COMPANIES BILL. [H.L.] (Hansard, 24 April 1929)

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD HAILSHAM)

My Lords, in moving that the House do resolve itself into Committee on this Bill, perhaps it would be convenient if I explained to your Lordships the reason for the Motion which I have down on the Paper to suspend Standing Order XXXIX in order to pass the remaining stages of the Bill this afternoon. The Bill is purely a Consolidation Bill. It is a Bill which has been receiving very careful attention at the hands of the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills, which is presided over by my noble and 173 learned friend Lord Muir Mackenzie. They have presented a unanimous Report, in which they inform your Lordships that the Bill is pure consolidation, and they urgently recommend that the Bill should be passed into law in the present Session of Parliament. As your Lordships know, it is not the practice of your Lordships' House on a Consolidation Bill to attempt to make any amendment of the law. All that is desired is to ensure that the existing law is faithfully reproduced in the proposed Statute, and therefore, inasmuch as the Consolidation Committee have satisfied themselves upon that point, presumably your Lordships will not think it necessary to make any alteration in the Bill at a subsequent stage. I propose therefore to ask your Lordships to pass the Bill through its remaining stages this afternoon, and, if that be done, I am sure there is every prospect that in another place it will be possible to pass it through all its stages in time to place it on the Statute Book before the Dissolution of Parliament. I beg to move.