YOUNG PERSONS (EMPLOYMENT) BILL. [H.L.] (Hansard, 26 July 1938)

§ THE PAYMASTER-GENERAL (THE EARL OF MUNSTER)
My Lords, in moving that the Commons Amendments be now considered perhaps I may be allowed to make a very brief statement of what the Amendments really do. There are no fewer than fifty-four Amendments which have been made in another place, but there is only one point which in any way affects the substance of the Bill. This is in the Amendment in Clause 1, page 1, 1155 line 14, to leave out "two years" and insert "one year," and the consequential Amendments to that. The effect of these Amendments is to reduce from two years to one year after the commencement of the Act the interval before the 44-hour week for persons under sixteen in shops and in the unregulated occupations to which this Bill applies comes into operation. The Government were strongly urged to bring the 44-hour week for persons under sixteen in the unregulated occupations and in shops into force at the end of 1939 instead of at the end of 1940; and as there will be an interval of five months before this Bill comes into operation it is considered that the employers concerned will have sufficient time to make the necessary alterations and adjustments if the 44-hour week for their youngest employees comes into operation one year instead of two years after the commencement of the Act. This will give them a total of seventeen months from now in which to make their arrangements. I beg to move.

LORD STRABOLGI
My Lords, I understand that the only Amendment of substance is the one that the noble Earl has just explained to your Lordships, and that the others are drafting. I have been a member of your Lordships' House for a very short time only, but it has been borne in upon me lately that the other Chamber is a revising Chamber just as much as this one. Here your Lordships have a House of Lords Bill, which has passed before the eagle eye of the noble Viscount, Lord Bertie of Thame, the whole force of the Government draftsmen, and all the talent of the Government Front Bench; it has gone to another place, and has come from that revising Chamber containing over fifty Amendments. These are mostly of a drafting nature, I agree, but this is not the only example I could cite in recent weeks of Bills that have come from your Lordships' House having been very largely redrafted in another place. I have ventured to draw the attention of the Government to this matter before. It is either because they have brought in such a spate of small legislative measures that the draftsmen are over-worked, or else the Drafting Department 1156 is not strong enough and needs strengthening. I venture to make that observation in the hope that the noble Earl, Lord Lucan, may perhaps be pleased to look into the matter and make representations in the proper quarters.

§ THE EARL OF MUNSTER
My Lords, the reason for the greater number of these drafting Amendments is, as your Lordships will remember, that during the Second Reading debate on this Bill there appeared an expression in the Bill, a "designated young person," and the noble Earl, Lord Radnor, said he thought that expression was a most inharmonious expression and asked your Lordships to remove it. That was done, but the other portions of the Bill were not amended to meet the alteration in the wording. This merely alters the Bill to suit the removal of the "designated young person."

LORD STRABOLGI
If I might, by leave of the House, remark upon that statement by the noble Earl: there are a number of stages in which these things may be done here. I am appealing to the pride of your Lordships in this House's efficiency, and in sending down what I should have hoped was perfect legislation as regards its drafting, however imperfect the policy behind it.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD MAUGHANI)
My Lords, if I might be allowed to make only one observation in defence of the draftsmen, it is this. Look at the first Amendment of all: line 8, after "whom" insert "this Part of." The other place thought right to put in "this Part of" there, and if you will look down two or three pages, you will find that all these other Amendments are consequent upon those words being inserted. Therefore, although the Amendments look very serious, over twenty of them are consequential on that very slight alteration. That may explain to some extent the number of these Amendments, and exonerate the persons who are responsible for the drafting of this Bill.