COMMONS AMENDMENT. (Hansard, 25 July 1930)

EARL RUSSELL
My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment. This was an Amendment moved by the late Minister of Transport and accepted by the Government. It enables the Minister to vary the limits of speed by regulation. When the Bill was in this House, I pointed out that the Royal Commission had said it was desirable that these speed limits should be fixed by Statute, and not otherwise, and should not be subject to alteration by regulation. When in another place they came to deal with the schedule of various speeds, of which your Lordships will recollect the difficulty, they found such great difficulty in the classes of vehicles which it was necessary to except, and the particular cases of particular kinds of vehicles made such difficulty about the whole matter, that in the end the Committee as a whole felt that the matter could not possibly be managed without giving some flexibility to the clause. Therefore, not at the request of the Government, but by the general sense of the Committee, and on the motion, in fact, of the Opposition, it was decided to give the Minister power to alter the speeds by regulation. That is the effect of this Amendment. In spite of the recommendation of the Royal Commission the thing was found to be impracticable.

§ EARL BEAUCHAMP
My Lords, I feel a little hesitation with regard to this. There are many regulations under this Bill made by the Minister of various degrees of harshness. Sometimes they are to be laid on the Table of the House for a certain number of days before they become law. This is of the harshest and most difficult kind, I think, that there can be in. any provision inserted in any Bill. You will see that no regulation will have effect until it has been approved by a Resolution passed by both Houses of Parliament. If it is desirable to give the Minister power to act in this way, I cannot help feeling that perhaps it is a little bit too much to expect both Houses of Parliament to find time for this matter; and although the noble Earl knows so much more about this matter than I do, I should like to have a word of reassurance from him that he is not himself dissatisfied with this particular provision.

EARL RUSSELL
My Lords, I am not generally in favour of affirmative Resolutions unless the case requires them, but you are here, after all, going contrary to the recommendation of the Royal Commission, and you are putting in the hands of the Minister very considerable power, and it seems to me an eminently proper case where Parliament ought affirmatively to approve his action.

§ VISCOUNT BRENTFORD
My Lords, I take entirely the same view, and I hope the noble Earl will not press his objection. We are giving the Minister more power than when the Bill passed through this House.