PRIVATE BILL STANDING ORDERS

HL Deb 12 February 1959 vol 214 cc179-83

3.5 p.m.

THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (LORD MERTHYR) rose to move that the following Amendments be made in the Standing Orders relative to Private Bills, etc.:— Standing Order 30A, page 24, line 19, leave out ("six inches") and insert ("not less than one inch") line 23, leave out ("an Ordnance map on the scale of not ness than one inch to a mile") Standing Order 216, page 87, line 44, at end insert ("Provided that no such Petition may be presented against a Manœuvres Order made under section one of the Manœuvres Act, 1958, and accordingly paragraph (6) hereof shall not apply to any such Order.")

The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion which stands in my name on the Order Paper. The first two of the three Amendments to the Standing Orders relating to Private Bills which are contained in this Motion may, I hope, be taken together, because the second is consequential upon the first. The third Amendment is quite separate, and I will take that later.

Standing Order No. 30A deals with the question of Bills seeking powers to take water for water supplies, and the Standing Order at present requires the Promoters of those Bills to deposit a map showing the position of wells and other such-like works on a map of not less than six inches to a mile. It has been represented to me, and I think with considerable force, that this is an unnecessary requirement, partly because these details have already to be shown on other maps and so there is a certain amount of duplication. Another reason is that it is not always very easy to obtain up-to-date editions of six-inch maps, and I am satisfied that it would be sufficient if one-inch maps were used for this purpose as a minimum requirement. So I propose that that shall be the rule in future, doing away with the necessity for a six-inch map for this purpose. As I have said, the second Amendment is consequential and stands or falls with the first.

May I deal with the third Amendment, which also is designed to prevent duplication? On the Second Reading of the Land Powers (Defence) Bill on May 8 last year, the House was informed by the noble Earl, Lord Bathurst, who was in charge of the Bill on behalf of Her Majesty's Government, that a private person aggrieved by a Manœuvres Order made under the Bill could, under Private Business Standing Order No. 216, petition the Special Orders Committee for relief, and that such an arrangement would merely have duplicated the right of audience before the Manœuvres Commission proposed by the Bill. The Land Powers (Defence) Bill has now been passed and has been consolidated into the Manœuvres Act, 1958, which received the Royal Assent on December 18 last. I accordingly propose now that Standing Order No. 216 should be amended by removing the right of persons aggrieved by a Manœuvres Order to petition the House and appear before the Special Orders Committee.

This Amendment is a very limited one. It retains the right of the Special Orders Committee to consider Manœuvres Orders in their public aspect and to report upon them to the House. All it does is to remove from that Committee their duty, if a petition is deposited against a Manœuvres Order, to hear the parties and to adjudicate upon the dispute. This duty, as I have already explained, is now taken over by the Manœuvres Commission.

I should like to add a short historical note. It may be of interest to your Lordships to know that between the years 1897 and 1939 Manœuvres Orders required an Address and did not go to the Special Orders Committee. In 1939, at the very beginning of the war, an Amendment was made to the Standing Orders of the House, to Standing Order No. 216, which required all draft Orders needing an Address, including, of course, a draft Order connected with manœuvres, to go in future to the Special Orders Committee. In fact, however, since 1939 no Manœuvres Orders have been made, so the point is not one that recurs very often, as your Lordships will at once see.

My Lords, I will add only this further comment. Your Lordships will require, I expect, to be satisfied that in the place of what is being taken away something satisfactory is being put, so I would draw the attention of the House, very briefly, to Section 6 of the Manœuvres Act, 1958. Your Lordships will there see, in subsection (1), that the Commission informs local authorities and invites representations from them when a Manœuvres Order is made. Under subsection (2) the local authorities inform the public and invite representations to be made, Under subsection (3), if there are representations a public inquiry must he held; and under subsection (5)—I would particularly draw your Lordships' attention to this point—the Secretary of State may delete or modify provisions precluding entry on to land made under subsection (3) of Section 5 of the same Act.

I think that is all I need say upon these Amendments. May I add just this? In this matter I must be, and indeed am, entirely neutral, and it is not for me to say whether this change ought to be made or not. I am proposing the Motion (of which I have given very long notice on the Order Paper), because it was suggested last summer that it should be done and it is my wish to help in every way possible. I merely suggest that the House may require to be satisfied either that the Act gives equal protection to occupiers of land or, if it does not do so, that it is right that it should not do so. Whether it does so or not is not for me to judge. I beg to move the Motion which stands in my name.

Moved, That the following Amendments be made in the Standing Orders relative to Private Bills, etc.:— Standing Order 30A, page 24, line 19, leave out ("six inches") and insert ("not less than one inch") line 23, leave out ("an Ordnance map on the scale of not less than one inch to a mile") Standing Order 216, page 87, line 44, at end insert ("Provided that no such Petition may be presented against a Manœuvres Order made under section one of the Manœuvres Act, 1958, and accordingly paragraph (6) hereof shall not apply to any such Order.")—(Lord Merthyr.)

3.15 p.m.

VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH

My Lords, again we are most grateful to the noble Lord the Chairman of Committees for his care in explaining to the House the situation in regard to the Motion on the Order Paper. As to the first two items, one can understand the reason behind the Amendments. I expect that originally there was some particular reason for providing the amount of space given to the information to be deposited, and all I am concerned about is whether there has been due consultation— I hope and expect there has—with people, such as the Parliamentary Bar, who are accustomed to represent others at these inquiries. I imagine that they are not raising any objection to this change, With regard to the matter of Manœuvres Orders, I am obliged to the Clerk of the Parliaments in that I have been able to look at Section 6 of the Act of last year, and I should have thought that this matter is largely covered. However, there is always a sort of feeling at the back of one's mind that there ought not finally to be an inhibition against the private citizen from being able to ventilate a grievance in Parliament. Therefore I take it that, provided we are satisfied win the general procedure laid down in Section 6, it would be quite understood that if he liked to go to his local Member of Parliament and have a grievance directly represented, nothing in either Section 6 or in this Order would prevent him from doing so.

3.18 p.m.

LORD MERTHYR

My Lords, there are two points in the speech of the noble Viscount to which I should like briefly to reply. First, about the maps, I can assure the noble Viscount that no objections have been received to this proposal. The main point there is that, these wells and other works have in any case to be shown on large-scale maps in another connection; therefore this requirement was duplication. This alteration is being made at the suggestion of Parliamentary agents. Passing to the other matter, the noble Viscount asked whether there was, by reason of this change, anything to prevent any person aggrieved from going to his Member of Parliament. Certainly there is nothing to prevent his going to his Member of Parliament; but I think it is only fair to say that I suppose, strictly speaking, that this change, technically at any rate, takes away the last word in the matter from Parliament and gives it to the Secretary of State. That is as I read it. If your Lordships will look at the last subsection to which I referred, you will see that it says that the Secretary of State may amend the Order. I take it that that means without the consent of Parliament. That is a technical matter, and if your Lordships wanted to pursue it, I should like to ask the representative of Her Majesty's Government to deal further with it, if necessary.

On Question, Motion agreed to: the said Standing Orders amended accordingly.