§ Mr. J. N. BrowneI beg to move, in page 28, line 18, to leave out "a committee" and to insert "committees".
For the convenience of the House, I think that we might discuss together this and the following Amendment, in pace 28, line 19.
These two Amendments which do not refer to minor warrant procedure or to burghs have been made at the request of the county councils and refer only to 1281 counties. In order to discharge their functions over the wide areas which they cover and to make use of local knowledge, the number of county councillors on the building authority will be comparatively large. If they are sitting as the building authority in any particular area all the members will, of course, quite properly, receive notices of the sitting, but probably by arrangement it will be mainly those councillors who represent the area who will actually attend.
The Association of County Councils pointed out that there will be occasions when the only business before a building authority sitting in a certain area will be unopposed applications with which the master of works has expressed himself satisfied. When this occurs it seems to the county councils—and the Government agree—
§ Mr. WillisThe Government do not often agree with them.
§ Mr. BrowneMore often than the hon. Member thinks. When this occurs it should not be necessary, even formally, to summon all the members of the authority to attend. The Amendment permits the authority to form a committee for the purpose of approving unopposed applications for warrants, but not minor ones. The applicant remains fully protected. If the committee refuses his application he can ask for the application to be reconsidered by the full buildings authority.
§ Amendment agreed to.
§
Further Amendment made: In page 28, line 19, leave out from "authority" to end of line 22 and insert:
and may delegate to any committee so appointed any of their functions—
Provided that—
§ Amendment proposed: In page 28, line 23, leave out "convener" and insert "chairman".—[Mr. J. N. Browne.]
§ Mr. WillisMay we have the reason for this change? What is the difference between a convener and a chairman? Do they not perform exactly the same functions?
§ Mr. BrowneThis was done at the request of the Association of County Councils and, as always in the proceedings on the Bill, we have tried to meet its wishes where it is at all possible.
§ Amendment agreed to.
§ Amendment proposed: In page 28, line 25, leave out "convener" and insert "chairman".—[Mr. J. N. Browne.]
§ Mr. WillisThe hon. Member seems to think that he can get away with murder. What is the reason for this change? The hon. Member says that the Association of County Councils has asked for it. That may be so, but that does not answer the question. What reasons has the Association given for asking for the change, and what about the counties of cities? Have they agreed?
§ Mr. BrowneThe change is being made to avoid confusion between the convener of the county and the convener of the committee.
§ Amendment agreed to.
§ Amendment proposed: In page 28, line 39, leave out from "authority" to end of line 41.—[Mr. J. N. Browne.]
§ 8.45 p.m.
§ Mr. RankinWe can congratulate the Government on the fact that, for once, under our guidance, they have seen reason and have allowed that reason to operate. They have resisted it so much during the evening that we might almost call this an occasion. It is worth while reading out the subsection which is to be changed. It is a pattern of the 1283 redundancy which prevails throughout the Bill. Here it is:
The local authority may make rules regulating the dates of meetings of the buildings authority, so, however, that meetings of the authority shall be held from time to time and as often as may be necessary in some convenient place.How many times the Government have stated the same thing over and over again in that little paragraph I do not know; nor do I know how they evaded possible disaster in those two closing words, "convenient place". A little slip there might have led to a very serious misunderstanding. When my hon. Friends and I were examining the Bill, we looked at this and we thought that were we just to say that the local authority might make rules regulating the dates of meetings of the building authority, and cut out all the other lines, we should achieve the object which the Government were seeking to achieve by using double the number of words, and that it could be very easily and more conveniently expressed in that way. So we congratulate the Government in following our lead, and we regret that we have had to wait until we came to discuss the Second Schedule before they took such a wise course.
§ Amendment agreed to.
§ Amendment proposed: In page 28, line 43, leave out "is" and insert "are". —[Mr. J. N. Browne.]
§ Mr. RankinThis is another of the profound steps which the Government have taken, and once again I may say that this was a matter which my hon. Friends and I discussed for some time. But we reached different conclusions. If one looks at the sentence, and if one asked a child to analyse it, that is, to give a general analysis and not a particular analysis—I assume that the occupants of the Government Front Bench know the difference between those two processes, in view of the fact that they get steeped in a "decreet-arbitral" and all these other mysterious things—it would be discovered that the sentence could be read in this way:
The local authority shall provide such accommodation … as is requiredand that in that accommodation there would be contained, as an extension of the subject,such furniture, books and other things.1284 Therefore they were not separate from the accommodation, but were part of it and, "accommodation" being in the singular, it would appear that the verb should have been in the singular too.I do not know whether the Government gave very deep thought to this matter. Obviously, at one stage in the drafting of the Bill there were strong influences in the Government which believed that the verb should be singular. Then, later—whether or not the matter went to the Cabinet I could not say—
§ Mr. WillisIt went to the dean of guild court.
§ Mr. RankinIt may have gone there. But whether or not it was sent to the Cabinet I do not know. At least the conclusion was reached that "is" was not the proper verb, that it should be "are" and the subject was not "accommodation", and all the things that one was given with accommodation, but was
accommodation, and such furniture, books and other things.Therefore—I hope they did not need to have a vote on it—they came to the conclusion that the verb ought not to be is", but should be "are".I should like to know the arguments on this matter. I will call to my help, although I do not know whether he will come, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede), who is even more versed than I am in the intricacies of these matters of high policy. He has had long experience of deciding when "is" should be used and when "are" should be used. Because of the confusion in the mind of the Government I am beginning to wonder whether or not I was correct when I thought it was "is" and when I advised my colleague that it should be "is", and therefore we decided to table our Amendment. Whether or not our argument leaked and got across to the Government side I do not know, but the Government are landing us in confusion at the end of the Bill just as they started in confusion at the beginning.
I do not know whether there is any reply to this or not. There must be sonic adequate reason for this change. Therefore, I shall hand over the reins of high policy to my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields who, from his singular position, may be able to advise 1285 us whether we should employ the singular "is" or the plural "are" in the Clause which the Government are seeking to amend.
§ Mr. EdeHeaven forbid that I should endeavour to criticise the way in which Scotsmen use the English language. That is a matter for them. My hon. Friend has said that there was some strong personality in the Government who had prevailed in this matter. After listening to the Scottish Ministers tonight, and remembering their appalling exhibition yesterday at Question Time, I would inquire from him who of them could possibly have been the strong personality?
§ Amendment agreed to.
§ Mr. J. N. BrowneI beg to move, in page 28, line 45, at the end to insert:
12. References in this Schedule to a buildings authority are references to a buildings authority which is not a dean of guild court.This is a purely drafting Amendment, a matter of style.
§ Mr. WillisI cannot understand why these words should be at the end of the Schedule when they are already at the head of the Schedule. They occur in the heading; why do we need a paragraph at the end to say the same thing? If it is correct to do this in the case of the Second Schedule why is it not to be done in the case of the First and the Third Schedules? That would be the logic of it.
What is the justification for making the Amendment? The Joint Under-Secretary of State has said that this is a matter of style, but we are concerned with law. We are concerned with making something intelligible to the ordinary county councillor and town councillor in Scotland. They have to deal with these matters. Why should we clutter up the Bill with all sorts of meaningless nonsense because lawyers consider this a question of style?
A phrase is put into an Act of Parliament because it means something and it is necessary to put it in. Otherwise we might think the Act meant something else. What is the justification for including this paragraph? None of these provisions could apply to anything else, coming, as they do, under the heading which says that they are 1286
provisions relating to buildings authorities which are not dean of guild courts.If we put in the new paragraph 12 we should miss out the heading. I suggest that would be a matter of style.What is this style business? The Solicitor-General for Scotland will no doubt give us a learned dissertation on the question of legal style and tell us why it becomes necessary to put in these words. I can see that he is looking it up in a brief. I hope we shall have the benefit of his advice. Undoubtedly this will be another of those things which goes back to the Parliament of 1605, or may be earlier. It may be an old Scots custom of 1550. I do not know, but we ought to be told. Probably the Solicitor-General is the proper person to do it, because he is more familiar with legal style than is the Joint Under-Secretary. Having been warned that this question would be raised, perhaps the Solicitor-General will now let us have the answer.
§ Mr. G. M. ThomsonI have listened to many speeches from my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis) in many Committees and I have always felt that he was completely right and the Government were completely wrong. This time I think my hon. Friend has completely misunderstood the matter and that he was all at sea. The Government are quite right here. The Amendment clearly has been proposed because it is a matter of legal style.
The difficulty my hon. Friend is in is that he seems to think that the purpose of legal style is to encourage clarity. Of course the purpose of legal style is to make a thing as unintelligible and incomprehensible as possible so that lawyers may keep in employment. I am quite sure this was considered very bad legal style. I can see the lawyers and draftsmen looking at it and saying, "This is almost intelligible as it stands; is there not something we can do about it?" So they put forward this Amendment. I am convinced that must be the reason for it.
After all, if Acts of Parliament were written in a style which was clear and intelligible and in good English there would be very little work for the lawyers and Parliamentary Counsel. Most dreadful of all, there might be no work at all for either the Solicitor-General or the Lord Advocate. We might not need 1287 them sitting with their feet up on the Table looking up reference books to find answers.
I should be interested to hear from the Government whether my hon. Friend is right, or whether the view I have expressed is right.
§ Mr. BrowneI have listened to many speeches by the hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis), but I have never heard him take so long simply to ask me what I meant by style. The position is quite simple. The only reference to the Second Schedule is in subsection (3) of Clause 2. There would be nothing very wrong in leaving the Bill as it stands, but the title of the Schedule does not have the force of law. We thought it would he for the convenience of those county councillors to whom the hon. Member was referring if, as a matter of style, we put it in the Schedule itself rather than in the title. There is nothing more sinister—
§ Mr. WillisIf that is true of the Second Schedule, should not we do the same for the First Schedule, because the title of the First Schedule has no effect in law? Should not we do the same for the Third Schedule and the other Schedules?
§ 9.0 p.m.
§ Mr. BrowneAnyone reading these Schedules will realise that they refer to the dean of guild court, etc. The Second Schedule could easily be mistaken for a Schedule that had a wider reference than county authorities. For that reason, and in order to make the Bill as correct as possible, my right hon. Friend thought that this Amendment, slight as it was, should be put down.
§ Amendment agreed to.