POLICE FEDERATION BILL (Hansard, 30 April 1959)

§ VISCOUNT TENBY
My Lords, I shall not detain your Lordships long on this Bill. It is a very simple Bill, which makes one slight alteration in the Police Act, 1919. Your Lordships will remember that that Act set up the Police Federation, and that the Schedule to the Act laid down the constitution of the Federation, its functions, and how proceedings should be conducted. It laid down, for example, how elections were to be held for the various branches, and it laid clown that elections for the branch boards should be held in October and that the annual meetings should be held before the 7th November. This lack of flexibility has led to some considerable difficulty. For example, I believe that this year, the Federation being a fairly large body, it would be impossible by this time to get the hall which normally they have in time to hold the meeting by the 7th November. All this Bill does is to allow the Secretary of State to fix the date, after consultation with the three committees of the Federation; that is the only purpose of the Bill. I may say that it has the support of the Home Office. I beg to move.

§ LORD SILKIN
My Lords, noble Lords on this side wholly approve of the purpose of this Bill; and, so far as I can follow its language, I think it carries out its purpose.

§ LORD CHESHAM
My Lords, as this afternoon I have apparently given the impression of damning with faint praise where I did not intend to damn, and of giving the House a free vote when I was merely trying to give, in a polite way, the Government's view on a Private Member's Bill, I think I had better choose my words with care. I trust that there will be no ambiguity when I say that the Government are in full sympathy with the objects of the Bill, have no objection to any of the proposals in it, or to the drafting, and hope that it will have a speedy passage to the Statute Book.