RE-TRANSFER OF FUNCTIONS

HC Deb 14 October 1975 vol 897 cc1256-7

Mr. John Silkin

I beg to move Amendment No. 244, in page 45, line 7, at beginning insert: 'Where any functions have been transferred from an authority under the last preceding section'.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

With that amendment, we shall take Government Amendment No. 245.

Mr. Silkin

The clause was drafted in its present form because it was considered that although there would be many cases where a re-transfer should involve all of the transferred functions there could be cases where it would be right for functions to be re-transferred piecemeal to an authority, and where an authority may wish a transfer to take place only in those circumstances.

In Committee it was suggested by Conservative Members that there was the risk that such a course could be unfair to the authority concerned. We have considered this matter, although I do not think we gave any undertaking about it at the time. We can see some force in the argument, and it is not clear how much use the additional flexibility would be in practice. The arrangements therefore make it possible only to re-transfer the functions in one go, as it were. That is what the amendment achieves.

Amendment agreed to.

Amendment made: No. 245, in page 45, line 8, leave out from 're-transferring' to end of line 9 and insert: 'to that authority all of the functions so transferred'.—[Mr. John Silkin.]