Clause 18.—(RULES AS TO PROCEDURE.) (Hansard, 3 May 1956)

§ Mr. P. Thorneycroft
I beg to move, in page 15, line 27, at the end to insert: and the place art which the Court is to sit for the purposes of any proceedings thereunder. This is really a technical Amendment. It is to ensure that the rules which are made shall provide for the place where the Court is to sit. Questions may arise from time to time as to whether the Court should appropriately sit in England or in Scotland. The basic principles which should govern that are not, I think, proper to be incorporated within the Bill itself, and I hope that the Committee will agree that they should properly be dealt with in the rules which will themselves be submitted to Parliament.

§ Sir L. Ungoed-Thomas
I do not know whether there is any confusion between the Amendment and the provision in paragraph 2 of the Schedule, which says: … and the Court when sitting in public in London shall sit at the Royal Courts of Justice, or at such other place as the Lord Chancellor may from time to time appoint. I am wondering whether there is some confusion between the two.

§ Mr. Thorneycroft
I think not, but I will certainly look at it when we come to the Schedule. It merely means that when sitting in London the Court will sit at the Royal Courts of Justice or at some other place in London. The Amendment has to do with the rules to be made as to whether the Court shall sit in London or elsewhere.

§ Mr. Walker-Smith
I beg to move, in page 15, line 32, at the end to insert: by all parties to any proceedings, including the Registrar. In a sense, this Amendment is really a clarification of the real purpose of the Bill. Subsection (2) of the Clause specifies certain matters which may be dealt with under the Lord Chancellor's rules relating to the procedure of the Restrictive Practices Court. Paragraph (b) of subsection (2) deals with the power of the rules to make provision for discovery in these cases. In particular, it secures that all material facts and considerations are brought before the Court.
744 11.15 p.m.
The Amendment is designed to make it clear that the rules can deal with discovery of the relevant material and information in the possession of the Registrar as well as in the possession of the parties to the agreement. The rules which the Lord Chancellor will make will presumably follow as closely as possible the analogous rules of the Supreme Court. The effect is to make it clear that both parties are on a footing and that the material facts will be in the possession of the parties in the ordinary way as a result of discovery and will thus be brought before the Court.

§ Sir L. Heald
I should like confirmation that I would be right in thinking that the object of the Amendment is to meet, at least in part, the request which has been made for the implementation of the statement made by my right hon. Friend on Second Reading. The words which he used on that occasion are set out in an Amendment which I have put down to my right hon. Friend's proposed Amendment in page 15, line 40, and they are these: It shall be the duty of the Registrar to ensure that all relevant facts are placed before the Court … It was said that it was quite unnecessary to put in anything of this kind but I am glad to see that these words now appear and to know that they set out the Government's intention.

§ Mr. P. Thorneycroft
My right hon. and learned Friend is quite correct. The point was raised by him. It is intended that there should be full discovery in all proceedings, and I am obliged to my right hon. and learned Friend for his help in the matter.

§ Mr. E. Fletcher
Will the President of the Board of Trade clear up this point for me? Suppose, for example, there is a great argument about the effect of a series of agreements on unemployment in an area or number of areas. Suppose there is an inquiry about shipping. Such an inquiry might well involve the disclosure of a great deal of statistical information about the level of unemployment in a number of various other industries and questions of that nature. Does this mean that interrogatories can be addressed to the Registrar about that?
745 I want to visualise how the information required for this kind of issue will come before the Court. It is not the kind of information that the Registrar is likely to have in his possession. It is one thing to call upon the Registrar to produce relevant documents; what he has might be very limited. On the other hand, the right hon. and learned Member for Chertsey (Sir L. Heald) seemed to me to be aiming at something different, requiring the Board of Trade to produce documents in its possession. The two things are not parallel.

§ Mr. P. Thorneycroft
This is much more limited. It does not entitle anybody to serve interrogatories on the Board of Trade. It merely provides—very properly, I think—for full disclosure of documents on both sides by the parties to the proceedings, including the Registrar and other parties. If there was the mass of statistical evidence which has been suggested, I think everyone would agree that it should be available to both sides to study before there was an argument on it in the Court.

§ Sir Lancelot Joynson - Hicks (Chichester)
While I realise that the President of the Board of Trade has taken an appreciable step towards meeting the point we have been trying to ensure, namely, that there is no relevant information in the possession of the Registrar which does not get before the Court, I must point out one essential difference between my right hon. and learned Friend's phrase in the Amendment to which he referred, which is: It shall be the duty of the Registrar to ensure that all relevant facts are placed before the Court and the Amendment which we are now discussing, which is simply that rules made under the Clause may provide for the provision which my right hon. Friend now suggests. It is a small point, but I hope that my right hon. Friend will be able to help us in ensuring that the rules which may be made are, in fact, made.

§ Mr. E. Fletcher
I want to get the position quite clear. Suppose an industrialist wants to raise an issue about the level of unemployment in shipbuilding. I can understand that there may be a lot of evidence in the archives of the Board of Trade that would be relevant, but surely it would be the duty of the Court 746 to get that information from the Board of Trade. Surely it is not contemplated that the Registrar should produce it.

§ Mr. P. Thorneycroft
The Amendment is merely to ensure that the right arrangements should be made in these rules for the mutual pooling of this information in the ordinary exchange of documents before the proceedings start.

§ Mr. Walker-Smith
I beg to move, in page 15, line 34, to leave out from "agreement" to "in" in line 36, and to insert: where it appears to the court that the relevant provisions of the agreement and the circumstances of the case are substantially similar to the provisions and circumstances considered, in relation to any other agreement. This is, in essence, a clarifying Amendment. It deals with subsection (2, c), which is an important provision which has been referred to before during the proceedings. It enables rules to be made to enable the Court to determine in a summary way issues appearing to be governed by principles established in previous proceedings. As the Committee is aware, this is a provision relied upon to facilitate the conduct of the proceedings before the Court and to save a good deal of time and trouble to the parties in the cases concerned.
The reason for the Amendment is that the words in the Clause as drafted are more appropriate to a previous determination based on a question of law. The words "principles established" rather suggest that. As the Committee is aware, the decisions of the Court will not be mere questions of law, and what is intended here is to devise a procedure to enable the Court to deal expeditiously where the provisions of the agreement and the circumstances of the case appear to be on all-fours with those of a previous case. The Amendment is more aptly worded for that than the words in the Clause as drafted.

§ Mr. E Fletcher
I beg to move, in page 15, line 36, at the end to insert: (d) for enabling the Court to dispose of any proceedings before them notwithstanding that in the course of the proceedings there has been a change in the persons sitting' as members of the Court. I hope that no one will minimise the great importance of the rules made by 747 the Lord Chancellor. The whole tempo of the proceedings before the Court will be governed by the rules of procedure which are laid down. The object of the Amendment is to give the Lord Chancellor further powers than it appears he has at present. We are anxious that the regulations to be made under the Clause should specifically deal with the possibility of there being some inevitable change in the constitution of the Court from one stage to another, and that there shall not be any unavoidable delay because there has to be a change in the persons sitting as members of the Court.

§ Mr. P. Thorneycroft
I think that the answer is that this point will be dealt with in the rules. I appreciate the difficulty. In ordinary High Court proceedings, if one of the judges dies, or anything of that kind happens, the case cannot proceed when half the evidence has been heard by the full court. There is a substantial difficulty here. Whether it may be solved is another question, but it is covered by his rule.

§ Mr. Fletcher
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

§ Mr. Walker-Smith
The effect of the Amendment will be to make the rule subject to annulment in pursuance of a Resolution of either House of Parliament. This will be in line with the provisions of Section 212 of the Supreme Court of Judicature (Consolidation) Act, 1925, which relates to the rules of the Supreme Court. I have no doubt that it would seem appropriate to the Committee that the same provision should apply here, and we are very happy to accept the Amendment.

§ Mr. Hector Hughes
I thank the hon. and learned Gentleman. I think that this is the only Amendment proposed from this side of the Committee that the Government have accepted.

§ Mr. P. Thorneycroft
I beg to move, in page 15, line 40, at the end to add: 748 (4) In any proceedings before the Court under this Part of this Act in which the Registrar is represented by counsel, counsel for the Registrar shall be nominated by the Attorney General, the Lord Advocate or the Attorney General for Northern Ireland, as the case may be. I thing that it is right to record the object of the Amendment in the Bill. We have had certain discussions in the Chamber about the position of the Attorney-General and I believe that the whole Committee is anxious to see that these proceedings are placed upon a basis which is not only just and fair but generously just and fair. At a later stage I shall make a proposal, in respect of Clause 1 that the Registrar may consult the Attorney-General, through the Treasury Solicitor, on appropriate matters of doubt and difficulty. No doubt he can do so in any case but it is right to record the fact.

§ Sir L. Heald
It would be indeed churlish of me not to recognise that my right hon. Friend has taken into account our pleas to him, and we are very glad to hear that he is to do something about this matter. Its importance in relation to the Registrar has been underlined very much by the very valuable discussion, initiated from the Liberal bench, in which it was pointed out that there was no guarantee what the Registrar would do or whether, if he were asked to bring forward the views of the parties who were interested or affected, he would do so.
That will be seen to if my right hon. Friend takes the step of allowing the Registrar to have the advantage of the beneficial and paternal advice of the Attorney-General. Then it will be in the Registrar's mind quite clearly that he ought to see what is to be done if matters of this nature arise, and that there ought to be the safeguard that the view of the other party is put forward or that, if necessary, proper representations are made to the Board of Trade. I hope that something really material will be achieved in that way.

§ Sir L. Joynson-Hicks
There is one minor point about which I should be grateful for elucidation. I refer to line 20, which reads: 749 … the fees chargeable in respect of such proceedings, shall be such as may be determined by rules made by the Lord Chancellor. There is a curious provision later in the Bill which rules that the Court has no power to award any costs. Presumably, therefore, these fees are those chargeable to the parties upon the interlocutory and other proceedings before the Court. I should be glad to have clarification of the fees that my right hon. Friend has in mind, the nature of them, and against whom they are likely to be charged.

§ Mr. Walker-Smith
As my hon. Friend indicates, the question of costs is dealt with in the Schedule. This subsection refers to fees, those being in this context the fees provided for by the Clause.