HC Deb 23 February 1938 vol 332 cc459-60

8.39 p.m.

Captain Wallace

I beg to move, in page 13, line 4, to leave out "hour," and to insert "respective hours."

This and the next Amendment go together and are for the purpose of implementing another of the promises which we gave in Committee during our discussions there—I think it was a promise to my hon. Friend the Member for South Croydon (Mr. H. G. Williams)—that the existing requirement in the Bill that the hour at which the exhibition of each film should begin and finish should be entered in the exhibitors' record book, should be eased. We subsequently made an Amendment in Committee, in Sub-section (3) of Clause 35 (which relates to the annual returns of an exhibitor), requiring the returns to include a note of the respective times at which exhibition of films each day began and ended. Hon. Gentlemen in all parts of the House who studied the matter will agree that the material point was to ascertain for the good administration of the Act what are, in fact, the normal hours of exhibition. The present Amendment is on the same lines as the one already made and will simply require an exhibitor to specify in his return the time at which the exhibition began and finished each day.

Amendment agreed to.

Further Amendment made: In page 13, line 5, leave out from "which," to the end of line 6, and insert: the exhibition of cinematograph films to the public at that theatre began and ended."—[Captain Wallace.]