HL Deb 29 July 1947 vol 151 cc701-17

Clause 40, page 49, line 27, at end insert— ("(6) In any proceeding under this section before the arbitration tribunal established under Part VIII of this Act the burden of proof that an undertaking is such an undertaking as is specified in the last preceding section shall be upon the person contending that the undertaking is such an undertaking")

The Commons disagreed to this Amendment for the following Reason:

Because the said Amendment is inappropriate having regard to the nature of the proceedings in question

THE MARQUESS OF READING moved, that this House do not insist on the said Amendment but propose the following Amendment in lieu thereof:

Page 49, line 27, at end insert the following new subsection (6) In any proceeding under this section before the arbitration tribunal established under Part VIII of this Act the obligation of giving to the tribunal all information in his power as to the manner in which the undertaking or the relevant part thereof was carried on during the period mentioned in Clause 39 (1) (a) shall rest on the person on whom the notice of acquisition has been served and provided that such obligation has been duly performed the burden of proof that the undertaking is such an undertaking as is specified in Clause 39 shall be placed upon the person contending that the undertaking is such an undertaking.

The noble Marquess said: My Lords, when this point was originally before your Lordships' House there was a certain amount of discussion as to what was the correct position and what was the correct procedure in a matter of this kind. Your Lordships may remember that the point was put originally by the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Simon. I, amongst others, ventured to support him on that occasion in insisting on, and ultimately carrying to a Division, the point that the. question of the burden of proof was one of very great importance; that in this case there was no ground for taking any other than the normal course and insisting that the burden of proof should lie upon the party alleging a particular series of facts before the tribunal; and that that party should be called upon to appear before the tribunal and prove his case.

In the course of the discussion which took place on that occasion, I think that the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack did point: out that difficulties, might arise, owing to the Commission nit being in a position to produce the necessary information without the assistance and co-operation of the individual undertaker. And on further reflection that has, I think, satisfied my noble and learned friends, Viscount Maugham and Viscount Simon, that there was, if I may respectfully say so, virtue in the point that difficulty might well arise if the Commission were called upon to appear before the Tribunal, owing to the fast that they had not in their possession, and therefore could not place before the Tribunal, the necessary information to enable the Tribunal to come to a satisfactory conclusion. Having adopted that part of the case put forward by the noble and learned Viscount in originally opposing the then Amendment, it was decided to put it in the terms now before your Lordships on the Order Paper, which your Lordships will see do make a difference by amplifying the original Amendment which we discussed and including in it a provision in regard to the party upon whom is placed the duty to make the necessary disclosure of the relevant facts.

Therefore, as the Amendment is now proposed, it lays it down that in the proceedings which are the subject of this particular part of the Bill, the obligation of giving to the Tribunal the information that is required shall be placed on the persons, on the undertaker, who has to appear before the Tribunal and make his case. That is the primary duty, and until he has done that the Tribunal is not in a position to come to any conclusion. But when he has done that, and the Tribunal being seized of the necessary information, the moment then arrives when the burden of proof is as it was placed in the original Amendment. That is why when he has once performed that duty of disclosure, then the burden of proof is placed upon the person contending that the undertaking is such an undertaking as ought to be taken over—in other words the original Amendment that we submitted. The difference, therefore, is that we have now put forward an Amendment in which disclosure has to be made by the person contesting that he comes within the Act. When he has performed that duty then, as in the original Amendment, the burden rests upon the person claiming that the undertaker comes within the Act to prove his case in the normal way. I beg to move.

Moved, That this House do not insist on the Amendment to which the Commons have disagreed, but propose the following Amendment in lieu thereof:

Page 49, line 27, at end insert new subsection: ("(6) In any proceeding under this section before the arbitration tribunal established under Part VIII of this Act the obligation of giving to the tribunal all information in his power as to the manner in which the undertaking or the relevant part thereof was carried on during the period mentioned in Clause 39 (1) (a) shall rest on the person on whom the notice of acquisition has been served and provided that such obligation has been duly performed the burden of proof that the undertaking is such an undertaking as is specified in Clause 39 shall be placed upon the person contending that the undertaking is such an undertaking").—(The Marquess of Reading.)

8.39 p.m.

VISCOUNT SIMON

My Lords, I should like to add a few words to what the noble Marquess has said, though he has, I know, very clearly explained the effect of our substituted proposals. I think that in order to apprehend the force of the new proposals one really has to look at Clauses 39 and 40 and see what the Commission is authorized to do. Clause 39 begins: Where the Commission are of opinion with respect to an undertaking the activities of which consist wholly or partly on the operation of any vehicles authorized to be used under any A licence or B licence—— And then there are two conditions mentioned, first that the undertaking or any part thereof was carried out during the whole or any part of the year 1946, and second, that the activities of the undertaking in that year, so far as they consisted in the carriage of goods in goods vehicles, consisted to a predominant extent in ordinary long-distance carriage for hire or reward; and it shall be the duty of the Commission to give a notice of acquisition to this body. To a large extent, and in many cases, the Commission must be acting on first impressions—I will not say a guess, but it does its best on any information then before it, and it may in those circumstances give notice of acquisition that an undertaking is going to be taken over and is going to be managed by the State agents and it will be a criminal offence for the undertaker any longer to carry it on himself. Observe how it goes on in Clause 40: A notice of acquisition given by the Commission with respect to an undertaking shall be in writing and shall be served on the person carrying on the undertaking. We have now got to the point that the Commission have formed a first impression and served a notice on the undertaker which says in effect, "We are of the opinion that you come within the ambit of the scheme." Then one of two things may happen. If a person on whom a notice has been served by the Commission with respect to an undertaking desires to contend that the undertaking is not such an undertaking … he may by notice in writing served on the Commission require the Commission to withdraw their notice. It is quite natural that the challenged undertaker should communicate to the Commission the reasons why he thought he was not in the scheme at all. Then the Commission might take one of two courses. They might feel in the light of what is pointed out that the original claim was wrong and withdraw it. Where the Commission receives such a. notice as is referred to in subsection (2) . . they shall, if satisfied that the contention of the person carrying on the undertaking is correct, withdraw their notice … They can say, "I beg your pardon, we thought you came within the Government scheme. Now we find you do not and we do not make any claim." The alternative is that if the Commission do not feel they should withdraw the notice, the question whether or not the notice given by the Commission is to have effect shall, unless the owner of the undertaking withdraws his notice, be determined by the arbitration tribunal established under Part VIII of this Act. I do not think anybody, lawyer or layman, will dispute that the arbitration tribunal sits as a tribunal to decide a dispute which exists between the Commission on the one hand and an objecting undertaker on the other. The tribunal is, in effect, the judge. There is nothing technical about this. There is no difference between a court of law and any other tribunal of that sort. It is the judge and the two sides appear before it.

When I made these observations on Committee stage, I may be flattering myself, but it appeared to me that what I said carried a good deal of weight in different parts of the House. Frankly it an unfortunate thing that the tribunal can say, "If you want to get out of this, get out of it." The Commission which is claiming to embrace the man within the scheme of the State service should be required to prove it and that was the nature of the Amendment which I moved and which was carried, and which is now subsection (6) of Clause 4o. With that before them, the other place, under the advice of the Solicitor-General, have largely rejected the proposal, as it was quite within their rights to do. I will not criticize the speech of the Solicitor-General, although I do not regard it all as quite what I should have thought was good law and good sense. But his main point was a good point. It was: If you leave it like that, and you say the Commission have to prove their case, there may he instances in which the Commission have not got the necessary information to prove their case.

A man who is unwilling to be absorbed into the State system might refuse to give information; or, owing to the fact that his records were destroyed, he might get away with it and keep outside the State scheme merely because he said: "You have got to prove it." I think that is a good point, and I accept it as a good criticism. Therefore, the noble Marquess, Lord Reading, the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Maugham, self and others—I think it is warmly supported by other noble Lords on the Front Bench here—have suggested that. while that is perfectly right, the proper way to get over that difficulty is not to perpetrate what at any rate in my experience—for what that is worth—is an extraordinarily anomalous assertion—that is, for a man to escape on the claim that he is within the State scheme—but that the proper provision is this. I call attention to the words on the Amendment Paper: In any proceeding under this section before the arbitration tribunal established under Part VIII of this Act the obligation o giving to the tribunal all information in his power as to the manner in which the under-faking or the relevant Part thereof was carried on during the period mentioned in Clause 39 (1) (a) shall rest on the person on whom the notice of acquisition has been served … I think that is right. If I had thought of it in time, I would have put it in. In so far as that was omitted from our original proposal, I venture most respectfully to say that I think the Solicitor-General in another place had a good point: we do not want to encourage anybody to get out of this measure by sitting mum and refusing to give information.

Once you have made that the duty of private undertakers, then I submit to the House the proper principle is what here follows: that it shall rest on the person on whom the notice of acquisition has been served and provided that such obligation has been duly performed the burden of proof that the undertaking is such an undertaking as is specified in Claire 39 shall be placed upon the person contending that the undertaking is such an undertaking. I really think your Lordships, sitting in any part of the House, will see that I am trying to talk what is reasonable and good sense. It seems to me that once you have put upon the person who is said to be within the State scheme the obligation of disclosing everything ("Put your cards upon the table; show us what your past history is; let us know as much about it as you know about it"), it is a rather monstrous thing, and certainly undesirable and very improper, that you should then say that what is called the burden of proof does not rest on the people who claim that the undertaking is within the scheme of the Act.

Your Lordships must remember that the result of an undertaking being declared to be within the scheme of the Act is not only that the private livelihood of the man carrying it on becomes illegal; he is not allowed to carry it on any longer, and has to take whatever compensation comes his way—which some think is not very much. Not only is it illegal in the sense that it is contrary to these clauses, but it becomes a criminal offence. Surely if a private individual gives you all the information and says: "Those are my records; those are the journeys I have travelled; this is what I have done", it cannot be right to say after that that anybody should be entitled to declare that he is to be deprived of his livelihood and is a criminal breaking the law, liable to be prosecuted in the criminal court, when he has done everything which can be done to disclose the actual facts.

I notice that in another place the Solicitor-General used an argument which, to me at least, is entirely mysterious. I wish to speak with the greatest moderation, because obviously a great responsibility rests upon legal members of the Government in either house who are advising the House at large as to how the matter will stand, and 1 am sure we should recognize that that is the first thing the Lord Chancellor in this House is always most scrupulous to observe. What the Solicitor-General did was this. He said that this inquiry by the Transport Tribunal will be an inquiry which is governed by the Arbitration Acts, and subject to some severe limitations—which do not matter. Then he proceeded to say something which, with great respect, made me doubt whether he was well acquainted with the Arbitration Acts. He said that the Transport Tribunal will be in a much better position to find out these facts than the Transport Commission. I speak humbly, but with a considerable knowledge of the way in which the Arbitration Acts work. As a matter of fact, an Arbitration Tribunal does not itself go inquiring into facts at all. It is, of course, a Tribunal consisting, as it happens, of some legally trained person sitting as the President and a couple of others. It does not set about inquiring into facts.

What happens in a case like this, since it is under the Arbitration Acts, is that the Commission, which is one of the claimants, asks for the necessary order for discovery; that is to say, to compel either side to produce anything and everything they have which is relevant, or it may even ask questions, which we call Interrogatories. The Tribunal does not seek to ferret out one side or the other. Either side may ask that an order should be made for all this disclosure. I think it was a little unfortunate that it was suggested in another place that the Tribunal, because it was sitting under the Arbitration Acts, had some function of ferreting out the facts. I never heard of such a thing! After all, I have attended hundreds of arbitrations in my life and it is really quite contrary to what the popular understanding of an Arbitration Tribunal is.

My submission therefore is this. I am quite willing to admit that in the original proposal I made I went too far. I think it was perfectly right that the Amendment as I proposed it—and as others supported it—went too far, because it sought to throw this burden of proof on the Commission at an earlier point than was in common sense and justice proper. It certainly would not do for the undertaking which they seek to get within their scheme to sit mum and say nothing, or say, "Prove it if you can," as a criminal sometimes does in the dock who says, "You accuse me of murder—well, prove it." I am sorry I made that mistake, and if I had realized it I would have protected myself from that in the first instance. I ask the House to support me in making this correction now. The effect of this Amendment is to throw upon the person who denies that he comes within the Government scheme the absolute obligation to disclose the whole of his transactions. Put that upon him as a duty, and do not say that the burden lies on the Commission to prove their case unless he discharges that duty. But if he does discharge that duty, and really reveals all that he knows, so that it is possible for the Tribunal to form a just judgment, then I must say I think it is rather astounding that you should still persist that it is the claimant who has got to prove what he asserts.

The Lord Chancellor was good enough, on the last occasion, to say that he did not differ with me on the general principle at all. I felt sure he would agree. It is not a lawyer's point, it is just a common sense point, that if you are going to claim that so-and-so is the fact, normally speaking the person who makes the claim has got to prove the fact. But I realize that I struck too soon in this Amendment. I think the matter has been put right, and I suggest that in the general interests of justice we ought to put before another place this modified proposal. I hope very much that if we do so the other place, which I am sure wants to do the right thing, may be disposed to accept it.

8.57 p.m.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

My Lords, may I make reference for a moment to the speech of the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury. He said, in effect, that he wanted another place to show themselves reasonable in considering our Amendments, and so on. I think your Lordships know me well enough to realize that I have devoted a great deal of time and care in trying to get Amendments which seemed to be reasonable accepted in another place. I have been at great pains, and generally I have succeeded. Sometimes I have not succeeded, but more often than not I have. It is only right to say, quite plainly, lest I should be thought to be sheltering myself behind the Minister, that I have not advised him to accept this Amendment. I do not think it right to do so, and I should like to tell your Lordships why.

I got a great deal of advice on the last occasion, particularly from the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, who, perhaps with the traditional knowledge derived from his distinguished grandfather, was good enough to tell me that in a case of murder the onus of proof is upon the prosecution. I was aware of that fact. But here we are dealing with a very different proposition. The noble Viscount, Lord Simon, as one would expect, has made his point with perfect correctness. But it would be interesting to go a little further and see what the next clause, No. 41, provides. The test of what is a predominant extent of long-distance carriage is there set up; and the test is either of two things. Either you have to show, to be within the definition of long-distance carriage, that the total weight of the goods which were the subject of ordinary long-distance carriage for hire or reward exceeded half the total weight of all the goods carried in those vehicles; or you have to show that the receipts from the undertaking in respect of those goods exceeded half the total receipts of the undertaking. Your Lordships will observe—and there can be no question whatever about this—that those facts are, in the nature of things, and must he, peculiarly within the knowledge of the man who runs the undertaking. It is a very difficult thing lo determine, and if anybody knows what the answer to this question is, it is surely the man who runs those undertakings.

Conscious that we were faced with this difficulty, we put in a proviso. It begins on the fifth line of page 50. The noble Viscount referred to it on the last occasion and said he thought it was without precedent, and I agree. I have never seen its counterpart. We put it in quite deliberately because we felt this difficulty, and we said in effect: "Provided that, if the tribunal have not enough information"—I am paraphrasing it very crudely—"you must do the best you can on the information you have got." That is, I think, the broad substance of it. There is a principle of law which is well known to all lawyers—we generally have our principle s written for us in well known works and, having got a principle written, we then proceed to explain it away. I have no doubt that this principle in regard to certain aspects of the criminal law is too wide, but it is very well understood and it is written down in what is the classical text book on this subject—Taylor On Evidence. I cite from the Twelfth Edition, paragraph 376.

There is nothing technical about this; I think it is common sense. I will read it to you: In several of the instances above given the Legislature has adopted a principle which the Common Law also recognizes, and which may here be noticed as a second exception to the general rule that the burthen of proof lies at the party who substantially alleges the affirmative. The exception is this, that, where the subject matter of the allegation lies peculiarly within the knowledge of one of the parties, that party must prove it, whether it be of an affirmative or a negative character, and even though there be a presumption of law in his favour. That is the proposition. I am not going to say that I accept that proposition in its full width with regard to the criminal law of this country, but I do accept the proposition as a rule of some common sense, and I do say that, where facts are peculiarly within the knowledge of one person, it is not unfair to say that the burden of proof should be cast upon that person in whom rests the knowledge of the facts.

VISCOUNT SIMON

Would the noble and learned Viscount forgive my interrupting, but I merely want to know this? Has his attention been called to the first five lines of the Amendment which I am proposing, because those five lines exactly embody—do they not?—the principles to which the noble and learned Viscount is calling our attention?

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

I am coming to that but, for the moment, I regard that intervention as valuable, because it seems to me that the noble Viscount entirely accepts this proposition which I think, whether or not it is perfectly correct in regard to the criminal law, is a rule of sound common sense. Therefore, as the noble Viscount rightly says, he in his Amendment, I have no doubt, intends to accept that proposition. I am not quite sure that he does it, but he says this: In any proceeding under this section before the arbitration tribunal established under Part VIII … the obligation of giving to the tribunal all information in his power as to the manner in which the undertaking or the relevant part thereof was carried on during the period mentioned … shall rest on the person on whom the notice of acquisition has been served. But that has nothing to do with the onus of proof; that has to do with the obligation to give the information, and the obligation is already there, apart from this Amendment. The obligation is expressly stated, I think, in this Bill, in Clause 51, imposing upon the person that he has to give all information. If he does not give information—

THE EARL OF SELKIRK

He goes to gaol.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

There is an obligation to give all the information in his power under Clause 51, subsection (2). If he does not give information, that becomes an offence. You will find on Page 121, at Clause 119 (2), that any contravention of the Act subjects the person so contravening to a penalty of, I think, one hundred pounds and a fine of five pounds a day. So that, before ever this Amendment was drafted, you had the plainest obligation that the person must state the relevant facts and, if he does not state the relevant facts, he commits an offence.

Now see what this Amendment does. It does not alter the law already in the Statute, and it does not, as I see it, in any way deal with the onus of proof.

It says: "provided that such obligation has been duly performed." Imagine yourselves, if you will, in the position of this Tribunal. How do you know whether the obligation has been duly performed? That is the point. Take the case of a man whose vehicles we are seeking to take over. The man comes along, and you get an impression, from the way he answers questions, that he is not being, shall I say, so forthcoming as he might be. You suspect that there is some little cupboard in his house in which there is a little book, and if you could only unlock that cupboard and look at that little book you would get a great deal of information. But you cannot prove it. You do not know it. You just get an impression that the man might give you more information than he is giving. What do you do then?

Suppose, to take the two most common cases in recent years—and I have met this sometimes—you get a man whose books you want, and he says "I am awfully sorry but I cannot produce my books. We had a fire and my books were burned." The number of times you find that relevant books have been burned in a most unfortunate fire is truly remarkable. It may have been true, and there may have been a fire—but who lit it one does not like to investigate. There is sometimes a greater refinement, and we get nowadays the man who says: "There is a tremendous demand for waste paper. We have all been asked to contribute, because there is a shortage of paper, and I have contributed all my old records, and I do not remember anything about them." Suppose you have cases of that sort, and that you have—I will not put it higher than this—a suspicion in your mind, a strong suspicion, that the man is not being as forthcoming as he might have been: what do you do then? Do you say that the onus has shifted or not? Because, assuming the first part casts the onus on the man, the conditions of the onus have shifted the other way round, because it is "provided that such obligation has been duly performed." That is the whole point. That is what you never know.

In my opinion, as these facts are peculiarly within the knowledge of one party to the arbitration, if you are going to adopt a definite onus of proof you should not have it shifting on an uncertain fact like that. I should put it boldly, fairly and squarely on the shoulders of the man, because he has got the peculiar knowledge. But it was to avoid that very fact which we thought might be hard that we put in this very odd proviso, the like of which the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Simon, and I have never seen before in our long experience, to try to avoid getting to that position. And if it is said to me: "You really must have an onus of proof," then I should say: "Well, do not have an onus of proof which shifts upon the performance of something which you cannot prove has been performed. If you want an onus of proof, put it fairly and squarely on the shoulders of the man who knows the facts."

The Commission here are not claiming anything, they are not asserting a right, they are doing that which the Statute tells them they have to do. If they believe that a man comes within a certain category, Whether they like it or not, they are bound to take the next step and serve what is called a notice of claim. He can serve a counter-notice, and unless they are satisfied that the countor-notice is right they are bound to go on. It is a case of the Commission performing a statutory obligation. I say that this Commission have to perform what I have called a dichotomy of putting these various undertakings into one camp or the other. They must do the best they can. I believe that this question of onus, particularly of shifting onus, is wrong and is undesirable, and would have the result, if people were disposed to try to dodge this Statute, of enabling them by not producing all the relevant documents perhaps to get out of the obligation which Parliament intended should be forced upon then. Therefore I say, with great regret, that I cannot, in this case, see my way to assist your Lordships in getting this Amendment accepted.

VISCOUNT SWINTON

My Lords, I should imagine that never in the history of this House has so strange a speech been delivered from that place. I am not going to speak as a lawyer, though a long time ago I was one. I am going to speak merely as a common man, hitherto accustomed in this country to what we have been pleased to call common justice. Just observe what is going to happen here. Stripped of all the nice webs of legal terminology which have been woven around this very simple question, every road haulier, big or small, who I as hitherto been regarded as a decent man giving a decent service, who has not found his way into the law courts, who rendered pretty good service in the war, whether driving lorries, at the Front or through the bombardment from the air, a man who certainly has not been prosecuted more frequently than any of the rest of us, is to be treated by the Government, through the highest legal luminary of the land as their spokesman, as a potential if not as an actual criminal.

I justify the words I have spoken. What did he say: "Documents have a habit of disappearing"—"Curious how many fires there are." When I was a very young man at the Bar, I used to hear that kind of thing said sometimes at the Old Bailey. And I sometimes heard the Judge say: "Mr. So and So I think you are going a little too far." With great respect, my Lord Chancellor, I thick that to-night you have gone a little too far. These men are not criminals. These men are not potential criminals. Way should they be treated as if they were? Stripped of legal verbiage, I think there is only one instance which can be cited—there may be another: I do not know—where the onus of proof is shifted in this way. He is the man popularly known as the "fence," a probable receiver of stolen goods. Where a man is found in possession of stolen goods which have been recently stolen, the British law shifts the onus of proof on him to show why he is in possession of these goods. The ordinary criminal or indicted man is not treated as a criminal until the case is proved. These wretched road hauliers are not in possession of recently stolen goods. They are in possession of goods doing a good service which are presently to be taken from them. Upon whom then should lie the onus of proof? I speak again as a common man. I do not care whether it is in Clause 51. I leave aside the miserable suggestion that these men go and burn the evidence. If you can prove that a man has done so there is a perfectly good legal procedure, and that man should he taken by the Public Prosecutor to the Old Bailey.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

Will the noble Viscount tell me with what offence he can be charged?

VISCOUNT SWINTON

I do not know. THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Nor I.

VISCOUNT SWINTON

I defer to the Lord Chancellor's legal knowledge. understand that deliberate destruction of evidence is an offence. It is not? Be it so. I bow to the Lord Chancellor's greater knowledge, but that does not get the Lord Chancellor out of his insinuation that these honest men are the kind of people who go and destroy evidence. That is not a suggestion—

LORD AMMON

Nonsense.

VISCOUNT SWINTON

Lord Ammon may find it amusing but I do not mind saying that I am hot under the collar. We do feel it a disgusting thing.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

The noble Viscount accuses me again. I do not intend to stand that sort of language from him. I did not say anything like what he said. I am pointing out that it is quite wrong that the onus of proof should depend on the production of documents, and I gave illustrations of the sort of thing that could happen. I do not suggest for a moment that these people are dishonest men.

VISCOUNT SWINTON

Do not let us mince words. Let us be frank. The noble and learned Viscount and I know one another well enough to be frank. He said these were the kind of things that would happen. What was the point of his speech at all?

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

The noble Viscount and I know each other well, and if he were not heated he would see that I have a right to my opinions just as he has to his. He knows that I gave these facts as showing how wrong it is to make the onus of proof depend on the question of whether or not there has been a full production of documents. That is all.

VISCOUNT SWINTON

With great respect, I am extremely glad that the Lord Chancellor has reduced it to that.

LORD CHORLEY

Withdraw.

VISCOUNT SWINTON

If he has withdrawn the suggestion—

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

I withdraw nothing. If the noble Viscount at this time is unable to understand what I say it is not my fault.

VISCOUNT SWINTON

I am in the recollection of the House and will content myself with saying this: either there is a charge that these are the kind of people who would destroy evidence or, if that charge is not made—and I am delighted that it is not—then the whole case the Lord Chancellor advanced falls completely to the ground. What we have done is that we have said that any information which these people have must be brought forward. The law calls it "discovery." Let me use a term better known to noble Lords—what Mr. Bevin called "Cards face up on the table." We ask that this hand should be played with the cards face up on the table; and then we ask that the common principle of English justice shall apply, with the cards on the table, that before an honest man is deprived of his livelihood the onus of proof shall rest on the man who seeks to turn him out.

On Question, Whether the Motion shall be agreed to?

Their Lordships divided:—Contents, 49; Not-Contents, 12.

CONTENTS.
Portland, D. Hailsham, V. Digby, L.
Long, V. Fairfax of Cameron, [Teller.]
Aberdeen and Temair, M. Portal, V.
Cholmondeley, M. Ridley, V. Gifford, L.
Reading, M. Simon, V. Gisborough, L.
Salisbury, M. Swinton, V. Grenfell, L.
Hawke, I,.
Beatty, E. Barnby, L. Hazlerigg. L.
De La Warr, E. Bingley, L. Hylton, L.
Fortescue, E. [Teller.] Butler of Mount Juliet, L. (E. Carrick.) Kinnaird, L.
Howe, E. Llewellin, L.
Iddesleigh, E. Cherwell, L. Lloyd, L.
Lindsay, E. Clanwilliam, L. (E. Clanwilliam O'Hagan, L.
Munster, E. Remnant, L.
Radnor, E. Courthope, L. Rochdale, L.
Rothes, E. Craigmyle, L. Teynham, L.
Selkirk, E. De L'Isle and Dudley, L. Tweedsmuir, L.
Denham, L. Wolverton, L.
Briilgeman, V. Deramore, L.
NOT-CONTENTS.
Jowitt, V. (L. Chancellor.) Ammon, L. Lucas of Chilworth, L.
Chorley, L. [Teller.] Marley, L.
Addison, V. Kershaw, L. Morrison, L. [Teller.]
Stansgate, V. Lindsay of Birker, L. Quihell, L.
Walkden, L.

Resolved in the affirmative, and Motion agreed to accordingly.

9.25 p.m.