HC Deb 17 July 1962 vol 663 cc297-313

In any proceedings under subsection (6) of section one hundred and eighty-six of the principal Act against the holder of a carrier's licence for failure to comply with the provisions of that section or of regulations made for the purposes thereof it shall be a defence to prove that he used all due diligence to secure compliance with those provisions.—[Mr. Hay.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

Mr. Hay

I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.

A very similar new Clause to this was moved in Committee by my hon. Friend the Member for Truro (Mr. G. Wilson). We had a very interesting debate on it, at the end of which I said that we would consider the discussion which had taken place and, in the light of it, decide whether to move a Government new Clause at this stage of the Bill.

I have to tell the House, as is apparent from the new Clause, that in the light of the discussion and in all the circumstances my right hon. Friend has come to the conclusion that we should accept the comparatively minor principle involved. I use the words "comparatively minor" because in Committee there was some misunderstanding among hon. Members opposite about what the effect of this Clause would be. Hon. Members, quite rightly, were anxious to see that we should do nothing by accepting the principle behind the Clause to weaken the very stringent law which we have on the keeping of records of commercial vehicles. We have looked at it very carefully with those fears in mind, and we have come to the conclusion that in these circumstances they are not justified. That is why we have put down the new Clause.

May I briefly outline what the Clause does? Section 186 of the Road Traffic Act, 1960, says that the holder of a carrier's licence must keep or must cause to be kept current records which show the hours of work of everyone whom he employs as a driver. At the same time, he must keep particulars, or cause particulars to be kept, of every journey of a vehicle When goods are carried. This is an absolute obligation in every respect, and the obligation is on the employer to see that the records are kept. There is also an obligation on drivers to carry the necessary documents and to make the necessary entries on those documents.

But as the law stands, if the employer were prosecuted for not complying with the statutory provision, and if it were shown that an offence had been committed by the driver even without the employer knowing anything about it, the employer would stand to be convicted because of the failure of his employee.

Mr. Mellish

Quite right.

Mr. Hay

The hon. Member says "Quite right"—and that is what the debate is about. We have taken the view that in those circumstances to place or continue to place an absolute obligation and liability upon employers is a little unreasonable, and that is why we have tabled the new Clause.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Truro will have noticed, it differs somewhat from the new Clause which he tabled in Committee. In particular, at the end of the Clause we have used words which I understand from the draftsmen are somewhat traditional and which I will quote: it shall be a defence"— this is for the employer— to prove"— the obligation is upon the employer to prove and not upon anyone else— that he used all due diligence to secure compliance with those provisions namely, the provisions of Section 186 of the Road Traffic Act. 1960.

I emphasise that all we do here is to give an employer in that situation nothing more or less than the opportunity of raising this as a defence—of raising it in a way which is somewhat difficult in any event to prove, because he has to prove that he used all due diligence and, as hon. Members who are lawyers know, that is not an easy thing to do.

I suggest to the House that the number of cases in which this will arise— as I said in Committee—is comparatively small. Nevertheless, I think that there is a principle involved. If my right hon. Friend or myself or those who advise us thought for one moment that the effect of putting this Clause into the Bill would be to reduce the degree of observance of the law relating to the keeping of records, we should not touch it. I assure the House of that. But we have come to the conclusion that to ask the employer of transport drivers to continue to accept an absolute responsibility, to which he has no defence at all under the Statute, for the accuracy of the records kept by every one of his employees is unreasonable. It means that one would have to assume almost that the employer was at the shoulder of the employee every minute of the day when he was on duty to see that the forms were properly completed.

That is quite impossible, as we realise, and it is only fair, and certainly reasonable, to give such employers the opportunity, and it is no more than that, of raising as a defence the point that they used all due diligence to comply with the regulations. This is all that the Clause seeks to do.

Mr. Mellish

I wish to put on record that I am expressing a personal view and not necessarily the view of my party, but I have made inquiries of the Transport and General Workers' Union, the largest union in the country representing those who drive heavy lorries, and I am assured that at no time has any employer approached the union and made the sort of complaint that the hon. Member for Truro (Mr. G. Wilson) has been able to advance in Committee to convince the Minister to bring forward this new Clause.

I know that the Parliamentary Secretary regards this as a comparatively minor matter and one not to be worried about very much. I can assure him that that is not the view of those who represent the men. As I said in Standing Committee when we discussed the overall principle of keeping records, we are concerned with the minority. The vast majority of road transport employers are first class. They do their best to ensure that their men keep to the regulation 11 hours maximum a day, because it is for the benefit of the employers and the men and their families. Any man who exceeds these hours of driving a heavy goods vehicle is a danger to himself and to the community.

The vast majority of employers do not need this sort of legislation to help them. They keep the records, and keep them very well. Nor are the vast majority of employers worried about the Ministry's inspectors, of whom, unfortunately, we have not enough. They do a first-class job and I suppose that one of the reasons why we do not have enough of them is that they are not sufficiently well paid.

It is a known fact, however, that there are great abuses among a minority of employers and drivers. We are now to alter the law and say that it will be a defence for an employer that he used all due diligence to secure compliance with the law. The shrewd employer will say that he told his men to keep records. Once this is written into an Act of Parliament that defence will be accepted by the courts in the vast majority of cases. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] That is how I read the Bill. The employer will use that defence and will "get away with it." At present, it is no defence to say that it was the driver who did something or other. If a driver commits an offence in connection with hours of work the employer is also involved. This is why the vast majority of good employers see that their drivers play the game. I honestly think, therefore, that by this proposal we are opening the door.

Has the Ministry been inundated with letters from employers about this? I do not believe it. Why not leave well alone? Why go out of our way to upset those who are doing a first-class job and who wish to co-operate with the Ministry? I am sure that the Parliamentary Secretary will have to say that at no time did the Ministry have discussions with the trade unions on this matter, or seek their advice. The Ministry has taken the advice of the hon. Member for Truro. I am all for salving the heartaches of back benchers, but not when other people are involved in this way.

I am sure that if there were more Ministry of Transport inspectors more records would be kept and that we should have greater proof of my case to submit to the Minister. I am sorry that it has been found necessary at this stage to propose the new Clause.

6.45 p.m.

Mr. Geoffrey Wilson (Truro)

I assure the hon. Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish): that the Clause was no invention of mine. This is a long-standing complaint. I moved something like this Clause not only in Standing Committee on this Bill, but on a previous Bill six years ago, and on both occasions on the advice of haulage organisations which, for many years, have complained that cases arise from time to time which seem unfair to their members.

I gave an excellent example of this not only in discussions on this Bill, but in debate on a previous Measure. It was a case where a driver who was trying to make some extra money deliberately altered his log-book and represented that he had stopped at the right time, had not exceeded the proper hours of driving, and had spent a night somewhere. He claimed a lodging allowance from his employer, but, in fact, he had driven home, thereby much exceeding the proper number of hours of driving. An employer has no means of discovering this without following his men home. The facts were admitted, but the employer was convicted.

I agree that there are not many of these cases, but there have been two or three regularly every year over a long period. I have been told that there have been some quite recently, though not in the same circumstances, where a court has accepted that the employer had done everything that he could reasonably do to see that the regulations were kept and yet has convicted him. It is only in these circumstances that the employer wishes to take advantage of this Clause.

I congratulate my right hon. and hon. Friends on going back to the words "all due diligence". I had not thought of that, but it is a phrase with which I am familiar because for a short time I was in a Parliamentary Agents' office and this is a hallowed phrase in Parliamentary draftsmanship which, I think, will meet the case admirably. I do not think that the hon. Member for Bermondsey need fear that a great number of his union employees will be prosecuted, but a few employers will have justice done to them. Nothing is more galling for a man than to be convicted, even if the conviction is nominal, in circumstances in which he feels he has a grievance and has dons nothing to merit conviction.

Mr. Glenvil Hall

I understand that this proposal makes no change whatever in the law. It will be still necessary for these records to be kept. All it does is to give the employer the right of defence in certain cases. This causes me to wonder why the horn. Member for Truro (Mr. G. Wilson) is so pleased with what has been done. One of two things will result. Either this defence will be upheld in very many cases, or else it will be a dead letter.

Mr. G. Wilson

I am pleased because there have been a number of cases in which the court admitted that there was no fault on the part of the employer, but, nevertheless, as the law now stands, the court was bound to convict.

Mr. Glenvil Hall

That is why I can well imagine that one union in particular is rather suspect.

In Committee, I had enormous sympathy with the hon. Member. I thought that part of his case was that it was very difficult for the owner of a butcher's or baker's van, running round the town, to keep a record of the mileage of each journey. Quite frankly, I was in favour of abolishing that, and retaining the requirement that a record shall be kept of the hours a man works, so that the employer can be checked by the inspectors. Here, as I understand it, we are falling between two stools; we are helping neither the one nor the other.

Mr. Cole

I can tell the right hon. Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Glenvil Hall) why some of us are pleased with this new Clause. It is anathema in English law that a man shall have no right to any kind of defence, and that is the present position. The position is the same in regard to a pedestrian crossing. The motorist is always at fault if the pedestrian rushes on to the crossing. I hope that one day we shall also change that state of the law.

In the present case, the employer is always wrong if his employee is convicted, and I am glad that the law is to be changed in that respect. The courts know that, in the past, the employer has always been guilty at law, and if the hon. Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish) really thinks that the court will accept the employer's bare statement that he did all he could the hon. Gentleman is much more naive than I believe him to be. They will want the sort of proof to which my hon. Friend the Member for Truro (Mr. G. Wilson) referred —that the man worked longer than he should in order to get home, and yet claimed for subsistence. The courts will want to be satisfied that the log-books are inspected regularly, and so on.

The hon. Member for Bermondsey says that the members of the T. & G.W.U. may not like the law to be amended, but if a driver member of the trade union is prosecuted under the law as it now is, but knows that he has been told to break the law by his employer, why cannot he say so? It will then be for the employer to prove himself guiltless. With respect, I think that the hon. Member is making a lot of bother over something which is not the greatest issue in the world, but which puts right something that should have been put right long ago.

Mr. Ede (South Shields)

I support my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish) in his oppo- sition to the Clause. My experience as a magistrate tells me that here is a wonderful phrase to discuss in the magistrates' room after the employer's counsel has done his best. The hon. Member for Truro (Mr. G. Wilson) says that "all due diligence" is a phrase of which the draftsmen are very fond—

Mr. G. Wilson

Yes.

Mr. Ede

That does not impress me very much. Most of the discussions I have heard in the magistrates' room have been about just that sort of phrase.

The hon. Member for Bedfordshire, South (Mr. Cole) gave us his view of what due diligence is. I suppose that it amounts to putting up a notice in the works; impressing on a man, when first employed, that his employer expects him never to break the law at all and will not stand behind him if he does—all that sort of thing.

It has been a great protection to many employees that the law has been very severe on employers who intend to sweat their men as much as possible. I cannot believe that it would be in the interests of safety on the roads for this absolute liability on the owner to be withdrawn. I cannot accept the view that the employee can be expected to say, "I did this because the boss told me to." Any better way than that of the man asking for his cards I cannot imagine—

Mr. Cole

Does the right hon. Gentleman really think that, after an employee has been charged in court, the employer, knowing that it is his employee's entire fault, will in any case keep him on in the job?

Mr. Ede

One has to have regard to the probabilities—

Mr. Mellish

That is the safeguard today. At present, the employee commits an offence of which the employer is probably not aware, but, as a consequence, both employee and employer are fined. The first thing the employer then does is to sack the man and, as a trade unionist, I think that it is absolutely right that he should. No trade union would support such a member.

Mr. Ede

That is as good an answer as can be given to the hon. Member.

The enforcement of the traffic laws depends on the willingness of magistrates to convict, and anyone who has sat as a magistrate on a bench consisting half of motorists and half of non-motorists knows how long can be the argument on the most trivial point. The words of the Clause must have some meaning. They do not say that the employer just has to be diligent; the words are "used all due diligence". The word "due" can waste quite a lot of time, just before lunch, in trying to reach a decision.

The Parliamentary Secretary is a lawyer, and a very good one, but I wonder whether he has ever sat in a magistrates' room after he has addressed the bench in some such case and found that, after they have taken half or three-quarters of an hour to decide, the magistrates give just the answer that he did not expect. That is a quite frequent experience of advocates in magistrates' courts, and they then try to work out why it happened—

Mr. Hay

It is not the advocate who tries to work out how it happened; it is the client.

Mr. Ede

Unfortunately, that is the one thing the advocate does not leave to his client; he insists on trying to find out for himself.

Our experience before the present law was enacted should make us very anxious not to reform it in the way suggested here. If the magistrates find the case proved, but it appears to them that the employee has let the employer down, they can always indicate their view by the penalties they inflict on the respective parties. I hope that we shall not accept the new Clause, because I am sure that to do so will mean a great deal of unnecessary hard work and long hours for many drivers, and will lead to other road users being exposed to the danger of tired drivers being on the roads when, according to the law, they should be off them.

7.0 p.m.

Mr. Mapp

I am entirely against the new Clause. Three or four years ago it became my responsibility to look at two or three hundred work notes a day. I was not unfamiliar with what was involved, or with the ways and means by which the work notes could be in- accurate, either by design or accident. I am not without knowledge of what it means to ensure that drivers do as the Act intends and what good employers will insist upon from day to day. If drivers on two, three or four occasions are not prepared to see the light when they have been warned that they are exceeding the 11- or 12-hour day, the employer must take the necessary action.

With all due deference to the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish), I want to say carefully and cautiously that, with the incentive system which applies to the movement of freight on the roads, there is now a built in interest on the part of employer and employee. I want to say without much reservation that the good employee and the good employer manifestly endeavour to abide by the law. Magistrates know that in the main that type of employer and employee do not come before the courts. There are many avenues of police approach between the alleged offence and the case coming before the courts. Where the evidence in the minds of the police indicates that it was an unfortunate occurrence, the case does not reach the courts. It is only when the police and others are fully satisfied that the case has arisen from a background about which the magistrates will never know anything that the case is brought before the courts.

Only this last weekend my attention was called to a public carrier in the north of England who the weekend before last worked one of his men for 16 hours entirely against the law. I know of another instance where another member of a Government service was asked to do so but declined. We must not open the flood gates, even though this may be only a small gate. This is the kind of relaxation which ought to be made. I realise that there is a theoretical point, which the hon. Member for Bedfordshire, South (Mr. Cole) advanced. But it is my experience that in the main courts are not troubled with cases which have arisen as a result of an isolated occurrence or by accident. The courts are troubled with cases where the background is doubtful.

Mr. G. Wilson

I take it that as a railwayman the hon. Gentleman is thinking of cartage and delivery vehicles which are worked daily. Has he had experience of the long-distance vehicle which is away for two or three days at a time, in which case the employer has far less chance of checking the accuracy of the log than he has with a day-to-day vehicle?

Mr. Mellish

This is the whole point of our argument. When the employer is aware that his employee may commit an offence when he is away from the depot for two or three days perhaps, it should make the employer all the more determined to impress upon the employee the necessity of keeping proper records. If that incentive is taken away, the type of employer we have in mind may well transgress the law.

Mr. Speaker

Lest this be regarded as a precedent, may I express the wish that we do not have interventions upon interventions.

Mr. Mapp

The short answer to the intervention of the hon. Member for Truro (Mr. G. Wilson) is that even railway companies engage in road transport, and those operations are controlled. I have been an overseer at a major terminal. That point is not valid.

I suspect the origin of the Clause. The hon. Member for Truro admitted parentage. In that case I think we should treat it with great reservation. The Clause would turn the clock back, not forward, and I am unhappy about it.

Mr. F. P. Crowder (Ruislip-Northwood)

I was interested in what the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) said about the words "due diligence". I know from personal experience that he has many years experience of sitting as a magistrate, particularly in Surrey and at Kingston. I agree with him that these words are bad and can be improved upon. They might worry magistrates. What on earth do the words "due diligence" mean? They are just the type of words we would expect to emanate from a Government Department. I cannot remember seeing them in an Act before.

I suggest that the Government remove the words "due diligence" and say, "took reasonable steps having regard to all the circumstances of the case to secure compliance with those provisions". Magistrates understand the word "reasonable". The words "reasonable doubt" have been bandied about in the Court of Criminal Appeal for years and people have begun to think that they might mean something. It would help if some such alteration were made to make it clearer.

Mr. J. T. Price

I support the objections which have been expressed against the Clause. However charitably-minded one might have been to redress an injustice if it can be shown to be an injustice, the fact remains that the overall effect of the Clause would be to weaken the law. There is not the slightest doubt that the law would be weakened as to the requirement to keep proper records. In contradistinction to what we did in the last new Clause in an effort to reduce danger on the roads, this Clause may increase danger on the roads. It introduces a new factor which may lead to logs and records not being properly kept.

I want to make a practical point which has not been mentioned before, otherwise I would not waste the time of the House. It is not a debating point. It is well known that any civil servant who has to enforce protective legislation always looks very cautiously at the prospect of securing a conviction before he makes a charge. This is true of the Factories Act, the Dangerous Drugs Act and all kinds of legislation with which the House is concerned.

It is not sufficient for hon. Members to ask, "Why should there be this absolute duty, to which there is no defence, on an employer to keep proper records?" Our legislation teems with absolute duties placed on employers to do all sorts of things. In support of this contention I need only quote Section 16 of the Factories Act and certain Sections of the Dangerous Drugs Act which place absolute requirements on employers.

Mr. Cole

I did not make that point. I should be the first to agree that an employer must comply with the law and keep log books. The position at law is that if on some occasion the law is broken, perhaps entirely by the employee, the employer willy-nilly is guilty.

Mr. Price

I am obliged for that intervention. I do not wish to submit an unfair argument. We are all broad-minded enough and sufficiently aware of what takes place in the world to know that, once a gap of this kind is opened, certain people will take advantage of it. If the law is being weakened and if it is being made more difficult to secure a conviction where a conviction ought to be secured, the civil servant who has to initiate the proceedings will be less anxious and less ready to make it his charge if he knows that this defence is open. I do not believe that that is being unfair on anyone who is operating according to the law.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish) mentioned that there might exist an unscrupulous minority of operators who will see in the Clause as "open sesame" to enter into collusion with drivers. It should be remembered that the driver will not be prosecuted, for he does not hold a carrier's licence. When an extraordinary job requires to be done a driver might be asked to do 15 or 16 hours instead of the prescribed 11, the operator saying, "We shall say that we did not give you any such instructions."

An unscrupulous employer faced with a difficult situation might be prepared to offer a sufficiently high inducement— in the form of overtime or in some other way—to a driver to break the law. To enable that to take place is bad, antisocial and against the intentions of the Bill, which hopes to increase road safety. The new Clause would weaken the Bill and tend to increase dangers on the road by causing men, perhaps in a limited minority of cases, to drive for longer hours than they should.

Mr. Hay

I must confess that I do not take quite as gloomy a view as some hon. Members opposite. As I said when I introduced the Clause, we felt that this was a fair and reasonable change to make because we do not intend, to use the words of the hon. Member for Oldham, East (Mr. Mapp), to "open the floodgates" to all manner of contraventions of the provisions of the Road Traffic Act relating to the keeping of records. We intend only to provide a statutory defence which would be available to an employer who is charged with an offence which, at the moment, is absolute in its nature.

It is straining language to say, as the hon. Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish) said, that this will be, in effect, a charter to enable the bad minority of transport employers to break the law. Let us take the case cited by the hon. Member on its face value, accepting, as I do, that the great majority of employers of road transport drivers are good people who keep the law. Let us accept that there is a small minority of bad employers. Is that any reason why any member of that bad minority who may unwittingly have broken the law should be shut out from pleading in his defence that he was temporarily not a member of that bad minority?

Let us, for example, take the case of a firm where offences take place regularly—really bad employers. Let us imagine that on one occasion the firm was not really responsible for a default. As the law stands there is absolutely no defence. Why should we deny to the sinner the opportunity we would like to give to the virtuous? I suggest to the hon. Member for Bermondsey that it is going a little too far to pretend that the affect of this is to enable all the bad employers to "get away with it". It is not that at all.

The hon. Member for Bermondsey then said that when a matter of this sort reaches the court it will be easy for an employer who has contravened the law to bamboozle the magistrates by saying that he told the driver to keep proper records. The fact that records were not kept is sad, but it is a matter for the magistrates to adjudicate, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bedfordshire, South (Mr. Cole) pointed out. Magistrates are not as simple as we may be sometimes inclined to think, or to say they are. They know their job and I am sure that if they have this sort of situation before them—with an employer pleading the statutory defence and saying, "I use all due diligence to see that my men keep the law"—the magistrates will be able to sift out the cases and satisfy themselves as to whether the defence has proved that it has a defence positive.

7.15 p.m.

The right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) raised an important matter—supported from a rather unexpected quarter, by my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip—Northwood (Mr. Crowder)—regarding the phrase "all due diligence". This phrase has substantial precedents. It was used most recently in Section 113 of the Food and Drugs Act, 1955, and in Section 156 of the Mines and Quarries Act, 1954. Both of those Statutes offer a defence to an employer who is otherwise made absolutely liable for the act or default of an employee.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood suggested that we might use a different phrase from "all due diligence". He thought that a phrase which included the word "reasonable" might help. We have deliberately kept to the phrase "all due diligence" because, if a defendant must prove that he "used all due diligence to secure compliance with" the provisions for the keeping of proper records he must show that he did not consent to what happened. That is to say, he must show that he did not know that it had happened and that it was contrary to his instructions that it had happened.

If the prosecution brings evidence to show that the employer knew, or that he must reasonably be treated as having known of a failing to keep records, then, obviously, the statutory defence of the Clause must fall. Absence of knowledge is quite beside the point. The point is that where the employer has made every effort to keep records properly and accurately—

Mr. Steele

Surely the Parliamentary Secretary is bringing in something new. In his opening remarks he made it clear that it was not for the prosecution to prove that the man had not been diligent, but for the man to prove that he had been.

Mr. Hay

The prosecution produces its evidence and then, when the time comes for the defence to have its say, presumably the defence would raise this statutory defence—that the defendant did use all due diligence. It is always then open to the prosecution to cross-examine, or, in certain circumstances, to bring other evidence. This is a matter of fact. It is not a sort of general subjective exercise that the magistrates are asked to go through, almost metaphysical in its nature. The magistrates must discover whether or not the defendant took all physical steps open to him to ensure that the law was kept.

With respect to the right hon. Member for South Shields and his extensive knowledge of magistrates' courts, I do not think that the average magisterial bench today would be in all that difficulty in a case of this kind. After all, we rely on the magistrates to use their common sense as well as such knowledge of the law as they acquire from their experience. I would not mind betting that the great majority of magistrates, faced with a case of one of the really bad minority who is trying to plead this defence, would soon see through it. This question is a matter of opinion and I cannot prove it to the satisfaction of the House. I would be prepared to leave such a matter to the good sense of the magistrates' courts.

I understand the feelings of hon. Members opposite, but I assure them that we do not think that the Clause is likely to lead to the evil consequences which some of them have said it will. We think that it is a legitimate and fair exception to make in the law, and I hope that the House will agree to it

Mr. Strauss

The House is in a real difficulty. The Parliamentary Secretary says—and we accept the logic of his argument—that there is an injustice which should be removed in that a man who has been, and can prove that he has been, in no way responsible for the commission of an offence should be entitled to plead that in court. We all accept that there is a strong argument in favour of that contention. On the other hand, my hon. Friends and the unions involved are fearful that if the new Clause is accepted it will lead to a relaxation of the present provisions which protect men from being unduly overworked.

The Parliamentary Secretary said that he is certain, and presumably his right hon. Friend is also, that the fears of my hon. Friends and the unions are not justified and that if the new Clause is accepted there will be no relaxation of the present strict provisions about the keeping of books. In these circumstances, I think that the right course for us its to say that there is an injustice under the existing legislation which should be removed to enable a man to plead that he was in no way responsible for a breach of the law.

We accept the Minister's assurance that the new Clause will not have a harmful effect on record-keeping and consequently on the hours which employees have to work. If the unions find that this happens in spite of what has been said by the Minister, they will be entitled to go to him and say, "We accepted your assurance, but we find that your promise has not been implemented. Therefore, it is up to you to put things right".

We realise that there is an injustice, but, if the Minister's assurance is not fulfilled, we shall come down on him like a ton of bricks and demand that he puts the matter right by further legislation.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause read a Second time, and added to the Bill.