Public Health (Control of Disease) Bill [Lords] (Hansard, 8 June 1984)

§ The Attorney-General (Sir Michael Havers)

I beg to move, That the bill be now read a Second time.

The Bill seeks to consolidate those parts of various enactments relating to public health which are concerned with the control of disease. Besides the general regulatory provisions for preventing the spread of disease, it contains certain provisions about disease in common lodging houses, provisions about burial and cremation, and provisions about the regulation of canal boats, which have practical force only in relation to the control of disease.

To produce a satisfactory consolidation, the Bill gives effect to the recommendations of the Law Commission which have been considered by the Joint Committee in the usual way.

The Law Commission reported in its third report of 15 January: The Committee are of the opinion that, apart from those parts of the Bill which are the subject of the Law Commission Recommendations, the Bill, as amended, is pure consolidation and represents the existing law. They are satisfied that the Recommendations are necessary for the purpose of producing a satisfactory consolidation of the law and that the amendments which the Bill proposes to make to the existing law give effect to those Recommendations. The report continued: The Committee note that there is no definition of the disease 'plague' referred to in Clause 10 of the Bill. They have also questioned the policy of excluding Clause 46 from Part VI of the Bill as provided by the definition of 'relevant provision of this Act' in Clause 74. There is no other point to which the attention of Parliament should be drawn. The Committee could not alter the Bill to deal with these matters because it is not entitled to make amendments which would have the effect of changing the law. What it has done, therefore, is to draw attention to these two points so that consideration can be given to making substantive amendments to the law in due course. For the moment, however, the Bill represents the existing law with those permitted amendments which give effect to the recommendation of the Law Commission.

Upon that basis, I commend it to the House.

§ Mr. Donald Anderson (Swansea, East)

We accept that this is a pure consolidation measure. The Joint Committee was correct to draw attention to the absence of a definition to the word "plague". As the Attorney-General has informed the House, because of the tightness of the consolidation rules, it was impossible to insert such a definition in this consolidation measure, yet it seems less than satisfactory that it has to be done in this way to draw attention to the fact by means of the Committee report.

I suggest to the Attorney-General that some consideration be given to a case like this, where a relatively minor matter would lead to an improvement in the Bill. where there is general consent that there should be such an improvement, perhaps the rules might be made less restrictive.