HL Deb 27 February 1947 vol 145 cc1074-5

4.14 p.m.

Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee read.

Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(The Earl of Huntingdon.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

House in Committee accordingly.

[The LORD STANMORE in the Chair.]

Clause 1:

Transfer to Agricultural Wages' Board of power to fix, cancel or vary minimum rates of agricultural wages.

(5) In accordance with the foregoing provisions of this section— (b) in paragraph (b) of subsection (1) of Section three of the Holidays with Pay Act, 1938 (which provides for applying the procedure under the principal Act to the giving, cancelling, varying or amending of directions under the said Act of 1938), for the reference to the principal Act there shall be substituted a reference to the First Schedule to this Act.

THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES (THE EARL OF HUNTINGDON) moved, at the end of subsection (5) (b), to insert: and in subsection (2) of the said Section three (which provides for applying provisions of the principal Act for the purposes of the said Act of 1938) the references to provisions of the principal Act shall be construed as including references to the provisions of this Act.— The noble Earl said: The purpose of this Amendment is to correct a drafting omission which has arisen in fitting the Bill to the provisions of the Holidays with Pay Act, 1938. The Holidays with Pay Act, 1938, provided for the application—through Regulations made by the Minister—of certain provisions of the 1924 Act to directions as to holidays with pay. Some of these provisions which might so apply were procedural and some were non-procedural. The Bill alters the 1924 Act procedure for wages orders and prescribes a new procedure in the First Schedule. Subsection (5) (b) of Clause 1 of this Bill, as at present drafted, applies this new procedure to directions as to holidays with pay. But while effecting this object, the subsection has not been sufficiently widely drawn to apply to the non-procedural provisions of the 1924 Act. This Amendment remedies the defect by providing that the reference in Section 3 (2) of the Holidays with Pay Act to the principal Agricultural Wages Acts is now to be read as a reference to those Acts as amended by this Bill. I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 2, line 27, at end, insert the said words.—(The Earl of Huntingdon.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

Clause 1, as amended, agreed to.

Remaining Clauses and Schedules agreed to.