§ Clause 39, page 30, line 16, leave out from ("theatre") to ("and") in line 17 and insert ("including a cinematograph theatre, and any building used as a public hall, public concert-room or lecture room, public dance room or public gymnasium or indoor swimming baths").
§ LORD NEWTONMy Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in this Amendment. Clause 39 of this Bill is concerned with the machinery for excluding children from places of entertainment or assembly in order to prevent the spreading of a notifiable disease. This Amendment, which was inserted in another place as a result of points advanced by the Opposition there, has the effect of defining much more precisely than was previously done in the Bill those places from which it is considered by medical opinion to be desirable to be able to exclude children when necessary.
During the proceedings on the Committee stage in this Houe the noble Earl, Lord Gainsborough, was concerned that the clause as drafted then did not include 88 indoor swimming pools. I assured him that in fact indoor swimming pools were caught by the words in subsection (1)(a):
any hall or other building which is used as a place of public resort",which are now to be deleted by this Amendment. That I think was true. But in another place when this clause was being debated on the Committee stage it became apparent that the words which I have read out were being, or could be, given a wider interpretation than was intended. The purpose of this Amendment which I am moving now is to prevent that wider interpretation being given.
§ Moved, that this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment—(Lord Newton.)
§ On Question, Motion agreed to.