CODES OF PRACTICE (Hansard, 29 October 1975)

§ Mr. Speaker
With this amendment we shall discuss Lords Amendments Nos. 5 and 6.

§ Mr. Booth
The effect of Lords Amendment No. 4 is to provide for a code of practice containing practical guidance on disclosure or time off to be issued by the Service and to come into effect on a day appointed by order of the Secretary of State only if the draft has been approved by resolution of each House.
In Committee hon. Members pressed me to consider whether it was appropriate that these two codes in particular should be subject to the affirmative procedure. I have listened carefully to what hon. Members have said. I have accepted that in the case of both these codes there are important rights in the Bill dependent upon them, a collective right in one case and an individual right in the other. Therefore, I hope that the House will accept the amendment. 1611 Lords Amendments Nos. 5 and 6 are consequential on the other amendment, and therefore I hope that these, too, will also be accepted.

§ Mr. Barney Hayhoe (Brentford and Isleworth)
The Opposition welcome the fact that the Government have made these amendments in another place in response to points that we made in Committee. What this means now is that we have the affirmative procedure operating for the two most important codes of practice which the ACAS will be producing. These are the provisions about disclosure and about time off with pay for trade union officials, that is, time off as a right for trade union members to go about specific trade union activities.
As the Minister said, these are very important. I should like an assurance from him. These codes of practice cannot become effective, obviously, until they have been through the affirmative procedure and the Secretary of State has appointed a day. The relevant clauses of the Bill, Clauses 17, 18, 49 and 50, and the rights so conferred by those clauses, presumably cannot come into effect until the codes of practice have been agreed. It would be useful if the Minister of State were to confirm what I think were the assurances he gave in a slightly different context in Committee about that.
Will the Minister also confirm—it may well be that this is the normal practice of the House—that where the affirmative procedure applies the appointed day cannot be made earlier than the last day on which one or other of the Houses gives its affirmation? In other words, the affirmative procedure having been gone through, one would like an assurance that the Secretary of State cannot then make a retrospective operation of the appointed day on which these codes of practice come into effect. Obviously, one has no need to argue the difficulties that might ensue.

§ Mr. Booth
With the leave of the House, perhaps I may deal with the last point first.
When one lays a code of practice before the House to come into effect subject to the affirmative procedure, that code cannot have effect before the day on which the latter of the two Houses deals with it.
On the former point, we shall not have a commencement date for the clauses 1612 which are affected by these two codes before the appropriate code is in effect. Obviously we should like them to be in effect as quickly as possible, but we take the point that they are important codes and, therefore, should not come into effect until the two Houses have approved them.