§ Mr. BishopI beg to move Amendment No. 15, in page 12, line 18, after 'investigations', insert 'which he considers necessary'.
Clause 10 deals with powers of entry in connection with Clause 9 which deals with the power to provide for the destruction of wild life in cases of disease, and so forth.
This is a drafting amendment designed to clarify that only investigations considered necessary for the purpose of determining whether an order should be made are carried out. It is similar to an amendment moved in Committee by the Opposition and which we agreed to consider between the Committee and Report.
In Committee the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) sought some assurances, which were given by my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, to look into the matter again. This amendment is designed to make it clear that the investigations to be carried out under Clause 10(2)(b) are restricted solely to those which an authorised officer considers necessary to determine whether an order under Clause 9 should be made.
Since the amendment is the result of the consideration given to the matter following my hon. Friend's undertaking in Committee, I hope that it will commend itself to the House.
§ Mr. JoplingIt is a pleasure to respond to the amendment which the Minister of State has moved. As he says, the amendment which the Government have proposed follows the amendment which my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) moved, as reported in column 510 of our Committee proceedings on 10th February. It is perhaps a lesson for all of us to note that the debate on that amendment took less than two columns in Hansardbut it has met with a happy result as the Government's amendment entirely meets the point which my hon. Friend raised.
The only point I would make about it is that both my hon. Friend and the Minister described the amendment as "drafting". It is slightly more than that because, as the Minister knows, the 1419 Opposition had some reservations about the impact of Clause 10 where an authorised officer of the Minister was allowed to enter on land where he merely suspected that there might be animals which were passing on disease. We debated this at some length in Committee and I do not propose to go any further tonight. However, I believe that to add these words means that an authorised officer must, in his mind, consider these investigations to be necessary—that is what the amendment says—and if there were an argument about it afterwards, the authorised officer of the Minister must be answerable for his actions. That will mean that an authorised officer, where he merely suspected there might be wild life passing on diseases which concern us all, would have to be careful in his own mind in order to justify his actions rather more than if we left the Bill as it is.
The Opposition welcome the Government's amendment and hope that the House will accept it.
§ Amendment agreed to.