HC Deb 31 March 1936 vol 310 cc1895-902

7.2 p.m.

Mr. H. G. WILLIAMS

I beg to move, in page 15, line 6, to leave out "fifty," and to insert "five."

The penalty of £50 provided in the Bill is for a summary conviction in respect of an offence if a person fails to send to the Spindles Board a return or causes or permits to be sent a return that he knows to be false. I do not wish to defend anybody who fails to make a return or to send a return which he knows to be false. Nevertheless, £50 seems to be a very heavy penalty. It is an unusually high penalty for failure to make a return, and for that reason a more moderate penalty ought to be inserted. I am not wedded to a penalty of £5, but I think that £50 is excessive. I ask the President of the Board of Trade to consider some modification of this excessive fine, which might be imposed for some quite minor offence. It is true that it is a maximum penalty, but when £50 is inserted in a Bill it is a hint to the magistrates as to how far they can go. I agree that for a minor offence they will not impose the full penalty, but it is a hint that Parliament expects them to impose a heavy penalty for a more serious offence.

Major PROCTER

I beg to second the Amendment.

7.3 p.m.

Sir S. CRIPPS

In Sub-section (3, b) there occur the words or could reasonably be expected to know. I can understand that you can prove whether a person knew a return to be false, but what is the criterion of reasonable expectation of knowledge of either the owner or the agent of a cotton mill? Is it the same as for the man-in-the-street, or is it some higher standard which he is supposed to reach? If some higher standard is being imposed, that has a considerable bearing on the quantum of the fine which is to be imposed on him for failing to reach that higher standard. It would be interesting to hear what exactly a cotton mill owner is reasonably expected to know.

7.5 p.m.

The ATTORNEY-GENERAL

Let me at the outset dissociate myself from the views which the hon. Member for South Croydon (Mr. H. G. Williams) expressed that a maximum penalty is meant to be an indication to the court as to what penalty should be inflicted in minor cases.

Mr. WILLIAMS

I did not say that.

The ATTORNEY-GENERAL

I will withdraw that if the hon. Gentleman did not say it. It is within the recollection of the House. The hon. Gentleman said that if Parliament puts £50 into the Clause, that is an indication that that is the sort of penalty which is meant to be imposed.

Mr. WILLIAMS

If Parliament puts £50 into a Clause and a man commits a rather minor offence, the magistrates are inclined to say £5, but if Parliament puts £5 in and a man commits an offence of the same nature, the magistrates are inclined to fine him 10s.

The ATTORNEY-GENERAL

I think that on that explanation the only question which the House has to consider is whether £50 is an excessive penalty for the most serious offense which one might expect to be committed under this Clause. The House will see that this deals with the offence of sending in a return which a man knows to be false, a return dealing with what may be a most important matter, the period during which machinery has been working in his mills; and I do suggest to my hon. Friend, who, I hope, will forgive me for having misunderstood his remarks, that the court might well be confronted with a serious case of wilful falsehood in the return submitted, and that a penalty of £5 would be wholly inadequate. It is true that the Clause covers offences of a technical character where proceedings might not be taken, or where, if taken, a smaller penalty would meet the case. One has to trust the courts to scale down the penalty according to the gravity of the offence.

The hon. and learned Member for East Bristol (Sir S. Cripps) asked what a millowner could reasonably be expected to know. There is nothing in the Bill that I can see to suggest that any different criterion should be applied to a millowner than, say, that which should be applied to my hon. and learned Friend himself. What anybody in any circumstances could reasonably be expected to know depends of course on the means of knowledge at his disposal. If one found a millowner had sent in a return which conflicted with the data and information available in his books, the court would be entitled to convict him of an offence on the ground that those were facts which he could reasonably be expected to know. There is no intention in this Bill to put millowners on either a higher or a lower level of knowledge.

Mr. H. G. WILLIAMS

In view of the explanation given, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

7.10 p.m.

Mr. RUNCIMAN

I beg to move, in page 15, line 16, at the end, to insert: and the Spindles Board may, after consulting the Advisory Committee, publish any of the said statistics in such manner as the board think proper. When the Bill was in Committee an Amendment was moved which would have required publication of all the information of production and working time furnished by the Spindles Board to the Advisory Committee. It was explained that there might be dangers in doing this, that it might be providing information of a valuable character to our competitors. The Amendment provides that the Spindles Board, after consulting with the Advisory Committee, may cause such of these general statistics to be published as they think desirable.

Amendment agreed to.

7.11 p.m.

The ATTORNEY-GENERAL

I beg to move, in page 15, line 21, at the end, to insert: (6) Proceedings in respect of any offence under this section shall not be taken in England otherwise than by, or under the authority of, the Spindles Board. If hon. Members will look at Clause.18 they will see that Sub-section (2) provides that proceedings in respect of any offence under this Act shall not be taken in England otherwise than by the Spindles Board. It was pointed out during the discussion in Committee that under one Section an offence might be committed by the board themselves, and therefore that it would be wrong that the sole control for proceedings under the Bill should be in their hands. We promised to look into that, and the Amendment which I am now moving is the first of a series of three Amendments dealing with that matter. We propose to put in these words in this Clause because an offence under this Clause is an offence which could not possibly be committed by the board themselves, and it is right in our view that the board should have control over these proceedings. The second Amendment inserts a similar provision in Clause 15. The third Amendment proposes to leave out Sub-section (2) in Clause 18. That leaves prosecutions possible against the Spindles Board for offences under Clause 16, which is the only Clause under which offences could be committed by the board.

Mr. SILVERMAN

On a point of Order. Are we to take it that all the Amendments which have been explained by the Attorney-General are to be discussed together?

Mr. SPEAKER

Yes.

7.15 p.m.

Sir S. CRIPPS

I desire to draw the attention of the House to the procedure which is being adopted here. It seems to me to be extremely dangerous to put into the hands of a prosecuting board the power to decide whether a prosecution shall proceed. We have always hitherto, or, anyway, until we recently started our journey into the corporate State, left in the hands of some independent person, such as the Attorney-General or the Director of Public Prosecutions, the decision whether or not a criminal prosecution should be permitted in a particular case. That has been done for the very good reason that there is always the danger that a prosecuting body may for some irregular, or even for some corrupt motive in some servant of the body, refuse to prosecute in one case while prosecuting in another. I am not suggesting that the Spindles Board is likely to be corrupt, but we have always guarded against that danger. In this Amendment we find the Spindles Board put in the position of both prosecutor and judge to decide whether the prosecution shall take place or not. I am certain that the Attorney-General cannot justify such a procedure. He has brought forward no argument for this entirely new method of regulating our criminal justice—because this deals with a criminal offence—

The ATTORNEY-GENERAL

On a point of Order. I am not minimising the importance of the point which the hon. and learned Gentleman is now raising, but it is a very wide point, and I submit that it is not relevant to this Amendment or to this series of Amendments. It was not raised, I think, upstairs, and I suggest that it is not raised by this Amendment. The Bill as unamended gives complete control to the Spindles Board over all proceedings. The only effect of the Amendments would be to limit the control to offences under certain Sections, and the point that I want to submit to you, Mr. Speaker, is whether Amendments limiting the control given by the Bill raise the general question whether such control is desirable or not.

Sir S. CRIPPS

May I draw your attention, Mr. Speaker, to the fact that the Government themselves have an Amendment to exclude from Clause 18 the general power to which I understand the Attorney-General refers, and that, if that general power be excluded, it will only be by virtue of the insertion of these Amendments that the power will arise at all under the Bill. Therefore, I submit that I am in order in raising the question.

Mr. SPEAKER

Without going into the question of law, I think that what the hon. and learned Gentleman said in dealing with this question was in order.

Sir S. CRIPPS

The Attorney-General will observe—I say this for his sake, because I notice that he has not observed it—that the subsequent Amendment to Subsection (2) of Clause 18, unless it be withdrawn, will remove from the Bill the right of the Spindles Board to control the bringing or not bringing of prosecutions. The Attorney-General is proposing to reinsert the power in two Sections, so as to apply the power to those two Sections but not to the other Section. I am opposing the insertion of that power. I shall gladly support its elimination from Clause 18, but I oppose its insertion back into the other two Clauses. The Attorney-General says that this point was not raised upstairs, but it may, perhaps, be none the worse for that. It is a very serious point indeed. Surely, when we are setting up these corporations such as the Spindles Board, we must be extremely careful that we set them up in circumstances which guard most rigidly the rights of the individuals who will come under their powers. It has always been the practice in this country to guard the rights of individuals in relation to criminal prosecutions, if they are going to be limited in any way, not by putting into the hands of the prosecutor the right to say whether a prosecution shall or shall not proceed in a particular case—not merely his own prosecution, but generally whether there shall be a prosecution—but by putting that right into the hands of some impartial authority like the Attorney-General himself. I am quite in favour of having some control provided for in the Bill, so that any odd discontented person cannot bring a prosecution in such cases, but surely it is better to do that by the well recognised method of having an impartial authority to make the decision. I hope that the Attorney-General will reconsider this matter and will deal with it in another way than that which he now proposes.

7.22 p.m.

Mr. PETHERICK

This matter was discussed in Committee, and, as a result of various representations that were made to the President of the Board of Trade and the Parliamentary Secretary, certain Amendments were placed on the Order Paper. I do not think the hon. and learned Gentleman opposite can be very familiar with the terms of the Bill, because, under the new Amendments, prosecutions can only be at the instance of the Spindles Board, when the offences in question are offences against the Spindles Board only. The offences under Clauses 14 and 15 are those of not making returns and statistics to the Spindles Board—

Sir S. CRIPPS

That is not an offence against the Spindles Board; it is an offence against the Act of Parliament, that is to say, an offence against the public.

Mr. PETHERICK

I agree, but the Spindles Board is being set up by Act of Parliament, and the aggrieved party in the first instance is the Spindles Board. Therefore it seems reasonable, as no party is immediately aggrieved except the Spindles Board, to give the instance of prosecution to the Spindles Board in these two Clauses. It might be out of order to discuss Clause 16 now, but perhaps I may be allowed to refer to it. That Clause deals with wider infringements of the Act, and it is certainly right that there the power should be taken out of the hands of the Spindles Board, and that prosecutions under the Act should be conducted in the ordinary way. I hope the Attorney-General will adhere to these Amendments, and will not accept the suggestion of the hon. and learned Gentleman opposite.

7.25 p.m.

Mr. BUCHANAN

I would ask the Attorney-General to reconsider this matter. Scotland is dealt with differently. This Clause only applies to England. I understand from the Bill that prosecutions in Scotland will take place under the Procurateur Fiscal, for whom the Lord Advocate is responsible in this House. In Scotland, therefore, every prosecution will be a public prosecution, and for the initial procedure the Lord Advocate will be responsible in this House. I would ask the House to note the difference. A man in England can be prosecuted, possibly for a petty offence, and, while he is awaiting the charge, his business must be affected. If that were done by the Public Prosecutor in Scotland, and were done wrongly, we could impeach him here. That must inevitably make the Lord Advocate act with a great deal of caution in such matters. In England, however, there is no public control over what might well be a serious matter to a, business man. The one safeguard in these matters is that there should be some public control, and the mere knowledge that that exists, even though it may never be used, is sufficient to make people use discretion and step warily in any prosecutions that they may bring. There is a fair amount of substance in this matter, and I trust the Government will try to make some public body responsible for these prosecutions, and to make the law of Scotland and England more or less alike. In Scotland I want this power to be retained in the hands of the Public Prosecutor.

7.29 p.m.

The ATTORNEY-GENERAL

I can only speak again by the leave of the House. My right hon. Friend has been impressed by the arguments which have been put before the House. As has been pointed out by the hon. Member for Gorbals (Mr. Buchanan), the position in Scotland under the Bill is different from what it is in England. The House will appreciate that these Amendments were put down to meet a different point, namely, the one which was raised in Committee. As my hon. Friend the Member for Penryn and Falmouth (Mr. Petherick) has pointed out, the offences in respect of which the Amendments would give the Spindles Board this power are such offences as failing to make returns to the board and so on. However, my right hon. Friend authorises me to say that he will reconsider this matter, with a view, possibly, to inserting the Board of Trade. The House will not expect me to give a final decision on behalf of my right hon. Friend at this time, but we propose not to proceed with the first two Amendments, but to move the third, which omits the Spindles Board, and to consider providing for another control, say by the Board of Trade, in respect of offences under Clauses 14 and 15. Accordingly, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.