CHARTERED AND OTHER BODIES (TEMPORARY PROVISIONS) BILL. [H.L.] (Hansard, 7 November 1939)

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT CALDECOTE)
My Lords, the general purpose of this Bill is to enable modifications to be made in the constitutional and electoral procedure of various chartered and statutory bodies to meet war conditions. The Bill is, in fact, an application in analogous spheres of principles which your Lordships have recently approved in two Acts of Parliament—the Universities and Colleges (Emergency Provisions) Act, 1939, and the Local Elections and Register of Electors Act, 1939. Three types of bodies are dealt with. Clause 1 deals with chartered corporations, of which I will give your Lordships an illustration or two in a moment. My noble friend the Lord President has, I understand, been approached by various chartered corporations, asking for some modi- 1701 fication of their duties and to be released from the strict provisions of the charter which constituted the corporation. Your Lordships will appreciate that my noble friend has no power to dispense the corporations from the provisions of their charters. The only alternative, apart from this Bill, would be to go to the somewhat lengthy and, I am afraid, expensive process of obtaining a supplementary charter, with the prospect of going through the same procedure to re-establish peace conditions at the end of the war.
I hope that your Lordships will agree that the powers contained in Clause 1, which will enable the Lord President, on the application of the corporation concerned, to make modifications of the provisions of the charter, are a sensible course. The Lord President will only have power to make such directions when in his opinion they are necessary or expedient for the purpose of securing economy or efficiency. I think an illustration or two will serve to illustrate the purpose of this clause. One of the cases is the Royal Institute of British Architects, who desire to suspend the elections of their officers. Another illustration is the Chartered Institute of Secretaries, who desire to be released from the necessity of publishing a year-book. The third illustration is the West India Committee, which desires to appoint a temporary additional deputy chairman.
That is Clause 1 of the Bill; and Clause 2 deals with statutory bodies and corporations, not with chartered bodies. It proposes to do the same to these bodies as your Lordships have already enabled to be done to local authorities. Among the bodies concerned by this clause are drainage boards, port and harbour authorities, the General Medical Council and the Malvern Hills Conservators. Clause 2 (1) (a) provides for an Order in Council to be made which will extend the term of office of members, a wholly innocent purpose which I hope your Lordships will approve in these war circumstances. Paragraph (b) of subsection (1) is of rather a different character: it enables an Order in Council to be made for reducing the number of persons required to constitute the corporation or body or to perform any of its functions. This is a power which might be thought capable of being used in such a way as to interfere with the privileges of a corporation or of members of a corporation, and His Majesty's Government 1702 thought right to schedule the only two bodies that at present can come under this paragraph. They are the Electricity Commissioners and the British Overseas Airways Corporation. Power is taken to add further bodies to the Schedule by affirmative Resolution in both Houses of Parliament.
The necessity under which the Electricity Commissioners are is due to the fact that, of the Commissioners required by Statute to be appointed, three must be whole-time officers. At present the only Commissioners are three whole-time officers, but one of them has recently been appointed to another position in the Ministry of Shipping and it is desired to retain his services as a Commissioner. The other body, the British Overseas Airways Corporation, was to be constituted by the Secretary of State for Air by an Act of Parliament recently passed under which the Secretary of State had power to appoint from nine to fifteen members together with a deputy chairman. The members of the Corporation are to be paid for their services. The Secretary of State has required all the aircraft of the Corporation to be handed over to him in the present emergency, and he is of opinion, subject to what your Lordships might think, that it would be undesirable to appoint a number of persons who will have no duties to perform. In those circumstances it is very desirable to reduce the members of the Corporation to three persons, who will still be appointed by the Secretary of State for Air.
The third class of bodies is the subject of Clause 3. This clause, in brief, does for universities and colleges other than those of Oxford and Cambridge what your Lordships did for those two universities, in enabling them to meet the difficult conditions of the war by making financial adjustments, prolonging terms of office, suspending conditions relating to scholarships, and generally making arrangements for meeting the special conditions to which war has given rise. The other provisions are supplementary to the clauses which I have briefly summarised. I hope your Lordships will be able to give approval to this necessary piece of machinery for meeting existing circumstances. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2^a.—(Viscount Caldecote.)

LORD STRABOLGI
My Lords, my noble friends do not wish to offer any opposition to this Bill, which we recognise as necessary, but as it has its genesis in your Lordships' House it is necessary to give it a brief examination. I wish only to ask one question and to make one observation. The question is this. These Orders in Council affect very many people. I do not know whether the co-operative societies have been consulted. Perhaps the noble and learned Viscount would answer that as a preliminary question. On a previous Bill I asked if the Law Society was affected, because anything affecting the Law Society requires very careful scrutiny in your Lordships' House, but the co-operative societies include so many people that it is a very wide power to give the Government. I do not see anything about these Orders in Council lying on the Table of your Lordships' House and being subject to a prayer for their anulment, as is so often the case in Parliamentary Bills. There seems to be rather a gap there. Once we give these wide powers to the Executive we have no sort of check upon them. I think that matter needs enlarging upon. I want to refer also to Clause 2 (1) (b). No other bodies can be added to the Schedule, I understand, unless, according to a subsequent subsection, a Resolution has been passed by both Houses of Parliament. That seems to be the only further check we have. I may be wrong, but, as I read the Bill, that is the case.
The other observation I desire to make is with regard to the two corporations mentioned in the Schedule. The Electricity Commissioners, I understood the Lord Chancellor to say, are three in number. One has now been appointed to the Ministry of Shipping; that leaves two. Is it intended to appoint a third? Their functions are of immense importance, and I would suggest that it is desirable to keep their number up to three. With regard to the British Overseas Airways Corporation, I ventured on behalf of my noble friends to criticise the proposal to have so large a body as nine to fifteen personalities as directors of this Corporation, because it was too large, and I am very glad to hear that one good result of the war at any rate has been that we are saved that mass meeting of directors in order to give seats on the Board to everyone who had had 1704 anything to do with the two bodies which are being combined, in order to preserve their rights. I am very glad to hear that a more workable body is apparently going to be appointed. But I did not quite follow what the Lord Chancellor said about all the machines being taken over by the State. I do not think that is the case, with great respect to the Lord Chancellor. I understand that Imperial Airways are still running. The distinguished visitors from certain parts of the Dominions came over by Imperial Airways machines the other day, and therefore the Corporation has an important function to perform at the present time. These are merely explanatory remarks that I am making, and I hope the Lord Chancellor will not mind clearing up the two points that I have ventured to raise. Otherwise, we recognise the necessity of this kind of legislation, and we offer no opposition to it.

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR
My Lords, I am obliged to the noble Lord for his observations and for saying that he would not offer any opposition to the further progress of the Bill. The noble Lord has referred to the fact that the Orders in Council that are proposed by the Bill will not be laid before Parliament. If the noble Lord will observe the very restricted and narrow limits of the powers which are conferred by this Bill, I think he will see that it is unnecessary to provide that the Orders in question should be laid before Parliament. For instance, with regard to Clause 2 (1) (a), the only power that is given to His Majesty by Order in Council is to extend the term of office of members or postpone the date of election or the filling of vacancies among such members or officers. So far as the Electricity Commissioners are concerned, the noble Lord has correctly stated the position. Sir Cyril Hurcomb has been appointed to a position in the Ministry of Snipping, and therefore he will not be able to exercise his powers as a whole-time officer of the Electricity Commissioners, but it is desirable that his services should be available as a part-time officer. So far as Imperial Airways are concerned the noble Lord no doubt is quite accurate in saying that some persons come to this country by aircraft which are not the aircraft of the Royal Air Force, but I think the fact is that the Corporation have been 1705 ordered to place their aircraft at the disposal of the Secretary of State for Air. That does not necessarily connote the withdrawal of them from the service to which the noble Lord refers. The opportunity will arise, if the noble Lord has any doubt about any particular provisions in this Bill, for further consideration, and I hope, after these few observations, that your Lordships will be prepared to give a Second Reading to the Bill.