HC Deb 03 February 1966 vol 723 cc1331-2
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Aviation (Mr. John Stone-house)

I beg to move Amendment No. 1, in page 2, line 34, after "as" to insert: 'may be proposed by the Corporation and approved by the Minister with the consent of the Treasury, or such other amount as". During our discussions in Standing Committee, the right hon. Member for Mitcham (Mr. R. Carr) proposed that the Exchequer equity dividend should be determined by the Corporation after consultation with the Minister. We had to oppose that proposal because we felt that the Minister should have responsibility for the final determination. However, we undertook to consider the right hon. Gentleman's proposal to see how far we could agree with it. This Amendment is the result of our consideration.

We do not accept the point which the right hon. Gentleman originally proposed, namely, that the Corporation should determine the rate. But we now accept that the Corporation should take the initiative in making the proposal and then the Minister will have the final decision. We believe that this will be a happy arrangement between the Corporation and the Ministry.

We thank the right hon. Gentleman for his proposal. We are sorry that we cannot accept it in full, but we hope that the Amendment will be acceptable to him and to the House.

Mr. R. Carr

I should like to express the Opposition's gratitude to the Parliamentary Secretary and the Minister for considering the arguments which we put forward, first, on Second Reading, and then in Committee. We realise that the Amendment does not go as far as we wanted, but we feel that it goes a very long way to meet us. We accept the Amendment.

Amendment agreed to.