PROVISIONAL ORDERS. (Hansard, 6 July 1939)

§ Mr. Holmes
I beg to move, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment."

§ Mr. Dingle Foot
I do not rise to oppose the Amendment but to call attention to what the Amendment involves. As the Bill originally left this House, it provided that when an Order was laid before Parliament it should not be made unless both Houses by Resolution approved the draft, either without any modification or addition or with modifications or additions to which both Houses agreed. As the Bill was approved by this House, the two Houses had power to amend these orders, but as a result of the Lords Amendment now proposed, the two Houses will be deprived of that power to amend, and we shall have either to accept or reject the orders as they stand. We 1681 are to be deprived of a very important power. I very much regret that this change should have been made in another place and that it should have been accepted. If the words had been passed in the form in which they left the House, it would, I think, have been an exceedingly useful and valuable precedent. I do not blame the promoter of the Bill. I think the change has come from another source—in other words, from a Government Department, and as the representative of that Department is here, we are entitled to protest against this change being made. This is another deliberate attempt to limit the power of this House over the making of orders—in many cases, orders of the highest importance. My hands are tied now. For obvious reasons, I cannot oppose the Amendment, but I do not think it ought to leave the House without some protest being made.

§ Mr. Wedgwood Benn
Is the representative of the Board of Trade going to tell us whether, in fact, we were deprived of the opportunity of amending these orders, which is a valuable power, by the action of the Government?

§ Mr. Cross
I am under the impression that the hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Foot) is right—although I have not been following this Bill in detail in recent times—in saying that the suggestion came from the Board of Trade that this procedure should be changed in the way that he indicated. The view taken by my Department is that the proper course in cases in which either House is unwilling to approve of a draft order in 1682 the form laid before it, is for the draft order to be rejected on the ground that it requires modification in some specified manner, and therefore, if the Minister in charge is prepared to accept the modification, it is easy for him to make his explanation in the House and, after withdrawing the draft or allowing its rejection, to lay a fresh draft, incorporating the agreed modifications, on the following day. That is at all events some explanation of the attitude taken up by the Board of Trade in this matter. I could have wished that the hon. Member had given me notice that he intended to raise this point in order that I might better have familiarised myself with the matter he has in mind.