STATUTORY INSTRUMENTS BILL (Hansard, 18 December 1945)

HC Deb 18 December 1945 vol 417 cc1128-91 1128

§ As amended (in the Standing Committee), considered.

§ New Clause. —(Supplementary provisions as to publication.)

(1) Regulations made for the purposes of this Act shall make provision for the publication by His Majesty's Stationery Office of lists showing the date upon which every statutory instrument printed and sold by the King's printer of Acts of Parliament was first issued by that office; and in any legal proceedings a copy of any list so published purporting to bear the imprint of the King's printer shall be received in evidence as a true copy, and an entry therein shall be conclusive evidence of the date on which any statutory instrument was first issued by His Majesty's Stationery Office.
(2)In any proceedings against any person for an offence consisting of a contravention of any such statutory instrument, it shall be a defence to prove that the instrument had not been issued by His Majesty's Stationery Office at the date of the alleged contravention unless it is proved that at that date reasonable steps had been taken for the purpose of bringing the purport of the instrument to the notice of the public, or of persons likely to be affected by it, or of the person charged.
(3) Save as there in otherwise expressly provided nothing in this Section shall affect any enactment or rule of law relating to the time at which any statutory instrument comes into operation. —"[The Solicitor-General]

§ Brought up, and read the First time.

§ 3.30 p.m.

§ The Solicitor-General (Major Sir Frank Soskice)
I beg to move, "That the Clause be read a Second time."
Hon. Members will recollect that during the consideration of this Bill in Committee anxiety was expressed on the position in relation to the possibility of conviction under an instrument which had not been formally published. Reference was made to the case of Johnson and Sarjent, and hon. Members felt that, notwithstanding the dicta of the learned judge who decided that case, it was not made clear at what stage of the life of a statutory instrument it became possible for a citizen to be convicted of a contravention of its provisions. The primary object of this new Clause is to remove uncertainty in that respect.
Hon. Members will see that the Clause is designed to work as follows: A list will be made showing when instruments have been issued. That is a term well understood by the King's printer. It is a term which indicates a moment which is easily capable of ascertainment. The Clause provides that in the event of a person being accused of a contravention of the instrument, if it appears that the alleged contravention took place before the date of issue, then the person accused shall have a good defence, but that defence shall be capable of rebuttal if the prosecuting authority shows that, notwithstanding that the offence was committed before the instrument was issued, reasonable steps had been taken to do one of three things—to bring the purport of the instrument to the notice of the public at large, to bring the purport of the instrument to the notice of persons likely to be affected by it, or to bring it to the notice of the person accused of the contravention.
1130 In commending this Clause to the House I desire to point out that one has to consider the position, both from the point of view of the person charged and also from the point of view of the Minister who makes the Regulation which creates the offence. From the point of view of the person charged, it is desirable that he should be given some protection and from the point of view of the Minister making the Order, and of the administration of the country generally, it is no less desirable that it should not be so impossible to prove the offence, as to constitute a real clog on the administration and prevent it effectively carrying out Regulations which it has to carry out. This Clause represents a very carefully considered attempt to draw the right dividing line.
I ask hon. Member to consider the position of the ordinary citizen charged with an offence in relation to any ordinary Statute which creates an offence. Ordinarily a citizen does not read the Statute. The man in the street does not follow Parliamentary affairs closely, but he has a general idea in his mind that somewhere there is an enactment and he has to be careful. That is the state of mind of the ordinary individual. A motorcar driver, for instance, may not have read the Road Traffic Act, 1930, but he has a general sense, when doing particular things, that he must be careful because there are statutory provisions which limit his activities. The effect of this Clause is to reproduce, as nearly as possible, the same state of affairs in relation to Regulations made under Acts of Parliament as exist in regard to statutory enactments. That is the object of the Clause, and I submit to the House that the Clause does do that. It does place a citizen in the same position, as far as that reasonably can be done, in relation to statutory instruments creating offences, as he is already in relation to Acts of Parliament. If it does that I would ask the House to agree that it is entirely satisfactory.
Hon. Members may ask why there should be three alternatives, why citizens should be put in three separate categories. That is unavoidable when one considers the multiplicity of statutory instruments and the different forms and kinds of statutory instruments. You may get a statutory instrument which affects the public at large. It will be easy for 1131 hon. Members to think of examples. Such a statutory instrument will be given out to the Press, it will be given to the B.B.C. and in that way it will be brought to the notice of the public at large. Any member of the public ought to be sufficiently alive to what is published in the daily Press to acquire cognisance of an instrument so publicised. There are other types of instalments which could not in a practical sense be publicised in that way. They are instruments which affect a particular class or trade or a particular set of interests.
If you handed those out to the public Press you would find they were not of sufficient public interest to warrant editors publicising them in the newspapers, nor would they be broadcast. They would not be of sufficient general public interest to warrant their being inserted in extenso in the big daily newspapers, but that type of instrument would be circulated, possibly to the trade papers concerned with the particular interests affected. The Minister concerned would find it no good trying to publicise them as matters of general public interest, because they are not, but he might circularise them to the trade papers, knowing that, by so doing, he would have taken reasonable steps to bring them to the notice of the particular persons likely to be affected. I ask the House to say that it is not unreasonable to expect a person who falls into such a category to keep himself abreast of things which affect his interest. So the Minister is given that alternative.
Then there is a further class of statutory instruments of even less general application, affecting only a particular market or a particular port. The third alternative is given to cater for that very limited class of instrument. In that case, if the notice is posted up in the place where a particular market is held, it will be likely to come to the notice of all who are affected, or if it is exhibited in the port it will be brought to the notice of the shippers using the port. Having made that explanation of how this Clause is designed to work, I submit that the Government have produced a reasonable, practical scheme which is fair to the individual, because it places him in the position in which he is today, roughly speaking, under a general Act of Parliament, and a scheme which will not unduly 1132 obstruct or clog the Administration in enforcing Orders which they have occasion to issue from time to time. I ask the House to say that this Clause does meet the point which was very anxiously discussed in Committee, and to say that it is a reasonable and proper compromise from the point of view of the Administration, and fair from the point of view of the subject.

§ Mr. Manningham-Buller (Daventry)
I should like to thank the hon. and learned Gentleman most sincerely for the effort he has made to meet the arguments put forward in Committee on this matter. I am bound to voice some criticism of this new Clause, but I hope he will not let that detract in any way from his sense of the sincerity of the thanks that I am now offering him for the great effort he made to meet the point raised. He referred to the rather elderly decision of Johnson and Sarjent. Will the uncertainty which still remains after that decision be cleared up when this new Clause becomes law? What is it we are trying to achieve? We are trying to ensure that no person should be convicted of a criminal offence and fined or imprisoned, without having an opportunity of knowing, before he committed the offence, that it was an offence. The hon. and learned Gentleman will remember, I hope, the discussion about the daffodil case when people travelling up from Penzance by train with flowers, found, when they arrived at Paddington, that it was an offence to have brought them and were fined, I think it was, at Marylebone police court.
It was no answer to say that those people, if they had appealed, might have had the conviction quashed. We want the law to be certain and beyond doubt, and I submit that that is a proposition to which both sides of the House should give their support. When a Bill is introduced into Parliament a certain amount of publicity is attached to it. There are the reports in the Press of the Second Reading Debate, of the Committee stage and of Third Reading, and there is ample opportunity for the general public to obtain knowledge of the changes that are to be made in the law. How different it is with regard to a statutory instrument. It is important that a person should not be convicted of a criminal offence without it being shown that he had knowledge, that the line of conduct in which he was engaged had 1133 become an offence. I welcome this new Clause to the extent that it does afford some protection against the possibility of a man being convicted, who has erred through complete ignorance. As I understand the Clause, it provides that it shall be a defence to prove that the instrument was not issued at the time, unless it is also proved that at the date of the offence, reasonable steps had been taken for the purpose of bringing the purport of the instrument to the notice of the public, or of the persons likely to be affected, or of the person charged.

§ 3.45 p.m.

§ What is really meant by "reasonable steps" to bring the purport of the instrument to the notice of the public? I am a little doubtful how any prosecutor could set about that task in a criminal court. Even if it could be accomplished, what would be held to be a reasonable step? The hon. and learned Gentleman referred to listening to the B.B.C. I am glad to say that in this country, at present, it is not an offence not to listen, although one is surprised sometimes by the number of people who happen to have heard a few words on the wireless on a Saturday evening. Is one to be liable to be convicted of an offence against a statutory instrument through failing to listen to the B.B.C. —because one will be,??? it is held that it is reasonable to bring???to the notice of the public by announcing it at the end of some news item on some programme or other? It may be that as this Government progress and become more totalitarian in character, we shall have a statutory instrument making that an offence. So far as this matter is concerned I ask the hon. and learned Gentleman if the Government would expand this Clause a little more, because if it is intended that one broadcast referring to a statutory instrument shall suffice to defeat the defence that a man did not know of the regulation, then I do not think that this new Clause goes far enough. Again, what is meant by reasonable steps … for the purpose of bringing the purport of the instrument to the notice of... persons likely to be affected by it "? How is that to be fulfilled? This matter should not be left so vague. I suggest that by including those words in the Clause the hon. and learned Gentleman has, in fact, departed substantially from the principle which I enunciated a few 1134 minutes ago, that is to say, what we on this side of the House tried to achieve in Committee, that no person should be convicted unless it could be shown that he had knowledge of the nature of the instrument.

§ The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Glenvil Hall)
Are we now dealing with the hon. Gentleman's Amendment to the proposed new Clause? It seems to me that the hon. Gentleman is now dealing with his own Amendment, which comes later rather than with the Clause.

§ Mr. Manningham-Buller
I am endeavouring to deal with the new Clause as it stands, in answer to the observations of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor-General which were mainly confined, if I may say so, to the last few lines of Subsection (2) of the new Clause. I am not endeavouring to anticipate the Amendment. I am covering the Clause as generally as I can. The hon. and learned Gentleman indicated that by this new Clause, we must not unduly obstruct or clog the administration. I cannot believe it would do either, if it merely provided that a person must be informed of the nature of the instrument, before he could be convicted of an offence under the instrument. This new Clause does not affect the coming into operation of the instrument. The operation is there, and it is binding. The operation may take place before the instrument is issued. That we concede, but it will not affect the operation of the Clause if it is merely provided that an innocent man shall not be convicted. I hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman will reconsider those points. May I conclude by thanking him again for the way in which and the extent to which he has met us, and ask him whether he cannot give us at this tim—with Christmas coming on—Complete satisfaction on this point?

§ Mr. Sydney Silverman (Nelson and Colne)
I have never heard before that Christmas time was any better than any other time for imitating Oliver Twist in his more unreasonable mood. I, like the hon. Gentleman, wish to thank my hon. and learned Friend for this Clause. I think it fully and completely fulfils the promise which he made in Committee, and which he would have made on Second Reading if he had been allowed 1135 to meet the very reasonable objection then taken and after wards pressed in Committee. The hon. and learned Gentleman has done everything that any reasonable person could ask. What was asked for, and reasonably asked for? It was asked that a man should not be put in the position—as people had in the past, irrespective of decided cases to the contrary —of being convicted of offences when they neither knew they had committed an offence, nor had any reasonable means of knowing that such an offence was possible to them. That is what it is sought to prevent.
This Clause, it seems to me, does prevent it. It provides, first, that it shall be a defence to prove that the Order was not issued at the time when the alleged offence was committed. It is not an absolute defence; it is a contingent defence, but it is a defence. That is the first part of the Clause. If it were left like that the Government would be put in great difficulty. They would never be able to operate an Order issued to meet an emergency. I take it that, in meeting an emergency, the Government would wish to be able to issue emergency Regulations, and at the same time to preserve the principle of the criminal law which we all want to preserve. It seems to me that they have dealt with the matter in such a way as to preserve, even when dealing with an emergency situation, the spirit of what it was intended to preserve; in other words, that it shall be a defence to say that the instrument had not been published, unless the Government have taken every reasonable step to give the alleged offender the means of knowledge.
The hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Manningham-Buller) feels that that should be defined. I think it is better that it should not be defined. To define in the Clause, what reasonable steps amount to, is to limit what reasonable steps are. As the Clause stands, it will be for the court to decide, in any particular case, whether the Government have taken such reasonable steps or not. As I understand the Clause, the defence having been raised, and the preliminary provision having been satisfied, that at the time of the alleged committal of the offence the Order had not been published, then the onus is transferred back to the prosecution to 1136 show that nevertheless a conviction is right, because they had taken reasonable steps to put the defendant in the position in which he ought to be put.
If the onus is on them, and if the words in the Clause are as I read them, that they have to show that reasonable steps have been taken, I am bound to say that if I were acting professionally for a defendant, I would rather that the question of whether the steps taken were reasonable or not were left to the unfettered discretion of a tribunal or a jury, than if the words were limited by definition in the Clause in the Bill. I say that without meaning to make any party point. I am making a purely professional point, in which I think most people charged with the responsibility of conducting defences would agree. It is surely not desired that a defendant in a case of this kind shall be put in a better position than a defendant in any other kind of case? It is not a defence in any other criminal action to say "I did not know the law." The prosecution has not to prove that a defendant knew the law, because it is a presumption of our law that he does know it.
What was objected to here was that such a presumption in the case of statutory instruments of this kind was wholly unreasonable, that there ought to be no such assumption in cases of this kind. The Government have met that point. The Clause raises a presumption to the contrary, because it places the onus on the prosecution of saying that they have taken every reasonable step to make the defendant aware of the law. The hon. Member asks, "What ought to be done? Suppose it was only on the wireless, or was only printed in a trade paper, ought the defendant to be fixed with an assumption of knowledge of the law in those circumstances? "Surely the answer is that one ought, as a reasonable person engaged in a trade, to know what is going on in one's trade, and if the Government have made it possible for one to find out, it is not reasonable to say afterwards that one does not know. It seems to me that the objections taken are wholly unreasonable.
I wish to refer to what took place on the Second Reading of this Bill. Everybody on both sides of the House then thought that, on the whole, it was a good and necessary and useful little Bill, but 1137 hon. and right hon. Members opposite objected to two points in it, the one with which we are now dealing, and another one, and for that reason proposed to oppose the Second Reading. I thought they were right in regard to the two points, and I supported them in the Debate, but it did not seem to me that they were good reasons for opposing the Second Reading. They seemed tome to be points which could easily be remedied in Committee, as indeed both of them now have been. Having said throughout the Debate, that they would vote against it, unless they received satisfaction on these points from my hon. and learned Friend at the end of the Debate, they then saw to it that he had no opportunity of replying.

§ Mr. Manningham-Buller
Surely the hon. Member desires to be accurate in this matter. He is accusing the whole of the party on this side of the House of preventing the hon. and learned Gentleman from winding up the Debate on that occasion. If he had been present on that occasion he would have known that it was not done by the party as a whole.

§ Mr. Silverman
If the hon. Member says that on behalf of his party, I accept what he says. I was not in at the moment, but I know that one of his hon. Friends behind him prevented my hon. and learned Friend from giving any explanation at all.

§ Mr. Speaker
It is becoming a little difficult to follow what it has to do with this Clause, whether the Solicitor-General spoke or did not speak in the Second Reading Debate. I suggest that we are getting rather far away from this Clause.

§ Mr. Silverman
I do not think I am responsible for all of it, Mr. Speaker. I was not responsible for the interruption. I do not think that it mattered in the least whether my hon. and learned Friend replied or not on Second Reading. I was satisfied that he would deal with the matter in Committee. I am regarding the character of the Opposition with which he is row faced, and the Opposition he was faced with then. Irrespective of the fact that he was not allowed to give an explanation, hon. Gentlemen opposite voted against the Second Reading.

§ Mr. Molson (The High Peak)
On a point of Order. Is the character of the Opposition relevant to the Clause?

1138

§ Mr. Speaker
It is rather difficult to see how it is, but this is more a matter of opinion and not of Order.

§ Mr. Silverman
I have never been a Minister, but I suppose if I ever were one, and if I were considering opposition, I should think it important to know whether the opposition was reasonable and constructive, or factious and irresponsible. If I thought it was factious and irresponsible, I would deal with it in one way, and if I thought it was trying to be helpful, I would deal with it in another way. I say that the point here has been substantially met. It has been met as fully as is consonant with the operation of this Bill, and I think that hon. and right hon. Members opposite, unless they are really factious and irresponsible, ought to be content.

§ 4. p.m.

§ Mr. Hopkin Morris (Carmarthen)
I join in the thanks to the learned Solicitor-General for the new Clause. It goes some way to meet a defect in the Bill as it originally stood, but I agree with the criticism of the hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Manningham-Buller) that good as the new Clause is it does not go far enough, because the trouble now arises about the new Instrument which has not been issued or the issue of which is in doubt. As the position stands the only Instrument that is likely to cause trouble is the Instrument about which it is not clear whether it has been issued or not. What is to happen in that position? The first thing that is wrong with this new Clause, in my view, is that it shifts the onus of proof on to the defendant. Under Subsection (2) it says: It shall be a defence to prove that the instrument had not been issued by His Majesty's Stationery Office. That will have to be proved by the defence.

§ Mr. Silverman
If the hon. Gentleman has read Subsection (1) as well he will see that it shows a very ready and simple way of ascertaining at once whether the Instrument has been issued or not. One has only to look at the List. That is not an onus of proof.

§ Mr. Morris
The defence must prove 1hat it has not been issued, and then it becomes a matter of rebuttal by the Crown to show that they have either brought it to the notice of the public—of the class of persons likely concerned or 1139 the actual person. Otherwise, the defence must prove that the Order was not issued. The second point of objection I wish to make is that the division making three classes—the three alternatives to which the Solicitor-General referred—is not a desirable classification to bring into the criminal law. The criminal law may affect one class more than another, but it concerns all citizens alike, whether they happen to belong to the special class affected by the Order or not, and it is important that all should know what the position is. The application of the criminal law should not be justified upon the claim of its having been brought to the notice of special classes or individual persons. There should be information for all alike. None the less the Clause is an attempt to make the Bill a far more workable Measure than it was in its original form.

§ Mr. Eric Fletcher (Islington, East)
As one of those who ventured to make some criticisms on Second Reading and also in Committee, I too should like to express my thanks and congratulations to the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor-General for this new Clause and for the language in which it is couched. I find it difficult to appreciate the criticism which hon. Members opposite have directed to the Clause. I feel, as my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) felt, that this was a good Bill when it was introduced, but it suffered from certain defects, the chief of which, perhaps, we are now—thanks to the Second Reading, which was carried despite opposition from hon. Members opposite—in the happy position of being able to cure. The defect to which I refer was that during wartime, particularly, but to a lesser extent during peacetime, an increasing number of offences had been created by Statutory Rules and Orders, or Statutory Instruments as they are now called, and that under the criminal law any breach of any of those Statutory Rules and Orders created an offence. As a result, benches throughout the country found themselves compelled to convict, although in a number of cases it was transparent that the accused person did not know and could not have known of the passage of the particular Instrument under which he was to be convicted. It was a serious position, for the reason that on account of the multiplicity of these Statutory Rules and Orders and of the 1140 diligence of enforcement officers there were some 30,000 prosecutions in one year alone at the instigation of the Ministry of Food. Some were of a serious nature and some of a trifling nature, and no doubt the great majority of them well merited punishment, but, nevertheless, there was a serious number of cases each year in which hardship and injustice were caused because the accused person could not have known what the law was. I think this is well illustrated in a book called "Laws and Orders," by Professor Allen, which was recently published, in which he draws attention to the state of affairs which existed before this new Clause was introduced. He gives a number of cases, and on page 225 says: A grocer was prosecuted for selling tinned mackerel at more than the controlled price. This was a new line of goods and the grocer could obtain no information about its price either from his wholesaler, his printed price lists or his trade journal. He therefore sold at a guess at the price of tinned salmon. This was 1½d. too much. He had to be convicted and fined." A similar case: The principal of a small religious order vowed to poverty was prosecuted for buying eggs for his brotherhood at more than the controlled price. He bought from a supplier of many years' standing, a widow entirely dependent on her small trade, and neither the seller nor the unworldy purchaser had the faintest idea that the price had been altered by a recent Order. The magistrates expressed their disgust and astonishment that the enforcement officer had not thought this a proper case for mere advice and caution, but they had to impose a fine. The evil which this new Clause is abolishing is the evil that there has been, unfortunately, in recent years a great many prosecutions which have been unwise, unnecessary, misconceived; and because of the absolute nature of the law as it stood benches of magistrates, notwithstanding their sympathy with accused persons, felt bound to convict, to brand them as criminals and to impose a fine. This new Clause is not in the form which I ventured to suggest on Second Reading and in Committee; it is not in a form making it absolute that no Statutory Instrument shall come into operation until it has been published or brought to the notice of the public in some other way, but its great merit is that it is in a form which in future will make it impossible, or at any rate very unlikely, that we shall have these continuing instances of unnecessary, misconceived prosecutions by 1141 enforcement officers, in cases in which, on the facts, it is quite obvious to any tribunal administering justice as humanly understood that the accused person is innocent because he had no knowledge and no means of knowledge of the Statutory Instrument. Therefore, I conclude as I began by thanking the Solicitor-General and hoping that the House will give a Second Reading to this new Clause.

§ Captain Crookshank (Gainsborough)
We shall be glad to give a Second Reading to the Clause, but before it is added to the Bill my hon. and learned Friends on this side hope to have an opportunity of getting the House to accept certain Amendments, if they are lucky enough to be selected by you, Mr. Speaker. I should like to say that we are grateful to the Solicitor-General for the trouble he has taken about this, but for my part I am rather perturbed at the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) referring once again to the need for dealing with emergencies, and rather using that as an argument against the case which we want to establish for full publicity.
It seems to me that we are rather losing sight of what the Bill is about. It gives statutory powers to make Orders, Rules and Regulations and other subordinate legislation, and the great bulk of those Orders and Rules are not emergency powers at all. The Government seem to have got themselves into a completely emergency state of mind. I am quite prepared to believe that all the time there is a Socialist Government this country will be living in a time of crisis and excitement, but it is not a good thing to deal with legislation on that basis. Last night the Chancellor of the Exchequer thought the directions to be given to the Bank of England ought not to be given publicity because there might be a war, or the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs might be in a difficult situation, but we on this side have not thought of the next few years as being troubled all the time by wars and rumours of wars, and until this afternoon I had not thought this particular Bill was to be concerned with Regulations dealing with emergency. I had understood that this was just a machinery Bill dealing with the publication of Statutory Rules and Orders. To that extent it does not seem to be neces- 1142 sary to be discussing it from the angle of a constant emergency.
However, we shall have something to say a little later on the point of publication, and I hope the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne will not consider the objections which we make then unreasonable. Regarding the quotation we have heard from that learned and interesting book, which all those interested ought to read, if they have not already done so, in the tinned mackerel case the whole point was that, in spite of the little grocer doing his best to find out, the change of prices had not been notified in the trade journal, and yet that is the very vehicle which the Solicitor-General tells us should be employed in these cases. To that extent it seems to me that there is a gap in the argument.

§ Mr. E. Fletcher
Perhaps I did not make myself clear. It is obvious that, had the present Clause been in operation at the time, in neither of the two cases which I quoted would there have been a conviction.

§ 4.15 p.m.

§ Captain Crookshank
I am not at all sure about that, but I will leave that to be dealt with when we come to the point. I was only remarking that in that case there was no publication in the trade journal. I am very much obliged to the Solicitor-General for all the interest he has taken in the case, and the attention he has given to this matter.

§ The Solicitor-General
I wish to express gratitude for the very kind references that have fallen from the lips of hon. Members. The hon. Member for Carmarthen (Mr. Hopkin Morris) was in some anxiety about how the provision would work. He pointed out that there was to be a defence, in some circumstances, as to the time when the instrument was issued, and the date on which it appeared in the list. If when the case is opened the prosecution indicate the fact that the offence was earlier than that date, there is, automatically, a defence. The question then intervenes whether the prosecution can establish to the satisfaction of the tribunal, that reasonable steps were taken to do one of three things indicated in the Clause. In that respect I would like to adopt what was said by the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman).

1143

§ Mr. Hopkin Morris
If it were established that the offence was committed at an earlier date, it would be doubtful whether the Order was in the ordinary list and that would be a defence. But it is for the defence to prove that the Order was not issued.

§ The Solicitor-General
The answer to that is that one has only to look at the list and see conclusive evidence as to the date on which it was issued. Any courteous prosecution would make a copy of the list available to the defendant.

§ Mr. Manningham-Buller
I want to ask a question about these lists. It may be that the Regulations are made, and the man applies to the Stationery Office for a list, and finds that the last list was published three or four weeks previously and that there is no list for that time.

§ The Solicitor-General
The hon. Member will notice that this is provided for by Regulations which provide that the lists shall be issued at such periods as may be convenient or necessary. I ask the House to say that this Clause should be added to the Bill.

§ Question, "That the Clause be read a Second time," put, and agreed to.

§ Brigadier Low (Blackpool, North)
I beg to move, as an Amendment to the proposed Clause, in line 2, after "date," insert "and time."
I would ask that the following three Amendments standing in my name should also be considered:
In line 7, after "date," insert "and time."
In line 11, leave out "at the date," and insert "before the time."
In line 12, leave out from "proved" to end of line 15, and insert: at that time he knew the purport of that part of the instrument against which the offence is alleged to have been committed. I add my thanks to those already offered to the Solicitor-General for the considerate way in which he has met the points which I and my hon. Friends have put to him during the Committee stage and on Second Reading. I would also congratulate him, not on having brought a good Bill to the House, but on having now got the Bill into a state of convalescence. The reason for these four 1144 Amendments is that I believe the Solicitor-General, in drafting his Clause, has not stuck to the principle that he himself ennunciated to us, and which the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) put forward on the Second Reading and in Committee. The hon. Member said it was important to ensure that no man is answerable in criminal courts for an offence he did not know and could not know he had ever committed. I believe that we have departed from that principle, in the words of the Clause as it now stands, and I have tried in drafting the Amendments to get back to that principle. The principle has been put in another way—that no man shall be convicted for an offence against an instrument before that instrument has been made known to the public.
That indeed is what the Solicitor-General has told us several times the law is. He said in Committee: I can summarise it by saying that the law at the moment is that a citizen is not affected—to use Mr. Justice Bailhache's words—until an Order is made known. So that quite apart from any question of amending Clause 2, and apart from amending the practice at the moment, until an Order is made known to the public it is not effective and cannot alter the rights of citizens who come within its ambit. And, in replying to certain criticisms put forward, he stated: I ask the Committee to take the view that in those circumstances it is better to leave the law as it is. It is reasonable and coherent; you cannot be convicted until the Instrument is known."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee B, Thursday, 15th November, 1945; c. 8–11.] As the Clause now stands, if an Order is issued at 4 o'clock in the afternoon of, say, today and something has been done contrary to that Order at 10 o'clock this morning, then what was done at 10 o'clock this morning is or might be a criminal offence. That seems to me distinctly contrary to the principle which the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne and the Solicitor-General put forward and for which many hon. Members fought on the Second Reading and in Committee. It may be that I am chargeable by de minimis non curat lex. Maybe hon. Members would care about the minimis even less. But it is important to know that the words of the Clause, as it now stands, do allow a man to be convicted for an offence against an Order, which offence was committed before the Order was issued. For 1145 that reason I have tried to incorporate the time in the Clause.
The Solicitor-General would probably reply by referring to the rules of law applicable to the coming into operation of Statutes; that is that a Statute comes into operation at the commencement of the day on which it receives Royal Assent, and there is no doubt upon that subject. I would like to refer him to what I believe is the law as regards rules and orders, although it may not be very clearly stated, for Mr. Justice Bailhache, in Johnson v. Sargent, draws definite distinction between the Statute and the Statutory Rules and Orders, as they were then called. It is worth noting that one of the great differences referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Mr. Manningham-Buller) just now, was before the judge, because Lord Wright, as he now is, used that in his argument, and Mr. Justice Bailhache said: While I agree that the rule is that a statute takes effect on the earliest moment of the day on which it is passed or on which it is declared to come into operation, there is about statutes a publicity even before they come into operation which is absent in the case of many Orders such as that with which we are now dealing, indeed, if certain Orders are to be effective at all, it is essential that they should not be known until they are actually published. In the absence of authority upon the point I am unable to hold that this Order came into operation before it was known, and, as I have said, it was not known until the morning of 17 May. I submit that, on those words, the learned judge was definitely referring to a stated time and not just to a date. If I may give some examples, there was the case of Johnson and Sargent, which dealt with some beans which had been sold and the Order in effect forbade the selling of beans without reference to the Food Controller. Those beans were, in fact, sold on 16th May and the Order was not made known until the morning of 17th May, but supposing, for the sake of argument, that the beans had been sold at 4 o'clock on 17th May, what would have been the answer in those circumstances? Vegetables, as we know, are often sold at that time of day and the point that the judge put up was that the Order had not been made known at the time of the sale. Take another example. There was the case, referred to in Committee, of church bell ringing. A clergyman was convicted and was put to great "inconvenience for having rung his church 1146 bells, actually three days before the Control of Noise Order was published. Supposing instead, he had rung the bells at 6 o'clock in the morning on the day when the Order was published. What is the answer to that? Certainly, as the Clause now stands, he would have been guilty of an offence.
Passing to my fourth Amendment, I should say that the only exception which should be allowed to what the Solicitor-General concedes as a general principle, that no man should be convicted until the Order has been issued, is that the man who is charged with the offence should be proved to have known the Order or the purport of it. That such a case is not impossible to imagine can be proved by Sir Cecil Carr's book. It is the only authority I can find for a case which, in actual fact, arose out of the tea rationing Order. The Order was made on the 9th of the month but official prints were not available until the nth. A grocer was summoned for selling un-rationed tea on the morning of the 9th. The new Order was mentioned on the wireless on the night of the 8th; the grocer admitted listening to the wireless news on the night before, but did not appreciate that the rationing Order was to be introduced next day. That man was convicted.

§ 4.30 p.m.

§ The only exception to the general rule should be proof that the man in fact knew. A conviction can be secured if the prosecution can prove that reasonable steps were taken by the Department of the Government to make these Orders known. What is reasonable can surely only be judged in the courts by what is reasonable to the Government, not what is reasonable to the man who is charged. The criminal law has always referred before, to the actual man charged with having committed an offence. The wording of this Clause seems to be abhorrent to the criminal law of England as we have known it before, and I ask the Solicitor-General to reconsider it.

§ There is another argument which is relevant in considering Subsection (2) of the new Clause. Subsection (2) affects criminal actions and Subsection (3) the operation of instruments in civil cases, contracts and so on. If I am right and the Solicitor-General is right in regard to the passage which I read out, then, what 1147 we have been trying to secure for criminal procedure, we may have succeeded in securing for civil cases. But we have not secured it for criminal cases. I fear that I may have not put this point very well but I hope the Solicitor-General will answer it and perhaps, if he can, persuade the House that I am wrong.

§ Commander Noble (Chelsea)
I beg to second the Amendment.

§ Mr. J. S. C. Reid (Glasgow, Hillhead)
It might be convenient, as my hon. and gallant Friend has included the case of his Amendment in the general discussion, if, instead of taking separately the last Amendment on the Paper to the proposed new Clause— in line 12, leave out from the first "of" to the third "the "— the. whole of the questions covered by these Amendments were discussed together. It might enable a better discussion, and so, with your permission, Sir, I would pro pose not to say anything further about the first three Amendments in the name of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for North Blackpool (Brigadier Low). He has stated the argument with clarity, and it deserves careful consideration which I am sure it will get.
On the fourth Amendment in the names of my hon. Friend and myself there are two steps. My hon. and gallant Friend and I are in complete accord about the first step, and we suggest only slightly different Amendments with regard to the second step. The first question is: Is it a good thing to bring into this matter, not only the person charged, but also notice to the public, or to persons likely to be affected by the Order? These two alternatives are embarrassing to the court and really help very little. The person accused is a member of the public, and a much easier way to deal with the matter is to see that such notification has been made, as it is reasonable to think ought to have come to his knowledge. If he can say, "I am a member of the public and what you did in the way of publication was not calculated to reach me," then, it can be said that it was not calculated to reach the public. The public does not mean a proportion of the public, but the public as a whole. If a member of the public, who has nothing peculiar about him, is able to come along and say that what was done did not reach his 1148 eyes or ears as an ordinary, undistinguished member of the public, then, the bringing in of the public is more of an embarrassment than anything else and does not help. When one comes to persons affected, ex hypothesi, the accused is the person affected by the Order, otherwise he would not be an accused person; and to ensure that the matter was brought to the knowledge of persons likely to be affected is to deal with the person who is accused at the moment. If he can say that he was the person, obviously, likely to be affected and nothing happened to him —

§ The Solicitor-General
On a point of Order. Only one Amendment has been moved and my right hon. and learned Friend is making observations relevant to one which has not been moved. The hon. and gallant Member for Blackpool, North (Brigadier Low) spoke first as to the three Amendments on the Paper, and then to the fourth Amendment, and spent some time in making observations relevant only to the fourth. Now observations are being made relevant only to the fifth Amendment and it is going to be extremely difficult on this side to deal with this many-sided approach to this question.

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Major Milner)
The hon. and gallant Member asked leave to refer to the four Amendments standing in his name, and I understood that Mr. Speaker was of the opinion that they could conveniently be discussed together.

§ The Solicitor-General
It is possible to answer the first four Amendments under two separate headings, but now I gather that still another Amendment has been introduced. I do not know, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, whether you are proposing to allow them all to be discussed or not, but I do not mind so long as we know where we are.

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
If the House wishes, all the amendments can be discussed together; only one so far has been moved.

§ Mr. S. Silverman
I take it that what we are really doing is discussing all the Amendments to the Clause together.

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
Yes.

§ The Solicitor-General
The arguments cannot be listened to again.

1149

§ Mr. Glenvil Hall
The hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Manningham-Buller) spent most of the time on the Clause, discussing, and putting forward arguments in favour of, the fifth Amendment. Are we to have a repetition of points already put?

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
I am in the hands of the House. If any objection is taken, we cannot discuss the Amendments together.

§ The Solicitor-General
So far as I can speak for Members on this side of the House, I have no objection at all, so long as we do not discuss the first four Amendments and go through all the arguments again.

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
Of course, that is understood.

§ Mr. Reid
I asked leave to discuss the Amendments on the ordinary footing, that, if we discuss the matter on the first Amendment, nothing but a formal moving of theAmendment— if indeed we move it at all— could possibly occur at a later stage. The reason I am taking this course is, that I thought it would lead to a waste of time if we discussed the first four Amendments and the fifth Amendment separately. Therefore, I wanted to discuss them together. I listened very carefully to my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Mr. Manningham-Buller), and I am trying not to go into anything that he said, but to present the case from a different angle, and I think that it will be agreed that I have succeeded up to now.
If I may find my way back to the point where I was when I was interrupted, I think I was venturing to suggest that the addition of the words "persons likely to be affected" by the Order gave very little advantage to the prosecutor and probably did more harm than good, because they were calculated to embarrass the issue. The phrase: reasonable steps have been taken for the purpose of bringing the purport of the instrument to the notice … of the person charged is difficult, no doubt, but, nevertheless, the court is accustomed to deal with it. It is a familiar but difficult type of inquiry, and we shall get into further trouble if we add to the ambit of that inquiry the bringing in of the other things to which 1150 I have referred. I think that that meets the case, and the desire of the Solicitor-General completely. But suppose we go on and we imagine that the prosecutor is going to deal with reasonable steps to bring the matter to the knowledge of persons likely to be affected. Surely, the defence is entitled to say, in that case, with great force, "I am the person likely to be affected." The question is: Has this been done in a way which makes it reasonable to suppose that a person has heard about it? It is no good saying that it has been published in a trade journal to which only a certain number of traders subscribe. One must do some thing calculated to reach the knowledge of, substantially, the whole of the persons affected, before one is entitled to succeed. Once a thing has become public in the full sense, you have to assume— wrongly in many cases— that after that stage people have somehow an inkling of what is going on.
Here we are dealing with a very early statement, a very short period, a period of a few days, we hope, between the Order coming into operation and proper publication. However clear it may be at a later stage to say. "You must be held to find out something about it although we did nothing to bring it to your notice," it is not fair to use that argument in the first day or so. We must be much more particular in bringing to his knowledge the fact that a person is doing wrong. I suggest, therefore, that the Solicitor-General might do well to accept the terms of our Amendment. He might do well to go even further and accept the terms of the Amendment of my hon. and gallant Friend. There is, one part of my hon. and gallant Friend's Amendment which, I confess, we had not thought of, and which it is necessary for the Solicitor-General to consider. In the second line it says: "knew the purport of that part of the instrument," and it might be helpful if the Solicitor-General would adopt those words and put them into the Clause. I do not want to discuss these Amendments in any sense of controversy, but I do suggest it might help the object which the Solicitor-General and I have in mind if he would consider these Amendments, and possibly make an alteration in another place if he cannot do so here.

1151

§ 4.45 p.m.

§ Mr. S. Silverman
With the best will in the world, and in spite of the appeal which was made some little time ago by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Hillhead (Mr. Reid), I find myself completely unconvinced. It may be that it would be a very useful change in criminal law to put upon the prosecution an onus to prove that a particular defendant himself knew the law which he is charged with breaking. I think, in equity, there would be a good deal to be said for such a view, but it is not the law generally, in criminal law at any rate. I suppose the reason why it is not the law is that it puts an impossible onus on the prosecution, and if one had to prove, generally— I am not speaking on this Bill for the moment— that every particular defendant knew exactly the law that he was breaking, in a great many cases, and perhaps in the majority of them, one would never be able to convict anybody of anything. What is now being sought is to put precisely that onus upon the prosecution in this branch of the criminal law.
If we were to accept the fourth or fifth Amendments on the Order Paper, no prosecution could ever succeed unless the prosecution discharged the onus of proving that the man charged knew of that particular Order or, at any rate, of its purport. I am well aware that the point only arises in cases where it is not on the list, but even in those cases one would be putting that onus upon the prosecution, which goes far beyond what is required in other cases and far beyond what is reasonable. Supposing this Clause were not altered at all, what harm would be done? What is the danger which hon. Members fear? I cannot see any. Supposing in such a case the prosecution prove to the satisfaction of the jury that it had taken reasonable steps to bring knowledge of this Order to the notice of the public. I would like the attention of the right hon. and learned Gentleman who spoke just now, because I am trying to deal fairly with his argument. Suppose the prosecution had proved in a particular case that they had taken every reasonable step to bring to the notice of the public, knowledge of the Order a breach of which was alleged, and everybody was satisfied that that had been done. What, then, would there be 1152 unreasonable in convicting the defendant of an offence against it, having proved that the Government had taken every reasonable step to bring knowledge of the instrument to the public?

§ Mr. Molson
Is it not the case that if reasonable steps have been taken to bring it to the knowledge of the public, of which the defendant is a member, it therefore follows that reasonable steps have been taken to bring it to the notice of the defendant?

§ Mr. Silverman
No, I assure the hon. Gentleman that does not follow at all. It would be a very much more serious onus on the prosecution to have to prove that John Smith knew, than to have to prove that the public knew. For the purpose of this argument, I am asking hon. Gentlemen to assume that the prosecution has proved that the Government took all reasonable steps to bringknowledge of this instrument to the knowledge of the public. Suppose they had done that. The question I asked was: What com plaint could there then be if a defendant, presumably a member of the public, were convicted of a breach of it? I answered "None," because, having proved that they had taken every reasonable step to bring knowledge of it to the notice of the public, I suggest they had done all they could reasonably be called upon to do.

§ Mr. Pickthorn (Cambridge University)
I am sorry to interrupt, but the hon. Gentleman has now twice— I am sure in advertently — insinuated the word every." There is nothing in the Clause bout "every reasonable step."

Mr. Silveman
I am sorry. I ought not to have said it. I will pursue my argument in the amended form-— '' assuming they had taken reasonable steps." Supposing they had taken reasonable steps to bring knowledge of the instrument to the notice of the public, I ask, what complaint could any member of the public have if he were convicted of a breach of it? I answer, "None." The Government have not been content with that. They have given further scope. Suppose they do not prove that it was brought to the notice of the public, but they do prove, according to the second Subsection of this Clause, that they have taken reasonable steps to bring it to the notice of persons likely to be affected by it. The right hon. and learned Gentleman has 1153 already said that the fact that a man is charged with the breach of it proves that he is affected by it. Supposing the prosecution prove that the Government have taken reasonable steps to bring the know ledge of the instrument to the notice of persons likely to be affected by it, of whom the defendant is one, what com plaint has the defendant then got? I suggest the answer must be that he has no complaint at all. He is rightly convicted if the Government have taken reasonable steps to bring knowledge of it either to the public or to persons affected by it, always provided that the defendant belongs to one or other of those categories.
There is the, further point. Suppose they have done neither of those things, and they have not taken reasonable steps to let the public know or to let persons likely to be affected know. But suppose, nevertheless, they have taken reason able steps to let John Smith know. Would it then be reasonable not to convict John Smith if he committed a breach? It is very difficult, as I said, with the best will in the world, to see there is anything in these points except the desire to make the working of this legislation as difficult as possible. I submit that the Clause as it stands does no conceivable injustice to anybody.

§ Mr. Molson
I shall take up only a few moments of time, but I would like to answer the point made by the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman). This is only a matter of drafting, because I think we are more or less in agreement on that which we want to achieve. It appears to me that the Clause as drafted is unnecessarily verbose and complicated. I would like to put my case in this way. Let us take the case of a man who owned tea at a time when a Regulation was introduced rationing tea. First of all, that individual is the owner of a substantial quantity of tea. In the second place, he is a grocer, and in the third place, he is a member of the public. As I understand the position which the Government have in mind, there are some statutory instruments which would apply exclusively to persons who were the owners of substantial quantities of tea. There might be other statutory instruments which would apply to grocers of all kinds, and which would introduce various rationing regulations dealing with them all. Thirdly, there 1154 might be a statutory instrument which would be of general interest to the public and the whole country, to the effect that, owing to an emergency arising, food rationing which had been suspended was going to be reintroduced. It is my submission that, in point of fact, there is no need to deal separately with the public and with persons likely to be affected. The question with which we are concerned is whether reasonable steps have been taken by the Government to bring the purport of the instrument to the know ledge of the person charged.

§ Mr. Silverman
How does the hon. Gentleman propose to do that? Supposing they did it by inserting a large notice in a trade paper, would they have to prove that the defendant got that trade paper, that he got that issue and that he read that particular page?

§ Mr. Molson
I would have thought that what the Government had in mind was that in the case of a general introduction of food rationing, if it were made known on the B.B.C. and in newspapers with a wide national circulation, all had been done that was required of it.

§ Mr. Silverman
But not if you amend the Clause in this way. If the Clause is left as it stands, what the hon. Gentleman says would, I suppose, be held by most courts to be reasonable steps to let the public know, but no one would hold that notice through the B.B.C. or in a newspaper was sufficient to let a particular individual know.

§ Mr. Molson
I would not have thought that was the case. I would have thought that if John Smith was a member of the public, and if reasonable steps had been taken to bring knowledge of the rationing to the public as a whole, they would have taken reasonable steps to bring it to the notice of any member of the public. Similarly, in the case dealing with the rationing in so far as it affects grocers, the appropriate method of doing it might be to put it in a trade paper circulating among grocers. Again John Smith would be fixed with a constructive notice of the statutory instrument because it would be put into the trade journal. Thirdly, in the case of a holder of a substantial quantity of tea, whatever steps might be appropriate there for persons dealing in tea, such as notification to the whole- 1155 salers and so on, would again fix John Smith with a constructive notice of the statutory instrument dealing with it. It seems to me to be like the case of the Irishman, who, in order to provide an exit for three members of the feline family, had one large hole cut for the tom, a slightly smaller hole cut for the she, and a very small hole cut for the kitten, whereas if one large hole had been cut it would have been sufficiently large for the whole feline family to make their exit one after the other. I would have thought in this case that it was unnecessary to make this special provision for the public and for the persons likely to be affected by the instrument. If these words were left out the result would be the same and it would be better drafts manship.

§ 5.0 p.m.

§ The Solicitor-General
If I may take the arguments that have been advanced on all the five Amendments seriatim, I will do so in the following form. First, the hon. and gallant Member for North Blackpool (Brigadier Low) felt it was desirable to make a point of time in the terms of the Clause as to which the immunity should operate. I submit that it is really for more convenient and far more likely to lead to justice if the Clause is left as it is. When talking about publishing a thing either to the world or to a limited part of the world, it is extremely difficult at any particular hour of the day to say whether you have done it or whether you have not. That is really the point. Supposing we take the case of a number of these instruments being delivered to a messenger to be taken out and displayed in certain shop windows, and so on. It is not altogether easy to say as from what precise point of time it was brought to the notice of the public.
What does the Clause do, as it stands? It says that on a particular day we are going to treat this thing as having been published. If a person were, in point of fact, charged with an offence, and it appeared that the offence was committed upon the same day as this thing appeared in the list, I should think it would be most oppressive action on the part of any prosecuting authority to try to say that, in those circumstances, the person charged was not entitled to the benefit of the Clause. The court before which the case 1156 was brought would make that perfectly clear, I think. The way the thing should work is this: The Instrument is said in the list to have been issued, say, on the 10th of the particular month. If the prosecution, when opening the case, say that the offence was committed on the 9th, clearly the immunity operates, and the onus is on the prosecution to prove that the necessary reasonable steps had been taken.
Suppose, however— if we are to go down to the question of particular hours, as the hon. Member is perfectly entitled to do, and I do not complain— from a commonsense point of view, the offence was done on the day. Obviously, any court considering this Clause would say that in that case the prosecution ought to have regard to the provisions of the Clause. Clearly, offences which are to be caught by the operation of the Clause are those which can fairly be said to have been committed before the Instrument was issued. It would be putting an in tolerable burden upon the King's Printer and the Stationer's Office if the actual time on any one day had to be put on the Instruments in the list.

§ Brigadier Low
Will the Solicitor-General tell us why the Clause does not say "one day before the date? "If he is right in saying that a court would not convict if the offence was committed on the same day, why does not the Clause specify the day before?

§ The Solicitor-General
It reads perfectly reasonably at present. It says: In any proceedings against any person … it shall be a defence to prove that the Instrument had not been issued … at the date of the alleged contravention. That is a perfectly sensible thing to say in all ordinary cases. I therefore ask the House to say that it is much more convenient that the Clause should stand as it is lather than that one should try to carve up a day into particular portions and try to allocate one portion as the pre-issue period and another portion as the post-issue period. Apart from the enormous amount of work which would be entailed, that process would have the effect of introducing a great deal of doubt. The result would be much more unsatisfactory than allowing the position to rest as it is, in which we have a clear definition between pre-issue and post-issue, estimated in terms of days.
1157 I hope the hon. and gallant Member does not think that I am dismissing his argument lightly. I am not intending to do so. Having regard to the balance of convenience, estimated in terms of the likelihood of justice being done, it is far preferable that we should leave a clear distinction between one day and another. If the offence is committed before the date when the Instrument is issued and is shown in the list, then the Clause should operate. I ask the House to say that that is an adequate and proper answer to the argument that has been adduced.
Now I would pass from that argument to the second argument, which relates to the fourth of the proposed Amendments. The hon. and gallant Member suggests that the onus should be on the prosecution to show not merely that the Instrument, but that the particular part of the Instrument that affects the person charged, was actually brought to the notice of that person. If the prosecution had to do that, they would have to do much more than they have to do in the case of the ordinary Statute, although the position is very much the same. In the case of the ordinary Statute we do not have to prove that the person charged knew the Statute at all, or that he had either read it or had been in a position to read it. That is the law of the country. The endeavour is to introduce some reasonable conformity between the position of the Statute and of the Statutory Instrument.
Take the ordinary case of a motorist. You know in a general sense that you must not drive on the wrong side of the road. Your instinct tells you. You know there is some law about it. You do not know whether it is contained in a Statutory Instrument or in a Statute, how it is worded or exactly what the pro visions are. You know, in a general sense, that you must not do it. That is the kind of way in which the ordinary citizen obtains cognisance. He has a general sense about it. If he is concerned with some particular trade or kind of operation, he knows in relation to it that there are certain general prohibitions, and that if he wants to do something of that sort he should be careful and should inform himself. He would have a grievance if, wishing to inform himself, he went to the trade papers and could not get information, or if he went to the B.B.C. or the newspapers and could not get any in- 1158 formation, and if he were convicted of an offence during a pre-issue period.
The Clause proposes to remove that grievance. He is not to be convicted in respect of a pre-issue offence when he could not obtain any information from any of the sources which are normally open to any person. If he were in such a position that you could not have got the information to him by the putting up of some sort of notice or if he had referred to his trade papers or to some other source accessible to a person engaged in his activity, or by any other reasonable steps taken to make the thing known to members of the public at large, then if his offence was in the pre-issue period, he cannot be convicted of it. In my submission to the House, that is dealing with the matter sensibly and fairly. It puts the person, roughly speaking, into the position in which a person is in relation to a statutory offence.
The ordinary citizen knows that it is wrong to take bribes or pay bribes. His instinct tells him that probably the law says something about it, but he has no idea of the Prevention of Corruption Act He never heard of it. Probably he does not know when it was passed and he does not know what the provisions are. That is the general sense one has about the law. You know there are certain types of thing you must not do. I suggest that the Bill brings that position about in relation to Statutory Instruments. One has to bear in mind that the Clause applies only to a very limited class of case, to the unfortunate case where, during the few days that may elapse after the Instrument is made and before it becomes generally accessible, a person should have been so unfortunate as to be caught out contravening its provisions. In that case, a person cannot be convicted, unless the ordinary sources of information which may fairly be said to be accessible to ordinary citizens would not, had he had resort to them, had given him information of it, and told him that he should not have done that with which he is charged.
If we try to go beyond that point, we shall put an impossible burden of proof upon the prosecution. They will have to show that everything possible had been done to bring the matter to the notice of the person charged. They might be able to show that they had plastered the place with notices, that they had thrust 1159 notices into his letter box or that they had, if, you like, shouted it into his house. If he were a respectable kind of person he might say that when the notices were thrust in his letter box he did not happen to be at home, or he might say "I hap pen to be deaf," or "I do not happen to be able to read." If you put on the prosecution the burden of showing affirmatively not only that the person charged knew that there was a Statutory Instrument but that he was familiar with that part of it which related to him, you make the administration of justice in relation to the pre-issue offences absolutely impossible. I therefore ask the House to say that the fourth of the proposed Amendments in the name of the hon. and gallant Member for Blackpool North (Brigadier Low) ought not to be accepted.
Now I would pass on to deal with the arguments which were addressed on the subject of the fifth Amendment. As I understood them, they were based on the footing that better drafting required that the words in the Amendment should be omitted. I think I may fairly summarise the arguments in the following way. It was, a fortiori, if you take steps to bring the matter to the notice of the public you take steps to bring it to the notice of the person charged, and as a pure matter of drafting, more a matter of form and tidiness in the wording, it would be better if we left out those words.
I put it to the House that that argument is misconceived. I answer it again purely on the footing of good drafting. The Clause is drafted in the way in which it is in order that it shall afford adequate and proper guidance to the court. Take a case in which it has been proved that steps had been taken to bring a matter to the notice of the public, then the prosecution will start to ask, "Are we, for this purpose, to treat the person accused as a member of the public, or are we to see whether, in point of fact, he was in some way divorced or separated from the general body of the public in this country?" Perhaps he lived in an outlying place. In drafting the Clause we have provided that the Minister who desires to enforce his Statutory Instrument must do one of three specific things. He can take his choice, but he must definitely bring himself within one of three specific courses of action which are defined in the Clause, and about which there can be no doubt.
1160 He must take reasonable steps to bring the matter to the notice of the public generally. The court before whom the case is heard will get from the prosecution what steps were taken and will decide, as a matter of commonsense, whether those steps were reasonable to achieve the end desired. Or, secondly, he must take reasonable steps to bring the matter to the notice of persons likely to be affected. We have been talking about publication in trade papers. Ordinarily, I should have thought that most courts, deciding the matter on a commonsense basis, would say that if you took steps to see that it was circulated in the trade papers concerned, they would be reason able steps. Finally, we give the Minister a third alternative. Take the case of markets or port towns. People who resort to those places will look, in all probability, at specific notice boards. If you put your notices on those notice boards I should think the court would say that you had taken reasonable steps to bring the matter to the notice of the person charged. Purely on the footing of drafting we have given, in the Clause as it stands, specific guidance to the Minister what he is to do, and to the court what they are to decide, in considering the question whether reasonable steps were taken.
To omit the words which it is suggested should be omitted, would not be to improve the drafting, but, in my submission, to increase the obscurity. Here are three specific alternatives, and we are telling the court that they must exercise their minds on these three alternative courses of action and on nothing else. I ask the House for those reasons to say that the proposed Amendments do not improve the Bill and that they should, for the reasons that I have given, be rejected.

§ Amendment negatived.

§ Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Clause be added to the Bill."

§ 5.15 p.m.

§ Mr. Manningham-Buller
There is a point I should like to raise, and it is neither the one I raised on the Second Reading of the Clause nor the one which we have been discussing on the Amendment. It is, however, a point of some substance and importance. I am not at all sure that we have not spent too much time in considering what would happen if the defence do prove that the statutory 1161 instrument has not been issued, because it is not at all clear to me, under this new Clause, how a defence can ever fulfil that task, and only if they can prove that the instrument has not been issued do the matters which we have been discussing at considerable length come into consideration at all. But how can they prove that it has not been issued? The first sub-paragraph of the new Clause provides for the making of lists, and then provides that such lists shall be conclusive proof of the dates on which the statutory instruments contained in them were made.
I have been considering— and I hope the Solicitor-General will be able to calm my fears on this point— what this in fact means. The defence, when charged, says that the statutory instrument has not been issued. If it is contained in any list which has been issued by the King's Printer, then the prosecution can prove that point, and all paragraph (2) falls to the ground. But suppose the list which is produced was published on 1st January, and the prosecution was in respect of an offence which has taken place on the last day of that month, under an Order made in January. The defence says that it has not been issued, as it was not recorded or entered in the last list issued by the King's Printer. The prosecution would answer that it was not in the List issued by the King's Printer because the Order was not made then. But to avail oneself of the defence under this paragraph, one must show that it was not issued at the time the offence was committed. The question I wish to put to the hon. and learned Gentleman is, how is the defence to discharge that burden, which may be in tolerable, since only upon the discharge of that burden do the matters on which we have spent considerable time become of any importance at all?
I tried to get an indication from the hon. and learned Gentleman of how often these lists were to be issued. I should have thought that, if they were to be issued frequently, one solution of the difficulty would be to say that the lists should be not only conclusive proof of the dates of issue of the documents shown in them, but also prima facie proof of the non-issue of the statutory instruments not referred to in the lists. I throw that suggestion out, and I admit that it is a point which did not occur to me until the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) 1162 was addressing the Committee. I think it is a point of considerable importance. If that were provided, the defence would have a means of discharging the burden of proving that the particular instrument had not been issued.
Unless some such machinery is provided, this new Clause may be robbed of a great deal of its effect, because although the accused person may say that a particular instrument has not been issued, that is not enough, he has to prove that it has not been issued. There is no list which he can produce to the court, and in respect of which he can say, "It is not in that, therefore it has not been issued," because this merely provides that lists shall be evidence of what has been issued. I do not want to take up time in pursuing this matter any further, nor indeed do I expect the Solicitor-General, unless he is in a position to do so, to answer this point here and now, but I would ask him to look at it, because I am quite sure that it is his desire, as it is mine, that the protection we are seeking to give to the accused person shall not in fact be a complete sham and a waste of time.

§ Mr. E. Fletcher
What I think the hon. Gentleman has completely overlooked is that there must necessarily be an interval of time between the committing of an offence and the time when any summons relating to it comes before the court. It seems abundantly clear to me that no situation can possibly arise of the kind suggested by the hon. Gentleman.

§ Mr. Manningham-Buller
May I suggest that the hon Gentleman's remarks so far do not indicate that he appreciated the point I was putting? Although a great deal of time may elapse between the commission of an offence and the issue of a summons, the time between the two may also be very short indeed, allowing for no list to be published in the interval. If one could be sure that there would be no prosecution for an offence under a statutory instrument until after the date of publication of a list— that is, that a list would be published between the commission of an offence and the hearing, I quite agree that this point would be covered.

§ Mr. E. Fletcher
One would have thought that if any such case arose there would be an adjournment, to allow the court to ascertain the facts. Surely the 1163 position envisaged under this new Clause is that on the hearing of any alleged offence it will be open to the defence to submit to the court the lists of statutory instruments that have been published in accordance with the regulations made under the first part of the new Clause. Presumably those Regulations, which will come before the House in due course, will provide for the lists to be published at regular intervals, and presumably they will provide for all statutory instruments that have been issued to be included. Presumably it will be a reasonable inference, which any court will draw, that if any statutory instrument is not included in the list that has been published, then it had not been issued on the date of publication of such lists. Then, if there is any doubt about the date on which the prosecution suggests that the statutory instrument in question was issued, being at a later date than the latest publication of those lists, one would have thought that an obvious course which any court would follow would be for a sufficient adjournment to take place to enable that fact to be verified or disproved. I should therefore have thought that in any case it would be the simplest possible matter for the defendant to show whether the first part of this new Clause operates or not, that is, whether the statutory instrument in question had in fact been issued. If it had not been issued, the other part of the Clause which we have been discussing recently can be brought into play.

§ Mr. Gallacher (Fife, West)
I was present during some of the discussions in Committee, and I listened to lawyers on one side and on the other arguing all about this. The feeling I got was that the more you listen to lawyers the more difficulties you find they create. I was quite satisfied with this Clause until I heard the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman), and he knocked all the satisfaction out of me. I would like the Solicitor-General to think this over. The hon. Member for Nelson and Colne said that a man could be prosecuted under the criminal laws and could not say in his defence that he did not know the law. But what we are discussing here is the question of whether the alleged offence is actually a crime or not. It is not a crime if the defendant had no knowledge of the regulation. That is something entirely different from criminal law. If the defend- 1164 ant had no reasonable grounds for knowing the purport of the regulation, then it is no crime. It is only a crime if he had reasonable grounds for so knowing. Then there is the question of what constitutes reasonable grounds. The hon. Member for Nelson and Colne said, as many lawyers will say, "Better leave that to the discretion of the court." It is impossible for any ordinary individual to understand why it should be left to the lawyers to haggle over. If it is to be left to the discretion of the court to settle what constitutes reasonable grounds, will every court come to the same decision? Suppose a man is brought before a court in Liverpool and evidence is given for the prosecution that the regulation was given over the B.B.C., and the court decides that that is a reasonable method of supplying information to the person charged. Will that apply to every other court? If another man is brought up in London and the prosecution says. that the regulation was put over the B.B.C., will the same decision be reached? That is the situation. Unless it is laid down that the first decision given must be taken as a precedent, decisions will vary as between one part of the country and another. I think that that would be very unsatisfactory, and I hope the learned Solicitor-General will look at the point again. We do not want people to be hauled up and convicted unless we are certain that they have been committing an act knowing that it was a wrongful act.

§ Question put, and agreed to.

§ Clause added to the Bill.

§ New Clause.— (Amendment of statutory instrument.)

§ Where by this Act or any Act passed after the commencement of this Act any statutory instrument is required to be laid before Parliament either House of Parliament may amend this instrument and, if the other House agrees with the amendment, the instrument shall come into force or shall continue in force subject to such amendment but without prejudice to the validity of anything done thereunder.— [Mr. Hopkin Morris.]

§ Brought up, and read the First time.

§ Colonel Sir Charles MacAndrew (Ayr and Bute, Northern)
On a point of Order. I humbly submit to you, Mr. Speaker, that the proposed new Clause is outside the scope of the Bill. This new Clause takes powers to amend statutory instruments. The Title of the Bill says: 1165 to repeal the Rules Publication Act, 1893, and to make further provision as to the instruments by which statutory powers …" There is no word about amending the instruments, and certainly under the Rules Publication Act there was no power to amend any Order.

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Major Milner)
I am obliged to the hon. and gallant Member, but Mr. Speaker has ruled that it is in Order.

§ 5.30 p.m.

§ Mr. Hopkin Morris (Carmarthen)
I beg to move, "That the Clause be read a Second time."
It will not require a very long speech from me to commend this new Clause to the House. I commend it with some confidence, since hon. Members opposite and hon. Members above the Gangway on this side have from time to time, in recent Debates in the House, supported the purport of this new Clause. Many of these statutory instruments will be of great importance in the future, and will deal with very important schemes. The aim of the new Clause is that the House, instead of as at present being able merely to accept or reject statutory orders, shall be empowered to amend them, and if the other House agrees with such Amendments, they will become part of the Order. This would give Parliament greater power over delegated legislation.

§ Squadron-Leader Emrys Roberts (Merionethshire)
I beg to second the Motion.

§ Mr. Molson
I have been associated with a number of my hon. Friends who have been jealous of preserving the general control of the House over delegated legislation, but in spite of that fact, I hope the Solicitor-General will not accept this new Clause. I think it is generally recognised that there is a sphere in which the principle of delegated legislation is both expedient and necessary. It has been used by Governments of all complexions, it is now of long standing, and it has been found to be convenient. The instruments that are brought forward result from the policy which has been decided upon by Parliament in the parent Act, and the purpose of the delegated legislation is to enable the executive, or any other appropriate body which is given power under the terms of the Act to give 1166 effect to the policy which has been laid down. In those circumstances, if delegated legislation is to be flexible and convenient, it is extremely important that it should be passed with reasonable expedition.
I do not believe that in the long run the House would really increase its effective control over delegated legislation and over other kinds of legislation if it deprived itself of this expeditious way of having effect given to the Acts which it passes. If on every instrument that came before the House there were un limited opportunities of Debate and Amendment, it would mean that the House, which is overworked already, would be even more overworked than it is at the present time, and the effect would be that, because of the vast volume of business laid before the House, the control, supervision and scrutiny would be less effective than at the present time. Therefore, I suggest that this new Clause, which at first sight is so attractive because apparently it is designed to increase the control of Parliament over delegated legislation, would in point of fact not be effective for this purpose. There are other ways in which the House must make certain that its voice is effective. The executive is responsible to the House, and as long as the House retains the power either to dismiss the executive or to reject delegated legislation which is laid before it, it is in that way retaining its power far more effectively than would be done by the acceptance of this new Clause.

§ Mr. Glenvil Hall
As the hon. Member for Carmarthen (Mr. Hopkin Morris) indicated, the object of the new Clause is to permit both Houses to amend any statutory instruments laid before them. For the reasons which the hon. Member for The High Peak (Mr. Molson) indicated, and for other reasons, if this new Clause were agreed to, it would make things extremely difficult, and would often make the method of putting through delegated legislation completely unworkable. Many of the Statutory Rules and Orders are laid for information only. There are many hundreds in the course of the year which are laid purely for the information of both Houses. There would be no machinery available to permit the new method of amending them to be used. Nor do we think it would be possible to use this new 1167 machinery, supposing the House agreed to it, in the case of an instrument which required only a negative resolution. It would have to apply, if it applied to any, to those that needed an affirmative Resolution, and that being so, there is in existence no real machinery which would allow for any adjustment of differences between the two Houses. As the hon. Member said, the new Clause would allow either House to amend a statutory instrument, but there is no procedure in existence to permit a difference between the two Houses as to an Amendment to be settled. As the hon. Member for The High Peak said, the effect of the new Clause would be to stultify the object of statutory instruments, which is to expedite something which a particular Minister wants to do under a general enactment giving him powers to do it, and it would in fact in many instances turn a statutory instrument into a Bill, on which there would be debates and to which Amendments would be moved. Frankly, I am sure the new Clause would not fulfil the object which the hon. Member desires to accomplish, and I hope he will consent to withdraw it.

§ Question, "That the Clause be read a Second time," put, and negatived.

§ Clause 2.— (Numbering, printing, publication and citation.)

§ Sir C. MacAndrew
I beg to move, in page 2, line 1, after "shall" insert:" as soon as possible."
I would like to thank the Solicitor-General for the kind way in which he has met our suggestions for amending the Bill. I am sure the Bill is now a better one than it was originally, and that is due to the way in which he has accepted suggestions concerning it. I hope these remarks will soften the hon. and learned Gentleman's heart on this Amendment, which is an important one, although it is simple. In the Statutory Rules and Orders Committee, we have for some time noticed the variation in time between the-signing and the publication of these instruments. We took the trouble to have some inquiry made about the actual time, and we found that the times between the receipt of the document by the King's Printer and the publication were as follows: a four page document normally takes three days, and a 24 page document 1168 takes seven days, but the period of seven days is reduced to five if the document is set up in type in advance of signature. In the second Special Report, which was in the hands of the House a week ago, the Committee pointed out that the period between the signature and publication should be shortened, and we also recommended that the practice of having Rules and Orders set up in type in advance of signature should be extended. As an example of the delay in printing, I have in my hand S.R. & O. 1436, Nurses (England and Wales). This Order came before the Scrutinising Committee a fortnight ago, and we noticed that, although the Regulations were made on 9th November, they would not be laid until 19th November— 10 days later. According to our terms of reference, we were empowered to ask for a memorandum from the Department, which we did, and we found that the Regulations were made on 9th November and the Order for printing asked for de livery by 16th November. Why does not the Department want them as soon as they can get them? Nobody wants to ask people to work at an excessive speed, but why should there be any slowing down? The purpose of this Amendment is that the thing should be printed as soon as possible, which I think is only reasonable, and I hope the Solicitor-General will accept the Amendment.

§ Mr. Baldwin (Leominster)
I beg to second the Amendment.

§ The Solicitor-General
I am grateful to the hon. and gallant Member for Ayr and Bute, Northern (Sir C. Mac Andrew) for his very kind words, which did soften my heart, because I am happy to say that we feel the Amendment he has moved would very definitely improve the Bill, and we are prepared to accept it. There was a lacuna in the Bill and the Amendment conveniently fills the gap.

§ Mr. Charles Williams (Torquay)
I wish to thank the Government for accepting this Amendment, and to point out that when anyone having expert know ledge, as my hon. and gallant Friend has on this matter, moves an Amendment, it is almost invariably an Amendment which would bring about a great improvement in a Bill. I thank the Government for allowing the Tory Party to improve their Bill.

§ Amendment agreed to.

1169

§ 5.45.p.m

§ Mr. E. Fletcher
I beg to move, in page 2, line 2, at the end, insert: (2) Every copy of any such statutory instrument sold by the King's Printer of Acts of Parliament shall bear on the face thereof a statement showing the date on which the statutory instrument came or will come into operation. The purpose of this Amendment is to insert in this Clause a provision which appears in Clause 3. The House will realise that the Bill provides for statutory instruments in two categories, those which arc required to be laid before Parliament, and those which are not so required to be laid. Clause 3 deals exclusively with statutory instruments which are required to be laid before Parliament. In Subsection (2) of Clause 3, it is provided, and very sensibly, that every such statutory instrument shall bear on the face of it a statement showing the date on which it came, or would come, into operation. The object of the Amendment is to extend that provision to all statutory instruments and not only to those which are required to be laid before Parliament. I should have thought that, if that was desirable in the one case, it was equally desirable in the other, and I find it difficult to understand why this provision should be confined to one class of statutory instrument and not be extended to all. I hope the Solicitor-General will see his way to accept the proposal, or, at least, to consider it sympathetically, with a view to an Amendment being inserted in the Bill in another place.

§ Major Wells (Walsall)
I beg to second the Amendment.

§ The Solicitor-General
I am sorry to disappoint hon. Members, but we feel that this Amendment does not improve the Bill at all. The reason why the provisions set out in -the Amendment are incorporated in the statutory instruments that have to be laid is in order to bring into operation the machinery provided under Clause 3 of the Bill. This is designed to bring to the notice of all persons concerned cases in which there has been an omission to lay the instrument when it should have been laid, but that does not apply at all in the case of an instrument which is not required to be laid before Parliament. The reason is, therefore, entirely inapplicable, and the two sets of instruments stand in completely different categories. I believe I 1170 am correctly informed that, in point of fact, before any instrument is accepted, it must be signed and dated, and, in the ordinary course, it will come into operation according to the terms of the Interpretation Act, and I therefore ask the House to say that this Amendment does not improve the Bill, is quite unnecessary and should not be accepted.

§ Amendment negatived.

§ Clause 3.—(Statutory Instruments which are required to be laid before Parliament.)

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
I think it would be for the convenience of the House if the three Amendments standing in the name of the hon. and gallant Member for Gainsborough (Captain Crookshank) were discussed together.

§ Mr. Manningham-Buller
I beg to move, in page 2, line 10, leave out from "shall," 10 end of line 11, and insert: not come into operation until it has been so laid. Under your Ruling, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, we shall also consider the next two Amendments—in page 2, line 12, after "if," insert: the Minister making, confirming, or approving any instrument certifies that." and in page 2, line 15, after "any," insert "such. Clause 3 is now in a very different form from the Bill which was considered on Second Reading. That, again, is evidence of the value of a Committee stage, and, if I may so, shows the valuable part that the Opposition can play. I hope that, notwithstanding these observations, the hon. and learned Gentleman will not resist these further Amendments to his Clause—and we are grateful to him for the trouble he has taken about it—with a view to improving the Clause.
In the first part of Subsection (1) are the words: subject as hereinafter provided, shall be. so laid before the instrument comes into operation. These words "so laid before the instrument comes into operation "may be misleading to some people. They might imply that the document has to be laid before Parliament as a condition precedent to the statutory instrument coming into effect, but I think the hon. and learned Gentleman will agree with me that that is not what this Clause does at all. As 1171 it now stands, we could have a statutory instrument brought into operation and it will not cease to be in operation because this part of Clause 3 has not been complied with. What we, on this side, think, is that those statutory instruments which require to be laid before Parliament, should not come into operation until they have been laid. It would avoid a great deal of trouble if that could be brought about. It might, I anticipate, necessitate some alteration of the procedure of this House in order to provide for laying statutory instruments during a Parliamentary Recess, but I doubt whether there would be any insuperable objection to that being done, and, if the Amendment were accepted, no doubt it would accelerate that being done.
We go on to provide—and may I point ' out that there is a proviso to Clause 3 that copies can be laid—that, where they are not laid before the instrument is in operation, notification shall be sent to the Lord Chancellor and the Speaker of the House of Commons. We propose as an alteration of that proviso that, if the Minister making, confirming or approving any instrument certifies that it is essential that any such instrument shall come into operation, copies of it can be laid, so that the orders could come into operation before they are laid although this provides that they should be laid, before they come in to operation. All that happens is that Mr. Speaker and the Lord Chancellor are notified. In our Amendment, we stipulate that, in normal cases, statutory instruments which require to be laid, shall not come into operation at all until they have been laid, and laying will, in normal cases, be a condition precedent. But, if the Minister certifies that it is essential that an instrument shall come into force before it has been laid, that can be done. I should have thought that would meet all possible objections from the hon. and learned Gentleman, apart from that relating' to instruments laid during a Recess, and I think that that objection can be overcome. I hope I have made the object clear to the hon. and learned Gentleman and to hon. Members opposite.

§ Captain Crookshank
I beg to second the Amendment.

§ The Solicitor-General
I have to submit to the House that there could not be the 1172 smallest doubt, on a reading of the essential part of Subsection (1), that the words, as they stand, do not imply that it shall be a condition precedent to an instrument coming into operation that it shall be laid. This question, whether it would be right to provide that it should be a condition precedent, or whether it would be right to provide that the instrument should cease to operate if not laid within a specific time, was very fully discussed in the Standing Committee. It is a matter which depends, in each case, on the same principle. The answer given in the Standing Committee was that, if an instrument was not laid, it was appropriate that Parliament should use its own remedies, and that it would not be appropriate to penalise the public, who would be affected by the instrument, if there was a failure on the part of a Minister or a Department to comply with the obligation to lay it. For that reason, after careful consideration, the Committee accepted the view that the Amendment now embodied in Clause 3 should be. accepted. That is the part which provides, in mandatory form, that the instrument shall be laid, but does not go on to provide that, if it is not laid as required, it shall not come into operation.
The whole question was very exhaustively considered, and the view was accepted that that was a matter for Parliament. That is why the very elaborate procedure provided for in Clause 3 was accepted and adopted. If the Amendment now proposed is accepted, one might just as well strike out the whole of Subsection (1), because it would become unnecessary. I ask the House to say that this Amendment should not be accepted. It is unnecessary, because the Amendment adopted by the Standing Committee does, in point of fact, provide an adequate safeguard and does meet the whole difficulty, which has been repeatedly discussed throughout the proceedings on this Bill.

§ Mr. J. S. C. Reid
I understood that the three Amendments were being considered together, but the hon. and learned Gentleman has not, I think, said anything about the second one, which is of an independent character, although it fits into the scheme.

§ Mr. Gallacher
It may be independent, but it has not much character.

§ Mr. Reid
Subsection (1) states: 1173 Provided that if it is essential that any such instrument should come into operation before copies thereof can be so laid as aforesaid the instrument may be. made so as to come into operation before it has been so laid. There will be difficulties if it is left like that. If it is essential, surely it would clear the matter up if the Minister certified that it was essential and let everybody know that it had come into operation, rightly and properly, on the Minister's certificate, which he would not give without good reason. If, however, we are merely leaving it as it is, there will be disputes about who says it is essential, and 1 suggest that, in order to make a tidier job—if we accept, reluctantly, the view that the Solicitor-General should have his way on the first Amendment—the second one, which does improve the framework of the Bill, should be accepted by the Government, even if the other is not. I hope the hon. and learned Gentleman will consider it from that point of view, and also from the point of view that it would avoid a great deal of controversy and make the thing perfectly clear if some authoritative expression- of the urgency of the matter were put on the face of the document in order that there might be no dispute. I do not see that there could be any objection to I he certificate being given. Obviously, this would have to be considered at a high level, and, if that is so, there is no reason why that certificate should not say so. I hope the hon. and learned Gentleman will take that view.

§ Mr. Gallacher
I want to warn the Solicitor-General that the more words we put in, the more opportunity there is for confusion. Can anyone imagine a Minister coming here with a Clause of this kind and somebody asking him, "Are you convinced that it is essential? ", and the Minister saying, "I do not know whether it is essential or not; I am just putting it down ''? No Minister would bring in a Regulation unless he was satisfied that it was essential, and putting in more words will not make it any clearer.

§ The Solicitor-General
If I may have the leave of the House to speak again on the same set of Amendments, I would like to put this point with regard to what has been said by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Hillhead (Mr. Reid). If the Amendment were intro- 1174 duced, the effect of Clause 3 would, in fact, be weakened. As it stands, somebody concerned has to take a decision, but the Clause only allows the instrument to be laid if it is, in fact, essential. As the Clause now reads, supposing an instrument is laid and there is no reasonable justification for saying that it is essential that it should be laid, then it is a matter which can be inquired into. When the Scrutinising Committee, in due course, comes into possession of the instrument and hears that this particular instrument was laid as being an essential instrument, when there is not a shadow of justification for saying that it is essential, they can make comments about it. If, however, the Amendment mentioned by the right hon. and learned Gentleman were introduced that would be taken away because the Minister's certificate, at any rate on a first reading of the proviso, would become conclusive.
It will not be open to the Scrutinising Committee, if the Amendment-is introduced, to say that the instrument should never have been made to come into operation before it was laid as being an essential instrument. If the Amendment is introduced the certificate of the Minister, his ipse dixit, becomes final, and the Scrutinising Committee can no longer investigate that particular aspect of it. Hon. Members opposite have been very anxious to safeguard that position. I quite understand that they introduced this Amendment with a view to improving the Clause, but I submit that it has exactly the opposite effect and, in point of fact, it will whittle down very materially the effect of the safeguards at present provided by Clause 3. Therefore, I ask the House to say that this Amendment should be rejected.

§ Mr. J. S. C. Reid
I beg to ask leave to withdraw this Amendment.

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
The right hon. and learned Gentleman did not move the Amendment, so he cannot withdraw it.

§ Amendment negatived.

§ Mr. Molson
I beg to move, in page 2, line 21, at end, insert: and the Lord Chancellor and the Speaker shall thereupon inform the House of Lords and the House of Commons, respectively, that he has received such a notification. This Amendment is intended to carry one stage further the process to which 1175 the hon. and learned Solicitor-General referred when he was dealing with the previous Amendment. As he has emphasised that the Government have no intention that statutory instruments shall come into effect until they have been laid upon the Table of the House, except in exceptional circumstances, and in order that all such cases shall be brought to the attention of the House, he moved in the Committee stage an Amendment that. notification should be sent to the Lord Chancellor and to the Speaker of the House of Commons drawing attention to the fact that copies of the instrument. have yet to be laid before Parliament and explaining that such copies were not so laid before the instrument came into operation. All the instruments to which this Bill applies will, in due course, when they have been laid on the Table of this House, go before the Scrutinising Committee. What we are concerned with at this point is what happens in the case of statutory instruments which are so laid as to come into operation before they have been laid on the Table of the House, and before, therefore, they have become referred to 'the Scrutinising Committee. I venture to point out to the hon. and learned Solicitor-General in the Committee stage that if Mr. Speaker were to receive a notification that, if the matter were just left there, there would be no means by which he could bring the matter to the attention of the House. It was for that reason that I have moved this Amendment.
There are two ways in which Mr. Speaker could be enabled to bring the matter to the attention of the House and of the Scrutinising Committee. It can either be done, as I am proposing in this Amendment, by incorporating the words in the statute itself or, of course, it would be possible for the matter to be dealt with by an Amendment of the Standing Orders of the House. I will be frank with the House. I was not aware when I drafted this Amendment that recently the terms of reference of the Scrutinising Committee have been specially enlarged in order that amongst the matters which they are required especially to deal with, and to bring to the attention of the House, is delay in the laying of a statutory instrument before Parliament. It was on 23rd August of this year that a Motion was introduced by my hon. and gallant Friend 1176 the Member for Ayr and Bute, Northern (Sir C. MacAndrew) which has widened the terms of reference of the Scrutinising Committee in that respect.

§ Sir C. MacAndrew
If my hon. Friend would allow me to interrupt, it was on 6th November.

§ Mr. Molson
I beg pardon, that is so. The effect of that is that the really effective scrutinising body is the Select Committee which, under the enlarged Terms of Reference, will now be required in each case to give special attention to cases of this kind where a statutory instrument comes into effect before it has been laid before the House, and they are empowered under their enlarged Terms of Reference to bring specially to the attention of the House any case where they consider that that power has been abused. Therefore, what we are concerned with in this Amendment is merely the exact machinery by which Mr. Speaker shall make known to the House, and thereby to the Scrutinising Committee, the fact that he has received a notification of that kind. This, therefore, is not a controversial Amendment, but one designed to provide the necessary machinery in order to enable the Amendment moved by the learned Solicitor-General at the Committee stage to be made effective for the transmission 'of the notification, which will have been received by Mr. Speaker, to the House and to the Scrutinising Committee.

§ Mr. Maude (Exeter)
I beg to second the Amendment.

§ The Solicitor-General
I propose to ask the hon. Member to withdraw his Amendment, and I wish to make the following statement to him and to the House. Clearly, some channel of communication must exist between the Scrutinising Committee and Mr. Speaker in reference to instruments which have not been laid. The question is what should be that channel of communication? The further question is whether some amendment of the Standing Orders of the House is necessary with a view to bringing into operation some regular system of communication. Personally, I am not convinced that it is necessary, but it is obviously a matter which requires consideration and it will be given consideration. If it is found necessary that there should be some Amendment to Standing Orders to deal 1177 with it, steps will be taken. to propose such an Amendment. I fit is not necessary, then naturally no such steps will be taken, but I would ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw his Amendment to the actual Bill on that assertion of mine, that it is rather a matter for discussion with the House authorities as to the appropriate channel of communication and the appropriate Amendment, if any, to Standing Orders if one is necessary.

§ Mr. C. Williams
Before the hon. and learned Gentleman sits down, may I ask him what harm this Amendment could do? It would not in any way hold up matters, and if there is a possibility that such a thing may happen under Standing Orders, I cannot see that there is any great harm in this Amendment and why it should not go in.

§ The Solicitor-General
The Amendment does not improve matters at all; it puts an obligation on the Speaker and the Lord Chancellor to do something which, at any rate, at one stage it was thought they might not have to do. When the Amendment was originally introduced, I say perfectly frankly, it was thought that Mr. Speaker and the Lord Chancellor might exercise a discretion in the matter" It may or may not be possible for them to do so, very likely it will not be possible, but if this Amendment is introduced and made part of the Bill, then it means that an unqualified obligation is put on them which does not permit of any elasticity, and merely puts a complete close to any further discussion of what would be the most appropriate procedure. Therefore, I ask the House to say that it would not help, but harm, and that it would be far preferable to discuss the matter fully, and, if necessary, to make any Amendment to Standing Orders so that, whatever was found to be actually the most convenient and efficacious form of procedure, could be embodied in Standing Orders.

§ Sir C. MacAndrew
I appreciate what the hon. and learned Gentleman has said, but I do not think it is quite so simple as he thinks. My hon. Friend's Amendment may not be in the right form; I do not know —

§ Mr. Gallacher
It certainly is not.

§ Sir C. MacAndrew
I have given a great deal of time and thought to Statutory Orders, and I think that, at present, 1178 the weak point in Clause 3 is what will happen if the Speaker is notified. The right hon. Gentleman talks about an alteration to the Standing Orders, but he must bear in mind that this Scrutinising Committee is of recent date, and I do not think that any mention of it will be found in Standing Orders. It seems to me that the appropriate body is the Scrutinising Committee, but I do not think that it is going to be so easy to amend the Standing Orders for the reason I have given.

§ 6.15 p.m.

§ Mr. E. Fletcher
The hon. Member for Torquay (Mr. C. Williams) inquired what harm this Amendment could do. Apart from the reasons given by the Solicitor-General, there are grave constitutional objections to this Amendment. The Lord Chancellor and Mr. Speaker occupy honoured, dignified and unique positions in the Constitution of this country. I submit that it is an undesirable innovation in a Bill of this kind to prescribe duties for the Lord Chancellor and Mr. Speaker, for sending communciations either to another place, or to this House. This Bill embodies the safeguard to give this House control over the Executive on this particular matter of delegated legislation.

§ Mr. Molson
If there is objection to using Mr. Speaker and the Lord Chancellor in that respect, surely that objection applies to the Amendment moved by the Solicitor-General requiring that notification should be made to them.

§ Mr. E. Fletcher
Not at all. That is an entirely different thing. The Bill provides that there shall be communication to the Lord Chancellor and to the Speaker of this House which is appropriate, at any rate, in connection with communications to this House by the Executive Departments in this matter. There is abundant precedent for that, but I should be very surprised 'to find that there was on the Statute Book any Act of Parliament which placed the duty on the Lord Chancellor or on Mr. Speaker to send communication to Members of this House or to another place. Matters of that kind, which are matters of internal regulation of the affairs of the House of Commons, do not appear to me—and I speak as a new Member subject to correction —to be appropriate matters to embody in an Act 1179 of Parliament. They are matters with which we can deal by our own domestic machinery. I urge the House—apart from the reasons given by the Solicitor-General—for these very constitutional reasons not to accept, at this late stage in the Bill, an Amendment of this kind.

§ Mr. S. Silverman
It is clear that what everybody wants to do is to secure, if such a lapse occurs, that the House shall have notice of it. It was at one time thought that that object could be achieved by requiring that notification should be given to Mr. Speaker and the Lord Chancellor. That seems ineffective by itself, and there are reasons why it cannot be made effective in the way proposed by the Amendment. I wonder whether my hon. and learned Friend would think it convenient, at a later stage, to amend this part of the Bill altogether, so as to provide that notification shall be given to the chairman of the Scrutinising Committee, who will then have direct cognisance of it and will have the duty, in the event of anything being wrong, of reporting it to the House.

§ Mr. C. Williams
I interrupted the hon. and learned Gentleman in the middle of his speech with a question and he replied. With great deference —

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Major Milner)
I am sorry but the hon. Member has made one speech and he cannot make another on this Amendment.

§ Mr. Williams
What I did was to ask a question. I think that the hon. and learned Gentleman gave way to me.. Of course if this is another speech, then he has made a second speech.

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
I thought it was n. speech which the hon. Gentleman made; if so, he cannot make another speech.

§ Mr. Williams
May I ask the leave of the House to say something? It will be in the recollection of the House that if I have made two speeches and the hon. and learned Gentleman has made —

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
I must point out to the hon. Gentleman that if he has made two speeches he is not entitled to make another.

§ Sir C. MacAndrew
rose—

1180

Mr. McKie (Galloway)
On a point of Order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. Is the hon. Gentleman not allowed to ask the leave of the House to make another speech?

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
In strictness on the Report stage, only the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill or an hon. Gentleman moving an Amendment is entitled to speak more than once. No other hon. Member is entitled to speak twice.

§ Mr. Molson
If I may be entitled to say a few words, I am much obliged to the Solicitor-General for the sympathetic reply which he has given to my Amendment. The hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) has also made a suggestion which, I hope, the Solicitor-General will consider. I think it has become clear that we all hope and expect that the Scrutinising Committee will be the effective body for making quite certain that statutory instruments are not lightly brought into operation, without having been laid before the House. I accept the assurance that the Solicitor-General has given that he will consider this matter further in consultation with the authorities on the procedure of the House. In view of that assurance, and in the hope that he will consider the suggestion made by the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

§ Clause 7.—(Regulations.)

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
I think that it would be for the convenience of the House if the three Amendments standing in the name of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Gainsborough (Captain Crookshank) were taken together.

§ Mr. J. S. C. Reid
I beg to move, in page 4, line 22, after "instrument," insert: "not being of the nature of a public Act. There are many things which could have been put much better in this Bill, and I hope that the Solicitor-General will agree to the alteration which we propose. The matter was raised in Committee, and I understood that the Solicitor-General agreed to look into the matter again. In. Clause 7 (i, c) it is provided that regulations, made with respect to any classes or descriptions of statutory instrument that they shall be 1181 exempt from the requirement of being printed and of being sole! by the King's printer of Acts of Parliament, or from either of those requirements; There is undoubtedly a case for exempting certain private and local regulations—instruments—from printing. It would be a waste of money to print them, because the circulation would be very small, as only a few people would be interested, and it is much easier and cheaper to reproduce them in some other form. But I submit that any instrument in the nature of a public Act should never be exempted from printing, because instruments of that nature have a fairly wide ambit. They may affect only a few people, but you cannot be certain how few. I think" it right that all instruments in the nature of public Acts should be printed, and I think it right that every instrument should be on sale either as a printed copy or it may be as a duplicated copy in some other form. Nothing ought to be the law of this land unless it is possible for someone affected by it to get a copy of it. There is no excuse for any form of legislative government being withdrawn from publication and circulation from those who are prepared to pay a reasonable fee. Therefore, I think that all references to exemptions from being sold ought to be deleted from the Bill and everything ought to be on sale for those who wish to buy it; but I agree that only certain instruments ought to be printed.
One other point was raised by the Solicitor-General. He said that certain of these instruments are printed already before they come here. He instanced some Army documents. I put it to him that what we are trying to do is to make it easy for the person affected by the law to find the law. Everyone knows that you can find Statutory rules and instruments in the annual volume which is published and indexed. If you cannot find it there, it is often not very easy, particularly if you live some distance from the Stationery Office, to find what you want. Therefore, even if it is going to cost a little money and take up a little more paper—these things do not happen very often—submit that everything in the nature of a public Act ought to be printed, and ought to be available to people all over the country, as it is available if it is included in a collection of Statutory Rules and Orders, and as it is 1182 not available if it is in some other obscure form of printing or is not printed at all. I propose this Amendment with the double object of making sure that every legislative instrument is on sale and that every legislative instrument that is going to affect the public generally is in printed form and available in the annual collection.

§ 6.30 p.m.

§ Mr. Glenvil Hall
The right hon. and learned Gentleman is quite right. This matter did arise in Committee, and the Solicitor-General promised to see if- anything could be done. I have to say that he has looked at it and, in our view, nothing can be done. We have, therefore, to resist these Amendments. As I understand it, the object which the right hon. and learned Gentleman has in view is to ensure that all statutory instruments of a public general character are printed, and that others, which may not necessarily be printed, should be either printed, or copies of them should be obtainable if necessary.
What the right hon. and learned Gentleman did not say was that the system which hon. Gentlemen opposite are now seeking to change has now been in existence for 50 years. Up to now, it has worked extremely well, and in my view it would be wrong, at this period of time, with50 years' experience behind us, to change it. It would, indeed, put limits on the authority of the rule-making authority under the regulations, namely Mr. Speaker and the Lord Chancellor, limits which we do not think they should have put on their authority. It does not mean that under the present regulations these statutory instruments will not be printed. What it means is that there should be a discretion. We think that that discretion has been used in a proper way, and that it should continue, and should reside, as formerly, in the authority to which I have referred. I hope that the House will reject this Amendment.

§ Mr. Manningham-Buller
I am sorry we have had that considered opinion of the Government, as expressed by the Financial Secretary. Although he told us the conclusion, the reasons he gave were not very convincing. I should have thought that, to hon. Members opposite, the fact that a practice had been in existence for 50 years was about the least appealing 1183 reason that the right hon. Gentleman could put before them.

§ Mr. Kirkwood (Dumbarton Burghs)
He was appealing to the other side.

§ Mr. Manningham-Buller
We are trying to include the practice which has been in existence for a considerable time, and it does not meet the argument put forward by my right hon. and learned Friend merely to say that this is an old practice. The Financial Secretary said that it has worked well. Let us have some evidence of that. The Government were asked in Committee how many of these statutory instruments, or rules and regulations as they were then called, have been made and have not been printed. How many of them have not been put on sale? I take the view that if any law is made, a copy of it should be procurable by anyone who is affected. I do not know that any reason has been put forward by the hon. Gentleman for the rejection of the Amendment, to leave out from "printed," to the end of the paragraph. Why should there not be some stipulation, so that if their printing is not required at least a member of the public can buy a copy of what the law is, and can satisfy himself by learning what the law is? These laws may cover a wide field of individuals and yet no one, be he a student of the law or a person affected, will have any knowledge of what is taking place. Could we be told how many times this power, which has existed for 50 years, has been exercised? If it has not been exercised much that would not provide a good reason for continuing it. If it has been exercised a great deal, it strengthens the argument for putting an end to the practice. I hope we shall have a more detailed and fuller reply giving the reasons why the Government must be so conservative in their attitude with regard to the existing procedure.

§ The Solicitor-General
If the Measure were so worded as to bring about the result that instruments which ought to be accessible to the public, would of necessity be withheld from them, I should at once accept the Amendment. But, as my right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary has pointed out, there is simply a regulation-making direction. I would ask hon. Members to consider this sort of statutory instrument, which is of 1184 general application—an instrument made under the Bank Holidays Act, 1871, appointing a day as a Bank Holiday. Clearly there is no advantage to be gained by printing that and making it accessible to the public. Everybody knows it. Who wants to buy a copy of the instrument? People enjoy the Bank Holiday, but they do not want to bother about buying a copy of the Order.

§ Mr. Reid
Suppose, and it is quite possible, that one has some contract which refers to a Bank Holiday and one's opponent in court is troublesome and will not agree on the statement as to the Bank Holiday It is perfectly possible that someone may have to prove, in a court of law, that a certain date is affected by this Order. How is he to prove the Order?

§ The Solicitor-General
By getting a copy from the Department, which is quite simple and easy to do. The hon. Member' for Daventry (Mr. Manningham-Buller) asked for information. I can furnish certain figures. In point of fact a very small percentage indeed of instruments of a public character have not been printed and made available. Let me give the figures for three years. In 1943 out of 1,333 there were 1,312 printed; in other words 21 out of 1,333 were not printed. The figures for 1944 are similar: out of 1,028 there were 1,012 printed. In 1945, up to 13th December, out of 1,060 there were 1,052 printed. If hon. Members ask why the others were not printed, there are various reasons. I mentioned the Bank Holiday one. There are cases like the Army Regulations which may appear in Army Orders. There are a variety of reasons which make it completely. unnecessary to print certain statutory instruments, although they may be instruments which have a public application.
I ask the House to say that a system which has worked as this has should stay as it is. I agree that the mere fact that a practice is old does not mean that it is good. The point is that this has worked well and does not require improvement. It is in the public interest that there should be a discretion to provide that instruments which clearly need not be printed, either because they have already been printed or can easily be obtained from the Department in the rare cases in which they are required, should not need 1185 to be subjected to the quite costly and unnecessary procedure of printing. In asking the House to reject the Amendment I summarise my argument by saying that it is not as if the Bill provides definitely that an instrument which ought to be available to the public will not be. It gives a discretion similar to that already exercised very reasonably by responsible people, in cases in which instruments ought not in the public interest to be printed, to decide in the case of a particular instrument that further printing is not necessary. I ask the House to reject the Amendment.

§ Mr. Reid
The Solicitor-General has raised a new and important point in the course of this discussion. He has stated that in the case of these instruments which are not on sale by the Stationery Office, they are always available to any person who has any interest in obtaining a copy. If he could assure us that it can be put on record that any person who has an interest in obtaining a copy of any instrument which is not on sale in the Stationery Office has only to write to the appropriate Department and get it, that goes a long way to meet our point. If the Solicitor-General can give us that definite assurance I will be prepared to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

§ Mr. Glenvil Hall
Perhaps I can briefly state that, where the Department thinks it is not essential that an instrument shall be printed, the Treasury can, with the concurrence of Mr. Speaker and the Lord Chancellor, override the Department and decide that it should be printed. In cases in which they are not printed, the public can get one when they are entitled to have a copy and need it. I can give the right hon. and learned Gentleman that assurance.

§ Mr. Reid
That was not what I asked for. I said that if I could be assured—

§ Mr. Bowles (Nuneaton)
On a point of Order. The right hon. and learned Gentleman said that he was not satisfied with what the Solicitor-General said, and asked a question. Is he now entitled to make another speech?

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
The right hon. and learned Gentleman is perfectly entitled to do so. He moved the Amendment

1186

§ Mr. Reid
Does the hon. Gentleman realise that what he said does not give the assurance for which I asked? I asked for an assurance that the Departments would make these Orders available for those who had an interest in seeing them. Can he go one stage further and assure us that any member of the public who is interested in obtaining a copy of a particular Order, as an interested person, can write to the appropriate Department, and will, in fact, get the Order? If I can be given that assurance that meets the point.

§ Mr. Glenvil Hall
I can give the right hon. and learned Gentleman that assurance. What happens now, will continue under this Bill when it becomes law.

§ Mr. C. Williams
We are getting very close together on this matter. It seems that there are very few cases in which the instrument is not printed. That being the case I cannot see why, if it is only a minute percentage of cases which is affected, they should not always be printed and made available. It would not do any great harm. I am not for encouraging the Government to print too much. I think all Governments print too much already. I would point out to the Government that they are now getting into a rather difficult position. I have often heard it laid down that if a thing is suggested and its inclusion is refused, that is taken almost as a mandate of the House that that should not be done. I am rather afraid it may well be, if this Amendment is refused, that that may rather be taken as a mandate to the Departments not to print at all. I hope that before we leave this Amendment, the Government will tell us quite plainly that they will not use the fact that this Amendment has not been accepted to prevent Departments from printing as much as they have done. I should not like the Government to use the fact to prevent the public from getting information which has always been useful and valuable.

§ Mr. Reid
In view of the assurance that we have received, I do not think we should press this matter, and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

§ 6.44 p.m.

§ The Solicitor-General
I beg to move That the Bill be now read the Third time."
1187 I wish to say very little because this matter has been exhaustively considered, during the Second Reading, the Committee stage and today. The object of the Bill is to regularise something which the House felt required regularising. Obviously that required a good deal of detailed consideration. The Bill has been given that detailed consideration, and as a result has emerged in a form which I believe does meet the views of all parts of the House. It is a short Bill; it has been described as a useful Bill, and I commend it to the House on Third Reading as such.

§ 6.45 p.m.

Sir C. Mac Andrew
I agree with the hon. and learned Gentleman that this is a very good Bill now, though I think there are still one or two weaknesses in it, and I am sorry that we did not come to a better conclusion about Clause 3. That is the Clause which makes it essential to send to you, Mr. Speaker, a copy of an Order which comes into force before it is laid. The question is, What is to happen once you have received it? We did not come to any conclusion on what should be done. My hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) suggested that it should be sent to me as chairman of the Statutory Rules and Orders Committee, but I would point out that that is a Sessional Committee, and that there would be this difficulty if it were sent to the chairman. I happen to be the chairman—I do not quite know why; perhaps nobody else wanted the job—and I had that appointment ' under the last Government too, and though it would perhaps be all right when there was a chairman drawn from the Opposition, I imagine that if he was a supporter of the Government it would be pointless to send this notification to him. I think also there is some difficulty in this. No doubt Orders would come before the S.R. and 0. Committee, but the Committee might slip up, and if an Order has to be sent to the Speaker, something, though I cannot think what, ought to be done, because it is a pity that we should leave the position as it is.

§ Mr. Bowles
Obviously if a communication is sent to Mr. Speaker his counsel. Sir Cecil Carr, who is, as we know, a very valuable member of that Committee, would therefore communicate the informa- 1188 tion. By submitting it to Mr. Speaker it will get to the S.R. and O. Committee.

§ Sir C. MacAndrew
I think that is probably true, but would that be sufficient to enable the Committee to deal with it? Mr. Speaker kindly lends his counsel to that Committee, but he serves us in an advisory capacity, and I do not think it would be fair to ask Mr. Speaker's. counsel to say what. goes on when he goes behind the scenes, so to speak. I think there is difficulty on that account, but I cannot see how it can be met, and no suggestion has been made to overcome it.
Let me turn to Clause 4, the one which requires an Order to lie for 40 days. I am very glad that that has been adopted. In days gone all sorts of periods were specified. In the list of Orders this week there appears a Savings Bank Order to which the Statutory Rules and Orders Committee drew attention in a special report. That is to lie for 21 days, and it is to lie during the Session of Parliament. That Order was laid on 10th December, and that means it gets its 21 days of the Session of Parliament by the end of the year, and comes into operation on 1st January. Obviously, under our present procedure, that is very unfair, because there are only a very few days on which it 'would be possible to present a Prayer against it. Under the 40 days' procedure anything of that kind will be made impossible.
I should be glad if we could get from the Government a clear indication of how far Clause 1 goes. I am not a lawyer, but I am under the impression that Clause 1 brings in many things as Statutory Instruments which are not Statutory Rules and Orders now. If that is so, will not the registration system be swamped? Further, in the Statutory Rules and Orders Committee we do not have before us what we call "grand children," that is to say orders made under Regulations.
We see the Orders made under Acts, but we do not see the others, and we call them "grand children" in our language in the Committee. Does this Clause bring in the grand children or not? Some say "Yes" and some say "No," and I should like to know for certain. Then again, under Clause 7 certain things are left out. The net is very wide, but certain things are omitted. I should also like to know who are the persons who are mentioned in 1189 Clause 7 (1,e). These are all important matters to which we must have an answer. This is a new provision and I think we are entitled to be told. I have two small points to put forward in conclusion. The S.R. and 0. Committee had before them the other day an Air Navigation Order and since the Air Navigation Act was passed, I think in 1923, there have been altogether 34 amending Orders. Surely they ought to be consolidated; that is only reasonable. Again, there was a Treasury Order in 1929 saying that every Rule should have a short title. They do not all have a short title now, and something should be done about that. We are dealing with an important matter, and I feel that the questions which I have asked merit an answer.

§ 6.53 p.m.

§ Mr. J. S. C Reid
I think this is a very good example of the value of a Committee stage on a complicated and technical Bill. Certain hon. Members have in the past doubted whether, in the case of Bills of this character, the House of Commons or a Committee of the House was the appropriate body to deal with them, but I think this Bill is a very good proof that there is no body better adapted for dealing even with a complicated and technical Measure than a Committee of this House. Very valuable changes for the better have been made in the Bill since the Second Reading. The Bill is not entirely to our liking, we do not think it is perfect by a long way, but it is so much improved from what it was that we certainly have no intention of objecting to its passage into law. I ought to say that we have to thank to a considerable extent the learned Solicitor-General, who has given very much consideration to the matter and has succeeded in obtaining valuable Amendments. We anticipate something of a flood of delegated legislation in the coming months or years, and I hope that this Bill will enable that flood to be dealt with adequately and efficiently from the point of view of this machinery. I think probably it will, but I would say one thing particularly to the Financial Secretary to the Treasury who, I imagine, has the responsibility in these matters. He will be well aware that the indexing of Statutory Rules and Orders is not above all complaint. There is no consolidated index. I venture to ask him to complete the process which has been begun by this Bill 1190 of bringing the position up to date, so that the general public may be able more easily to find these Orders than, perhaps, a trained lawyer can do at the moment. I think the Bill has been so much improved that I would venture to suggest to my han. and right hon. Friends that we can accept it as at least a tolerably good Bill.

§ 6.55 p.m.

§ The Solicitor-General
; I hope I shall have the permission of the House to speak again on Third Reading, with a view to answering the questions put by the hon. and gallant Member for North Ayr and Bute (Sir C. MacAndrew). His anxiety was lest the effect of the Bill might be to cause a flood of Statutory Instruments to descend upon the Scrutinising Committee. I do not think his apprehensions are well grounded. The scope of the Bill is set out in Clause 1, and that Clause is limited in effect. It applies to instruments which were made by Rule-making authorities within the Rules and Publications Act, 1893. That is one class of Statutory Instruments. The other class of Statutory Instruments to which it applies are those Instruments which, in the Act which gives power to make them, are actually called Statutory Instruments. It is not every Act which gives power to make a subordinate Instrument which results in Statutory Instruments being made, but only those Acts which specifically say that the power given to bring into operation subordinate legislation is to be exercised in the form of Statutory Instruments. The Act has got to use the term, so that it is limited in application. The hon. and gallant Member asked whether "grandchildren" are included. The opening words of the Bill are: Where by this Act or any Act passed after the commencement of this Act power to make confirm, or approve orders, rules, regulations or other subordinate legislation is conferred. etc. That, I think, is the answer to the question. It is limited, as stated, in the first line. The hon. and gallant Gentleman referred also to the question of consolidating a number of Orders, and quoted a case where there are 34 Orders dealing with some matter. That obviously requires consideration, but I respectfully say that it does not come within the ambit of this Bill which is not designed to deal with that particular anomaly. The Regulations made under 1191 Clause 7 provide for specific things, but do not provide for consolidation of a number of Orders dealing with the same matter. It provides for provisions relating to printing and publication and so on, but does not deal with consolidation. The hon. and gallant Gentleman asked who are the people referred to in Clause 7 (1, e). I am not in a position to let him have a specific answer, though I would like to do so. Obviously only persons of responsibility or authority would be entrusted with that particularly responsible task by the Lord Chancellor and Mr. Speaker. Clearly a task of that sort would not be entrusted to anybody who was not qualified to discharge it. That is the only answer I can give the hon. and gallant Member at the moment. That will require consideration, as will the question of the proper channel of communication between Mr. Speaker and the Scrutinising Committee. That is a matter for consideration as was indicated earlier in the course of the Debate.

§ Question put, and agreed to.

§ Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed.