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Lords Amendment: No. 1, in page 2, line 7, leave out from "person" to "as" in line 8 and insert
is permitted to station a mobile home on a protected site and occupies it".
§ 1.45 p.m.
§ Mr. Tom King (Bridgwater)I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
Before I begin discussing the amendments and the Bill, I should like to express my appreciation. The Minister of State, Department of the Environment, spoke on the preceding Bill about all-party co-operation. I am very grateful for the co-operation which has been shown to enable these Bills to proceed in an orderly fashion. I very much appreciate the co-operation of all concerned.
I should like to say, by way of introduction to the series of amendments made by their Lordships, that while a number of them are technical and may not need considerable discussion, they are nevertheless very worth while and they reflect great credit on their Lordships. I pay a particular tribute to my noble Friend Lord Elton for the amount of work he did in sponsoring the Bill for me in another place. I pay tribute to the help given by the Minister and his officials, and Lord Melchett, who dealt with the Bill in another place. I appreciate the work that has been done.
This amendment relates to an important change. The wording of the Bill had 964 got out of balance between Clause 1 and Clause 2. There was never an intention —because it was impossible to extend the range of the Bill—that it should apply to people who rent caravans as well as to people who own them. The Bill is limited in intention. It is intended to cover those who own a caravan but who rent the site.
Lords Amendment No. 1 ensures that the intention of the Bill remains intact. There would otherwise have been a danger that Clause 2 would have been in disagreement with Clause 1. The amendment clarifies the position.
§ The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Ernest Armstrong)I hope that the hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King) will not think me discourteous if I preface the discussion on the amendments with some brief remarks. Among the responsibilities which I have recently assumed in coming to the Department of the Environment is mobile homes. The return of the Bill from another place has meant for me a very rapid initiation into the subject. While I can hardly claim extensive expertise, my enforced and concentrated study over the past few days has been useful in two particular respects.
First, I can understand why my predecessor, now the Under-Secretary of State for Industry, my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Ardwick (Mr. Kaufman), was able to welcome this measure on behalf of the Government. In the interval since he and the hon. Gentleman last spoke on the Bill, a number of amendments have been effected in another place. I hardly think it is anticipating our discussions too much to say that with one exception those amendments do not alter the substance of the Bill as it left this House. The bulk and the length of the amendments conceal, from a first glance, a considerable amount of reordering, trimming, polishing and clarification, but the essential parts of the Bill are altered only in form.
Secondly, my introduction will certainly stand me in good stead in continuing with the review into mobile homes instituted by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State last December and headed, until last month, by my hon. Friend the Member for Ardwick. My hon. Friend has already explained to the House that work on this review was necessarily interrupted because of the success 965 of the hon. Member for Bridgwater in the Ballot, but he was looking forward, before his translation to the Department of Industry, to resuming this work.
I shall follow up those intentions. In particular, I hope before too long to meet the organisations which have supplied statements and have, as it happens, inadvertently provided me with some excellent briefing on problems relating to mobile homes.
It is unfortunate that my hon. Friend the Member for Ardwick, with his enviable grasp of the issues involved, cannot assist in what I hope will prove the concluding stages of this Bill. But I am sure that the hon. Member for Bridgwater will deploy the same skills of lucid explanation and persuasion as he has exercised during the previous stages of the Bill in this House.
§ Question put and agreed to.