody else knows anything else. That is the tragedy of Singapore. That is the tragedy which has brought on this economic recession - the assumption that the Government knew best, that our people did not know anything, and so the Government refused to listen, even when people were warning the Government. And then we find ourselves in the plight that we are. Clause 3 of the Bill seeks to amend, the Minister says, an existing power in the Board to vary mortgage rates where they have already been agreed upon between the parties and entered in the mortgage deeds. Of course, the Minister says with a smile, "This will really benefit the tenants because if the rate goes down, we will vary it." I am not so sure that the Board will be ever so ready, prompt. But, of course, if it should go up even by a little bit, the Board will be ready, almost the next second, to raise the interest rate. I agree that perhaps the interest rate should be pegged, but it could be written like that into the Bill so that regardless of what the Board does it is pegged to something external. I say this because what is proposed by this Bill (I know the Minister has said this exists already) the existing power runs counter completely to the Evidence Act. Under the Evidence Act, if parties have agreed upon something in a document and the document particularly is under seal, then no single party can vary it or alter the terms. So the principle is wrong. I wonder whether whoever drafted this Bill ever gave that any consideration. That shows the care and thought that has gone into the drafting of this Bill. It is a shoddy piece of legislation. It runs counter to a number of sections in the Evidence Act and the Government draftsmen would appear not to be aware of these principles in the Evidence Act. Then if I may move on, Mr Speaker, Sir, to clause 4. I do not wish to spend too much time on paragraph (a) of that clause. But that again is much too wide and the penalty of the fine is much too excessive. Of course, to the Government, to the statutory boards, everything must be calculated in terms of money. The more we can collect, the better it will be for us. That is the whole principle by which the Government and the statutory boards would appear to have conducted their affairs. But may I sound my warning that it is much too wide, and I would make a plea that if you are going to legislate rules you should spell them out with greater clarity so as to provide for certainty that the citizens may be guided by them. The second part of this clause, to which reference has already been made, introduces something which is unknown in the private sector. Mr Speaker, Sir, if in the private sector a tenant falls into arrears with payment of his rent, all that the landlord can do is to levy distress by applying to the Court for a writ of distress to sell the goods and recover the rent; and if he cannot recover enough he can bring an action for the recovery of the arrears of rent. And the Court may (I say "may" because the Court has a discretion), in awarding payment of any arrears, allow interest to be paid on the arrears of rent recovered. The HDB has those powers like any other landlord. But not content with that, the HDB says, "We must have something more. We must have power to levy a penalty on persons who for genuine reasons may find themselves unable to pay rents." Why should there be one law for the HDB and one law for other house owners, property owners? Why should there be? I have said before, the HDB is a law unto itself in this country. It is a veritable Leviathan. So I say, Mr Speaker, Sir, that part of this clause is thoroughly obnoxious. No private owner of property can go to the Court and say, "I want a penalty as well for late payment." He may be eligible for that if in the tenancy agreement the tenant agrees to pay a penalty. That is a different matter. But he cannot get it under the law. But HDB wants it for itself. Then we come to clause 5. Again reference has been made to this by the speaker before me, Mr Speaker, Sir, and this proposes to give the Board, of course with the approval of the Minister, power again to vary contracts entered into solemnly between the Board and tenants, lessees of the Board. If, in the private sector, somebody takes a lease of a property from the owner and the rent is fixed for that period of the lease, then the owner is stuck with that rent. There is nothing he can do even if rents go spiralling up because the lease governs the relationship between the owner and the lessee and equally the poor tenant is stuck with it if the rent should go down. He can perhaps seek relief from the Courts but this, as has been pointed out in sub-paragraph (2) of this clause: 'Notwithstanding anything contained in any tenancy or licence agreement ... the Board shall have the power to vary, with the approval of the Minister, the rent, licence fees or maintenance fees fixed under subsection (1).' In other words, what this subsection (2) is saying, and it is being presented as a piece of legislation, is: forget about contracts, forget about deeds. It does not really matter. Is that the sort of society that we want in Singapore that people should forget their written agreements? People should not honour what they have solemnly agreed to honour in a written agreement. See the kind of spin-offs that you are going to get in society when they see that the HDB can do all this. Again, I say, why is the HDB exempt from the ordinary rules of law that apply to other citizens in this country? Why? Sub-section (3) of that section says "shall be published in the Gazette and shall take effect on such date as may be specified therein." I was looking at it this morning and I have not had the time to research this. Would the Minister say whether this order made by him would be laid before Parliament so that if it is laid before Parliament then a motion may be presented for revocation of that order because I have, Mr Speaker, Sir, given notice of an amendment at the Committee stage and I do not propose to say anything more now. I shall speak at the Committee stage on this - why I think if it is not going to be approved by Parliament under this clause, why it is absolutely essential that it should be laid before Parliament. So could the Minister clarify this and give me an assurance that it will be laid before Parliament the moment it is gazetted? Mr Speaker, Sir, may I move on to clause 7 and whilst I am dealing with clause 7, may I also deal with clause 9 because those two clauses overlap in the new powers that the Board seeks. Clause 7 of the Bill seeks to debar persons from applying for Board accommodation. They are not yet tenants or "owners" of HDB apartments but they propose to and clause 7 seeks to debar them upon the contingencies mentioned in this clause. Clause 9, of course, relates to those who are already in occupation and proposes to divest them of their home, their roof, if they should commit any of the acts contemplated by these new powers. As I said a little while ago, Mr Speaker, Sir, on 31st August, 1982, in Question No. 4 for Written Answer, I asked the Minister for National Development to furnish us with all the reasons and causes for which persons may be debarred and I had this answer from him, and if I may set out the categories for which persons may be debarred. a) Persons who misuse the flats for illegal purposes, eg. gambling, drugs, prostitution, etc. b) Persons who assault HDB staff in the performance of duties and are convicted of such offences. So if a poor man who perhaps in anger should so much as raise his hand against an HDB inspector or housing officer and he should then go to Court and say, "I am sorry. I lost my temper" and the Court says, "All right, my man, you are convicted of it. We would not fine you but you are convicted and you may leave", the HDB can debar him forever from living either as "owner" or as a tenant in an HDB apartment. I hope the Minister sees the enormity of these powers. c) Vandals of HDB properties who are convicted of such offences. It should have really said "persons who are guilty of vandalism against HDB properties." But I would not quibble about the way it is spelt out "vandals of HDB properties". d) Tenants and lessees who have sublet their entire flats without HDB's permission. This is one of the two categories for which the Minister has given us some numbers, and he said so far 332 have been barred, I take it for life, from ever stepping into an HDB apartment. e) Ex-tenants of HDB flats who have not cleared their rental debts. Again, I hope the Minister can see the enormity of this. If a poor citizen should fall into misfortune and should find himself unable to pay the rents for his flat to the HDB and he is evicted, then under this category he cannot apply for HDB flats unless he has first paid his previous debts and, in some cases, it may be quite a big sum. Then we come to f) Foreign workers allocated rental flats under the Single Unskilled Workers' Scheme who cause nuisance to the public. I shall not spend very much time but I have heard complaints from our citizens that the HDB is taking away their homes and allocating them to foreign workers. g) Employers who fail to exercise control over their foreign workers who have been allocated rental flats under the Unskilled Workers' Scheme. This time the employers are to be punished if they fail to exercise control over their foreign workers. I shall be touching on all this when I come to deal with the new categories brought in by the Bill and I just wish to point out that there are all these other reasons. h) Persons who contravene the Government's work permit marriage restriction policy. I have said enough about this in this House about families being torn apart by this Government's policy. i) Lessees who sell their HDB flats to their own buyers after five years of occupation with no intention to reapply for HDB flats. Finally, j) Lessees who transfer their HDB flats to immediate blood relatives within five years of occupation, unless the transfer is to their parents and is due to the lessees' intending marriage. So you have there 10 causes for which persons may be debarred, and I take it that they are also the measures by which persons may be divested of their homes if they are already living in them. If the Board has been doing this over the past, I do not know for how many years, why does the Board now think it necessary to come to Parliament in respect of these new reasons? Of course, I am saying that what the Board has been doing is completely unconstitutional and illegal. Do we have a faint admission by the HDB that what they have so far been doing has been outside the law, and therefore they think now it is time they should come to Parliament and seek to legalize their powers, at the moment restricting it to these three clauses? Mr Speaker, Sir, if I may first deal with the provisions of the Bill which seek to debar and which seek to give HDB the power to divest persons of their homes: (1) if they should have been found guilty of throwing something out of their home and in that act injuring or maiming somebody outside; and (2), if anyone should have been found guilty of harbouring an illegal immigrant. I must take issue with the Member for Rochore to put him right, if I may, on his query as to whether he would be guilty if, without knowing that the person is an illegal immigrant, he offers him a drink. If I may tell him, he will not be guilty under the law. The prosecution will have to prove that he knew that the person was an illegal immigrant. My first objection to these is that the whole thing is discriminatory. As has been pointed out by the Member for Changkat, if persons living in private apartments throw anything out and in the result maimed somebody, they are not deprived of their home. It is only the poor HDB flat dwellers. So the law treats within its own community in different ways, categories of people, for the same act that they may have committed or might commit. That is thoroughly discriminatory, and it offends the Constitution which says that all persons are equal before the law and shall be entitled to the same treatment and rights under the law as anyone else. That itself, I should have thought, is bad enough. The other reason is, of course, in regard to the throwing of the litter and to the harbouring of illegal immigrants, the retrospective nature of the provisions. Times without number the Courts have said that any law which seeks to punish persons for acts committed by them when, at the time they committed the acts there was no such law, is reprehensible and is against all accepted principles of law. There should be a law that punishes an act at the time it is committed before a person can be punished for that act. You cannot seek to backdate sanctions when at the time of the commission of the act there were no sanctions. So it is thoroughly undesirable. Then we come to the principle of vicarious liability and the collective punishment. Both are more or less the same, as a variant, one of the other. In criminal law there is no principle of vicarious liability. In other words, under criminal law no one can be punished for the act of somebody else, whether it be his employer, his son, his wife or his friend unless, of course, he aided and abetted the commission of that act, that is, he participated in it. So there is no principle of vicarious liability. Only, the doer of the offence, the person who commits the offence, can be punished. If anyone else is to be punished, he must be shown to have participated in that offence. What does this clause do? These provisions say that if the owner, his spouse or any authorized occupier above the age of 14 has been convicted, then the owner loses his protection. So it introduces a principle which is unknown to criminal law and which is completely repugnant. In the same vein, Mr Speaker, Sir, is this principle of collective punishment. I was going to mention this but I see that reference was made by the Member for Rochore to the Templer era in the Malayan Emergency days when a whole village was punished if one or two members of the village had in some way or other given any help or supplied food to the Communists. That was condemned by a number of countries outside as being completely uncivilized and barbaric - to seek to punish an entire community, a village, for the acts of one or two persons inside that village. But at least the government in those days could have pleaded the Emergency. The government could have said, "Well, we agree in normal peacetime this is thoroughly bad. But we are fighting a war with the Communists, and national interest, national security demands this." So that was pleaded. But is the HDB saying that this country is fighting for its life, that national security demands that HDB should have the power to punish collectively an entire family? If an authorized occupier who may not even be a member of the family, he may just be a lodger, should be so foolish as to throw something out which results in somebody being injured, is the HDB going to say that the entire family should be punished? Mr Speaker, Sir, for all these reasons, these provisions are thoroughly bad. There is nothing else I can say about them. They flout all recognized principles of law and civilized behaviour and, may I say, if we do have these provisions they will only bring disgrace to Singapore. They will show that we do not conform to civilized standards that are accepted in other countries, that what we follow is a code from ancient times perhaps, as mention has been made, not a civilized code of behaviour. So I ask the Minister to think very seriously whether he does need to get Parliament to pass this Bill which will bring only discredit to Singapore and to Singaporeans. I have so far been speaking about these provisions under which persons may be evicted if they are convicted in a Court. But there is one other provision, of course, in this Bill, ie, paragraph (l) in clause 9 and paragraph (c) in clause 7, and this relates to the purchase price or loan taken by the buyer for the purchase of the apartment. This provision proposes to punish him if he "fails to return the money to the Government when he is required to do so under the terms of the grant." So the HDB is being used as a lever to help the Government get its money back. What if the man has a defence to the claim against the Government for the return of the money? The Government may feel that it cannot go to court to recover the money. Is that why this is being introduced, to circumvent the procedure under which persons should go to Court and recover monies that are due to them? The whole thing is against all accepted codes. Subsection (5) in clause 9, Mr Speaker, Sir, of course, refers to the remedy that any person who is aggrieved by the order of the HDB in divesting him of his flat may have. And the Act gives him, which is now becoming commonplace in all legislations in this country, the great remedy of appealing to the Minister. I am sure the Minister - he must have said this - will say, "Of course, he can go to the court." But I have pointed out to him more than once that in those circumstances there is only a very limited area in which the court can intervene. The court's powers are supervisory. It is quite a different thing altogether from the person taking something to court and asking the court to investigate the merits. This, I have complained again more than once, is iniquitous, thoroughly bad one, because it deprives the citizen of his proper legal remedies and rights. A citizen may lose his property, may lose a property on which he has spent all his life's savings because the Board exercises its powers under section 48. And what remedy do you give him? The remedy you give him is, "My dear chap, all you can do is to appeal to the Minister who is in charge of the HDB and that's all." Why should he not be allowed to challenge the power of the HDB in the court, the original decision of the HDB? If you think the court is not the right forum, then should there not be a tribunal set up to hear these cases so that arguments may be presented for both sides openly, where the public may hear the arguments, and not decided by the Minister in his air-conditioned room without anyone knowing what has been presented? I have said before that I think it is time that we set up a tribunal and take all these powers away from the HDB and make the HDB apply to the tribunal, if they wish to exercise any power. That is what is done in a democratic country, in a country where the rights of the citizens are respected, in a country where the rights of the citizens are honoured, but not in Singapore. I mentioned sometime ago about, I think a Swedish journalist who expressed surprise that the tenants or lessees of HDB apartments did not have a seat on the Board. He said, "In my country they have, so that their views are put forward and discussed." Here, it would appear they have no such rights. And this is delegated power to the Minister. And unless this delegated power is strictly circumscribed and spelt out by Parliament, it will amount to an exercise of arbitrary power. Again may I assure the Minister that it does not do any good for him to tell us with his hand on his heart, "Trust me. I am not going to do any evil thing like this." That is not the issue, whether one Minister or another Minister will exercise these powers. The question is: is it right that you should cut down on the citizen's rights and his remedies? I am very upset at the continuous erosion in this country of the citizen's rights. Finally, Mr Speaker, Sir, clause 10 seeks to repeal the present section 48E and substitute another section numbered likewise, 48E. This would appear to enlarge the Board's powers again. That is the trouble. The Board gets a little bit. Then it continually seeks to enlarge its powers. It is like the camel and the Arab in his tent. The camel first puts its neck in and then little by little, it goes in and drives the poor man out. Previously, the section only caught any statements which were actually contained in the application to the Board. Now, it would appear that it will catch any statement made, whether it is contained in the application or not. Because it seems so wide to me. It says: 'Any person who, in relation to the purchase by such person of a flat, house or other living accommodation, makes any statement to the Board which is false, ...' So that it does not have to be in the application that he submits.