SCHEDULE.—(Provisions as to the Appeal Tribunal.) (Hansard, 25 January 1949)

§ The Attorney-General
I beg to move, in page 20, line 8, at the end, to insert: Provided that an order under this paragraph shall only be made where, in the opinion of the tribunal, the person against whom the order is made was acting frivolously or vexatiously in requiring the matter in question to be referred to the tribunal or, as the case may be, in making or resisting the application before the tribunal.

§ Mr. Grimston
I agree with the Attorney-General that the wording which he has produced is more appropriate than in the Amendment we have upon the paper. We are very glad to accept it.

§ Mr. C. Williams
I cannot imagine why these words were not in the Bill before. This is another case in which the Government have depended absolutely on the Opposition to make a Bill workable. Very violent things have been said about the Opposition by the Leader of the House. I congratulate the Postmaster-General upon knocking a certain amount of sense into the head of the Attorney-General.

§ The Attorney-General
I do not know whether I may speak, with the permission of the House, to make a point. It is that if the hon. Member for Torquay (Mr. C. Williams) will refer to the Committee proceedings he will find that the opposite is the fact.

Mr. Paling
I beg to move, "That the Bill now be read the Third time."
I do not think it is necessary for me to make a long speech. The Bill has been threshed out fairly and fully. I referred to it in my opening speech on the Second Reading as a workaday Measure. It has come out of the proceedings fulfilling that description. It is very necessary. I was interested a few minutes ago when hon. Members were talking about this matter being one of mere entertainment and one which in the course of time would settle itself. I think that is wrong or, to say the least of it, far too optimistic. The evidence that we have shows the opposite tendency. If it had not been dealt with here and now it would have grown and might have become intolerable.
The first part of the Bill is principally repetition of the existing position. The second part is entirely new. We have about 11½ million listeners now and wireless is in practically every home. It plays a big part in everybody's life. Television is in the offing and may grow very rapidly, and it may play a big part. It was necessary that something should be done in this matter of interference. We had powers to deal with it, up to a point. 831 A huge proportion of the population voluntarily have worked with us, and helped to obliterate interference, but there is a section which did not. I said on the Second Reading, and I say now, that I think experience will prove that we shall use these powers very seldom, but the fact that the powers are there will be in itself a great help.
I am glad that we were able to deal with the manufacturing side of the matter. When criticisms were made on this point we had to realise that we had not taken power to deal with the matter at the source. There was some foundation for that complaint, and the criticism was very solid. It was not because we had not discussed the matter. That had been done previously to my going into the Post Office, but action was not taken because of the difficulties entailed. We have done our best to overcome these difficulties and I hope that the Bill will be successful.
This Bill has come out of the various proceedings of this House a better Bill, a workable Bill, and I think a Bill which will do much good. I thank all hon. Members for their co-operation and assistance in making this Bill into what I think is a pretty good Measure.

§ Mr. Grimston
I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that the Bill is a better Bill than it was when it was first introduced into this House. For that I think we of the Opposition can take some considerable credit, although we thank the right hon. Gentleman for having met us on so many points.
Interference does exist and it will become acute, but the Government seemed to set about dealing with it in their usual way, of taking more compulsory powers, more penalties and more pains without ascertaining whether there was a better method of tackling the problem. We attacked the Bill on Second Reading as another instance of this grasping of further powers whenever the slightest excuse arose. However, as the right hon. Gentleman has said, in the process of Committee and Report it has become much better. We have made good one of the greatest defects in the original Bill, namely, that no provision was made to try and solve the problem 832 in the factory. As the Bill first appeared, it was the unfortunate consumer who bought an iron, a Hoover or an electric razor, or some such article, who was to suffer, because he interfered with somebody else and he could not use it unless he spent further money on it. That was the only method which the Postmaster-General intended to use to attack the problem. I am glad that we have changed that.
I hope also that the Postmaster-General has changed his mind and heart about the matter, because there is nothing to stop him continuing along the same old course and ignoring the new powers he has taken. I hope that will not happen. Hon. Members will remember, as a sort of illustration of this point, that in the early days of motoring one bought a motor car and then found that one had to buy a speedometer, lamps, and dozens of other things which were necessary before it could be put on the road. Private enterprise soon saw that that would not satisfy the motorist, and now one can buy a motor car with every conceivable thing already on it, and there are no additions. I hope that the Postmaster-General will remember that. and see that this apparatus which is produced .for the public shall be produced in such a way that the user will not find that he has to buy additions to it afterwards in order to stop interference.
There are very many difficulties in the way of tackling the problem at that end, but I hope that the Postmaster-General has now got the will to do it in that way There are considerable powers in this Bill. He has certainly now got enough powers to deal with this problem of interference. As a matter of fact, he will get rather more powers than I would like to see granted to him. But, having gained all the modifications that we have, we do not propose to take the matter to a Division on the Third Reading.
We have had a very full discussion and we think we have improved the Bill very considerably. We shall watch the regulations which the right hon. Gentleman produces under it. I hope that he will be able to deal with the matter with as little bother and interference as possible to the consumer and will endeavour to put into the hands of the consumer an instrument which he can use and over which he will not be called upon to incur 833 any extra expense after he has bought the article. We thank the Postmaster-General for what he has done, and we wish him and his Department success in the operation of the Bill.

§ Mr. C. Williams
I still view this Bill with very grave misgivings. We did vote against the Second Reading, but from that time, fortunately, we have been able to take a fairly full part in the discussion. We recognise that the development of new ventures may make it necessary to give a certain amount of power to the Government. We were faced at first with the fact that this Bill gave the Government almost unlimited powers. The one great fear that we had was that it would bear very hardly on the small householder who, when he got some new device, would find that he would have to buy some new gadget to put it in order.
During the whole of the proceedings on this Bill my hon. Friend the Member for Westbury (Mr. Grimston) has fought that point again and again, and he has managed to secure a great many concessions from the Government which make the position of the individual householder very much better than it was. Some of us arc suspicious when the Government ask for a Bill of this sort and say that they are going to be good about it and will not use the powers which they have. When it concerns men of a kindly disposition, such as the Postmaster-General, it may be all right for a short time. But he is not everlasting, and neither, thank goodness, is this Government.
It probably will be all right, because after the dusting the Government have experienced in this House over this Bill, they will not venture to abuse their powers for some time, and in a comparatively short time from now they will have disappeared from the present scene into the oblivion from which they should never have been taken.