Clause 27.—(INTERPRETATION.) (Hansard, 11 February 1959)

§ The Solicitor-General for Scotland
I beg to move, in page 24, line 19, to leave out from "Act" to the end of line 20 and to insert: includes a decreet-arbitral, provisional order or other instrument ratified or confirmed by a Parliament of Scotland or of the United Kingdom This Amendment concerns our old friend Glasgow, which, again, we cannot mention by name. The reason for the Amendment is that the constitution and procedure of the Glasgow Dean of Guild Court rests not upon a local Act but on a thing called a decreet-arbitral, which, 1274 in effect, is a judgment in an arbitration way back in 1605 which was ratified by the Scottish Parliament in 1672.

§ Mr. Rankin
This Amendment is indicative of the extreme lengths to which the Government have been forced to go to try to make the Bill presentable.

§ Mr. Hannan
Shocking.

§ Mr. Rankin
Absolutely shocking. They are going back nearly 300 years, before the Act of Union. They are going all that way back to take a little stumble forwards.

§ Mr. Ede (South Shields)
The date which the Solicitor-General gave was the date of the powder plot, when the English tried to blow up the Scottish king.

§ Mr. Rankin
To get the Bill through, the Government have had to bring to life a reference to the Scottish Parliament.
I tabled a Question with the purpose of obtaining maximum self-government for Scotland. Of course, the Amendment might be tied up with the idea for a Scottish Parliament. This is merely an illustration, but it would appear that a Scottish Parliament has some uses, in view of the fact that the Government have gone back hundreds of years to help the Bill on its way. Perhaps if a Scottish Parliament were in being the Government might have got the Bill through with less difficulty than has faced them tonight.
However, we offer the Government congratulations in the discovery that they have made—that there was a Parliament in Scotland which they now find of some use, and perhaps we may take that as an indication of the lines along which their thoughts are proceeding. It may be they are looking forward to a Parliament in Scotland which they may find of even greater use in the attempts which they are making to get their Bills through.

§ Mr. Hannan
The Government have shown by the Amendments that if they make up their mind to achieve a certain objective, they can do it and overcome all obstacles. The Solicitor-General made up his mind to maintain this archaic institution in Glasgow and found words to achieve that objective. The Government have allowed this old institution to defy them and local opinion in the City of Glasgow.
1275 Why should the words be taken out? It is stated in page 24 of the Bill that 'local Act' has the same meaning as in the Local Government (Scotland) Act, 1947. I would be able to understand the Amendment better if the original words were left in and the words of the Amendment added for the purpose of greater accuracy.
Will the Solicitor-General for Scotland tell the House what a "decreet-arbitral" is? Should it be "decree-arbitral"? I consulted the Encyclopaedia of the Laws of Scotland to find out what this meant. I found that it is the enforcement of an award. It is described as: a summary diligence in common form, and matters arising as to their execution are matters of diligence law. This appeared to me to have no remote connection with the definition of what a local Act is. This is a matter which gives substance and existence to the dean of guild in the City of Glasgow. It concerns the organisation which is responsible for the building laws and the interpretation of the new code. The Government have circumvented justice by adopting a trick to keep the dean of guild court in the City of Glasgow.
If it should be "decree-arbitral" and not "decreet-arbitral", there will no doubt have to be another Amendment. May we know the year from which the term dates? What history has the term? How often has it been used in local government work since, say, 1920? As I say, I found a definition in the Encyclopaedia of the Laws of Scotland, but I cannot find any relationship with the definition of a local Act.

§ The Solicitor-General for Scotland
Perhaps I may, by leave of the House, deal with the point raised by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mr. Hannan). We have to go back to the definition in the 1947 Act. As the Bill stands, "local act" has the same meaning as in the Local Government (Scotland) Act, 1947, where we find: 'local Act' includes a provisional order under any Act confirmed by Parliament …. If we give effect to the Amendment, we are saying that "local Act" includes not only a provisional order under any Act confirmed by Parliament but also this curious creature, the decreet-arbitral, or 1276 other instrument ratified or confirmed by the Parliament of Scotland or the United Kingdom.
I will try to explain what this mysterious phrase decreet-arbitral "means. It is a decision or judgment in an arbitration. It is "decree-arbitral" or "decreet-arbitral", the latter being as it was known in the old days, and we have used the old phrase because it is an old decision. It was an arbitration between the merchants and the crafts in Glasgow in 1605. It is from that that the constitution and procedure of the dean of guild court still stems, and it was ratified by the Scots Act of 1672. I can assure the hon. Member that there is no funny business about this although it sounds rather odd.

§ Mr. Woodburn
The Solicitor-General for Scotland will agree that this "shell" from ancient history seems today in Glasgow to be filled by an entirely different animal from the one which got into the "shell" of the old merchant guilds and trade houses in order to find a back door on to the Glasgow Town Council.
Making the Bill work has involved the Government in the most extraordinary manœuvres. For the sake of the Secretary of State's own administration, he should have carried out his first intention, which was to get these people to agree that they should be brought into harmony with existing circumstances. Instead of that, the Bill has to be messed up with a lot of jargon in order to make it possible for something which goes back to ancient history to survive. I am a member of an organisation concerned with the preservation of ancient buildings, and we do our best to preserve ancient monuments, but we try to get modern inhabitants in them to keep them up to date with modern circumstances.

§ Mr. G. M. Thomson
I am fascinated to find in the middle of a 1959 Bill an Amendment proposed by the Government to bring in such magnificent legal phraseology as "decreet-arbitral", and even more fascinated to find that we are ensuring that the dean of guild court in Glasgow is not merely buttressed by provisional orders and Acts of this Parliament, which has been in existence for only 350 years, but is to have the additional strengthening of Acts of the Parliament of Scotland which existed before 1277 1707. It is a fascinating disclosure of the lengths to which a Conservative Government are prepared to go to bolster up undemocratic privilege.
The Secretary of State at an earlier stage in our discussions rather let the cat out of the bag by indicating that he regarded his efforts to protect the dean of guild and the deacon convenor in Glasgow merely as a sort of first step in a reactionary course which was shortly to bring back the university seats. As far as I can see, shortly after that we shall be finding the Government going back to the age of the rotten boroughs. It is a most astonishing process that legal matters from so far back should be brought into action in order to maintain the position of the dean of guild court, and this in a very modern Bill which is trying to bring about mid-twentieth century building standards.
8.30 p.m.
I have often wondered exactly what function the Solicitor-General for Scotland performed for the Government in the Scottish Office, but now at last we know. He is the man who comes to the rescue when all other lines of defence are down. He goes back to 1605 and to the old Scottish Parliament to bamboozle us with magnificent legal phraseology. It is a remarkable performance, but it is clear that the Secretary of State's discussion with the Trades' House and the Merchant House in Glasgow could not have been so seriously concerned with trying to modernise the dean of guild court as with all those various legal manoeuvres which were embarrassingly necessary if the dean of guild court was to be preserved with all its medieval panoply in this mid-twentieth century Bill. It is astonishing that a Government in this day and age should try to preserve the dean of guild courts and go to the lengths of this sort of Amendment in order to do so.
The Secretary of State was both shocking and weak in his defence, because he referred to the position in Glasgow and the need for preserving those out-of-date provisions while not mentioning that in Dundee, where we have a very old dean of guild court, the Government have been sensible and progressive. The court in Dundee is so ancient that its jurisdiction applies only to the old medieval City of Dundee. Faced with that position, rather than 1278 extend the jurisdiction of the medieval dean of guild court of Dundee to the whole of Dundee, the Government sensibly decided to allow the Dundee Corporation, the democratically elected local authority, to form the building authority for the city.
If they can act sensibly and progressively in that case, why have they had to fight to the last seventeenth century ditch with the Glasgow dean of guild court? The Government will one day come to regret the work which they have done in the House of Commons tonight and the legal researches of the Solicitor-General for Scotland, because tomorrow morning they will appear to the people of Glasgow, when those people read of our proceedings here, as prepared to go to any length to preserve unjustified and undemocratic privilege.

§ The Solicitor-General for Scotland
I beg to move, in page 24, line 42, after "sixteen", to insert: and subsection (2) of section twenty-four". This is a drafting Amendment, as the definition of "warrant" is no longer applicable to Clause 24.

§ The Solicitor-General for Scotland
I beg to move, in page 25, line 3, after "the", to insert "extension".
It may be convenient if with this we take the next two Amendments.
These three Amendments are to enable a building authority when granting a warrant for an extension to look at the extension as a building, just as it regards an alteration as an alteration. It is largely a drafting Amendment.

§ The Solicitor-General for Scotland
I beg to move, in page 25, line 37, at the end to insert: (9) Any reference in this Act, except in section fifteen thereof, or in any other Act to the exercise by a buildings authority of any of their functions shall, in the case of a function which may be delegated to any person by virtue of 1279 any provision of this Act, be construed as including a reference to the exercise of the function by that person. The purpose of this Amendment is to make it clear that where in the Bill there is reference to the exercise by a building authority of some function, that reference also applies to the exercise of the function by the clerk or the master of works, as the case may be. There is only one exception to that, which is under Clause 15 which provides for an appeal to the sheriff. The position there is that if an applicant is dissatisfied with the decision of the clerk or the master of works he has no right to go straight to the sheriff, but must go to the building authority first.