Clause 99.—(INTERPRETATION.) (Hansard, 25 January 1967)

§ Mr. Willey
I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Eric Fletcher)
Would it be convenient to take, with this Amendment, the following Amendments: Nos. 22, 23, 24 and 26?

§ Mr. Willey
Yes, Sir. The Amendment is designed to bring the Bill in line with the Transfer of Functions Order which is at present before the House.

§ Mr. Boyd-Carpenter
We should be given more explanation of the Amendment. After all, this is the right hon. Gentleman's own funeral and he should be a little more decorous about it. We wish to see the final obsequies conducted with a certain dignity. It would be an affectation on my part if I were to indicate great grief at what the right hon. Gentleman has said. As he knows, I have always contended that the creation of his separate Department was an appalling mistake.
The most popular item in the Government party's election manifesto last year was their undertaking to abolish a separate Ministry of Land and Natural Resources. I therefore attend the funeral in a singularly un-funereal spirit, but we should know a little more about this. This Bill was launched by a separate Ministry of Land and Natural Resources and taken through another place with the Ministers in the Bill described as "the appropriate Ministers"—a phrase which one might think questionable. Then, by the use of the vehicle of another place, at the last stage, these wholesale changes in nomenclature were made.
Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us a little about the timing? Is it that the Prime Minister decided that the right hon. Gentleman should be like the bee—having inserted this bitter sting into the body of the nation, he dies?

§ Mr. Graham Page
I think there is a point of more seriousness than my right hon. Friend has made.

§ Mr. Boyd-Carpenter
Even more serious?

§ Mr. Page
Even more serious. Throughout the Bill there was a distinction between the Minister of Land and Natural Resources and the Minister of 1705 Housing and Local Government. We rather rested on that distinction at times when we considered that the Minister of Housing and Local Government is the Minister of planning and the Minister of Land and Natural Resources is not the Minister of planning. There was a certain sort of safeguard to the public between the exercise of directions to the Land Commission and the exercise of planning duties by the Minister of Housing and Local Government.
I understand that by this Amendment the Minister of Housing and Local Government will have power to give directions to the Commissioner in all cases. He is the master of the Land Commission, but at the same time he is the master of planning. What happens when there is some planning appeal by the Commission or in which it is concerned and it has to go to a public inquiry before an inspector of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government? Surely the Minister will be judge, jury and advocate in his own cause.
Previously we had always understood and argued on the basis that the Commission was quite separate from planning. If the Land Commission is to be the adopted child of the Minister of Housing and Local Government and the Minister is also the planning lord of all, there will be confusion and lack of safeguard for the public.

§ Mr. Graham Page
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The right hon. Gentleman being now dead and defunct and no longer the Minister, can he now move the next Amendment?

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Eric Fletcher)
It is perfectly in order for him to do so.