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Lords Amendment: In page 43, line 33, after "inadequate," insert:
and such report shall set forth the proposals of the Commission in regard to that area and the advantages which are expected to follow therefrom.
§ 6.21 p.m.
§ Captain CrookshankI beg to move, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment."
We now pass from the question of royalties to the other functions of the Commission. The House will recollect that the Commission have certain duties cast upon them in regard to the reduction of undertakings, and as the Bill left this House the Commission, if they considered that adequate progress had not been made in that direction, could make a report to the Board of Trade and recommend that their powers to submit amalgamation schemes should become exercisable in the area which they specified in their report as one in which the reduction was inadequate. These words clearly give some idea of what the report should contain. It says that in the report they should set forth their proposals with regard to the area, and the advantages which they expected to follow from amalgamation. As a matter of fact, it is hard to imagine that a statutory Commission of this kind in submitting a report to the Board of Trade as a result of which action is to be taken, would not give in outline what they intended and what they hoped would follow from the action. At some stage it will have to be done, because Parliament itself will want to be satisfied. This makes it clear that in our opinion it is better it should be done at the earliest possible moment.
§ 6.23 p.m.
§ Sir S. CrippsThis seems to go on the principle that "The child wants the toy; why not let him have it." There seems to be no purpose in this Amendment, and if it had been proposed from this side of the House I can tell the Secretary for Mines exactly what he would have been advised to say. He would have said that to pick out two special matters like this and particularise them is quite wrong and very dangerous, because it might be said that they are the only two matters which need be put in the report, and he would beg the House not to pass so foolish an Amendment, because if you limit what shall be put in the report it will become the maximum rather than the minimum. On those grounds he would advise the House very strongly to reject the Amendment. Now as it comes from his master's voice, he says that we had better accept it.
§ 6.24 p.m.
§ Captain CrookshankI think the hon. and learned Member misses the point which is really relevant, and that is that under the Bill Parliament has to be satisfied. Therefore, his argument does not really touch the point.
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Lords Amendment: In page 43, line 42, at the end, insert:
in manner proposed by such report with such modifications (if any) as the said Board may think fit and within such period as may be prescribed by such Provisional Order.
§ Captain CrookshankI beg to move, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment."
This is to say that after receiving the recommendations of the Commission the Board of Trade may bring a report before Parliament with recommendations, and it is to make it clear that the Board of Trade may in submitting a Provisional Order to Parliament modify the proposals recommended by the Commission. It also requires that the Order itself shall prescribe the period within which the compulsory powers shall be exercised. That is a reasonable provision, because I do not think Parliament will want to pass an Order and then have it left in cold storage in the offices of the Commission, and people who may be expected to come into the scheme not know whether it was going to be carried out this year or next year. The Amendment is an improvement on the Bill and does not do anything contrary to the intentions of this House.