HC Deb 19 March 1980 vol 981 cc545-6
Mr. J. Enoch Powell (Down, South)

I beg to move amendment No. 64, in page 16, line 25, leave out from 'Department' to end of line and insert 'makes'.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

With this, we make take the following amendments: No. 65, in page 16, line 28, leave out 'Department shall lay' and insert: 'Secretary of State shall lay before Parliament'. No. 66, in page 17, line 7, leave out from 'before' to 'together' in line 8 and insert 'each House of Parliament'.

No. 82, in schedule 3, page 72, leave out lines 19 to 24.

No. 83, in schedule 3, page 72, line 25, leave out 'not falling within paragraph 17 of this Schedule'.'

Mr. Powell

As you have noted, Mr. Deputy Speaker, amendments No. 64, 65, and 66 hang together and, as the official Opposition perceived, they require the consequential amendments No. 82 and 83, which, considerately, the right hon. Member for Salford, West (Mr. Orme) and his hon. Friends have tabled.

Perhaps I may take this opportunity, without incurring your displeasure, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to express the gratitude of my hon. Friends and myself for the manner in which the official Opposition in Committee dealt with amendments that my hon. Friends and I had tabled on matters that we hoped would be discussed. We are grateful for the fact that that occurred, even though no member of the Ulster Unionist Party could, by reason of the composition of the Committee, take part in the debates.

I feel that the official Opposition—and I hope that this is true of the Government as well—support the intention behind the amendments. New clause 3, which was not moved yesterday because of the exigencies of time under the guillotine, would have achieved the same object as that at which the amendments aim and it is not for me to say that it would not have done so more neatly than do our amendments.

My hon. Friends and I are naturally not wedded to the form of words. One can rarely beat the parliamentary draftsman at his job and if the Government indicate that they regard the intention behind the amendments as reasonable and acceptable, there will be another stage for the Bill elsewhere and we should be happy to see our intention put in proper form at that stage.

We are not seeking to return to the matter on which we have often engaged the House, namely, the undesirability of the House proceeding, or continuing, to legislate in terms of constitutional arrangements in Northern Ireland which do not now exist and which, according to the Government, it is not intended shall exist in future. That might have been, and indeed was, behind some of the earlier amendments that we tabled.

I ask the Minister to dismiss that consideration from her mind in considering the much narrower point that these amendments raise. The anomaly that they would remove is this. In Great Britain, when a report is made by the advisory committee to the Secretary of State on regulations that he proposes to make—

It being Ten o'clock, further consideration of the Bill stood adjourned.