§ Lords amendment No. 122 agreed to.
§ Lords amendment: No. 123, in page 68, line 40, leave out "(a)".
§ Mr. Kenneth ClarkeI beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
§ Mr. ClarkeThese amendments are essentially technical. Again, their purpose will be by no means readily apparent. The policy of the Bill is that on the appointed day the successor Companies Act company will step into the shoes of the National Freight Corporation in every respect.
Clause 37 and schedule 6 are intended to secure a smooth transition. As originally drafted they purported to transfer the rights, liability and obligations of the corporation to the successor company.
The agreements under which the present nationalised corporation operates can sometimes refer to the corporation without imposing obligations or conferring rights. There are references of that kind in, for instance, the trust deed constituting the 1978 National Freight Corporation Pension Fund. To make sure that the wording of the Bill did not exclude such general agreements, the amendments widen the existing transitional provisions so as to convert, as from the appointed day, any such reference into a reference to a successor company.
I see that it is thought an appropriate moment to give me a message about the by-election this evening. I can only say that, while I congratulate the Conservative candidate on her achievement and wish that she had done better, I very much doubt, if the House had agreed with the Lords in this particular amendment, that it would have affected the 925 result in Edinburgh, Central very significantly earlier this evening.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Lords amendment No. 124 agreed to.