HC Deb 28 July 1947 vol 441 cc189-90
Sir S. Cripps

I beg to move, in page 8, line 29, to leave out "petitioner's shares," and to insert: shares of any members of the company. This Amendment is to give effect to an undertaking given to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bournemouth (Mr. Bracken), and it gives the court power not only to deal with the petitioner's shares but also with the shares of all the members of the company, which is obviously a desirable thing.

Amendment agreed to.

Mr. Manningham-Buller

I beg to move, in page 8, line 32, at the end, to insert: subject to the provisions of Sections fifty-five, fifty-six, fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine and sixty of the principal Act. This again, is an Amendment which was considered in Committee, and if I recollect aright, the hon. and learned Gentleman said that this was one which he would consider between the Committee stage and the Report stage. The Government have not put down any Amendment to deal with this point, and we tabled this Amendment to see what were the results of the Solicitor-General's recon- sideration of the points raised by us in Committee.

Colonel Crosthwaite-Eyre (New Forest and Christchurch)

I beg to second the Amendment.

The Solicitor-General

We did carefully reconsider the drafting of this particular Clause in order to make certain that all the powers which it was thought the court should have were, in fact, vested in them. When this matter was under discussion in Committee, the answer which I made to the Amendment was that, in our view, the powers were adequate, and that there were all the powers of discretion which were necessary. After all, the court had the power to make such order as it thought fit, and the view we took on reconsideration of the drafting was that inasmuch as that discretion was vested in the court, the court could make such decision as it was thought necessary. Therefore, the court appeared to have all the powers which were required to do justice to all the parties in a case where a petition came before the court by way of application. We thought it surplusage to put this into the Clause, and, indeed, we had some doubt about whether, if we did so, it might not be suggested that the powers of the court were limited in some respect.

Amendment negatived.