CLAUSE 1.—(Tower to require returns.) (Hansard, 29 June 1925)

§ Sir D. NEWTON
I beg to move, as an Amendment to the Lords 2174 Amendment, to leave out the words "ten pounds" and to insert instead thereof the words" five pounds." I do so because I think that in view of the facts which are now before the Members of the House, the penalty proposed in this new paragraph is an excessive penalty. I would like to give my reasons for stating that.

§ Mr. SPEAKER
The hon. Member Is not entitled to move an Amendment after the Question, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment," has been proposed. He can speak against that Motion.

§ Sir D. NEWTON
It is really a peg on which I wanted to hang my observations rather than to move a concrete Amendment. Since this Bill was introduced on 9th April and since it received its First Reading the (agricultural industry has been called upon, as it will be under this Bill, to fill in most elaborate returns. This Bill proposes that the Minister shall be empowered to require agriculturists to complete very detailed forms of return resembling somewhat the form of return which agriculturists have recently been called upon make. I think every hon. Member will admit the value of having accurate statistics from the point of view of being able to frame, at some future date, a far-reaching agricultural policy; but the thirst for information which officials and officialdom have recently shown has gone beyond all reasonable bounds. Agriculturists have been called upon to compile information which seems to me to be of very little practical utility from the point of view of promoting an agricultural policy, or from the point of view 2175 of the good of the industry. In the form of return recently issued which we were called upon to fill up, and similar forms of return which might be required in future—

§ Mr. SPEAKER
The hon. Member, I think, has not quite understood what I said. This Lords Amendment is a mere redrafting of the penalty Clause as it left this House, and any discussion must be confined merely to the question whether the drafting of the Lords is better than, or worse than, the other drafting.

§ Sir D. NEWTON
I venture to suggest that our drafting is the best. The point I want to make, and that I think I am entitled to make, with great respect, is to give an illustration of the way in which this Bill would work. That is what I was endeavouring to point out: the effect of the Lords Amendment. But if you rule that I am scarcely in order in proceeding further with the matter, i must bow to your ruling and withdraw my Amendment.

Mr. MacDONALD
I am not quite sure that the Lords have seen the effect of the Sub-section (4) of the Bill: Any person who uses, publishes, or discloses contrary to the provisions of this Act any individual return or part of a return shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding fifty pounds. I presume the object when the House had in mind when it put in this provision as to a fine of £50 was to punish a person who had committed the offence wilfully. It will be agreed that it would be an extravagant penalty for a pure mistake. But the Amendment which we are now considering claps on to that imprisonment. There must have been 2176 some mistake in the other place when it was proposed to insert this Amendment. Everybody will agree that it is an excessive punishment. I hope we are not, in every case where we impose a fine by new legislation going to supplement the fine by imprisonment. It is a most subversive doctrine. This offence might be a very innocent thing or, if it is not innocent, a £20 fine by summary jurisdiction is quite adequate.

§ The MINISTER of AGRICULTURE (Mr. Edward Wood)
I would remind the right hon. Gentleman that in this matter we are dealing with very confidential returns that are made under the seal of confidence for official purposes and are made on that explicit understanding. When the House sent this Bill to another place it stood in the form which appears in the copy which the right hon. Gentleman has in his hand and in which no distinction was drawn between publishing unwittingly and publishing wilfully. When the Bill was under examination in another place, attention was drawn to the importance of safeguarding the information that is furnished and the effect that it would have on the general character of the returns if there was any reason on the part of the occupiers to fear that the information at their disposal would be published. It was for that reason that the point came under revision in another place as to the desirability of imposing a further penalty in cases where it might be established that the information was wilfully disclosed. It was for that reason that their Lordships introduced this Amendment. The right hon. Gentleman is in unwitting error in supposing that the Amendment introduces a new principle into our legislation, because it is taken verbatim from Section 15 of the Corn Production Act of 1917. The House will remember that that Act deals with offences of an almost similar, if not exactly similar, character, and it is the fact of that similarity which is the ground for asking the House to agree with the Lords in the Amendment.