Clause 5.—(ORDERS IN COUNCIL AND ORDERS.) (Hansard, 25 November 1949)

§ Mr. Assheton
I beg to move, in page 5, line 4, to leave out subsection (2), and to insert: (2) No Order in Council shall be made under this Act unless, after copies of the draft thereof have been laid before Parliament, each House presents an Address to His Majesty praying that the Order be made. I will not trouble the Committee for more than a moment. This is such a simple and necessary Amendment that it will commend itself to the Committee, and I hope that the Financial Secretary will agree to it at once. We are merely asking for a positive Resolution instead of the negative procedure. In view of the complexities involved and the fact that this Bill is nothing but an enabling Bill, the case for this procedure is very strong indeed.

§ Mr. Glenvil Hall
I should like to give something to the right hon. Gentleman, because we are all in such a friendly mood today, but it would be wrong if we changed the procedure here from the negative to the affirmative, as the Amendment suggests. It is not as though we were refusing—we would not do it—facilities for having these orders 694 annulled. It will be perfectly proper on any Order in Council for a negative Resolution to be moved. That procedure is just as efficacious as, and very much simpler than, the affirmative Resolution procedure proposed in this Amendment.
If we changed over to the affirmative procedure, it would mean that lots of Orders in Council which are purely administrative would have to go through this procedure, as well as Orders in Council of far greater moment. That is the way this Amendment is drafted, and whilst I do not say that that is what is intended, it is nonetheless what would take place if we accepted the Amendment. Both Houses would have to pray His Majesty to make the Order, whereas with the present procedure we reach the same end by a much shorter route. I hope that on reflection the right hon. Gentleman will agree with me that there is very little, if anything, wrong with what we propose.

§ Mr. Assheton
I am very sorry that the Financial Secretary cannot meet this point, which I thought had the support of the whole Committee. It is all very well to say that the negative procedure is as good as the affirmative procedure, but the right hon. Gentleman knows very well that that is not so. Laws are made almost by mass production methods at the present time. I deplore and hate it. I dislike Orders in Council and prefer Acts of Parliament when all of us can see what is being done. By making Orders in Council Ministers escape criticism. The only way of ensuring criticism is for the laws to be enacted here, when the Minister would have to pay attention to what was said and to the desires of the public. Half the laws made today are quite unknown to the people concerned. It is about time that this House took a stronger line about this, and the only method by which we can do so at the present time is to insist on positive rather than negative Resolutions on occasions of this sort. I deeply deplore the decision of the Government.