HC Deb 22 February 1951 vol 484 cc1482-4
The Deputy-Chairman

The three proposed Amendments to the first Schedule, namely to leave out "(Protection)" in lines 8, 15 and 19 on page 11 are out of order.

Mr. J. Stuart

The Amendments were proposed in the interest of pure English. This word "Protection" is not necessary and double brackets and things like that are extremely awkward. May I ask why it is out of order?

The Deputy-Chairman

We have already dealt with that point and have come to a decision upon it. These Amendments fall because they are consequential.

The Lord Advocate (Mr. John Wheatley)

I beg to move in page 11, line 27, at the end, to insert: In Schedule G, in paragraph 6, for the words "the Down Stream Face of" there shall be substituted the words "or at," and in paragraph 7 the words "than at present exists" shall he omitted. This Amendment seeks to do what the hon. Member for Angus, North (Mr. Thornton-Kemsley) sought to do by a new Clause which was not called, it being out of order. This is to tidy up Schedule G of the Act of 1868. The hon. Member drew attention to the fact that there seemed something wrong with that Schedule. It seemed to confine any improvements which we have made to the standards existing at the time when the 1868 Act was passed. He thought that most undesirable, having regard to the march of progress. We said we would look into the matter. We have done so, and we thank the hon. Member for drawing attention to it. By this Amendment we seek to omit the words offensive to him, and to the Committee, and to enable the Schedule to be read so that the most modern and up to date methods can be adopted.

Mr. Thornton-Kemsley (Angus, North and Mearns)

On an earlier Clause dealing with the weekly close time I had an Amendment on the Order Paper last week which was subsequently adopted by the Secretary of State. In a conversation we had beforehand behind the scenes he said, in his jocular fashion, "I will accept it on one condition, that there is only one speech on the matter." I accepted that and although as a matter of fact there were about a dozen speeches from hon. Members on both sides of the Committee congratulating him on doing so, I refrained from lifting up my voice. I should now like to say that I did not do so because I was not grateful to him. I was grateful, and I wish to say now to the Lord Advocate that I am most grateful to him for accepting the Amendment which I was not allowed to propose, but which I advocated last week, and I am glad that he has now consented to include it in the Bill.

Amendment agreed to.

Schedule, as amended, agreed to.