§ 4.18 p.m.
§ The Attorney-General (Sir Donald Somervell)I beg to move,
That Mr. Louis Arnold Abraham, a Senior Clerk in the Journal Office, have leave to attend and give evidence before the Magistrate at Bow Street and afterwards at the Central Criminal Court, and there to produce the Journal of the House for the 30th day of July last, on the hearing and trial of a charge of the contravention of Regulation 3 (2) of the Defence (General) Regulations, 1939, about to be preferred against one Roy Townsend Leonard Day.The Regulation referred to is the Regulation which makes it an offence to report or purport to report the proceedings of a Secret Session. It is necessary for the prosecution on those proceedings to prove the Resolution of the House making that Session a Secret Session. According to the law and practice of Parliament, evidence of this kind can only be given by one of the Clerks of the House if the House give leave for him to give that evidence. The Motion which I have moved is in the ordinary form and has been adopted by the House on many previous occasions.
§ Question put, and agreed to.