§ Mr. W. S. MorrisonI beg to move, in page 5, line 28, to leave out "'thereby."
In the course of our discussions upstairs attention was drawn to this word in the Clause which refers to factory rationalisation schemes, which is an important part of this plan. Since these words were drafted there have arisen doubts of a legal character as to whether, 2028 if the word "thereby" were retained in its position in the Bill, legal objection might not be taken to other measures as well as to the actual rationalisation measures themselves. The problem of rationalisation involves two factors: one, the reduction of redundancy of curing capacity and the other the imposition of efficiency measures on the factories which remain. The legal doubt raised was whether or not if the word "thereby" were left in someone might be able to hold up the efficiency measures by saying that what the Bill authorised was the rationalisation scheme which was founded upon the reduction of redundancy of curing capacity. The Government feel that this problem of redundancy is so important that it ought to be kept in the forefront of any rationalisation scheme to be brought into being. Therefore, while in order to escape the dangers of the word "thereby" we are prepared to remove it, I should like to add that I propose in Clause 6 to move an Amendment to line 17 in these terms:
After 'scheme' to insert 'satisfactorily provides for regulating the extent of the facilities for producing bacon in Great Britain.'The effect of that will be to place the obligation upon the Minister, when considering a rationalisation scheme, to satisfy himself that not only will the efficiency of the bacon industry be improved but that the scheme itself deals with the redundancy problem. We shall, therefore, get over the difficulty by leaving out the word "thereby" and inserting an 2029 Amendment to put upon the Minister the duty of satisfying himself that a rationalisation scheme does deal with redundancy.
§ Amendment agreed to.