§ Order for Second Reading read.
§ The Lord President of the Council (Sir John Anderson)I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time"
I have to commend to the House an innocent little Bill whose provisions and purposes I can explain in a very few words. Hon. Members may recall that earlier in the war an Act was passed for the purpose of introducing a measure of flexibility and simplification into the procedure of bodies established for the discharge of public or semi-public functions by Royal Charter or by Act of Parliament. What we all overlooked at that time was that there were certain bodies of an intermediate type. The Act passed dealt, as I have said, on the one hand, with bodies established by Royal Charter, and, on the other hand, with bodies established by Statute. The intermediate 118 class is the class of body, of which the Pharmaceutical Society is a direct example, established in the first instance by Royal Charter, but subsequently made the subject of regulation by Act of Parliament. It happens, owing to the form in which the original Bill was cast, that its provisions do not enable the benefit of the earlier Act to be extended to such a body as the Pharmaceutical Society. The number of examples of such bodies is probably quite small. I think I am right in saying that only two cases have been brought to the notice of the Privy Council. One of them, the Pharmaceutical Society, operating over the whole country, with a somewhat elaborate constitution, is certainly a case of some importance, and it is the desire of the Government that the same easement should be given to that body and to any other bodies similarly situated as Parliament has thought fit already to extend to bodies established either by Royal Charter or by Act of Parliament.
§ Question put, and agreed to.
§ Bill read a Second time.
§ Bill committeed to a Committee of the Whole House, for the next Sitting Day.— [Major Dugdale.]