§ Mr. SPEAKERI do not select the first Amendment standing in the name of the hon. Member for Hillsborough (Mr. A. V. Alexander), to leave out Clause 1, as it would have the effect of destroying the Bill.
§ Mr. A. V. ALEXANDERI beg to move, in page 1, line 9, to leave out the word "immediately."
I am sorry that it has not been possible to discuss Clause 1 as a whole, because I wanted to raise an important issue on it. The Clause provides that:
reconstituted cream shall not be sold or offered or exposed for sale for human consumption under any description or designation including the word 'cream' unless that word is immediately preceded by the word 'reconstituted'.I want to suggest to the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill that that may raise very serious difficulties for people 2385 in the trade who are using this commodity. The Parliamentary Secretary's attention is particularly directed to the fact that a person must not expose this commodity for human consumption under any description or designation. I do not know whether hon. Members are familiar with the circumstances in which reconstituted cream has become of much more general use in the last 12 months than was formerly the case. The Minister of Health 12 months ago, or more, presented to the House Regulations which prohibited entirely the use of any preservative in farm-produced cream. There was medical evidence that such a Regulation was desirable, and there was medical evidence on the other side that such a Regulation was quite unnecessary in the interests of health. Whatever the merits of that may have been, the fact has emerged that in many districts about half of the ordinary trade in farm-produced cream has gone, and that a very large section of the confectionery trade, owing to the impossibility of keeping cream fresh for the period required, has had to have recourse to some other article. Every week they are using increasing quantities of this reconstituted cream, made from perfectly good farm products—butter and dried milk, with some liquid milk added to it.According to my reading of the Bill, people who engage in the confectionery trade and make things like cream buns and cream puffs, and those who are engaged in the development of the ice-cream trade, will be required, if they use reconstituted cream, to label their products either as "ice reconstituted cream" or "reconstituted cream puff" or "reconstituted cream bun." The ice-cream trade is a very important one now to the farming community. Anybody who has read the reports of the recent dairy conference in this country will realise the very great importance which is attached by the dairying business to the ice-cream trade.
It is suggested in some quarters that my view is not a correct interpretation of the Bill, but I ask the Parliamentary Secretary to bear in mind that only a few days ago the Government had to take considerable portions of Parliamentary time on two separate occasions in order to put right a very serious error with 2386 regard to industrial assurance which occurred in legislation in 1923 as the result of the advice of the Conservative Government of that day. In that year I withdrew an Amendment to a Bill on the advice of the Government of the day, and the consequence was that people engaged in that particular business found themselves in grave danger of serious financial difficulty, because their application of ordinary common sense to plain English was not regarded as a correct interpretation of the Bill by the law officers. Traders generally are very nervous about the wording of this Clause, and I am moving this Amendment to delete the word "immediately" in order to make it quite plain that people will not have to apply the word "reconstituted" to articles in which the reconstituted commodity is used for manufacturing purposes.
§ The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of HEALTH (Sir Kingsley Wood)The hon. Gentleman who has moved this Amendment, which, I agree, is an important one, has raised certain matters which affect the principles of the Bill. It may be for the convenience of the House if I say a word or two on one of the points he has raised, for by that means we may, perhaps, be able to expedite the Bill, and it may not be necessary for him to move his other Amendments. The object of this Bill is to secure that reconstituted cream shall not be sold as cream, and the Bill provides that if the word "cream" is used in describing it that word "cream" shall be immediately preceded by the word "reconstituted." It is also provide that vessels containing this article shall be similarly labelled. But it is not intended, and I give this assurance to the hon. Gentleman after taking the best legal advice I am able to obtain, that the Bill shall apply to such products as fancy cakes or ice cream which may be made of reconstituted cream. What this Bill is intended to do—and I think this will meet the general acceptance of the House is to stop the sale of this product under the name of "cream." To sell it as cream without further describing it is in the nature of a fraud en the purchaser. We also believe, and that is one of the reasons why the Government 2387 have adopted the Bill, that the sale of reconstituted cream as cream is prejudicial to the interests of British agriculture generally. That is, briefly, the intention and the object of the Bill, and I hope the hon. Gentleman will accept my assurance on these points.
As regards his immediate Amendment, I do not think he should press it, because if the word "reconstituted" does not appear immediately before the word "cream" there may be a means of avoiding what we all desire to secure. If it were permissible to separate the two words and have something inserted between the word "reconstituted" and the word "cream," there would be very considerable danger. I do not think hon. Members will say this Bill is going too far in saying that if anyone sells this commodity he must label it as reconstituted cream, and that the two words must follow one another, with no possibility for anyone to interpose some word between the two when advertising the commodity. Taking the Measure as a whole, I think the hon. Member will see that it would be inadvisable for us to permit any vendor to insert any words between these two words.
§ Amendment negatived.