§ Lords amendment: No. 19, in page 14, line 4, leave out "use by" and insert "the use of".
§ Mr. MellorI beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
This is a drafting amendment. The intention in subsection (6) of the new section 29 of the Gas Act 1972, set out in clause 12, is merely to repeat the provisions in subsection (9) of section 29 of the 1972 Act. The amendment achieves that by adjusting an error that unfortunately arose in transferring the provisions of the present section to the new one.
I take this opportunity of correcting an infelicitous phrase in my previous intervention that I know the right hon. Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Rees), who has forgotten more about procedure in the House than I shall ever know, will not have missed. I suggested that on the negative resolution procedure the matter could be debated when the Opposition wished. I now know that it is not for me to pre-empt the decisions of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. I was intending to convey—and I shall now have a second stab at it—that if the negative resolution procedure is invoked I feel sure that my right hon. Friend will provide a time that is reasonable to himself and not inconvenient to the Opposition. I apologise for my earlier statement.
§ Question put and agreed to.