EXPIRING LAWS CONTINUANCE BILL. (Hansard, 17 December 1924)

§ THE EARL OF CLARENDON
My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be read a second time.

THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF DONOUOHMORE)
My Lords, there is one point in this Bill to which I think I ought to draw your Lordships' attention. It has recently been brought to my notice, and I am sorry, having worried my noble friend Lord Peel several times already in the last few days, that I must worry him again. The matter concerns the Minister of Transport, although it comes under the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill. Part II of the Schedule of this Bill continues the Harbours, Docks and Piers (Temporary Increase of Charges) Act, 1920, for another year. I want to ask why this is done. I have not had the opportunity of going very carefully in detail into the subject, but I think that all these temporary Bills, of which the war naturally brought forth a very large crop, have been dropped, except this one and the Canals (Continuance of Charging Powers) Bill, which is the next Bill on the Order Paper. Why is it necessary that the Minister of Transport should ask Parliament to continue this power?
Your Lordships are, of course, aware that this is a matter that has been gone into in great detail. A Select Committee of the House of Commons sat in the year 1922, and issued a Report, from which I will read two quotations which bear directly on this very question. The Report is responsible for the form in which the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill now appears, and I can sum up what the Committee say by referring your Lordships to Paragraph 10 of the Report, in which they say:— If the recommendations of your Committee are followed, the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill in future years will be 155 confined to measures properly subject to annual renewal. Paragraph 11 seems to me to be very apposite to the proposal in Part II of the Schedule, This is what the Committee say:— The above considerations do not apply to the greater number of the temporary laws passed during and since the war, many of them being limited in duration by reference to the date of the termination of the war. Such Acts owe their origin to circumstances which are, by their very nature, exceptional, and, speaking generally, your Committee has taken the view that temporary Acts passed during and since the war should, if continued at all, be continued for a strictly limited period. They wish, however, to record their view that it is most undesirable that these Act6, which are essentially of a temporary and emergency nature, should be allowed to drift into the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill, and so become, without any definite intention of Parliament, part of the permanent system of law. What I suggest for your Lordships' consideration is this. If it is really desirable that these increases of charges that have taken place in all our harbours should be permanent, surely it is better for Parliament to continue them and settle them on a permanent basis. I have not the smallest intention, of course, of being a nuisance to my noble friend in this matter, and I have no intention of moving any Amendment, or of opposing the Bill when we reach Committee, but I would suggest that the point might be looked into, with a view, perhaps, to dealing with the matter when this Bill reaches us again a year hence.

§ VISCOUNT HALDANE
My Lords, I think the Chairman of Committees is entirely right in the point of view he has put. These Acts, which owed their origin purely to war circumstances, are not Acts which should find their way into the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill, and be continued from year to year. But I can see the reason why this particular Act, relating to dock charges, is in. It is not always easy to dispose of a matter of this kind when a policy, perhaps a new policy, is followed in regard to these charges. It may be that the noble Viscount will tell us that this Act is in the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill merely because time has not been found to put the matter on a proper and permanent basis for the future. If that be the truth about it, then, agreeing as I do with the Chairman of Committees, I think the Government should tell us that they mean this year 156 to look into this particular Statute, to see upon what permanent basis the matter should be put, and that the Act is only in the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill in order to give them time for that purpose.

§ THE FIRST COMMISSIONER OF WORKS (VISCOUNT PEEL)
My Lords, my noble friend the Chairman of Committees did not tell me that he was going to raise this particular point on the Second Reading, or I should have been very glad to have given him a more comprehensive answer than I can give at the present moment. But perhaps I may be allowed to suggest, as he has told us that he objects to this and similar measures becoming part of the permanent law of the land—

THE EARL OF DONOUGHMORE
Oh, no!

§ VISCOUUNT PEEL
That is what you said.

THE EARL OF DONOUGHMORE
I am sorry I did not make myself clear. I want them to become part of the permanent law of the land, but I think the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill is not a Bill in which they should be permanently included.

§ VISCOUUNT PEEL
I thought the noble Earl objected to the increased charges. I am glad he is anxious that they should become part of the permanent law of the land. As to the point raised by the noble and learned Viscount opposite, it is true that it is owing to pressure of work that these provisions are included in the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill. There has not been time for this Government, or for its predecessor, to deal with these matters in a way which would put them on a more permanent basis. Indeed, I am sorry to say that after your Lordships have disposed of the Second Reading of this Bill I am going to move the Second Reading of another Bill which commits the same iniquity, if it is an iniquity, in regard to certain canal charges. May I say at once, as it will shorten my second speech, that the only reason why the Canal Bill is necessary is that owing to a technical error or a technical difficulty those charges cannot be included in this particular Expiring Laws Continuance Bill. I am afraid that their inclusion would have excited the 157 animadversion of my noble friend the Chairman of Committees. That is the whole explanation of the circumstances.