GENERAL REQUIREMENTS AS TO LICENSED SERVICES (Hansard, 9 May 1990)

§ Mr. Mellor
I beg to move amendment No. 538, in page 65, line 26, leave out from beginning to 'as' in line 29.

Mr. Deputy Speaker
With this it will be convenient to discuss Government amendments Nos. 539 and 419.

§ Mr. Mellor
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) for what he said earlier. In the Bill we have made a serious effort to include parliamentary procedures in a number of instances that were not present before. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his persistent pressure on that point. At a similar hour towards the end of the Bill's Second Reading and its aftermath, I promised the hon. Gentleman to make such inclusions, and I hope that I have delivered on that promise six months later.
The first two amendments in the group remove an inconsistency in clause 84. At the moment, clause 84(3) refers to programmes taken as a whole, while subsection (4) refers to a series of programmes. We have taken out the reference to a series of programmes, since the two subsections would have made a different attempt to define the same concept. No substantive change has been made.
330 Amendment No. 419 honours an undertaking I gave in Committee, that the authority should be required, so far as reasonably practicable, to consult its licensees about the programme code as well as the advertising code in clause 87.