COLONIAL STOCK BILL (Hansard, 5 November 1948)

§ The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Glenvil Hall)

I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

The Colonial Stock Acts 1877 and 1892 give certain powers to registrars of stocks, to which those Acts apply, to make regulations governing the transfer of stocks. At the beginning of the war the Government and Other Stocks (Emergency Provisions) Act was passed, which suspended the transfer of stock by inscription, and made provision for all transfers to be by instrument in writing. The last named Act was to remain in existence until the emergency which occasioned the Act was declared to be at an end by Order in Council. The Treasury and the Bank of England have considered the matter, and have come to the conclusion that it would be a retrograde step to revert to the old method of transferring these stocks by inscription. It is a cumbersome method, and is frequently inconvenient, and this Bill seeks to make permanent the changeover to transfer by instrument in writing.

1192 Clause 1 does what I have indicated. It will be noticed that there is a proviso which makes it essential that in each case the Dominion or Colonial legislature concerned should concur in any change that is made. Clause 2 deals with a rather different matter. It extends the Colonial Stock Acts to the stock of Governments or authorities which may be operating in more than one territory. For instance, in East Africa there is the East African High Commission, which is an inter-colonial body functioning in Uganda, Kenya and Tanganyika. There, they are interested in loans to finance the East African railway system, the development of minerals and so on. This Clause extends the powers in the Colonial Stock Acts to loans raised by inter-colonial authorities of that kind.