(CONTINUITY.) (Hansard, 29 January 1968)

§ Mr. Graham Page
I beg to move, in page 91, line 24, to leave out from 'Act' to the end of line 25.
Subsection (6) begins by saying: 1032 In this and the next following section 'the repealed enactments' means the enactments repealed by Schedule 11 to this Act … That is straightforward. One has only to turn to Schedule 11 and there they are set out. But there follow in the subsection these unintelligible words: … and such of the enactments repealed by the Income Tax Act 1952 as correspond to the provisions of that Act so repealed. I could not understand what that meant. Whether "so repealed" refers to those repealed by this Bill, or the Income Tax Act, 1952, I do not know; although I gather that it must mean those repealed by the 1952 Act. On that assumption, the Government seem to assume that if they repeal one Act, they thereby revive anything repealed by that Act. This is saying that what was repealed by the 1952 Act shall not be revived now that we repeal the 1952 Act. According to Section 11 of the 1889 Interpretation Act, it does not revive them, and therefore, if these words are left in the Bill, they will show the present Government's ignorance of the existing law.

§ The Solicitor-General
It grieves me that the hon. Gentleman should torment himself with matters of this kind and the kind of arguments he has just addressed to the Committee. This Amendment arises relevant to Clause 97, which is the Clause having the purpose of ensuring that continuity of the operation of the Income Tax Acts and the Corporation Tax Acts shall not be affected by the substitution of this Bill for the repealed enactments. If anything in the repealed enactments has relevance, the continuity of that relevance must be preserved, and the preservation must be spelt out in the Bill. That is all that the Bill in its present form does.
The Bill is concerned with depreciation allowance for capital expenditure on industrial buildings, machinery and plant, mines, and matters of that kind. In all these things, writing down allowances may still be running on expenditure incurred before 6th April, 1952, when the Income Tax Act of 1952 came into force.
Even where such expenditure has been fully written off, if the asset is sold or put out of use after the coming into force of the present Bill it will be necessary to have regard to the amounts written off for years before as well as 1033 after the 1952 Act came into force in order to establish, in the case of a sale, that a balancing charge should be made on the ground that the sale price exceeds the original cost less the amount written off or, if the asset is scrapped, that the expenditure has been fully written off and no balancing charge is due.
What it comes to is that these pre-1952 provisions of the law are relevant still in determining these balancing charges and in deciding the matters to which I have referred, and it is necessary, in order to effect satisfactory consolidation, that it should be made perfectly clear that these provision still take effect.

§ Mr. Graham Page
With great respect to the hon. and learned Gentleman——

§ Mr. Graham Page
I wish to be serious for a moment, if I was, perhaps, a little flippant in moving the Amendment.
The Solicitor-General has been addressing himself to subsection (1) of the Clause, and not to subsection (6). It is quite true that subsection (1) provides for a continuity of the operation of the Income Tax Acts, but what is said in subsection (6), and quite deliberately said, is that the enactments which were repealed by the 1952 Act—those corresponding to those repealed—are not to be revived. That is as I read the last two lines of the subsection, and this is absolutely unnecessary.
The Interpretation Act said that where an Act passed after 1850 repeals the repealing enactment it shall not be construed as reviving an enactment that has been previously repealed. That is what the subsection says there again, and quite unnecessarily. As the hon. and learned Solicitor-General wished to refer to precedents in connection with the previous Amendment, I say that this is setting a very bad precedent in consolidation Measures.