Clause 22.—(CITATION, COMMENCEMENT AND EXTENT.) (Hansard, 16 November 1966)

§ Mr. Graham Page (Crosby)
I beg to move, in page 11, line 41, to leave out 'month' and to insert 'year'.
I am anxious to keep in order on this Amendment, and I know how delicate it is to keep in order on a Consolidation Measure. Therefore, I should perhaps mention first the circumstances leading up to this Amendment.
This consolidation Measure comes before the House by reason of a memorandum of the Lord Chancellor on 9th May, 1966, when he expressed the opinion that a Bill should be prepared for the purpose of consolidating the Sea Fisheries Regulation Acts 1888 to 1930 and certain other enactments relating to the sea fisheries of England and Wales … in pursuance of the Consolidation of Enactments (Procedure) Act 1949.' In pursuance of that, the memorandum was laid before the House on 10th May containing corrections and minor improvements to certain enactments relating to Sea Fisheries, proposed by the Lord Chancellor for the purpose of facilitating the consolidation of those enactments". That was referred to the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills. The Joint Committee reported, and, as a result of that Report, the Bill came back to the House on Second Reading and is now in the Committee stage. If I understand the procedure correctly, the contents of the Bill are, in fact, law so far as the Bill is consolidating previous enactments, but what is not law, and what we are entitled to discuss and debate during the Committee stage, is Clause 22 of the Bill which is the Title of the Bill, the commencement of it, and the extent of it. It is to that which this Amendment is directed in that the Bill itself in Clause 22 states: that it shall come into force at the expiration of a period of one month, 571 and the Amendment would substitute the one year for one month.
The purpose of that would be to allow the Government to bring in further consolidation of sea fishery law in that interim of one year. Therefore, I think I am entitled, under the Standing Orders of this House, to propose that the Bill be postponed in its effect for a period of 12 months instead of the one month stated in Clause 22.
My justification for asking for that postponement is that the Bill, as it stands, consolidates only a very small proportion of the law relating to sea fisheries. The Schedule of the Bill mentions only three Acts which are repealed out of 33 Acts which relate to sea fisheries. In the Schedule there is an Act of 1888, an Act of 1894 and an Act of 1930, which are wholly repealed and are embodied in this Measure. There are five other Statutes mentioned as being partly repealed and embodied in this Measure, whereas there are, in fact, 33 Statutes relating to sea fisheries, dating from 1771 to 1965, which are left out of this consolidation. It is my submission that this type of partial consolidation is of no real assistance and causes some confusion.
When the Joint House of Lords and House of Commons Committee appointed to consider all consolidation Bills, and particularly those pursuant to the Consolidation of Enactments (Procedure) Act, 1949, considered this Bill it tried to find some solution to the problem of a Measure which consolidates only part of the law on any particular subject. It recommended that in such a case there should be printed with the Bill a table of comparisons and derivations, so that anyone referring to the Measure might know what part of the law it consolidated.
It will be seen in cols. 21 and 22 of that Committee's Report that a Resolution was proposed and passed that such a table of comparisons should be printed with the Bill. That might solve some of the problems of this kind of part consolidation. The ordinary practitioner who has to deal with a Bill for part consolidation and not whole consolidation of one section of the law may be misled by thinking that he has in front of him a Measure 572 consolidating the whole law on the subject.
Perhaps I may be permitted to give a practical example of what may happen. By Clause 1, as it now stands, the Minister is entitled to make Orders creating sea fishery districts, and the sea fishery district covers the sea and the coast adjacent thereto. This is at present left in considerable doubt. Had the Government decided to consolidate the whole of sea fishery law, there would not have been any doubt. As it is, I fear that when an Order of the Minister comes before this House for consideration, and a sea fishery district is created by that Order, the House will be in some doubt about what is meant by "sea" or "coast" referred to in that Order. This doubt would never have existed had a full consolidation been made.
It may be very important to the subject, who has to submit to the orders and directions of a sea fishery officer who has certain powers within a sea fishery district. If the subject does not know what a sea fishery district is, he will not know whether to challenge the powers of the sea fishery officer when he may come to search a house near the coast or seize a lorry on the beach which has fishing tackle, or the like. With a part consolidation of this kind, the subject, who may possibly be committing criminal offences if he does certain acts within the sea fishery district, may be left in considerable confusion.
For that reason I have sought to have the operation of the Bill postponed, with the object of enabling full consolidation to be made of sea fishery law. I believe that no useful purpose is served by such piecemeal consolidation as this, and that only confusion is caused to the practitioner.

§ The Solicitor-General (Sir Dingle Foot)
The hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) always displays considerable ingenuity in finding ways in which he can canvas the provisions of Consolidation Measures which come before the House. On this occasion he is really saying that we ought never to have any piecemeal consolidation, we ought always to wait until we can consolidate the whole of the law.
573 As the hon. Gentleman has rightly said, we are dealing here with a large mass of Statutes. I think he said that there were 33 Statutes in all—I do not quarrel with his enumeration—dealing with sea fisheries. To consolidate the whole would be a considerable undertaking, and I notice that the hon. Gentleman did not realy relate his remarks to the Amendment, because the Amendment proposes that we should postpone the operation of this Measure, not for a month, but for a year.
I cannot undertake that within a year the whole of the 33 enactments could be consolidated, and therefore the choice for the House is whether we have this modest Measure of consolidation—and we discussed it the other day on Second Reading—or whether we have no consolidation at all. It was the view of the Committee, and it is the view of the Government, that it would be convenient to have this Measure of consolidation at the present stage.
The only specific point raised by the hon. Gentleman was how we defined the coast. This is not at all an easy matter. Do we define it by where the sea comes to at high water mark, or further inland?
This was raised by the Association of Sea Fisheries Committees of England and Wales—and naturally I treat it with the greatest respect—in a letter written from Truro. This letter was before the Committee when it considered the Bill, and perhaps I might refer the House to what was said by Mrs. Eadie, the Deputy Parliamentary Counsel, when she gave evidence before the Committee.
She said: What the Association are asking for, my Lord, is in effect a codification of the law 574 dealing with the powers, privileges and liabilities of a constable. That, I submit, is outside the scope of a Consolidation Bill, and in any case I also submit that a Bill dealing with Sea Fisheries is not an appropriate Bill in which to set out the law on this subject. It is clearly a subject which ought to find a place in an Act dealing with the Police and not with Sea Fisheries. Therefore, even if we were to go ahead and consolidate on the larger scale which the hon. Gentleman suggests, it would not follow that we would be dealing with the point which he has raised.
We discussed this two nights ago. I submit that this is in its modest way—and I do not put it higher than that—a useful Measure, and I therefore ask the House to reject the Amendment, and to allow this Measure to come into effect a month after it receives the Royal Assent.

§ Mr. Graham Page
Before the right hon. and learned Gentleman sits down, perhaps he would deal with the point about the Table of Comparison and Derivation. Why is it not possible to print it with the Statute? It would be a useful Schedule for the practitioner who has to deal with Acts of this sort.

§ The Solicitor-General
I hardly think that it is necessary with a Measure of this compass. If we were dealing with a larger Measure such as the hon. Gentleman suggested, we might well consider such a table.