CHILDREN BILL [H.L.] (Hansard, 30 July 1958)

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT KILMUIR)
My Lords, in rising to move that the Commons Amendments be now considered, may I suggest to your Lordships what I think would be the best procedure? There are, as your Lordships will see, twenty-two Amendments from another place. Of these, all except Nos. 5, 6, and 16 are technical and drafting improvements to the Bill, with the minimum of political content. Therefore, what I suggest to your Lordships is that we should take Amendments Nos. 1 to 4 formally, and that I say a word on Amendments Nos. 5 and 6; that we then take Nos. 7 to 15 formally; that I say a word on No. 16; and lastly, that we deal formally with Nos. 17 to 22. That does not, of course, exclude any noble Lord, if there is a point he wishes to raise on any of these Amendments for which I suggest formal treatment, from raising it when I move them and I shall be delighted to reply. I hope that that course will meet the feeling of your Lordships, because we do not want to occupy too much time with what are largely drafting Amendments to the Bill. I beg to move.

§ LORD SILKIN
My Lords, in response to what the noble and learned Viscount, the Lord Chancellor, has said. I would say that we on this side of the House 489 find the suggestion he has made completely acceptable. Indeed, so far as I am concerned—and I believe that I speak for my noble friend Lord Latham, who took such a prominent part in the discussions on this Bill—I am completely satisfied with all the Amendments, and I have nothing to say except this. Three of the Amendments are Amendments which we pressed strongly from this side of the House. We pressed them in Committee, and we pressed them on the Report stage. We put forward such arguments as we could, and on each occasion the noble and learned Viscount, the Lord Chancellor—I will not say in accordance with the brief that he had—put forward the strongest possible reasons why they should not be accepted; so strong in fact, that we were almost convinced that he was right.
To our great surprise, we found these same Amendments which were turned down in this House put down by the Government in another place, where, of course, they were accepted by my friends. It may be that the arguments we put forward had a delayed action; that at the moment of our putting them forward they were not very effective, but became effective a month later. We can only express our gratitude that, even at a very late hour, the Government saw wisdom and accepted these Amendments. I do hope, however, that on another occasion when we put forward Amendments the Government will see reason a little earlier and that we shall have the satisfaction of feeling that our work has been rewarded immediately, rather than somewhat late in the day.

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, for accepting my proposal. With regard to the point he has made on the Amendments, I think it is another clear indication that no one is infallible—certainly no Minister is regarded as infallible—and also of the truth of the remark of Lord Rosebery's famous father: that it is the worst sign of weakness not to be ready to change your mind. However, having made those excuses, I do want to say to the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, on the general point, that these particular Amendments raised difficult matters and I ventured to put the difficulties as they appeared to me. I hope that on a review of the Session 490 and the general working together that we have had since last November he will acquit me of any desire or practice to ride roughshod over his suggestions. I think that over the last year the noble Lord and his colleagues have put forward a great number of helpful suggestions, and on many Bills I have been able to include them. All I can say is that I hope they will go on making such suggestions; I assure them of my gratitude for them and my consideration of suggestions when they are made.