HC Deb 20 January 1954 vol 522 cc1149-50
Mr. J. Stuart

I beg to move, in page 11, line 36, at the end, to add: (2) This Act shall continue in force until the expiration of the fifteenth day of May, nineteen hundred and fifty-nine, and shall then expire. As the House will know, the words in this Amendment are very nearly the same as those of the Amendment on the Order Paper in the names of the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser) and the hon. Member for Glasgow, Central (Mr. McInnes), which says that (2) This Act shall continue in force for a period of five years and shall then expire. We have the same object in view and the only difference between us is that for purely administrative reasons it would be simpler to bring the Act to an end at the end of the financial year corresponding more or less with the date which the hon. Members have in mind. Our Amendment merely means that the Act would come to an end at the nearest decimal point one can fix after midnight on the night of 15th May, 1959.

Mr. T. Fraser

I wish to thank the Secretary of State for putting down the Amendment. It will be remembered that in Committee we had quite a discussion on an Amendment in similar terms which I had put down on the Order Paper. I made it quite clear in that discussion that we would use the words which are now being used by the Secretary of State if he so desired. He will remember that he resisted that Amendment strongly in Committee but ultimately we persuaded him to have another look at it.

During the Recess I had correspondence with the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, in which he started off by saying he could give many more reasons why an Amendment limiting the Bill could not possibly be accepted. But I did not give up. I continued to correspond with him, and ultimately he wrote to say that he agreed that it would be desirable to add the Amendment to the Bill. I thank him, therefore, for his second thoughts and for accepting the Amendment, which was so strongly pressed upon him in Committee.

Amendment agreed to.