§ LORD GAINFORD had the following Notice on the Paper: To ask His Majesty's Government why the Emergency Order for Potteries, dated December 23, 1941, extending the hours of child employment, was not: published in the Labour Gazette before February; why the Emergency Order for Cotton Spinning dated February 5, 1942, extending the hours of child employment, was not published before April; why these Labour Gazettes were not on sale and available to the public for a further month; and whether steps will be taken to ensure that in future such Orders shall be published promptly and placed on sale so that Parliament and the public may be given the earliest possible knowledge of the contents of such Orders; and to move for Papers.
§ The noble Lord said: My Lords, the only object I have in putting this question on the Paper is to give the Government an opportunity of removing a suspicion which has existed, that when the spirit of the Factory Act has been annulled by the issue of Orders, those Orders should be available to members of both Houses and to the public. I beg leave to ask the question.
§ LORD SNELLMy Lords, I will delay your Lordships for only a few minutes. The Minister regrets very much the delays that took place in regard to the publication of the Order mentioned. The explanation is that the Ministry's Gazette is not considered to be the primary channel for publication of such Orders. The subsequent reference to them in the Labour Gazette was a supplementary method af publication. Other steps were taken to bring the matter before the notice of those concerned. For instance, the Order was at once communicated to representatives of the employers and the employed and it was thus found to have an immediately wide 1066 circulation in the areas affected. Then copies of the actual Orders were sent to both sides concerned, and it must be remembered that no firm could use them without the written consent of the Inspector of Factories who would in the ordinary course send copies to firms authorized to use the Orders. It cannot, therefore, be said, according to the view held by the Minister of Labour, that reliance has to be placed on the Ministry's Gazette for knowledge of the Orders concerned. The delays, such as they were, were due first to this, that the Gazette was regarded as a supplementary step, that copies were not sent to the Editor at once, and that war-time difficulties of printing and of issue had something to do with the delay. New arrangements have been or are being made in the sense that in future the Editor will at once receive the special documents, and that the Orders will be placed in the Printed Paper Office of your Lordships' House. In regard to the sale, which is a part of the noble Lord's question, this matter was discussed with the Stationery Office, and the Ministry was advised that the demand for such documents was far too small to justify the very much greater use of Paper that would be involved in the publication. Copies, however, of the Orders are obtainable at the Ministry, and the Ministry is considering at the present time what further steps could appropriately be taken to avoid delays in future.
§ LORD GAINFORDMy Lords, I beg to thank the noble Lord for his reply.