New Clause.—(COMMENCEMENT.) (Hansard, 22 March 1965)

§ Sir David Renton (Huntingdonshire)
I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.
The effect of the new Clause would be to bring the Bill into operation on days to be appointed instead of the day on which the Bill receives the Royal Assent. I Feel bound to protest most strongly 182 about the Report stage starting at this late hour at this early stage of the Session. I understand that this was arranged through the usual channels and, therefore, my protest is purely personal.
The Government attach importance to the Bill; it is a fairly important Measure, although, I suggest, not an urgent one. That is one of the reasons for the new Clause. It is unfortunate that we should have to discuss a Bill which is designed to improve the reform of the law—and which, therefore, in itself should be an example to all other Bills, if I may put it that way—which is not well conceived and perfectly drafted. The Government's precise intentions, however, are still so vague and the Bill's provisions so imperfect that it still needs a lot of careful attention, which we shall now have to give to it during the midnight hours which lie ahead of us.
However, the new Clause is intended to help the Government, and I hope that the Minister without Portfolio, when he replies, will feel that he is able to express his gratitude for it. It means that the Law Commission for England and Wales will not be set up until a day appointed by the Lord Chancellor and that the Scottish Law Commission will not be set up until a day appointed by the Secretary of State and the Lord Advocate. I apologise for the omission of the word "and" between "Secretary of State" and "Lord Advocate"on the Notice Paper. I accept full responsibility for this. That minor omission does not, however, alter the sense of the new Clause in any way or prevent us from discussing its underlying principles.
The reason for proposing the new Clause is partly financial and partly administrative. The financial implications are these. The Explanatory and Financial Memorandum, which was published with the first print of the Bill dated 20th January, estimates the total expenditure in the first full year at £150,000 for the English and Welsh Commission and £60,000 for the Scottish Commission, a total of £210,000 in all.
Figures of that nature are frequently underestimated and costs are now rising faster than for some years. It might, therefore, be safer to say that the cost of the Bill in the first full year would be, in round figures, £¼ million and rising each year after that. How much it will rise 183 will depend upon the use that the Government make of the Commission and of the extent to which the Commission uses the opportunities given to it. The cost must, however, rise fairly fast beyond the £¼ million if the Commission is to become the really active body that the Government hope that it will become.
The Government are rightly worried about the enormous cost of Government expenditure and, no doubt, wish to save, whenever there is a chance to do so, on matters of low priority, on administrative luxuries as we might call them. I am sure that the Government are even more anxious to get their priorities right after reading Mr. Rees-Mogg in the Sunday Times yesterday when he said that The disappointing thing about the Labour Government is that it has been perverse in its priorities (and this from a party which has talked about little else). The Bill attempts to do even better something that has been done supremely well for many years: statute law revision. As an example of that, all Statutes between the years 1275 and 1770 are now in one volume of the Statutes Revised. So it is a wild exaggeration to talk about a lot of dead wood on the Statute Book. The repealing of obsolete Statutes has gone on with statute law revision, with consolidation of Statutes, codification of case law, law reform generally, in which Lord Butler, Lord Kilmuir, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead (Mr. Brooke) and others excelled. Such work will continue unless held up by lack of Parliamentary draftsmen and the Government's wrong sense of priorities in legislation. In other words, we shall have less time for law reform Bills if a lot of Parliamentary time is taken up by nationalisation Bills. So I say that this Bill, bearing in mind that law reform is already proceeding apace, is a Bill of low priority. It is an administrative luxury. It is, as I think is well known, a brain child of a charming and talented but new Lord Chancellor.

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Dr. Horace King)
Order. So far the right hon. and learned Member's speech has sounded to me very much like a Second Reading speech. I hope he will come to the new Clause.

§ Sir D. Renton
I was trying to avoid the former, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. What 184 I am trying to explain is that if the Bill is a low-priority type of Bill, then instead of its coming into operation immediately it gets the Royal Assent the Government should have the opportunity of considering the cost of the Bill in comparison with the cost of other Government services before bringing the Bill into operation, and before establishing each of the Law Commissions. What I am saying is that the Government might find, after further reflection, and after hearing all the criticism of the Bill in both Houses, that the money it will cost might be better spent on many socially more urgent matters. It would be out of order to mention the kind of other matters which have a higher priority from the point of view of social urgency than this Bill, but of course many examples would spring to the mind of any hon. Member in this House.

§ The Minister without Portfolio (Sir Eric Fletcher)
Give one.

§ Sir D. Renton
Oh, yes, indeed. I will indeed give one. The hon. Gentleman, going out of order, I think, has challenged me to give one, and I can give him several from my own constituency. I do not know whether he seriously means to press me—

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
If the Minister was out of order in issuing a challenge to the right hon. and learned Member, the right hon. and learned Member is also out of order in accepting it.

§ Sir D. Renton
I would respectfully agree, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, but on this occasion it was I who, in a sense, ruled the hon. Gentleman out of order before you had done so, and so it was that I accepted the challenge for the time being; but I entirely accept your Ruling.
I do not think I need deploy this case any further. It is a perfectly clear and obvious one. The case can be summarised by saying that this Bill is an administrative luxury which should command only very low priority in Government expenditure; by accepting the new Clause the Government would have an opportunity of putting the cost of the Bill into its right place when they consider priorities of expenditure, whereas if we do not have this new Clause, or something like it, the Government will automatically be committed 185 to the whole of the cost of the Bill on the day when it receives the Royal Assent.

§ Sir Knox Cunningham (Antrim, South)
I wish to support my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) and to join with him in saying that it would seem a great pity that the Government should decide that the Report stage of this Bill should be considered at this late hour. There may be quite a lot of discussion on a number of Amendments, some of which are Government Amendments.
This appears to be a low priority type of Bill, and I hope, therefore, that the Government will accept the proposed new Clause. That would give them time to get the priorities right. If they leave the Bill as it is, it will come into force as soon as it becomes an Act. I have been pressing the Minister and others to consolidate the Merchant Shipping Acts. I have been told that these are matters which take a great deal of time and are not urgent. That is the sort of thing which the Commissioners could do, and therefore, by the words and action of the Government, this Bill would appear to be a low priority type of Measure. I hope that we may get agreement about this proposed new Clause. We are trying to help the Minister, and I hope that he will be able to accept it.

§ Sir Eric Fletcher
In the two speeches to which the House has listened we have been told that this is an important Bill and that it is an administrative luxury. Both propositions cannot be right. We consider this an important Bill to which the House gave an unopposed Second Reading. I do not think that it lies in the mouth of the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) to protest at the fact that we are discussing this Clause at this hour. May I remind the right hon. and learned Gentleman that this Clause appeared on the Order Paper in his name during the Committee stage discussions and was withdrawn then at his request because it would not have been convenient for him to have been present in the Committee. Otherwise the Motion would have been moved then. I do not think that it rests with him to protest at this stage when what happened was for his personal convenience.
186 I am sure that the right hon. and learned Gentleman would be the first to recognise that this is a wrecking Amendment. He attempted to convince the House that it was put down in the most friendly and engaging manner and that he hoped it would be accepted. He must know there is no substance in the suggestion that the Bill should do other than come into operation as early as possible. During the Second Reading debate his right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir J. Hobson) paid the Bill a rather lukewarm tribute. He said, in terms, that he did not think the Bill would do any harm and did not think it would do very much good. The House has decided that it wishes the Bill to proceed and we cannot go over the merits of it.
The question is when the Bill should come into operation when it becomes an Act. If it is to do good, obviously the sooner it comes into operation the better, and therefore it should follow the normal course and come into effect as soon as it receives the Royal Assent. The Amendment, even had it been acceptable, would have no merits. Its acceptance would merely mean that after the Bill had obtained the Royal Assent it would be necessary for the Lord Chancellor to lay a Statutory Instrument providing that the Act should thereupon come into operation, and so it would, even though it would be open to either House to move a Prayer to negative it. That is unnecessary, and would be an absurd procedure. It is obviously the wish of both parties that, if we are to have this Law Commission, the sooner it is set up the better.
10.15 p.m.
It is quite idle of the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire to pretend that there would be some niggardly saving of a few pounds by postponing the operation of the Bill for a few months. I can assure him that it is the intention of the Government that this Bill should have a high priority. We do not regard it as in any sense an administrative luxury. We regard it as a desirable and essential measure of law reform and an essential preliminary to measures of law reform which are long overdue. Therefore I hope that, having listened to the speeches, the House will 187 resist the new Clause, even if the right hon. and learned Gentleman feels inclined to pursue it.