HC Deb 11 March 1953 vol 512 cc1360-2
Mr. Sandys

I beg to move, in page 37, line 34, at the end, to add: but to fall within paragraph 2 or paragraph 3 thereof, as the case may be. As this is the last Amendment I move it with considerable satisfaction and not a little relief. In bringing the debate to an end, I should like to thank the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Vauxhall (Mr. G. R. Strauss) and his hon. Friends for having made it possible for this debate to come to an end within the agreed time. We have had a full and useful discussion on the Report stage. In order to finish our deliberations on time, considerable restraint has been required both from hon. Members opposite and from my hon. Friends on this side of the House. We are grateful for this co-operation.

I readily recognise that the Bill, as it leaves us, has been improved by the Amendments which have been made, many of which were inspired by hon. Members opposite.

Mr. G. R. Strauss

My comments will be as relevant to the Amendment as were those of the right hon. Gentleman. Perhaps, Mr. Speaker, you will allow me the same latitude. I agree that the Minister has met us on a number of matters which we brought to his attention. He accepted many Amendments as a result of which a Bill which was previously, in our view, very, very, very bad indeed is now only very, very bad. We agreed, quite apart from the merits of the Bill, that if we could get reasonable co-operation we would try to limit our arguments within a certain compass. That meant that we had to restrain ourselves on many occasions. We put on the Order Paper only those Amendments which we thought were of considerable importance. There were many other Amendments we wanted to propose which were never put on the Order Paper.

I regret that the other day the Leader of the House, presumably in ignorance of our procedure and of what has happened, made some comments which were not fair and which suggested that we had not taken more time during the Committee stage because we had not sufficient to say. As everybody who has attended our proceedings knows, that was not the situation. We could, very happily and without wasting time, have talked for many days longer both in Committee and on Report. Under normal Parliamentary procedure we would have done so, but we were confined to a certain period. There was the threat of the Guillotine, and we did not want that, so we came to a voluntary arrangement.

We have succeeded in keeping within the time limit. I agree that the right hon. Gentleman and hon. Members opposite have co-operated. I think that the time has been well spent. A number of Amendments have been accepted. The right hon. Gentleman has accepted our advice on a number of occasions and accepted our Amendments. I only hope that he will accept our advice again when we advise him not to proceed with this Bill. It is still so very bad that it ought to be dropped now. Then we could save another day of Parliamentary time by forgoing the Third Reading.

Mr. Speaker

I am not sure how relevant to the Amendment were the two speeches which we have heard.

Amendment agreed to.

Bill to be read the Third time upon Monday next, and to be printed [Bill 56].