FURTHER PROVISIONS RELATING TO CONSTITUTION OF METROLOGICAL CO-ORDINATING UNIT (Hansard, 3 April 1979)

§ Mr. John Fraser
I beg to move amendment No. 16, in page 28, line 7, at end insert— '(2) Without prejudice to the generality of the Secretary of State's power to give notices in pursuance of the preceding sub-paragraph, it shall be his duty to give a member such a notice if the Secretary of State is satisfied that the member is no longer a member of any local authority '.

Mr. Deputy Speaker
With this amendment it will be convenient to take Govment amendments Nos. 17, 18 19 and 20.

§ Mr. Fraser
The purpose of the amendments is to impose a duty on the Secretary of State to give notice of termination to a unit member upon his ceasing to be an elected member of the local authority. I was asked to amend the Bill in Committee in this way and I have accordingly done so. It is intended that the units described in the Bill will be the local authority's committee on trading standards. Since that does not exist as a legal entity, it is not possible to describe it as such in the Bill. Therefore, I should like to give two further assurances which cannot be written into the Bill.
First, it is the intention to stick firmly to the LACOTS committee's proposals. 1267 Any member of the unit who ceases to be a member of the committee will also be given notice under the clause. The local authority associations can rest assured that the other controls in the clause are not designed to prevent the unit from enjoying the same freedom of action as a local authority in respect of staffing and conditions of service.

§ Mr. Giles Shaw
I should like to confirm our understanding of the case put to us by the Association of Municipal Authorities. This is what we should like to see done. We give an assurance that it shall be done if we are in Government at the time.