§ Mr. MolsonWould it be for the convenience of the House if the Amendments standing in my name were all taken to- 2170 gether, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, since they all deal with the same point?
§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Mr. Hubert Beaumont)If the House agrees, that would be quite satisfactory.
§ Mr. MolsonI beg to move, in page 4, line 40, leave out from "committee," to end of line 41
In the Committee stage my hon. Friends and I moved an Amendment because the Bill, as drafted, made this rather strange provision, that if a statutory Order had been referred to a Joint Committee of both Houses, and the Joint Commitee had disapproved of the Order and recommended that it be annulled, then if the Government incorporated the statutory Order in a Bill and proceeded to pass it through Parliament as a Bill, the Bill could be deemed to have passed a Committee of the House—whereas, in point of fact, it had failed to pass that Committee. There are, obviously, in this case two conditions which might arise: either in the case of this statutory Order there might only have been a petition of general objection, or there might have been a petition of general objection and also a petition of amendment. In our view it was desirable that if the Government, in the exercise of their right to incorporate the statutory Order in the form of a Bill, used their majority in the House of Commons in order to carry that statutory Order through in the form of an Act, at any rate it should be subjected to the scrutiny of a Committee of the House.
The Amendments in my name are directed to the case where the Joint Committee of both Houses has considered a petition of general objection and where there has been, in the first place only, a petition of general objection and, in the second place, where there has also been a petition of amendment. If there are no petitions for amendment, the question which Parliament has to determine is whether the Order which the Minister had laid before Parliament—and which had been disapproved by the Joint Committee and subsequently embodied in a Bill—should or should not be annulled, and that obviously is a matter to be determined upon Second Reading. If, however, in addition to that, there are outstanding before Parliament petitions for amendment, it is appropriate that even if Parliament has decided that the general prin- 2171 ciples of the statutory Order shall be approved and the statutory Order shall go forward, that the Order itself shall go to a Joint Committee which will be the same Joint Committee as was set up to consider the general principles of the Order, and which will sit upstairs in a forensic atmosphere, and hear the case for and against the Order stated by Parliamentary Counsel. Paragraph (a)in the new Subsection (5) which it is proposed to insert provides that in such a case the Bill, as soon as the Government have obtained in the first House a Second Reading decision overruling the Joint Committee on the question of annulment, shall go back to the Joint Committee for consideration of the petitions for amendment. When the Joint Committee has considered those petitions for amendment, the Bill will be reported in the House in which it has been introduced.
The intention of this Amendment is that there shall be a Report stage, and that when the matter has come back to the House after being considered by the Joint Committee upstairs, the House shall have an opportunity on Report stage of effecting any Amendments in the Bill which, after due consideration, appear to be desirable. When the Bill has passed the first House, it will pass to the second House, but in that House it will already have had a Committee stage. The effect of having a Joint Committee—and that is the chief economy in time which will be effected by this Bill—will be that instead of there being Committee stages in both Houses, there will be a Joint Committee which will be the Committee stage in the first and in the second House, and so, when it proceeds to the second House, it will there again begin at the Report stage. The new Subsection (5) which I am moving should be inserted in Clause 6, while it ensures that there is a Committee stage, if there are petitions for amendment to be considered in Committee, is entirely consistent with the main purpose of the Bill. This Amendment is not in any way a wrecking Amendment, but is intended to give general effect to the purpose of the Bill.
§ 6.30 p.m.
§ The first House probably will have its opportunity of debating the general question whether the Bill embodying the Order shall proceed at all on Second 2172 Reading, and it will have on the Report stage, an opportunity of making any consequential Amendments which may be necessitated by Amendments at the Joint Committee stage. The second House will, in its turn, have an opportunity at Report stage of making Amendments, and it will have its own opportunity of deciding that the Bill shall not pass at all if it chooses to reject the Bill at the Third Reading stage. This is a carefully drafted Amendment which is the result of certain discussions which have taken place between the Government and my hon. Friends and myself since the Committee stage. I have also handed in a manuscript Amendment adding the word "Standing" before the word, "Committee, "in order to make it quite plain that the purpose of the Amendment is that there shall be a Report stage in both Houses, after the Joint Committee has considered the Bill.
§ Mr. Charles Williams (Torquay)I beg to second the Amendment.
It seems to me that this Amendment, as drafted, will give additional chances of overcoming the difficulties, and I believe that is the real object of all parties in the House—to make legislation go smoothly and easily. I notice that the Lord Privy Seal is in a very mellow mood tonight and I have no doubt the Amendment will be accepted by the Government.
§ Mr. GreenwoodI thank the hon. Gentleman for the kind words he has used about me. When the first of these Amendments—and they all hang together—came before us in Standing Committee upstairs, I felt bound at that stage to oppose my hon. Friend the Member for The High Peak (Mr. Molson), but I did undertake to reconsider the matter between Committee stage and our present Report stage. The first Amendment, by itself, would really have emasculated the Bill, but with the other Amendments I think its purpose can be properly achieved. I think the Amendments have been very skilfully drafted and I shall be very glad to accept them and also my hon. Friend's manuscript Amendment
§ Amendment agreed to.
§ Further Amendments made:
§ In page 4, line 40, leave out from "Committee" to end of line 41.
2173§ In line 46, after "a" insert "Standing."
§ In page 4, line 47, leave out from "and" to "as," on page 5, line 1.
§ In page 5, line 4, at end, insert:
- "(5) A Bill presented for the purposes of Subsection (3) of this Section shall set out the Order as referred to the joint committee, and any such Bill shall be treated for all purposes as a public Bill, except that—
- (a) where a petition for amendment of the Order certified as proper to be received was not dealt with by the joint committee, the Bill shall, after being read a Second time in the House in which it is presented, be referred to that committee for the purposes of the consideration of that petition, and thereafter shall be ordered to be considered in that House as if it had been reported from a standing committee thereof; and when the Bill has been read a Third time and passed in that House, it shall be deemed to have passed through all its stages up to and including committee in the second House;
- (b) where no such petition has been so certified, the Bill shall, after its presentation, be treated as having passed all its stages up to and including committee in the House in which it is presented, and shall be ordered to be considered in that House as if it had been reported from a standing committee thereof; and when the Bill has been read a Third time and passed in that House the like proceedings shall be taken in the second House."—[Mr. Molson.]