Clause 16.—(INSPECTION AND TESTS.) (Hansard, 11 February 1959)

§ Mr. J. N. Browne
I beg to move, in page 17, line 6, after "him", to insert "or by the buildings authority".
The effect of this Amendment is to enable entry for the purposes specified, not only by the master of the works, but also by the buildings authority. It is desirable that the buildings authority should be able to confer the power of entry, in order that it may be able to authorise a sub-committee to inspect the building, as envisaged by paragraph 6 of the Second Schedule. This the Amendment does.

§ The Solicitor-General for Scotland
I beg to move, in page 18, line 45, to leave out from "require" to "an" and insert: (a) any person who has made". It may be convenient to take this Amendment along with the following two Amendments, and also that to page 19, line 6.
The first two Amendments are really paving Amendments for the Amendment to page 19, line 2, whereby we are overcoming the difficulty of the use of the word "owner", because, here again, the person who is responsible may not be the owner, but somebody else.

§ Mr. Hannan
May I make a brief intervention here to say that Clause 16 has suffered immeasurably by the number of Amendments made, and has been mutilated by the Amendments now being made. We had a number of Amend- 1268 ments to this Clause earlier during the Committee stage, and the Clause has really been rewritten. Certainly, what we have here bears little relation to the initial drafting of the Bill. The Clause extends over two pages of the Bill, and deals with inspection and tests. We had in mind asking the Government for an explanation of the latter part of the Clause, and particularly of the words unless the buildings authority, on application made to them, otherwise direct. The Government appear to have anticipated what the trouble was, and, consequently, have deleted some of the words and added their own Amendment during the Committee stage.
I should, finally, like to ask the Government to invite the draftsmen to be very careful about these periods. If, in the Government Amendment which has not yet appeared on the Notice Paper, a period is put to give an indication where the Amendment finishes, it would help some of us to understand the Bill properly. There is no period or comma to enable us to see where these Amendments have been made, and we are handicapped by a lack of these commas, which adds immeasurably to our difficulties.

§ Mr. J. N. Browne
I beg to move, in page 19, line 3, after "such", to insert "reasonable".
In Clause 16 (1, b), the master of the works is authorised to enter at any reasonable time, and it is right that the same element of reasonableness should be applied to tests which the master of works should require the persons responsible for the building to carry out.