CLAUSE 123.—(Power to remove difficulties.) (Hansard, 22 March 1929)

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN
I beg to move, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment.
Under the last section certain Orders are provided for, and it is laid down that they must be laid before Parliament and that an Address may be presented within a certain number of days asking for them to be annulled. Under this Clause 123 we have gone further and we have put in 2029 a provision that there must be a positive, affirmative Resolution supporting the action of the Minister under this Clause, if it is to become operative. We had a discussion upon this matter in this House and Amendments were made here which, I think were fairly satisfactory to everybody and entirely satisfactory to most of the Members of the House. Still, there were certain Noble Lords in another place who felt that further restrictions upon the possibility of bureaucratic action by some future Minister—I think all were careful to explain that it was a future Minister they had in mind and not the present Minister—might be desirable. This provision was offered to them and received by them with, I might almost say, enthusiasm, so far as enthusiasm is ever shown in another place, and I hope it will be received with equal enthusiasm by hon. Members of this House.

Mr. BENN
Before I make a few general remarks on this subject I wish to ask how we stand about an Order which should vary one of these Orders. Clause 122 gives the Minister power to make an Order varying an existing Order. As far as I can understand it, that Order varying an existing Order can only be checked by an Address. An Order removing the difficulties, which may be the original Order which has been varied, requires a positive Motion of approval. Is that the position?

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN
Yes.

Mr. BENN
That is to say, if the Minister makes an Order amending the Act, at any rate what he is pleased to call remove difficulties, under Clause 123 he must get a positive confirmation from both Houses, but if he subsequently makes another Order fortifying his original Order for removing the difficulties he does not have to get any approval.

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN
If the hon. Member will look at Clause 122, he will see that it says there: Except as otherwise expressly provided by this Act, any order or scheme made under this Act may be altered or revoked by an order or scheme made in like manner and subject to the like provisions as the original order or scheme.

Mr. BENN
I had overlooked that. I am quite satisfied. I have made a 2030 mistake. Now I want to say that this is another case where the Minister by his Guillotine and by refusing to meet reasonable criticism in this House has really degraded the House of Commons as a debating assembly. [Laughter.] This is really more than a joke. We have got past the time of Runnymede and Magna Carta, and we look to this House to protect the liberties of the subject.

§ Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER (Sir Dennis Herbert)
I must call the hon. Member's attention to the fact that the Guillotine is an Order of the House and not an Order of the Minister.

Mr. BENN
I am well aware that I am not permitted to criticise any Order of the House. I merely say that owing to the course of the Debate and in consequence of Motions made by the right hon. Gentleman carlier on it is a fact—without casting any reflections upon this House—that this Debate was greatly curtailed. The discussion on this particular question was not actually terminated by the operation of the Guillotine, but the whole Debate was curtailed because we were expecting the Guillotine at half-past seven. This precise suggestion was made to the Minister in this House, and the Attorney-General, I think it was, although he did not speak very strongly against it, rejected it. Why is it that a suggestion should be rejected by the Minister when it is made in this House and accepted by the Government in another place?

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN
It was not in this form.

Mr. BENN
Oh, no. The right hon. Gentleman is quite mistaken. A Member of his own side said what many of us would have said if we had had an opportunity, that there ought to be a positive Resolution of approval. That was the hon. and learned Member for Altrincham (Mr. Atkinson). That suggestion was rejected by the Government.

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN
In that form.

Mr. BENN
I do not understand why the right hon. Gentleman says "in that form." What was asked for was a positive Resolution of approval.

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN
The explanation is very simple. In the form in which it was originally presented the Order was not to be operative till this affirmative 2031 Resolution had been passed. As was pointed out by my hon. and learned Friend as well as by myself, that was an absolutely impossible suggestion, because the whole point of Clause 123 is to enable the Minister to deal with a situation which is urgent, and if it should happen that the Houses of Parliament were not sitting it would not be possible to wait until an affirmative Resolution could be passed. That was the reason why the suggestion was rejected in this House. This Amendment gets over that difficulty.

Mr. BENN
I read the very able exposition in the other House, and I was shocked that this House should have been estopped from making its case on a point on which we all felt deeply. The reason we could not make our case was that the attempt to draft Amendments and have them discussed on the Committee stage was a fatuity. The best we could do was to make the point.

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN
I suppose the hon. Gentleman is speaking for himself and his friends.

Mr. BENN
That is a very quick retort, but not very effective. The narrow limits within which we were working made it quite impossible for us to do more than make our case and ask the Government to take it up, and that is exactly what was done, not only from our side of the House but from many other quarters. There is reciprocal subservience between the Government and the Upper Chamber. They are subservient to the Upper Chamber, and the Upper Chamber, when required, is subservient to them. That is what has occurred in this case, and I say it is a matter for deep regret that it has not been left to the elected representatives of the people to erect this, which is something of a barrier, against the undue exercise of bureaucratic powers.

Sir A. HOPKINSON
"All's well that ends well." This matter has certainly ended very well indeed. I was one of those who, with the hon. and learned Member for Altrincham (Mr. Atkinson), brought forward an Amendment which did not do exactly one of the things which needed to be done. There were two things to be done—enable the Minister to act, and to act at once. 2032 Unless he acted at once it was no good at all. That was the practical question; but some of us also felt that the constitutional question was of very great importance, and we did not want another precedent set for the over-riding of Acts of Parliament by Departments. The other place has secured a very happy solution. The Minister can act and can act at once, and the beauty of it is that his act, though it comes into operation at once, as was absolutely necessary, is to be limited in time until this House has had the opportunity of confirming it. The question is not a pedantic one. We are all very glad that a practical solution has been found, and that the constitutional question has been very carefully guarded. I will not go into the details of this Clause, which has been very carefully drawn, but I will congratulate everybody concerned in regard to it. We have saved the Constitution on the one hand, and on the other hand the Minister will be able to bring the Act into operation without any undue delay. I have very great pleasure in supporting the agreement which has been arrived at upon this question.

§ Mr. E. BROWN
I would like to remind the House that on the Second Reading of this Bill I called attention to this particular matter, in fact, I drew attention to the whole structure of the Clause. In the first draft of the Bill which I received I put in tie margin opposite this Clause "Henry VIII." I suspected this provision from the first, and, in fact, I thought that the only word that was missing from it was the word "proclaim." It seemed to me to be a great pity that in view of the large number of words put into the Clause conferring powers the word "proclaim" was not put in. I do not agree that congratulations are due to the Minister of Health in regard to this matter, because it is only after the most intense debate that we have been able to secure a modification of the original Clause.

§ Mr. PETHICK-LAWRENCE
I think congratulations are due to the Members of this House for the final result which has been achieved in this Clause, and I do not think those congratulations ought to be extended either to the Minister of Health or the Parliamentary Secretary. The attempt we made to obtain a reason- 2033 able constitutional procedure in this matter was like drawing the teeth of an unwilling patient. Concessions were extracted under very great difficulty and it needed a Committee stage in this House and a considerable amount of discussion to persuade the Minister to consider any Amendment. On the Report stage hon. Members again expressed their dissatisfaction on this point, and even then the Minister of Health refused to give way to the widespread opinion which was expressed in all parts of this Chamber. It was not until the Bill went to another place where the friends of the Government are present in overwhelming numbers that the Minister of Health decided that discretion was the better part of valour. We have a far more reasonable proposition in this Clause than that which was inserted in the Bill, and although we do not disagree with the Lords Amendment we protest against the Minister refusing to meet the wishes of the representatives of the people in former discussions on this question.