BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE (Hansard, 23 March 1954)

§ THE PAYMASTER GENERAL (THE EARL OF SELKIRK)
My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Home, I beg to move that the Food and Drugs (Scotland) Bill be re-committed to a Committee of the Whole House. Your Lordships will recall that on Thursday last my noble friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster introduced the Slaughterhouses Bill into this House. This Bill will cover the whole of the United Kingdom, and as it will be a simple Bill it is hoped that there will be no essential difficulty in its making its way through Parliament in time for the necessary arrangements to he made when control of meat supply by the Ministry of Food comes to an end in July. Accordingly, it is no longer necessary that clauses dealing With slaughterhouses should be contained in the Food and Drugs (Scotland) Bill. These clauses become redundant because of the new provisions now contained in the Slaughterhouses Bill, and it becomes necessary to re-commit the Food and Drugs (Scotland) Bill in order to omit them from the latter Bill. I may also add that as the slaughterhouse provisions are to be omitted from the Food and Drugs (Scotland) Bill, it is considered more suitable that the law relating to knackers' yards should remain, as at present, under the Public Health (Scotland) Act. 1897. I beg to move.

§ EARL JOWITT
My Lords, I would just say one thing. I notice that the noble Earl, in making the observations which he has just made, relied far more than he usually does on a piece of paper in front of him. That is indicative of the fact that this is an exceedingly complicated matter. So far from the Slaughterhouses Bill being, as the noble Earl suggested a simple Bill, my noble friends who have studied it (I am afraid I have been studying other things) feel that it is one of very great complication. I hope that the noble Earl will not be under the impression that all is going to be easy about this Bill, or that it is an easy Bill to understand. Having said that, I have no objection to the course which the noble Earl now proposes.

§ THE EARL OF SELKIRK
My Lords, may I take the opportunity of thanking the noble and learned Earl, and also of welcoming him on his return from his sojourn abroad and saying how glad we are to see him back in this House? We are grateful for his warning, and we will bear it in mind.