HC Deb 29 April 1947 vol 436 cc1763-4
Mr. Barnes

I beg to move, in page 122, line 28, at the end, to add: The Hertfordshire and Gloucestershire Canal Company. This canal company was overlooked in compiling the Schedule, and I now beg to move that it be inserted.

Mr. Frank Byers (Dorset, Northern)

I would like to ask the Minister how it came about that this company was omitted. Can we have an assurance that because we have hurried on with this Bill, because the Guillotine has come down time and time again in Committee, there are not similar omissions which have not been found out? In other words, has the Minister made any special effort to check up to ensure that this Schedule is now all-inclusive?

Mr. Barnes

Generally, yes, but as a matter of fact this canal is derelict. We discovered however that it might rank for payment and therefore included it.

5.15 p.m.

Mr. Oliver Poole (Oswestry)

This raises an interesting point about the posh tion of canals under this Bill. I am in correspondence with the right hon. Gentleman—although I daresay he has not seen my letter—about a derelict canal in my own constituency. We feel very strongly that sufficient attention has not been given to the canals. That in fact is what has happened here. The attention given to the position of the canals when this Bill was being drafted was totally inadequate to the scope of the problem, and I therefore urge the right hon. Gentleman to go into the whole question of canals and give it more serious consideration than he has done in the past. It is just one more example of the cursory kind of examination which has been given to this problem.

Mr. W. J. Brown

What on earth are we doing, nationalising derelict canals? Is it the Minister's intention to take this derelict property and make it into an up-to-date one, or is it to be preserved as a memorial to this Bill?

Mr. Barnes

I must confess I have some difficulty in discovering what principle is involved in this.

Viscount Hinchingbrooke (Dorset, Southern)

I hope that my colleague the hon. Member for Northern Dorset (Mr. Byers) is not anxious to put more into the Bill than is already in it. It seems to me that anything which is excluded will be in a fair way to succeed when we come to be nationalised.

Mr. David Renton (Huntingdon)

As this matter was somewhat rushed in Committee and was the subject of an oversight on the part of several people concerned on both sides, the position of the Weaver Navigation Trustees was not discussed in Committee. I wonder whether the Minister has had an opportunity, since the Committee stage was concluded, of considering the rather peculiar position of the Weaver Navigation Trustees?

Mr. Barnes

Although that point does not arise on this Amendment, perhaps with the permission of the Chair I might say that I have met the Weaver Navigation Trustees and have had their case submitted to me. I am advised that it will remain within the provisions of the Bill.

Amendment agreed to.

Schedule, as amended, agreed to.