WEIGHTS AND MEASURES BILL [H.L.]

HL Deb 26 January 1961 vol 227 cc1310-92

3.25 p.m.

Amendments Reported, (according lo Order.

Clause 5 [Working standards and testing and stamping equipment]:

THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (THE EARL OF DUNDEE)

My Lords, I beg to move the first Amendment on the Marshalled List. Clause 5 provides that the local authority shall be required to maintain the equipment necessary for them to carry out their duties. It also provides that the Board may maintain and hire out to such authorities as need it equipment which may sometimes be too expensive or difficult for the local authorities to maintain themselves. The noble Lord, Lord Latham, moved an Amendment in Committee and expressed some doubts lest this provision might involve any degree of compulsion. He said that the local authorities were afraid that the Board of Trade might be empowered by this clause to compel them to hire equipment. I said that I did not think the clause could be interpreted in that sense, and that it was certainly not intended to be, but your Lordships were not quite satisfied that it could not be. The noble Lord, Lord Silkin, and the noble Viscount, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, voiced doubts on the subject, and I concluded by saying that if the noble Viscount was genuinely afraid that this clause might be interpreted in a way the Board of Trade did not believe it could be interpreted, of course we would look at it with the greatest attention. This Amendment is intended to remove any conceivable doubt on the subject.

Amendment moved—

Page 5, line 38, leave out ("the Board may") and insert ("then, if that authority so request, the Board may instead").—(The Earl of Dundee.)

LORD LATHAM

My Lords, we on this side, I think, are grateful to the noble Earl for having put down this Amendment, which, as he has said, gives effect to the Amendment submitted at the Committee stage by my noble friend Lord Alexander of Hillsborough. It removes the doubts which were present in the minds of the authorities, and I am sure we are grateful for what the noble Earl has been able to do with the Minister concerned.

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, this is another Amendment designed to effect the purpose of an Amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Latham, though his Amendment was to a much later part of the Bill, Clause 42. The noble Lord will no doubt remember that he wanted to omit the provision for requiring suitable premises to be maintained by local authorities for the housing of equipment, on the ground that, although this had been the law since 1904, it was now sometimes considered derogatory to the independence and dignity of local authorities.

In view of the objections expressed by the noble Lord to Board of Trade control on local authority premises, we are prepared to limit it to those which are used for housing inspectors' working standards and testing equipment. Those premises have under existing law to be to the satisfaction of the Board of Trade, and it is accordingly proposed that the provision about approval of premises shall be deleted from Clause 42 and that provision shall be made for the Board to approve the laboratories and other premises in which working standards and other testing equipment is kept, in the same way as the Board approve, under Clause 4, premises used for keeping local standards. I hope that this will meet the views of the noble Lord. Later on, I shall move to delete provisions of Clause 42 relating to the approval of local authority premises by the Board of Trade. I beg to move.

Amendment moved—

Page 5, line 44, leave out ("in the case of") and insert ("except so far as may be necessary for the purposes of their use elsewhere, shall be kept at premises provided by the local weights and measures authority and approved for the purpose by the Board; and").—(The Earl of Dundee.)

LORD LATHAM

My Lords, as the noble Earl has said, this Amendment goes some way to meet the objections voiced by myself and by other noble Lords when the matter was being considered in Committee. It limits the necessity for approval by the Board to those premises where is stored the neces- sary equipment. In these circumstances, we are much obliged.

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

Clause 6 [Testing of other standards and equipment]:

LORD ST. OSWALD

My Lords, when this clause was discussed in Committee, a number of Amendments were made to subsection (3), with the object of enabling the Board of Trade to prescribe a more realistic fee for the testing and stamping of flashing-point apparatus under Section 20 of the Petroleum (Consolidation) Act, 1928, and also a fee where the apparatus is tested and rejected. When the clause itself was moved, my noble friend Lord Derwent, while agreeing that an increased fee for the testing of flash-point apparatus was justified, pointed out that Section 20 of the 1928 Act prescribed a maximum fee. He thought that this principle should be retained and suggested that the procedure in the recent Patents Act be followed. On behalf of the Government, I undertook to look into the matter. This has now been done and the Amendment which I am now moving is designed to meet the noble Lord's point. It increases the present maximum from 20s. to £10 but permits the Board of Trade at any time, by order, to increase that maximum. By virtue of an Amendment to Clause 55, at page 45, line 22, which I will move later, any such order will require an Affirmative Resolution of each House, thus making the procedure for increasing the maximum subject to a similar control as that relating to patents' fees. I hope your Lordships will agree that this meets the points raised by noble Lords in Committee.

Amendment moved—

Page 6, line 44, at end insert— ("Provided that no such fee shall exceed ten pounds or such higher sum as the Board may by order specify.")—(Lord St. Oswald.)

LORD DERWENT

My Lords, may I thank my noble friend for having looked into this matter and for having gone the whole way to meet me? I am completely satisfied. May I also thank the noble Viscount the Leader of the Opposition for the support he gave me in Committee on this point? I hope that he, too, is now completely satisfied.

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

Clause 7:

Commission on Units and Standards of Measurement

7.—

(2) The Commission shall consist of nine members appointed by the Board as follows, that is to say—

1. (f) three from among persons appearing to the Board to have a good knowledge of industry or commerce;

and the Board shall from time to time appoint a chairman of the commission from amongst the persons appointed to be members thereof.

3.34 p.m.

LORD LATHAMmoved, in subsection (2), to leave out "nine" and insert "twelve". The noble Lord said: My Lords, I ask leave of the House to couple with this Amendment Amendment No. 7, because this Amendment is the vehicle, as it were, for Amendment No. 7, and both are concerned with the constitution of the Commission. In Committee, this matter was the subject of lengthy consideration. Whilst, in pursuance of a promise made by the noble Earl, there is in his name on the Marshalled List an Amendment which goes somewhat beyond the terms of the Bill, I must say, without, I hope, appearing to be ungrateful, that in our opinion his Amendment does not meet the case. This is an important issue, an issue of principle, an issue concerning the dignity and rights of local government. After all, the weights and measures authorities represent the consumers, for it is they who must enforce the law. It is upon them that the responsibility has been cast; and if that be the case, as undoubtedly it is, then they should be in at the time when proposals are being considered which, if they are accepted, will have to be enforced by the weights and measures authority.

Take, for instance, the words "or public administration". There are thousands of people engaged in thousands of different activities which can he described as "public administration", but such experience as they may have obtained in that administration may not fit them to be able to judge the practicability of proposals which the Commission may evolve. We take the view that the weights and measures authorities are entitled, in their own right, because they are the enforcement authorities, to be represented through their associations on this Commission.

I should like to refer to what the noble Earl said in Committee—I quote from the OFFICIAL REPORT [Vol. 227 (No. 20), col. 209]. I had asked the noble Earl what were the functions the Commission would be carrying out in regard to which industry or the consumer would be concerned, and the noble Earl said: … it would be easier for me to answer the question of the noble Lord. Lord Latham, if I knew whom the Commission were going to appoint. I suppose the noble Earl, really meant to say, "whom the Board were going to appoint". But that is a curious doctrine. Surely you do not decide who is to do a job before you decide what the job is to be. That seems to me to be an almost Alice-in-Wonderland doctrine. You do not fit the subject or purpose to the person; you fit the person to the subject or purpose. The noble Earl cannot tell us what this Commission is going to do until he knows how it is constituted. Surely the purposes of the Commission are determined, and then one looks around to find the persons best able to discharge the functions which are to be given to the Commission.

We on this side say that the local authorities who are weights and measures authorities should have representation on this Commission, and for that purpose this Amendment proposes to increase the size of the Commission from 9 to 12, to permit of the appointment of representatives of the three associations who represent the authorities who will be the weights and measures authorities. I very much hope that the noble Earl will be able to accept the Amendments on the Marshalled List on the constitution of this Commission. We take a very serious view of this and feel bound to press these Amendments. I beg to move.

Amendment moved—

Page 7, line 4, leave out ("nine") and insert ("twelve").—(Lord Latham.)

3.40 p.m.

LORD HAWKE

My Lords, while the noble Lord has been speaking I have been trying to make a study of the functions of this Commission. So far as I can see, their functions are purely what might colloquially be described as of an "egg-head" nature, except in one small respect; that is, in Clause 8 (1)(b), where they have to advise on the keeping of authorised copies of British Standards. I can imagine that weights and measures authorities might have some interest in where the copies of these standards are to be kept, because I presume that at some intervals their weights and measures have to be checked up against those standards. Otherwise, I cannot find in any of these functions anything designed to be done by anybody who is not a higher mathematician or scientist. For that reason, it seems to me that the noble Lord has a very small ground indeed for suggesting that weights and measures authorities, at any rate to the number of three, or indeed any persons other than these distinguished and scientific nominations whom the Government propose, should be represented on this Commission. Therefore I hope the Government will not saddle themselves with a long list of people in this body who will really perform no useful function.

LORD SILKIN

My Lords, I find it difficult to understand why there should be any possible objection to adding three names to the body that is set out in Clause 7. It is not proposed to interfere with that. I should have thought that the Commission would be strengthened by having three representatives of the local authority associations. The noble Lord, Lord Hawke, asks what the purpose of these representatives would be. The purpose of The Committee is to advise the Board on matters relating to units and standards, and I should have thought that local authority representatives who will have to administer this Bill when it becomes an Act would be in a strong position to give such advice.

LORD HAWKE

My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord? This is a point that has puzzled me. I thought as he did when we were first dealing with the Bill, but on re-reading it seems to me that the more mundane matters, as to whether there should be three-eighths of a pint measure and that sort of thing, will not come within the purview of this Commission. They are concerned only with the higher mathematics and the places of storage of these stan- dards. That is how I read it; but perhaps the noble Lord reads it differently.

LORD SILKIN

I do read it differently. I think that the matters on which they will be advising, according to subsection (1) of Clause 7, are much wider than the noble Lord has in mind, and that, at any rate, this gives them power to give such advice. But if the noble Lord is concerned only about such matters as involve the knowledge of higher mathematics, then I do not understand why Amendment No. 5 provides that they should consist of people who have "experience in industry, commerce or public administration". The noble Earl is really giving us that case, because, in addition to the pure scientists and mathematicians, he is bringing in people of wide experience and people with experience of public administration. It would therefore be quite possible, if the noble Earl's Amendment is accepted, to have local authority representatives on this Commission.

The real difference between the noble Earl and ourselves is simply that we want three representatives of local authorities to be there as of right and not merely as a result of the discretion to be exercised by the Board of Trade. In the result, it may be much the same, except that it would be a smaller number—the three might come out of the original nine. We want to add three, and we say specifically that they should be local authority representatives. I cannot see that there is any great question of principle involved in this matter. I feel that if this Bill is to operate smoothly, the local authorities, when these questions of principle are being considered, should be there to express their views.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, in replying to the two Amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Latham, and the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, I shall also, with your Lordships' permission, refer to my own Amendment, which mainly arises out of the discussion that we had on the various Amendments in Committee. On that occasion the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, preferred to have a separate discussion on his Amendment, and I take it that he wishes to do the same again. I must warn I am afraid, that my arguments in reply to his Amendment cannot be different in any way, but will be exactly the same, in principle, as those which I shall have to use now in reply to the Amendment which is before your Lordships.

As the noble Lord, Lord Latham, said, although we have tried to do a little to meet the point of view which he put forward, I think it is recognised here that there is perhaps an irreconcilable cleavage between us which rests on different conceptions of the function and the purpose of this Commission. The noble Lord quoted a remark which I made in Committee in reply to a number of questions and supplementary questions, not on the main purpose of the Commission but on the particular qualifications of the three members who are to be appointed by the Board of Trade, and who, in the Bill as it was, were to be appointed among other persons appearing to the Board of Trade to have a suitable knowledge or appropriate knowledge of industry or commerce.

My noble friend Lord Derwent asked a question about these three members. The noble Lord, Lord Latham, said that he wanted, before I replied, to ask a supplementary question which was not about the functions of the Commission as a whole, but as to what advice [OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 227 (No. 20), col. 209]: is it expected by the Board of Trade will be given by these three representatives of industry and commerce? What special knowledge or experience is it anticipated that they will bring". For one thing, which I did not mention, we do not regard them as representatives of anything. I then replied to the noble Lord: But it would be easier for me to answer the question … if I knew whom the Commission were going to appoint. Then the noble Lord said: The Board must determine what advice they want before they look around for the persons to give it. I then replied: As the Commission will have to cover questions relating to the need for prescribing new units of measurement for use in trade or for abolishing existing units which have become obsolete, it is considered that they will benefit from membership of those with knowledge of trade and industry if these are included in the membership. The difference between us is really this. Noble Lords opposite and the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, in what he has just said, have repeatedly suggested "representatives" in this or that theatre of life in the country, such as business or local authorities. We hold the view very strongly, and we must adhere to it, that this Commission should not contain representatives of any interest or body of people in the country at all. Indeed, in my Amendment, in order to make that clear, we have been obliged to introduce a rather clumsier form of expression than was contained in the original Bill.

LORD SILKIN

My Lords, may I point out that in the Amendment which we are moving, although we use the term "representatives" rather loosely—and I think perhaps my noble friend did, too —we visualise that they will be appointed by the Board and not by the local authorities themselves, though they may make suggestions.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

I quite understand that. But even though they are appointed by the Board, we do not intend that the Board should select them as representatives of any body. I was just going to point out that my noble friend Lord Derwent suggested that it might appear from the existing wording of the Bill that these three persons to be appointed by the Board might be looked upon as representatives of business—the Federation of British Industries and so on—which is not at all what we intended. It is for that reason, in order to remove that misunderstanding, that we have substituted the words suitable qualifications by way of knowledge of or experience in industry, commerce— and we have added the words "public administration", to do all we can to meet Lord Latham's point. Because, as was pointed out just now by my noble friend Lord Hawke, experience of local authority administration might in some cases which the Commission might have to consider be of value in the Commission's work, although it would not be of major importance normally.

The point of putting in these provisions is not that we want anybody to be put on the Commission as a representative of industry and commerce, but simply because we think the Board, in choosing three independent persons to serve on the Board, should have regard to certain kinds of experience. The kinds of experience which we mention in the clause are the only ones which seem to us to be relevant to what the Commission will have to do. It is, as my noble friend Lord Hawke said, a body whose functions are entirely concerned, or at least predominantly concerned, with scientific questions relating to the fundamental and derived units of measurement defined in the Bill and with highly technical matters relating to the construction and maintenance of the primary standards established by the Bill. The functions are fully defined in Clause 8 of the Bill, and I do not think there can be any doubt about them. If it were one of the functions of the Commission, for example, to give advice upon the manner in which local authorities should carry out their duties under the Bill, then I should be 100 per cent. with the noble Lord, Lord Latham, in his argument. But that is not the case at all, and I think this cleavage of opinion which we have on this point arises from these different conceptions of what the Commission is supposed to do.

We feel that, in consideration of the arguments which were used in Committee, we have considered the matter as fully as we can. We have introduced an additional qualification of "experience in public administration" which may be one of the qualifications to be considered. But we are not going to have anybody as a representative either of local authorities or of business or trade unions or as a representative of anything at all. We think it would destroy the usefulness of the Commission if persons had to be appointed for reasons which are irrelevant to the work which the Commission will be expected to do, and that an enlargement of its numbers over nine would detract from its usefulness. I am sorry that we cannot come closer together in this matter, but I hope I have made the reasons for the Government's point of view as clear as I can.

VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH

My Lords, I have listened carefully to the very courteous reply by the noble Earl and I can see that he is adamant on this point. Nevertheless, his argument has been such that, if it is sound, apart from the two words "public administration", I can see no reason at all for putting in two members experienced in industry and commerce unless there is something fundamental in the case with regard to local authorities. When one looks at the scientific matters set out in this clause, one sees that they might lead to contingent questions arising, especially in this vastly changing world of industry and commerce—questions dealing with all kinds of things, like pre-packaging in large quantities in different places, and the kind of effect such matters might have upon standards as well as units of measurement, and especially where the standards and units were to be stored. I therefore propose that we move to a Division on this matter, so that it may be properly debated in another place.

LORD DERWENT

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for having taken up the point I raised in Committee. At the end of the Committee stage I thought I understood what the Commission were going to do. I think I agree with my noble friend Lord Hawke on what their duty is, but I am not sure. I cannot help feeling still that it would be better for the Commission if the three people mentioned in paragraph (f) were not named at all, but were appointed by the Commission members in paragraphs (a) to (e) as three people they found necessary for their work. I do not wish to pursue that matter futher, but I should like to leave the thought in my noble friend's mind for the future course of the Bill.

LORD MILVERTON

My Lords, in the Committee stage of this Bill there were two Amendments down in my name which covered much the same ground as that of the noble Lord, Lord Latham, and at that time I should certainly have been prepared, if necessary, to go into the Lobby and vote against the argument then put forward by the noble Earl in charge of the Bill. But since then, like others. I have had time to reconsider, and I have carefully read and tried to understand the reasons which have been put forward by the noble Earl. I have to admit that to-day I think that, on the whole, I should not be prepared to go into the Lobby and vote against him on this matter, because I now see his point of view which previously I was not able to appreciate.

On Question, Whether the said Amendment shall be agreed to?

EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, this Amendment I have already discussed in dealing with that on which your Lordships have just divided. Although it contains only a small crumb of concession to the noble Lord. I hope that your Lordships will accept it for what it is. I beg to move.

Amendment moved—

Page 7, line 14, leave out from ("have") to end of line and insert ("suitable qualifications by way of knowledge of or experience in industry, commerce or public administration;").—(The Earl of Dundee.)

4.10 p.m.

LORD STONHAMmoved, in subsection (2), to add to paragraph (f): of whom one shall have adequate experience of the organisation of workers ".

The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move Amendment No. 6 which, as the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, has already foreshadowed, proposes that the three persons who will have suitable

Their Lordships divided: Contents, 22; Not-Contents, 66.

CONTENTS
Alexander of Hillsborough, V.	Douglas of Barloch, L.	Shackleton, L.
Amwell, L.	Faringdon, L.	Shepherd, L. [Teller.]
Attlee, E.	Henderson, L.	Silkin, L.
Boyd-Orr, L.	Latham, L.	Stonham, L.
Burden, L. [Teller.]	Lawson, L.	Williams, L.
Chorley, L.	Listowel, E.	Wise, L.
Citrine, L.	Pakenham, L.	Wootton of Abinger, B.
Dalton, L.

NOT-CONTENTS
Ailsa, M.	Dundee, E.	Milverton, L.
Ailwyn, L.	Dundonald, E.	Newall, L.
Alexander of Tunis, E.	Fortescue, E.	Newton, L. [Teller.]
Ampthill, L.	Freyberg, L.	Perth, E.
Ashbourne, L.	Furness, V.	Radnor, E.
Atholl, D.	Gage, V.	Rathcavan, L.
Auckland, L.	Goschen, V.	St. Aldwyn, E. [Teller.]
Bathurst, E.	Gosford, E.	St. Oswald, L.
Bethell, L.	Hailsham, V. (L. President.)	Saltoun, L.
Bilsland, L.	Hawke, L.	Sinclair of Cleeve, L.
Birdwood, L,	Horsbrugh, B.	Somers, L.
Boston, L.	Iddesleigh, E.	Soulbury, V.
Buccleuch and Queensberry, D.	Jessel, L.	Spens, L.
Buckinghamshire, E.	Kilmuir, V. (L.Chancellor.)	Stonehaven, V.
Cholmondeley, M.	Long, V.	Strang, L.
Clitheroe, L.	McCorquodale of Newton, L.	Stratheden and Campbell, L.
Colyton, L.	Mackintosh of Halifax, V.	Swinton, E.
Cottesloe, L.	Mar and Kellie, E.	Teviot, L.
Craven, E.	Massereene and Ferrard, V.	Torrington, V.
Croft, L.	Merrivale, L.	Waldegrave, E.
Derwent, L.	Mills, L.	Willingdon, M.
Digby, L.	Milne, L.	Wolverton, L.

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

qualifications by way of knowledge or experience in industry, commerce or public administration, shall include at least one who has adequate experience of the organisation of workers. In reply to my noble friend's Amendment, the noble Earl has said that he will treat this in a like manner, in that he is unable to accept it. I should like to say at once that Amendment No. 5, which he has himself moved and which embodies a suggestion made by his noble friend Lord Derwent, considerably improves the position.

I have advanced the arguments on Committee stage and I do not propose to repeat them, but I want to point out that the noble Earl has said this afternoon that the Government hold very strongly that these three people should not include people who represent any particular interest at all. I acknowledge the strength of that. But in my view, when these three people are appointed it will be impossible in fact to observe what he has just said. If, for instance, these three eminent persons are to have these suitable qualifications—experience in industry, commerce or public administration—it is quite certain that a business man, an employer, will be appointed, and he will be appointed simply because he is a business man, and an eminent one.

It is quite likely that another of the three persons will be someone who has a connection with public administration a member of one of the bodies concerned with public administration. Although these people will not be appointed as delegates, they will be appointed precisely because they have those particular qualifications; and although one would accept that the Government may not appoint a trade unionist simply because he is a trade unionist. I think that at least the noble Earl should give an assurance on behalf of the Government (because he has already said that he cannot accept my Amendment) that when these three persons are appointed they will include one who has considerable experience in the organisation of workers—namely, a prominent trade unionist.

The only object here—and it is quite a fair one; it is one which surely everyone must support—is to preserve a kind of balance in these things. These three gentlemen, or gentlemen and ladies, will be three wise people who, in the context of this Commission, will be laymen. They will not be scientists; they will not be experts in astral matters or things of that kind, but they will be laymen. To a large extent it will be their job to see that the decisions of this high-powered and extremely experienced scientific Committee will, as it were, be brought down to earth; it will be their job, before the recommendations are submitted to the Board of Trade, to ask themselves. "How will this affect the ordinary man or woman, for good or ill? How will it benefit them? Will it harm them?" Therefore, those three laymen are going to be important people, and it seems to me unanswerable that there should be this balance in the selection of those three persons.

There is no use denying that one of them is going to be an eminent business man. One of them is going to be someone eminent in public administration. What I am asking is that the third person should be one who is eminent in trade union affairs, who in fact represents the workers—not as a delegate, not in fact as a representative, but as one who, in effect, in committee can give expression to their views. After all, what is decided is going to be of importance in factories, in shops and everywhere. Surely, therefore, it is important that the recommendations of this Commission, which are going to be worked out in practice by ordinary men and women, should at some time before they are submitted to the Board of Trade have received the advice, knowledge and experience of a prominent trade unionist. It seems to me that the proposition is so self-evident that it does not need to be argued further. Even though the noble Earl has already said that he cannot accept the Amendment, I hope that, on behalf of the Government, he will give an assurance that when these three persons are appointed they will include a trade unionist. I beg to move.

Amendment moved—

Page 7, line 14, at end insert the said words.—(Lord Stonham.)

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, the only thing I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, about, is that there is not the slightest reason why all three members of the Commission appointed by the Board of Trade should not be prominent trade unionists, because often trade unionists have suitable knowledge and experience of industry and commerce, and sometimes they have experience of public administration, too. There is not the slightest reason why all three should not be trade unionists.

The noble Lord must know a great deal about the intentions of the Board of Trade when he says that it is obvious that one of these three members is going to be a prominent business man and another a prominent local authority representative. If he knows that, he knows a great deal more than I do. But that is exactly what we do not intend to do under this Bill. I am not going to try to counter the noble Lord's prognostications about the membership of this Commission in any way, but I should have thought it just as likely that one or more of these three representatives might be people with a specialised mathematical knowledge of weights and measures who happen, in a subordinate capacity, to have a great deal of knowledge of industry and commerce and of the way in which weights and measures could impinge on industry and commerce. I do not know.

I must repeat that we do not take the view that membership of this Commission should be representative of any particular interest. We think it would detract from the usefulness of the Commission if that were so. We have introduced the words "experienced in public administration "because it is conceivable that in one or two respects experience of public administration might impinge on the particular specialised, scientific kind of work which the Commission will have to do; but by no conceivable stretch of the imagination can we think of any way in which experience of workers' organisations would be relevant to this particular kind of work. Though if is a fine and useful experience to have in general, it would have no particular relevance to this kind of work.

On the other hand, there is no reason why one, two or three trade unionists should not be appointed; nor is there any reason why those appointed by other persons should not happen to belong to trade unions. I believe our difference really arises from a fundamental divergence of view about the functions of this Commission. I do not want to elaborate what we have already covered in Committee. I am sorry, but I can do no more than repeat the considerations I put before your Lordships on the earlier Amendments, which in my view have not been detracted from by anything which has been said in support of those Amendments.

LORD SHEPHERD

I do not know what my noble friend intends to do in regard to his Amendment, but I think the noble Earl could help us if he would at least undertake to consider the suggestion that was made by the noble Lord, Lord Derwent. At the present moment we have it clearly stated that these three persons shall be experienced in industry and commerce. The noble Earl said this might well mean a trade unionist, but not many people looking at those words Would believe that that was the Government's intention. This is to be a man who conies from industry, a senior man; and obviously his views must be clouded or guided by his industrial experience.

If the noble Earl would consider between now and the Third Reading taking out those words from the Amendment he has just obtained: experienced in industry, commerce or public administration and using instead a few words which might embrace the views of my noble friends Lord Latham and Lord Stonham, words which at least would give an indication to the House that this is the intention of the Government—for they have said this evening that they wish to appoint three men not as representatives but as men who, because of their professional knowledge and experience, would be useful to the Commission—I believe that would be acceptable. I think if we struck out those words I have mentioned and found words within which loosely it would be possible for us to appoint three individuals, not as representatives but with knowledge, then my noble friends might be prepared to support that.

4.23 p.m.

LORD CITRINE

My Lords, may I say a word in respect of this Amendment? I think that, what has been said in support of it, however theoretically difficult to prove in practice, is very sound. I am quite sure that in the drafting of these words there was no contemplation in the mind of the draftsman of bringing in among these three representatives anyone having a knowledge of the organisation of workers; and I should have said that, had this point not been raised, it would not have been in the minds of the Board of Trade to make such an appointment. I am not in any way supporting the view, which in fact is not before us, for representation of the trade unions in a matter of this description; but I feel certain in my own mind that when a selection is being made those making the selection will have some regard to the interests with which the proposed appointee has been associated. That will be one of the tests of his knowledge: as to how far, in fact, he is acquainted, not with a particular trade but with the broad considerations of a practical, nature which will need to be applied in carrying out this work.

All we are asking is that similar consideration should be given to the work-people in industry; and that, without appointing a trade unionist as a representative of the trade union —or, I would go so far as to say, without appointing a trade unionist—someone who has a knowledge of the organisation of workpeople (and that is the only practical definition one can find) should be taken into consideration and ultimately appointed. These precise words have been used before in legislation. They are used in all the nationalisation Acts. I do not know whether they were used in the case of the Restrictive Trade Practices Act, but certainly a trade unionist, a man with knowledge of the organisation of workpeople, sits upon the Restrictive Practices Court. It is a difficulty of definition with which we are struggling here, and I believe that the words used in the Amendment are the nearest to which the Mover can get in seeking to express what he wants.

As a lifelong trade unionist, and one responsible in some measure for its later development in policy, I have been very anxious that at every stage trade unionists should be associated with the administration of this measure and with the carrying out of the practical day-to-day problems with which management, and even science, has to be associated; because there are trade unionists serving on scientific councils appointed by the Government. I believe that that is good for the country; that the more work-people can see their problems in perspective with the problems of industry as a whole, the better for the country. It is a long view and it may show no immediate results, but I am pretty sure that it is a sound view. I greatly hope that words can be found which will at least afford the opportunity for consideration to be given to this Amendment.

LORD STONHAM

My Lords, I am most grateful to my two noble friends for their support. May I add just one thing before the noble Earl replies on this particular point? During the Committee stage I ventured to say that if no workers' representative was to be appointed among these three—I am quoting from the OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 227 (No. 20), at col. 205. We might have, for example, the Chairman of Unilever, the Chairman of I.C.I. and the Chairman of Barclays Bank, all of whom have great knowledge of industry or commerce and a very keen interest in, and no doubt extensive knowledge of, weights and units of measurement. When the noble Earl came to reply he said (col. 206): The noble Lord … gave a number of possible examples of people who might be appointed to the Commission and I am sure that will be very helpful, because the Government have not as yet any fixed ideas about the precise appointments to be made. I should be very unhappy if those suggestions made by me were the only suggestions to be considered by the Government, and I would therefore add that, while the Government are considering those three eminent gentlemen I suggested, they ought also to consider a representative from the Electrical Trades Union, the Associated Engineering Union, the Association of Supervisory Staffs, Executives and Technicians, the Transport and General Workers' Union and the shipbuilding unions, all of whom have in their daily work very considerable knowledge of units of weight and measurement; and although their membership of these unions has no relevance to this Commission they have, in their specialised knowledge, a knowledge of the organisation of workers. I hope, therefore, that those two sets of people will be considered together, and considered equally.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, if I may have your Lordships' leave to make a very brief further reply, I still feel that noble Lords who are supporting the Amendment have not quite correctly envisaged the purpose and functions of this Commission. As the noble Lord, Lord Citrine, has rightly said, there is a great deal of legislation, such as that dealing with nationalisation, in which there is provision for trade union representation. Of course, that is right and proper, because in those cases it is relevant to what the Boards or authorities concerned are expected to do. But I should like to repeat, for the last time, that the functions of this Commission will be of the most limited scientific nature, confined more or less to recommending what kinds of weights and measures are most useful.

It has been suggested by the noble Lords, Lord Derwent and Lord Shepherd, that we might go further and leave out all these qualifications altogether so that there would be no ill-feeling. One reason why I am a little reluctant to do that is that we have differed on this matter from the Hodgson Committee, which went further in the other direction. The Hodgson Committee suggested that the President of the Board of Trade should be entitled to make these three appointments—I quote from the Committee's Report: in order that industry and commerce can be appropriately represented". That is what the Government disagree with. We disagree with the Committee on that point, because we take the view that the Commission and its members ought not to be representative at all of any interests, although it may be desirable that they should be learned in the matters under consideration. However, I will certainly look at the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Dement, which Lord Shepherd has mentioned. I think it would probably not be a good thing to omit the words altogether, but we might consider whether we could water them down any more.

LORD SHEPHERD

My Lords, before the noble Earl sits down, may I say that it is not a question of ill-feeling. The suggestion of changing or omitting these words was made to give some flexibility to the choice as to who should be concerned.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, I think that the Board of Trade have the greatest flexibility. It is, I think, an indication that they wish to look for people who are experienced in these things.

On Question, Amendment negatived.

LORD LATHAM had given notice of his intention to move an Amendment for the Commission's membership to include () three on the recommendation of the associations representing local weights and measures authorities. The noble Lord said: My Lords, the principle and purpose of this Amendment has been decided on by your Lordships' House, and the matter must therefore be left for consideration in another place. In those circumstances, I will not move my Amendment No. 7.

Clause 8 [Functions of Commission]:

VISCOUNT STONEHAVENmoved to add to subsection (2): The Commission shall, nevertheless, be empowered to examine special cases in particular sections of industry or commerce, where it is represented to them that it would be beneficial to encourage the use of metric units of weights and measures, and to make recommendations to the Board to facilitate such changes in usage, and the Board may, if they think fit, make provisions to give effect to such recommendations.

The noble Viscount said: My Lords. I moved a similar Amendment to this one during the Committee stage and received a very fair answer from the noble Lord, Lord St. Oswald. He stated, as I understood him, that Her Majesty's Government did not want a piecemeal compulsory change over to the metric system to be made possible by this Bill. He went on to say (or I understood him to say) that there is nothing to prevent the proposed Commission from examining the problem in relation to any particular industry—I do not think I have misquoted him, though I have paraphrased his words. That is quite true, but there is no indication whatever to encourage the Commission to do so. We are living to-day in a competitive world; we are constantly being urged to export more; we are constantly being told that if we do not export more we shall starve and die. Our friends in the Commonwealth are in this connection our competitors. So are the Americans; and we must regard the whole position as being a competitive field. Many of the Commonwealth countries and the Americans are moving towards the metric system. Some have all but got their decimal coinage, and others are thinking about it very definitely indeed. Then there is the question also of the emergent countries. They are starting from scratch, more or less, and it is at least conceivable that they will adopt the basic and most uniform system employed in the world. And that could, of course, be the metric system.

What I should like to get, if at all possible, is a few words of hope or encouragement saying that the Commission would be encouraged to search for other industries, such as the pharmaceutical industry, in which it would be advantageous to adopt the metric system. The joint Report of the Association of British Chambers of Commerce and the British Association indicated that the electrical industry, for example, is a likely place to start looking. It might be established from evidence given by trade associations that a voluntary change could be facilitated if Government Departments of a nationalised industry were to amend specifications to permit the use of metric units. The Director of the National Bureau of Standards in Washington is at least keenly interested in this question of the metric system, as are various Commonwealth countries. The Australian Decimal Currency Committee reported that the Committee thinks it should draw the Commonwealth Government's attention to the fact that the adoption of the metric system was raised by many people who supported a decimal currency.

South Africa has gone over, or is about to go over, to decimal currency, Pakistan and India are on the way. There is Eire, which is also in favour of that. It does not seem as if there is any question of our "going it alone" if we take some exploratory steps towards a possible change. We got left at the post over the Common Market question—or, if that is too strong an expression, we had a very rocky start—and I feel that the Commission could either lead in this or drag along afterwards. All I should like to accomplish, if it is at all possible, is to obtain an indication that this Commission should favourably search out any possibilities so that when the time comes the changeover to the metric system would be facilitated. I beg to move.

Amendment moved—

Page 8, line 46. at end insert the said words.—(Viscount Stonehaven.)

LORD ST. OSWALD

My Lords, this Amendment, as was the case with the two Amendments which the noble Viscount withdrew after a rather lengthy discussion on the Committee stage, is designed to enable the Commission to examine special cases in particular sections of industry and commerce where it is considered that it would be beneficial to encourage the use of the metric system of weights and measures, and to make recommendations to the Board of Trade with the object of facilitating a change over by those sections of industry or commerce; and, lastly, to enable the Board, if they think fit, to give effect to the recommendations of the Commission.

My noble friend has in mind, I think, a recent Joint Report, as he has explained, entitled Decimal Coinage and the Metric System: Should Britain Change?, to which he made a reference. That Report recommended that the world situation in regard to the use of the metric system should be kept under review by the Government through a regular two-yearly review by the Board of Trade, in consultation with industry and commerce, and with the corresponding bodies in the Commonwealth and the United States. The Government have accepted this recommendation in principle, and the Board of Trade will be keeping a watch on world trends; but they do not consider that this is a matter for the Commission on Units and Standards of Measurement or for action by subordinate legislation.

As I pointed out when the clause was being discussed in Committee, there is nothing in the Bill to prevent any section of industry or commerce from changing over to the metric system at any time, if it so desires. The Government, however, regard any compulsory changeover to the metric system as something which should be done only as part of a general plan or, at any rate, should be die subject of general legislation. My noble friend mentioned American competition. But, of course, we must also think in terms of the American market, and the United States is not a country which at the moment shows any intention of changing over to the metric system.

The noble Viscount mentioned the problems in connection with the changeover from the apothecary system to the metric system in the dispensing of drugs (I think this is what he was referring to), and it is true that those problems are not dealt with in the Bill as at present drafted. It has been envisaged in the past that these will be dealt with by separate legislation. The General Medical Council are, however, anxious to change over to the metric system in parts of the next edition of the British Pharmacopœia, which is due to be published in 1963. The measures necessary to deal with this situation are now under urgent consideration by the Board of Trade and the Health Departments. The Government hope that they will be able to introduce proposals for dealing with this situation within the framework of the present Bill during its passage through another place.

My Lords, we have studied carefully my noble friend's Amendments which he has set down both to-day and at the other stage. The reasons I have given are our reasons for still thinking that the Bill should be left as it is, and I hope that I may have persuaded my noble friend to withdraw his Amendment on this occasion.

VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN

My Lords, before I ask leave to withdraw this Amendment, may I thank the noble Lord for his very comprehensive answer, and say that I am quite sure that it will give considerable satisfaction to those people who are anxious about this matter and who thought my Amendment was necessary? I may add that I am satisfied. I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 10 [Units of measurement, weights and measures lawful for use for trade]:

4.43 p.m.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, this and the following Amendment, Amendment No. 10, are drafting Amendments to improve the wording and balance of the clause. I beg to move.

Amendment moved—

Page 10, line 10, leave out ("and") and insert ("(4A)").—(The Earl of Dundee.)

THE EARL OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE

My Lords, in connection with this Amendment I should like to ask the noble Earl who is in charge of the Bill a question. I regret that I have not given him any proper notice of it, but I hope he will be able to give me some indication. Under this clause, or subsection as it is going to be, … the Board may by regulations prescribe what may be treated for the purposes of use for trade as the equivalent of, or of any multiple or fraction of, any unit of measurement included in the said First Schedule … From the forestry angle, some of us are worried over the question of the hoppus measurement. We have in Part III of the Schedule the cubic yard and the cubic foot; and, as the noble Earl himself knows—he is a very keen forester—we use the cubic foot as a measurement of timber. I am wondering whether the hoppus measurement is covered by this subsection; or, if it is not, whether he would wish me to put down an Amendment to the First Schedule.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, the question of the hoppus measurement is now under discussion between the Board of Trade and the trades concerned as part of the wider question of certain special measures which are used in the timber trade.

THE EARL OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE

I thank the noble Earl.

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, I beg to move.

Amendment moved—

Page 10, transfer lines 10 to 14 to after line 28.—(The Earl of Dundee.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

Clause 11 [Weighing or measuring equipment for use for trade]:

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, in Committee, on the Question whether Clause 11 stand part of the Bill, my noble friend Lord Derwent inquired whether testing equipment in use in the oil industry—such as flowmeters, proving tanks and twin container measuring instruments—could be used as appropriate local or working standards under subsection (2) of this clause. So far as I am aware, such equipment is not at present used by inspectors of weights and measures, but the Government see no reason why, if this is convenient both to the owner of the equipment and to the inspector, it should not be used for the testing of other equipment for use for trade, and the Amendment which I am now moving will make this clear. It will be necessary, of course, to make the use of such equipment subject to conditions similar to those applicable (under subsections (2) and (3) of Clause 5) to equipment provided by the local authorities, and my Amendment therefore includes power for the Board of Trade to prescribe such conditions by means of regulations. I beg to move.

Amendment moved—

Page 11, line 42, leave out ("and if it") and insert ("or, subject to any conditions which may be prescribed, by means of other equipment which has already been tested and which the inspector considers suitable for the purpose, and, if the equipment submitted").—(The Earl of Dundee.)

LORD DERWENT

My Lords. I thank my noble friend. This is rather technical, but I think that is what I asked for. In fact, I did not go so far as asking for it: I expressed a doubt. I am glad to think that perhaps my doubt was soundly based, and I think my noble friend has found the right answer to it.

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

Clause 12:

Approved patterns of equipment for use for trade

(2) A certificate of approval under the foregoing subsection may be granted subject to a condition that, except with the consent of the Board, equipment of the pattern in question shall be used for trade only for a specified period or only for a specified purpose; and if any person knowingly uses, or knowingly causes or permits any other person to use, any equipment in contravention of such a condition, he shall be guilty of an offence and the equipment shall be liable to be forfeited.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE moved, in subsection (2) to leave out all words from "person" to "condition" and insert: knowing that such a condition has been imposed with respect to any equipment, uses, or causes or permits any other person to use, that equipment in contravention of that condition, or disposes of that equipment to any other person in a state in which it could be used for trade without informing the other person of that".

The noble Earl said: My Lords, in Committee the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, moved several Amendments which were designed to make it an offence to sell equipment which no longer possessed a certificate or which had become obsolete. I said that I would accept Lord Silkin's Amendments in principle, and he agreed that, in the form in which he had moved them, they went a little too far and might prevent a number of perfectly reasonable and legitimate transactions. The purpose of my first Amendment to Clause 12 is to make it an offence for anyone not only to use or cause to be used but also to dispose of any equipment, knowing that the certificate of approval in respect of that equipment places a limitation on the period during which it may be used or restricts its use to a specified purpose, without informing the purchaser of the facts.

My next Amendment makes it an offence for anyone not only to use, or cause or permit some other person to use, for trade equipment the certificate relating to which has been revoked, but also to dispose of such equipment to someone else in a state in which it could be used for trade without informing that person of the revocation of the certificate. I think these Amendments meet Lord Silkin's objective but at the same time do not prevent equipment from being sold for some use where the limitations do not matter—for example, for some non-trade use.

If I might anticipate my next Amendment, to Clause 13, page 14, line 23, I may say that I put it down also to meet an Amendment which Lord Silkin had on the Paper but did not move in Committee. The subsection—that is, subsection (3) of Clause 13—provides that a person using for trade equipment which to his knowledge no longer complies with the specification commits an offence, and this Amendment, No. 14, also makes it an offence for anyone to dispose of such equipment in a state in which it could be used for trade without informing that other person that it no longer complies with the specification. I beg to move.

Amendment moved—

Page 13, line 21, leave out from ("person") to ("condition") in line 23 and insert the said new words.—(The Earl of Dundee.)

VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH

My Lords, I think this is a very useful concession toward the object that my noble friend Lord Silkin has in mind, and I am much obliged. One thing which occurs to me and which may possibly merit consideration at some time is as to how Common Law in the matter will be affected, so far as the carrying out of this enactment will, let us say, affect auction sales. For example, a steel yard arm with a weighing platform for weighing grain, or any other similar weighing instrument, on some of the smaller farms, may get thoroughly worn and would have to be readjusted at the testing stations. Yet it may come straight into a farm auction sale and be purchased by, let us say, an iron or hardware man, who thinks it is perhaps no more than old iron, but who discovers later that, if he puts something on it, it moves the weights of the yard arm, and he may then seek to sell it. He may not have been informed at the auction about that. I am not against the Amendment that the noble Earl is putting down, but I think that the administration of the Common Law in that respect needs a little consideration.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, that is an interesting point and I shall have to consult the Law Officers before I give an official answer as to whether such activities would be affected by the Common Law.

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, I beg to move the next Amendment.

Amendment moved—

Page 13, line 35, after ("question") insert ("or disposes of any such equipment to any other person in a state in which it could be so used without informing that other person of the revocation").—(The Earl of Dundee.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

Clause 13 [General specifications of equipment for use for trade]:

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, beg to move.

Amendment moved—

Page 14, line 23, after ("prescribed") insert ("or disposes of any such equipment to any other person in a state in which it could be so used without informing that other person that it no longer so conforms").—(The Earl of Dundee.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

Clause 13, as amended, agreed to.

Clause 14 [Regulations with respect to equipment used for trade and tare weight]:

LORD STONHAMmoved, in subsection (1), after paragraph (f) to insert: (g) the testing of weighing equipment used for weighing cattle, sheep or swine at any market or slaughterhouse including—

1. (i) the provision of weights stamped as fit for use in accordance with the provisions of section eleven of this Act;
2. (ii) the circumstances in which such weights should be made available."

The noble Lord said: My Lords, the object of this Amendment is to enable the Board of Trade to be given permissive powers to make regulations for the testing of weighing equipment used for weighing cattle, sheep or pigs at any market or slaughterhouse, including the provision of weights stamped as fit for use, and the circumstances in which those weights can be made available.

Your Lordships are aware that under Section 4 of the Markets and Fairs (Weighing of Cattle) Act, 1887, and Section 46 of the Food and Drugs Act, 1955 (and it is significant that Parliament should twice have enacted legislation of this kind) scales at cattle markets must be tested at least twice a year. The Bill proposes to repeal these two provisions, which would mean that these scales would need to be tested compulsorily only once a year. On Committee stage I raised Amendments asking that those two provisions should not be repealed. The noble Earl, Lord Dundee, pointed out in his reply that they could be tested on other occasions at the request of the user, on payment, of course, of the appropriate inspection fee. But, my Lords, that is not good enough. Because if the Bill as it now stands becomes law, it will rest entirely with the local weights and measures authority as to when testing should be carried out. Of course, it may well be that that local authority is also the market authority.

During Committee stage the noble Earl said that when the accuracy of the scales deteriorates outside the inspection allowances, the stamps will be obliterated and they will have to be adjusted and re-stamped. That gives rise to the question of how the seller or the purchaser of the cattle can be certain that the scales are accurate, when there is no stipulated time limit, except once a year, as to when the scales must be tested, and no one can say whether the accuracy of the scales has deteriorated outside the inspection allowances. In this connection, of course, it may happen that the view of the buyer or the seller of the cattle may not agree with that of the market authority, who, as I say, may also be the local authority. My submission is that if it were stipulated that tests must be carried out at intervals of, say, not less than three months, it would ensure that the scales were at least tested at regular periods. But under the present Bill, if the two enactments I have mentioned are repealed, there will be no such guarantee.

This is a matter in which the National Farmers' Union are naturally very much concerned. They feel very strongly about it, and of course the farmers are likely to be particularly affected. There are good reasons why cattle market weighing equipment should be tested more frequently than most other machines used for trade. I am not going to argue that they are the only kind of weighbridges which have hard treatment. Machines which are used for weighing coal or stone also have very rough and heavy treatment. But cattle weighbridges are not dealing with inanimate objects. Cattle weighbridges often receive very rough treatment with restive or frightened animals passing over the weighbridge, and sometimes fighting. There is also the possibility of manure, earth, and all kinds of waste material, getting on to the weighbridge and affecting its balance. For these reasons it is quite obvious that there should be some simple means readily available to the buyer or seller of cattle, and understood by them to be readily available, to enable them to test the accuracy of machines. And that is precisely what this Amendment ensures.

As the noble Earl is aware, I have again tabled Amendments to a later Part of the Bill—in fact, they are the last three Amendments on the Order Paper—in the hope that these two measures will not be repealed; but we are now at an earlier stage of the Bill, and I put forward this Amendment, not so much as an alternative, but one which I hope will be accepted as an extra provision. I am suggesting that certified and stamped weights of varying poundages should be available for use at cattle markets and slaughter points and also that scales should be required to be checked, by means of these weights, by the certified operator before commencement of a testing operation, and, of course, after any break in the continuity of working the weighbridge at any centre. In other words, if the certified weights were available, the certified operator could test the scales every day.

I submit that this seems a self-evident case and one which is absolutely necessary. This particular clause provides permissive powers to the Board of Trade to make regulations. They "may" make regulations it does not insist that they shall. But I am quite sure that when the Board investigate these facts which I have put forward fully and carefully, they will wish to have the power to make these regulations, and will, in due course, do so. Therefore, in consideration of the fact that those who are most likely to be concerned here are the farmers, and buyers and sellers of cattle, who are anxious to have these facilities and need confidence in the knowledge that the scales on which their cattle are weighed are as accurate as can be, I feel that the Government should accept this Amendment, and that there is no need for me to argue it further. I beg to move.

Amendment moved—

Page 15, line 12, at end insert the said paragraph.—(Lord Stonham.)

5.0 p.m.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, a good many of the Amendments which have been tabled are designed to prevent too much interference with the responsibility and dignity of local authorities by the Board of Trade. In fact, I see that the noble Lord, Lord Latham, has again put down an Amendment, which we discussed in Committee, to leave out Clause 48, which in my view gives the Board the minimum powers of ensuring that degree of uniformity which we want to observe. I feel that this Amendment is a most unwarrantable interference with the judgment and the independence of local weights and measures authorities. I should have thought that, if a local authority happened to be the owner of a market, that would make them take more interest, and not less, than if it belonged to somebody else.

I think that the frequency with which a machine is inspected can be left, and ought to be left, to the local authority and to the local inspector. It is part of an inspector's duty to know which machines, due to the conditions under which they have to be used, are liable to lose their accuracy quickly, and to arrange inspection with such frequency as he considers desirable. The testing by inspectors of weighing equipment used for weighing cattle, sheep or swine at markets and slaughterhouses is already covered by paragraph (b) of this subsection, and accordingly that part of the Amendment which relates to such testing is not necessary. So far as additional frequency is concerned, there is no objection from the weights and measures point of view, to such weights being made available and to tests being carried out to the satisfaction of the users of the equipment as frequently as they may desire.

VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH

My Lords, the noble Earl seems to think that Clause 14 (1) (b) covers all the items in my noble friend's Amendment. That can be so only if the noble Earl can assure us that it is intended that they should be covered in the regulations to be issued under the clause.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, it does cover the testing of equipment but does not provide for additional testing, which is the object of the noble Lord's Amendment.

VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH

My Lords, whatever the technical implication the noble Earl may put upon it, I feel sure that he has often been at agricultural markets and seen the amount of strain put upon weighing instruments, which is sometimes exceedingly heavy. Wherever there is a movable platform as a bridge between the accommodation for the cattle that are going to be auctioned and the actual selling arena, there are such violent reactions on the spring weight shown on the clock as to make many people doubtful, at certain times of the year, whether they are getting accurate measurement or not. From this point of view I think that my noble friend is entitled to call attention to the situation and to hope that there can be at least an assurance from the noble Earl that in the regulations made under paragraph (b) this point will be covered. There is a good deal of feeling in the agricultural industry about this matter. The other day I was reading in theFarming Expressthat farmers are grousing, not about this particular case, but about the returns to them on animals, sent for sale by dead weight at slaughterhouses. In these circumstances, anything that can be done to reassure them would be a very good thing.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Viscount for his intervention. I was just about to point out that all that can be done voluntarily by the market authorities as often as they like by arrangement with the local authority and local inspector, but what we are concerned with is what the Board require the market authorities to do by law. We do not think that we should require them to carry out special tests over and above the ordinary tests which are required by the Act. I think that that would be an undesirable interference with their independence. There is nothing whatever to prevent equipment from being tested every day, if the market authority thinks it should be done and if they choose to make the appropriate arrangements with the local inspector or the local weights and measures authority.

LORD STONHAM

My Lords, the noble Earl has rightly said that it lies within the power of the Board of Trade to make regulations with regard to inspection, and obviously in these regulations they can say how often a piece of weighing machinery should be inspected, but the plain fact remains that in this Bill the Government propose to remove provisions which at present insist on that machinery being tested at least twice a year and to leave only a provision that they shall be tested once a year under general weights and measures legislation. Naturally, farmers think that at least half of their safeguard, the frequency of the test, is removed. The noble Earl has failed to deal with that point, and his reluctance to grant what seems to me to be a most reasonable request gives rise to a doubt about whether paragraph (b) is going to be used in the manner which he suggests.

My noble Leader rightly pointed oat the fact that this type of machinery is often subject to sudden strains, which are observed by the people around and which might produce some of the incidents which occur on these occasions. The certified operator, who would always be in attendance, would know of this. The noble Earl did not say that the second part of my Amendment, referring to the provision of weights stamped as fit for use, is covered by paragraph (b), but if this Amendment were accepted the Board of Trade would make regulations for the provision of weights stamped as fit for use, and in the circumstances in which there was a sudden strain on the weighing equipment and thereby doubt arose about the accuracy of the scales the certified operator, without worrying the inspector of weights and measures, could use those weights to test the scales and satisfy the farmers and cattle buyers that the scales were accurate. This seems to me to be a completely reasonable provision.

The one objection, apparently, to the noble Earl's acceptance of the Amendment is that it would be an unwarrantable interference with the rights of local weights and measures authorities. But surely local weights and measures authorities are anxious that everyone who uses their equipment should be satisfied that he is getting correct weight. A simple and workable provision of this kind would be an admirable way of making sure that that is the case.

It is obvious to me, from my limited experience, that the noble Earl is not going to accept the Amendment this afternoon, but I hope that he will look at it again between now and Third Reading It seems to me a reasonable and most sensible thing that this should be done. If the Amendment is not acceptable in its present form, perhaps the noble Earl can find some other way of reassuring the National Farmers' Union that farmers can be sure that, in so far as it is humanly possible, they will get equipment which is tested with sufficient frequency and which they can be certain will be, bar accidents, accurate.

On Question. Amendment negatived.

Clause 15 [Offences in connection with stamping of equipment]:

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, this Amendment deals with offences which relate to the defacing of an inspector's stamp. When this clause was considered in Committee the noble Lord. Lord Milverton, moved an Amendment to this part of it. It is recognised that scale-makers may need to destroy obliterate a stamp in the course of overhauling some weighing or measuring equipment, and the proviso to subsection (1) accordingly exonerates them from any offence under that subsection in so doing. The noble Lord, Lord Milverton, moved an Amendment to extend this exoneration to repairers of weighing or measuring equipment who are not manufacturers. ""Repairers" were not clearly defined. We thought the Amendment went too wide, and the noble Lord, therefore, withdrew it after I had undertaken to move a suitable Amendment later. This Amendment is designed to implement that promise, and we believe that the words now on the Marshalled List effectively achieve the noble Lord's objective without going too wide and exempting "Do it yourself" repairs and adjustments. I beg to move.

Amendment moved—

Page 16, line 6, leave out from ("seal") to end of line 8 and insert ("in the course of the adjustment or repair of weighing or measuring equipment by, or by the duly authorised agent of, a person who is a manufacturer of, or regularly engaged in the business of repairing, such equipment.").—(The Earl of Dundee.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

Clause 19:

Keepers of public equipment to hold certificate

19.—(1) No person shall attend to any weighing or measuring by means of equipment available for use by the public, being a weighing or measuring demanded by a member of the public and for which a charge is made, other than a weighing or measuring of a person, unless he holds a certificate from a chief inspector that he has sufficient knowledge for the proper performance of his duties; and any such certificate shall cease to have effect at the expiration of two years from the date when it was granted.

(2) Any person refused such a certificate as aforesaid by a chief inspector may appeal against the refusal to the local weights and measures authority for the area for which the chief inspector was appointed.

LORD LATHAM moved, in subsection (1), after "certificate" (where that word first occurs), to insert "of competence". The noble Lord said: My Lords, when moving a similar Amendment in Committee I said that this was not a question of nicety of language; and that was the case. It is even more so now, because under Amendments tabled by the noble Earl, if they are carried and embodied in the Bill, the certificate to be issued to the keepers of equipment will not be revocable. It is therefore even more important that the persons who are designated as keepers of this public equipment should be properly fitted for the tasks which will be conferred upon them. In my submission, it is not only a question of knowledge. A person can be full of knowledge and empty of wisdom; a person can know all the regulations and pass an examination, including actual tests, yet not be competent to discharge the important duty of keeping public equipment. Indeed, when the matter was being discussed in Committee the noble Earl himself said [OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 227 (No. 21), col. 306]: Possibly the word 'fitness' might be more appropriate "— that is to say, fitness to the words of the clause. It is an interesting and perhaps an amusing circumstance that in the Bill as reprinted after the Committee stage the rubric, which in the previous Bill had read, Keepers of public equipment to hold certificate of competence ", then read: Keepers of public equipment to hold certificate. Somebody, no doubt under instructions, has eliminated the two words, "of competence". I press this Amendment because from my experience, which I am sure cannot differ from that of many noble Lords, a person, as I have said, may be able to pass an examination and pass the tests (we see examples of that on the roads every day), yet not be competent to discharge the duties of the keeper of this public equipment. That is the more so because, as I have said. Amendments have been tabled on behalf of the Government making the issue of the certificate irrevocable. In those circumstances, I hope that the noble Earl will be able to accept this Amendment, which is not put forward in any frivolous sense, but because we on this side of the House take the view that it will strengthen the language of the clause. I beg to move.

Amendment moved—

Page 18, line 12, after ("certificate") insert ("of competence").—(Lord Latham)

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, Clause 19 requires the keeper of public weighing and measuring equipment to hold a certificate of a chief inspector of weights and measures that he has sufficient knowledge for the proper performance of his duties, and it makes such a certificate valid for two years. Subsection (2) enables any person who is refused such a certificate to appeal to the local weights and measures authority for the area for which the chief inspector was appointed. That is in the Bill as it stands now. A number of Amendments on these points were moved in Committee. The noble Lord, Lord Latham, moved a series of Amendments which, had they been accepted, would have had the effect, first, of substituting the word "competent" for the words "have sufficient knowledge for the proper performance of his duties"—

LORD LATHAM

Additionally, if I may say so; not in substitution.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

I thought the noble Lord had proposed to leave out these words, but if I am mistaken, I apologise. Anyhow, the point was that he wanted to lay stress on competence. Secondly, that series of Amendments, if accepted, would have had the effect of empowering a chief inspector to refuse or revoke a certificate for any sufficient reasons relating to the applicant personally.

LORD LATHAM

I am sorry to interrupt again, but the two were not necessarily connected. It is true they were related to the same clause, but the question of competency was independent of personal disqualification. It is quite fortuitous that they were in the same clause.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

I quite appreciate that, but it is the Government, in considering the matter, who have necessarily connected them together, as I shall explain in a moment.

LORD LATHAM

If I may say so, that is a misconnection.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

I did not mean that the noble Lord intended to connect them, but we have considered all the Amendments together. The noble Lord, Lord Burden, also moved an Amendment which, if it had been accepted, would have had the effect of directing appeals to a magistrates' court rather than to the local authority for whose area the chief inspector was appointed. The Government felt, and I stated, that there was room here for further consideration of the best approach, particularly because of the great importance to a man of having his certificate revoked and taken away. I said that we would reconsider the whole question again and, having looked at the clause afresh, would bring forward proposals at a later stage of the Bill; and all the Amendments were withdrawn pending reconsideration by the Government.

LORD LATHAM

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Earl, but should like to keep things straight for the Record. The Amendment of my noble friend Lord Burden on Committee stage was not that there should be an appeal to the magistrates' courts: his proposal was that representation could be made by the aggrieved person. I suggested that a tribunal should be appointed to which appeals could be made, and that was the situation at the end of the Committee stage. There is now, however, an Amendment submitted by my noble friend Lord Burden suggesting a reference to the magistrates' court. But that was not the Amendment before the Committee.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, I have the OFFICIAL REPORT here, but I will not at this moment go into the exact number of Amendments moved by Lord Burden. The important fact is that all the Amendments were withdrawn, because I explained to your Lordships that the Government were going to consider the clause afresh—which we have now done. And we have come to the conclusion that the question of a certificate should be entirely separate from the question of whether or not, on other grounds, the man who holds the certificate is a good person to employ.

We think that the employer of a keeper of public weighing or measuring equipment should be left responsible for judging the reliability of the individual employed as weighing instrument operator, just as the local authority judge that of the inspector; and the employer must be left with the responsibility to discharge any such employee who, because of his subsequent actions, has proved to be unreliable. We therefore feel that the certificate should still relate solely to that knowledge which is sufficient for the proper performance of his particular duties, whether they are specific or more general duties, and that, once given, the certificate should not have to be renewed at intervals.

Suppose that a firm of accountants were to make a rule that people they employed should have a degree in mathematics; and suppose that the person they employed misbehaved himself and produced false accounts. He would probably be sacked. But that would not mean that his degree in mathematics would be taken away. People who wanted to employ him again would no doubt get a reference from his previous employer, and if they considered, on the grounds of his record of unreliability, that they would not employ him, that would not affect the fact that he has the degree, which has nothing to do with his reliability or suitability except in so far as it concerns his knowledge of the subject. We felt that the most satisfactory way to look at this question was to treat the certificate in that way.

LORD LATHAM

My Amendment concerns action prior to the issue of the certificate; that the certificate should not be issued unless the chief inspector is satisfied as to the person's competence and not as to his personal character. That would come later. That arises on the question of revocation.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

I am trying to deal with the whole question comprehensively, if your Lordships will allow me to do so. We think the certificate should relate solely to that knowledge which is sufficient for the proper performance of his particular duties. As to his competence to carry out that knowledge and put it into practice, we think that is a matter which must be left to his employers: the certificate should be concerned solely with his knowledge, and not with his employer's opinion of whether or not he does his job well. It is possible to have an extremely knowledgeable man who does not satisfy one particular local authority, or whoever employs him. That is a matter for his employers. But the certificate should be given to him on grounds of knowledge, and not on other grounds which may affect his employability. That is the object of the first Amendment which I intend to move. In the chief inspector's certificate there will be a statement that the person concerned is technically qualified to perform certain duties, as is the case with many other examinations. But it will not be a statement about his character.

Now may I mention the second Amendment which the Government have put down as a result of their reconsideration of this clause? Since the only grounds for refusal of a certificate will be lack of sufficient technical knowledge, it seems right that any appeal from such refusal should be to a body which is able to examine the candidate's knowledge of the particular work, and in the view of the Government that body should be the Board of Trade. The Board would have the assistance and advice in this respect of its technical officers who are charged with inspecting the arrangements made by local authorities under the Bill, so that the operative who thinks he has been unfairly refused a certificate would not, unless he so wished, need to travel to London. The examination could be done by the local officers of the Board of Trade.

These considerations seem to us to be the right way of dealing with the certificates. They should be given on grounds of knowledge, rather than on grounds of competence, because the word "competence" might raise all kinds of other considerations which need not necessarily depend on the grounds upon which an examination is based. That is a reason why the word "competence" has been removed from the rubric. It was not appropriate there, and I thought in Committee that the noble Lord had moved his Amendment so as to make the text fit in with the rubric. Now that we have reconsidered the matter and decided to ask your Lordships to accept these Amendments, we have, of course, altered the marginal reference accordingly.

LORD LATHAM

The noble Earl does not now think that "fitness" would be a better term?

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

I should have thought not. "Fitness" would be open to the same possible misinterpretation as the word "competence". I should have thought that knowledge of the subject was the best definition of the quality required for a certificate to be given.

LORD LATHAM

Surely "knowledge and fitness" are better?

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

I do not know. If you want to appoint a professor of mathematics, the people who appoint him must judge of his fitness. But as for his knowledge, that is more appropriately related to the general diploma, or whatever it may be, which some employers may want to see in order to show that he has the knowledge. That is a thing which he gets once and for all. After that, his fitness, competence, reliability, honesty or whatever it may be, must be judged, and ought to be judged, by the people who employ him.

LORD LATHAM

Sir Charles Snow, who is a scientist as well as a novelist, does not take that view, does he?

LORD CITRINE

My Lords is there not some slight inconsistency with what has been said by the noble Earl? So far as I can judge from this clause and what has, been said, the scope of the chief inspector is limited to ascertaining whether or not the man possesses enough knowledge. That is correct, is it not?

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

That is correct.

LORD CITRINE

Very well. But now look at the next subsection. Supposing the certificate is refused, and the man who considers himself aggrieved appeals against it, there is nothing in the subsection which limits the power of the body to which he appeals either to sustain a refusal or to set it on one side. There is nothing set out here about knowledge.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

It is limited by the terms for which it is granted, and that is why we think the appeal ought to be made to the Board of Trade, because they are able to give the final judgment as to the man's knowledge of the subject.

LORD CITRINE

It is not referred to in the subsection.

On Question, Amendment negatived.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, I beg to move.

Amendment moved—

Page 18, line 14, leave out from ("duties") to end of line 16.—(The Earl of Dundee.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, I beg to move.

Amendment moved—

Page 18, line 18, leave out from second ("the") to end of line 20 and insert ("Board.").—(The Earl of Dundee.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

Clause 21 [Offences in connection with public equipment]:

THE EARL OF DUNDEE moved, in subsection (1), to leave out "The provisions" and insert "Subsections (2) to (4)". The noble Earl said: This is another Amendment to give effect to an undertaking which I gave to the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, in Committee. Clause 21, to which this Amendment and the next Amendment, No. 22, relate, deals with a number of offences in connection with public weighing and measuring equipment, and subsection (2) of Clause 21 requires a keeper of such equipment, among other things, to keep a record of the weighing and measuring be carries out. Subsection (3) makes it an offence if he makes a false record.

When your Lordships were considering this clause in Committee, some of your Lordships argued that its intention —that is, the prevention of fraud by public weighing machine keepers—would be frustrated unless the clause included a requirement that records should be kept and produced for examination when required. The noble Lord, Lord Latham, moved an Amendment which would have had the effect of requiring records to be kept for a period of at least six months by the person by whom the weighing was made, and he withdrew his Amendment on my undertaking to move at a later stage an appropriate Amendment imposing the obligation on the person responsible for providing the equipment, and prescribing a more suitable period for preserving those records. Lord Silkin expressed the view that six months was not long enough. I hope your Lordships will agree that the second Amendment strengthens the clause by requiring records to be kept for twelve months by The person making the equipment available to the public, and to be produced for examination by inspectors, and by making it an offence for any person to destroy or deface such records before the expiry of that period. I beg to move.

Amendment moved—

Page 18, line 36, leave out ("The provisions") and insert ("Subsections (2) to (4)"). —(The Earl of Dundee.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, I beg to move.

Amendment moved—

Page 19, line 24, at end add— ("(5) The person making any weighing or measuring equipment available for use by the public shall retain for a period of not less than twelve months any record of any weighing or measuring by means of that equipment made by any person appointed to attend thereto, and any inspector, subject to the production if so requested of his credentials, may require the first-mentioned person to produce any such record for inspection at any time while it is retained by him; and if the first-mentioned person fails so to retain or produce any such record, or if any person wilfully destroys or defaces any such record before the expiration of twelve months from the date when it was made, the person in question shall be guilty of an offence.").—(The Earl of Dundee.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

Clause 22:

Transactions in particular goods

22.—

(4) The Board may make regulations—

(5) The following are exempted from all requirements imposed by or under this section, that is to say—

1. (d) any assortment of articles of food pre-packed together for consumption together as a meal and ready for such consumption without being cooked, heated or otherwise prepared;

and the Board may by order exempt from all or any of the requirements aforesaid, either generally or in such circumstances as may be specified in the order, any other goods or sale so specified.

THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES

I have been informed that it would be more convenient to the movers of the next Amendment if it were divided into two, and for the second proposed new paragraph to be treated as a separate Amendment. I therefore, with the permission of the House, propose to deal with it accordingly.

LORD SHEPHERD moved in subsection (3) after paragraph (a) to insert: () as to the size, shape, material, colour or quantity, in any particular, of the container, wrapping or packaging material associated with any goods sold, exposed or offered for sale, or in possession for sale, or in possession for a purpose of trade; and for prohibiting the use of deceptive containers or wrappings on or with any such goods. 'Deceptive' for these purposes being such containers or wrappers which falsely or misleadingly suggest that the quantity of the goods which they contain or with which they are associated is substantially greater than in fact it is;".

The noble Lord said: My Lords, I am grateful to the House for meeting me in this request, because the two paragraphs in the Amendment are on rather different subjects. We on this side of the House do not regard this Amendment as a technical Amendment to improve the Bill; we believe that we are raising a matter of considerable importance and a general principle. Advertising, publicity and display are playing a greater part to-day in the distribution of merchandise than ever before, and we must anticipate that this trend will continue. My friends have no basic objection to displaying material for the purpose of its sale, for the development of the sale policy of the company, but there are from time to time cases where merchandise is put on the market to catch the public eye, to entice the buyer, and about which the customer, on taking the merchandise home, would say that the offer was definitely misleading.

My noble Leader at the Committee stage produced an article from the cosmetic trade to indicate that type of deceptive container. It was a plastic box the contents of which were approximately 50 per cent. of the size of the container. We felt that such a container was misleading. I do not propose to show your Lordships that container this afternoon, because I do not want my case to be based purely on cosmetics. There are many containers on the market to-day which are grossly misleading, both in size and shape. In the case of detergents this has been a general practice: giant-size containers containing only the average amount. The Government may well say that this matter is being taken care of because to-day this article will have to bear on it the net weight; but I do not think that that, in itself, is sufficient protection. Publicity is the attraction of the eye to the article.

May I explain that some time before the war I had some connection with the advertising world, and I remember that in a cold snap very similar to the one we have to-day one of the well-known beverage firms put on an advertising campaign and they scooped the market. I doubt whether their product was any better than that of any of their competitors, but they had put something on to the market with publicity which caught the public eye. I believe that many of these deceptive containers, even though they are going to have the net weight on them, will catch the eye because of their size and their attractiveness. I think that is wrong. We are asking this House to accept our Amendment not only to protect the consumer but also to protect those manufacturers who put their articles on display and offer to the public for what they are worth.

I can think of one example of a deceptive container. Later in the Bill we are to deal with the sale by net weight of tobacco; but we are not bringing into the Bill a provision laying down the net weight of tobacco in a cigarette or a packet of cigarettes. Noble Lords will know that to-day "king-size" cigarettes are being sold at a Cheaper price than ordinary cigarettes. This is done by fitting a large filter. In this Bill we are not saying that a cigarette must contain a certain amount of tobacco. We might well see cigarettes increasing in numbers with a filter tip, but with less and less tobacco. If this Amendment were accepted, and if there were wide abuse by cigarette manufacturers or anybody else in putting their merchandise on the market in a deceptive way, this situation could be dealt with.

What we have said in our Amendment is quite clear—namely, 'Deceptive' for these purposes being such containers or wrappers which falsely or misleadingly suggest that the quantity of the goods which they contain … is substantially greater than in fact it is. I think that this House, which has set itself up in the past to protect the public, can hardly refuse to accept an Amendment which gives protection both to the public and to the manufacturer against misleading containers and wrappers. I beg to move.

Amendment moved—

Page 20, line 45, at end insert the said new paragraph.—(Lord Shepherd.)

5.42 p.m.

LORD ST. OSWALD

My Lords, I regret that I was told only a minute or two ago of the arrangement which had been reached by the Lord Chairman of Committees and the noble Lord who moved this Amendment of dividing the Amendment into two parts, and I have done my best in the time available to me to separate the arguments that I was producing to one Amendment. I hope I shall satisfy your Lordships that I have done my best.

Your Lordships will remember that this Amendment was discussed at great length on the Committee stage, and on that occasion I argued that in my view the housewife could hardly require all the protection which noble Lords opposite were anxious to give her: that is to say, I argued in a state of considerable innocence, some of which has been rubbed off in the intervening weeks. It is always regrettable to lose even a little of one's dwindling innocence, but in this event what I regret even more is that I have lost some part of my respect for some housewives—a very small number, I hope and submit. Impressed, as I was bound to be, by the arguments of noble Lords opposite six weeks ago, I spent a considerable part of the Christmas Recess discovering some of the tricks which the housewife allows to be played upon her and which some grocers and packers are willing to play—I hope, in both cases, a minority.

A full catalogue of all the instances described to me would not be suitable for your Lordships at this stage, when we all want to get on, abut they were such stratagems as are bound to remind one of G. K. Chesterton's song against grocers: God made the wicked Grocer As a mystery and a sign That men should shun his awful shops And go to inns to dine. What stands out clearly is that Chesterton dealt with the wrong sort of grocer. Most grocers deplore such practices, and indeed have no wish whatever to confuse the housewife in any way. They in fact deplore the use of such misleading words as "giant" and "gargantuan" in order to sell goods which are in wrappers but are neither giant nor gargantuan.

But it appears to me that some housewives insist on being fooled in many instances, and what I am going to question in my reply to this Amendment is whether that insistence, that apparently it is fun to be fooled, can actually be covered by legislation and, in particular, by weights and measures legislation. It seems to be a fact that a certain sort of shopper asks to-day, when buying, for instance, detergents, "What has got fourpence off?", without any reference to the quality of the detergent itself or to whether fourpence-worth of the contents has been removed from the packet. By no means all these so-called sales gimmicks are underhand. Similarly, by no means all unorthodox packing is designed to confuse. As one or two examples brought to my notice, there is "Jif" lemon juice which is sold in small plastic lemons; there is "Earl Grey" tea, and there is "Chelsea" corned beef. We feel that to bring in an Amendment like this would in fact prejudice perfectly fair packers who wish to advertise their wares with legitimate but unorthodox packing. It could not be so directed as to cover only those who intentionally confuse the public.

LORD SHEPHERD

My Lords, may I just remind the noble Lord of the words of the Amendment—namely, "falsely or misleadingly"? We do not object to the attractive display of merchandise, but we say that "deceptive" is when it falsely and deliberately misleads.

LORD ST. OSWALD

My advice is that it would be virtually impossible, in point of fact, in every case to divide the two without unfairness to perfectly fair traders. I have mentioned one or two examples. There are also unevenly shaped tins containing ham. I shudder to think what would happen if a haggis came under the description of a pre-pack. It might make more difference to the life of my noble friend beside me than it would to mine.

One of the things that disturb us about this Amendment is that it would give to the Board of Trade sweeping regulatory powers which would be subject only to the annulment procedure once they had been brought into effect, covering a major aspect of everyday trade. The first aspect that we are discussing would cover the nature of all containers or wrappers used for selling any goods, and would, in particular, be designed, as the noble Lord has emphasised, to prohibit "deceptive" containers. In this connection I must ask your Lordships to consider two questions: first, have all the existing conventional weapons of the weights and measures law been tried and failed in any case in which noble Lords think that the new provision would be useful?

The way in which the Bill protects the consumer from being deceived as to the quantity and contents of a package is to ensure that the consumer is informed of the quantity of the goods. There are broadly three ways in which the Fifth to the Ninth Schedule, or Orders made under Clause 22, will, we think, achieve this object. The most usual way is to require the container to be marked with the quantity of its content by weight or measure or number, as the case may be. The manner of marking will have to conform to regulations made under subsection (4) of Clause 22. Where I completely agree with the noble Lord is that the manner of marking will have the greatest importance, but I ask him to believe that this can safely be left to regulations. We shall be discussing this in greater detail in his own Amendment, No. 52A, later on in this stage, and I will now dwell on it at this point.

As in the existing regulations applying to pre-packed foods, the regulations would ensure that the markings have to be prominently placed on the container in a manner in which they are capable of being easily read by the public. That is subsection (4) (a) of this clause. Some noble Lords may believe that certain consumers cannot be bothered to read a weight marking—in fact, the noble Lord has himself intimated that as his opinion —but will simply go by the size of the package, and that such consumers must be protected by Board of Trade control over every detail of the packaging. Despite the appreciation that I hope I have shown for the noble Lord's concern and purpose in this matter, I would ask him and his friends to consider, all the same, whether it is not jumping to conclusions to assume that, because a packet is not filled to the brim at the time when the consumer purchases it, this is clear evidence that the packer has been attempting to deceive the consumer. I must, in fact, ask noble Lords to consider certain simple practical points.

In a number of cases where packages are filled to the top by the packer, the contents may shake down and consolidate before reaching the consumer. In other cases, the packer may intentionally and necessarily allow some air space at the top of the container because the contents are liable to swell, owing to changes in humidity and temperature, or because it helps to prevent spilling when the container is opened. The noble Lord may say he is talking only of exaggerated cases where this could not possibly be explained by legitimate necessity. We say that the division between such cases would be too difficult to prove. My noble friend Lord Mancroft referred to the desirability of leaving space for cotton wool at the top of bottles of medical tablets. I have seen bottles of medical tablets which were almost half filled with cotton wool. The jar of face cream to which some noble Lords have referred, and which was brandished in my face from the opposite Despatch Box—

LORD LATHAM

Not in the noble Lord's face.

LORD ST. OSWALD

No; not in my face, it is true. But that brings out another practical application. The container was one commonly used in the cosmetic trade, constructed with two separate skins designed to prevent any seepage through the thin plastic inner wall, and also to avoid loss of contents if the outer wall was accidently broken. We should regard that as legitimate packing if it were proved that that was the purpose. Mention of cosmetics may also remind noble Lords that there are certain goods where the containers are made with considerable care and cost so as to be attractive, for example, on a lady's dressing table.

If the regulations which it is proposed the Board of Trade should make under the new paragraph are intended to be framed regardless of these considerations, then in many cases the cost of packaging may be increased; in other cases the containers may burst, and in yet other cases the containers may be much less attractive to the consumer than they are now. If, on the other hand, all these considerations are to be taken into account, the net result is likely to be very small, except that considerable manpower will be devoted to working out regulations in consultation with all the people interested, and in conforming with the letter of these regulations. There will be great scope for technical breach of the regulations, and at the end of the day the consumer is likely to have no advantage, and, indeed, may be faced with a "Board of Trade utility packing" which may not be at all to his taste. This has been described to me by a scrupulously honest grocer as a "1984 pack".

If noble Lords agree, it may be helpful to mention two or three of the contexts in which there has been criticism of what is called deceptive packaging.

First, cereal breakfast foods. At present most of these are required to be marked with their weight. Under the Bill all those in flake form will have to be sold only in certain specified weights. This, as was explained at the Committee stage, is because certain varieties, like puffs, have a different density, and it is most economic to pack them in the same size of packet as it used for more common flakes. Packets of soap powder and detergents are also often referred to in this connection. At present, these packets are not required to bear a net weight marking, although certain packets have been marked voluntarily in this way, often with some rather qualified indication of weight. Under the Bill they will have to be marked, but they wilt not be required to be sold in specific weights, because some of them shake down and some of them swell, and it is common to use the same size of packet for products of different density and, indeed, different characteristics and uses.

Lastly, I should like to mention again cosmetics, in view of points made by noble Lords at the Committee stage. The Government are at present preparing an Amendment to the Bill which would bring under it a large range of cosmetics, and would also bring toothpaste within the scope of the Eighth Schedule, requiring them to be marked with their contents. In short, the Government oppose this Amendment because we think it unnecessary on top of the provisions we are already making. We believe, moreover, that unless the proposed regulations were quite unreasonably to disregard all considerations of cost and practical convenience, and also the export trade, they would not make any appreciable difference in the protection afforded by the Bill and would merely give manufacturers a whole new set of detailed technical subordinate legislation through which they would have to find their way as best they could. I have been no lengthier than I could help. I was answering a large part of two Amendments, and I have done my best to satisfy the noble Lord as to why we oppose his Amendment.

VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH

My Lords, I am sure we are all very grateful to the noble Lord for the answer he has given my noble friend Lord Shepherd. I feel that there are one or two things which ought specifically to be said. First of all, we have not entered into this course of trying to get an Amendment of this kind through simply because we have a political "bee in our bonnet". This is something that has been submitted to Members of the House from the Consumers' Council, because they have had so many complaints, from housewives and others, of the manner in which they have, as they feel, been definitely fooled in the value of the commodity they have purchased, in relation to its apparent size, shape and the like, when looking at the commodity prior to buying it. Therefore I want the noble Lord to understand that this is not a special foible on the part of the Labour Opposition. It is something which comes directly from the Consumers' Council. I believe that we demonstrated by the article which was displayed—not in the noble Lord's face, but near enough for his reasonable inspection—on the last occasion that the package containing the substance to be sold was more than double the size of the space in which the actual commodity was packed and could be exceedingly misleading to a housewife or other lady who was going to buy it. And so the Consumers' Council thought. We have not really had an answer on that point.

Some of us know enough about producing, wholesaling and retailing to be able to deal from experience with practical considerations like weights and measures. We know that some things which look highly desirable have either to be watered down, or at least to carry within them sufficient safeguards to protect those who are in the trade, not because they cannot ultimately meet the situation but because the tolerances for which they have to allow, in order to meet loss of the kind now being brought in, may ultimately lead to an actual advance in the final price to the consumer. It cuts both ways. So we are always very careful, when we are putting up these cases, to consider what are the actual positions of the traders in all stages of producing, wholesaling and retailing that require legitimate protection.

But in regard to these highly deceptive packages, as the noble Lord who replied for the Government showed just now quite clearly, there are numbers of commodities in packages that may come within that description. I feel quite sure that my noble friend Lord Stonham, and perhaps myself at a later stage, in different clauses and Amendments dealing with pre-packed commodities and things of that kind to be sold by weight, will have something more to say about them. We shall not be pressing against the interests of traders. We may actually be helping to defend the interests of traders, and the ultimate interest of consumers who would otherwise be mulcted in extra charges for undue tolerances which are allowed for. But in the case of packages of the kind that were shown, or in some cases of detergents and in some cases of cereals and the like, there is not the slightest doubt that there is a very deceptive effect left upon the mind of the consumer when the article is actually being purchased.

There was one word of hope that seemed to come to us towards the end of the noble Lord's remarks, when he said that the Government were preparing Amendments to deal, at any rate in part, with some of the points raised in this connection. But at what stage are they to be submitted to Parliament? After all, we have been thinking about this Bill here since the middle of November, and it is now the end of January. We have had the Second Reading debate and the Committee stage debate, and we are well on with the Report stage. When Will these Amendments be submitted to Parliament—while the Bill is still passing through the House of Lords stages?

LORD JESSEL

My Lords, I think that the noble Lord referred to regulations, not Amendments. That was my understanding. If it is regulations that we are waiting for we shall not get them at this stage.

LORD SILKIN

But regulations will require amendment of the Bill.

LORD ST. OSWALD

My Lords, I believe that I am not allowed to reply. I think that my reply referred to Amendments.

VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH

My Lords, I move that the noble Lord be allowed to reply. Will he please explain it to us?

LORD ST. OSWALD

My Lords, the phrase I used was "Amendment to the Bill". What I cannot tell the noble Viscount, I am sorry to say, is at what stage we shall be able to move it. It will come into the Schedules, but whether it will be brought in while the Bill is going through your Lordships' House, I am at present unable to say. The reference was to cosmetics, I think.

VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH

My Lords, it seems to be rather a confused condition on the part of the thinkers in the Board of Trade in these matters. They have had a very long time to think it over. Parliament has been in Recess from December 21 until January 24. That is a reasonable period for reconsidering the matter. In any case, I would ask the question clearly indicated by the interjection of my noble friend Lord Silkin: what is the difficulty in covering yourself now, so far as Parliament is concerned, first with a short Amendment which will make it necessary for the Board of Trade to submit regulations, and in indicating, roughly at any rate, what it is proposed to cover in the regulations? No regulations will be submitted until the Bill becomes an actual Statute. No draft regulations will appear until then. But surely in considering the passage of a Bill through Parliament we should be quite clear as to what is in the Government's mind.

LORD HAWKE

My Lords, I think it would be wrong to suppose that the interests of consumers are not represented on this side of the House, as well as on the other. One must have very considerable sympathy for the purpose of this Amendment. In fact, when somebody the other day asked me the purpose of the Bill I found myself nonplussed; I really did not know. But one of the main purposes must be to prevent the consumer from being deceived. But the question whether it is a practical legislative possibility to prevent that is a very different question from having sympathy with the end.

LORD SHEPHERD

My Lords, might I assist the noble Lord in this matter? I understand that in the American Acts and in Continental Acts they have a clause very similar to the one I have endeavoured to move this afternoon.

LORD HAWKE

My Lords, that is very interesting, because this one looks to me a rather impracticable one. I do not think it is possible to achieve this by detailed regulations of the Board of Trade as to size and shape of the material, et cetera, which can be used for packing anything. I should have thought that the only way to tackle the question of gross deceit is by some general provision that it is illegal to pack goods in such a way as grossly to deceive the consumer as to contents in weight or number. Then it would not be left to the Board of Trade to decide whether or not there had been a breach of those regulations. The courts would have to decide, and there would be some sort of action. It would be rather similar to a passing-off action. I have no experience of a passing-off action in this country, but I have dealt with such actions once or twice in India. There, one went to the court and proved that the other person's goods were in deliberate imitation of one's own, calculated to deceive the consumer. That would be the type of action that would have to be brought by some consumers' association in order to secure any conviction. But I do not believe that any specific regulations of this nature would make the matter any clearer at all. I do not believe they would be any help at all.

My noble friend's answer is that the provisions about net weight are adequate. I would ask him whether he could not go into this a little further and perhaps consider, before the next stage of the Bill, whether my suggestion—namely that it should be an offence to pack in such a container as grossly to deceive the consumer as to its contents by weight or number—is a practicable one, or whether this is the right type of Bill in which to do it. However, I could not support this Amendment.

LORD CHORLEY

My Lords, I must say that I find the attitude of the noble Lord who is replying for the Government in regard to this matter very puzzling. He comes to us with speeches which have obviously been carefully thought out, but they bear little relation to the arguments which are put forward when these Amendments are moved. This was so on the last occasion. On the last occasion he said, in effect, that there was no reason for the Amendment because housewives were intelligent people and were not being deceived in this way. Now he comes back this afternoon and says, after making inquiries during the Recess, that he is satisfied that that was not right, and, indeed, that there is a great deal of deception of housewives and, in other cases, arrangements by which housewives are induced to deceive themselves. Surely when he has said that he has given away his case. Surely he has established a case for a real, genuine attempt to handle this problem.

LORD ST. OSWALD

My Lords, if the noble Lord is basing his assertion on the fact that I said there was "a great deal of deception", I am afraid I must point out that I never used that phrase. I said that what I had discovered was that there was deception, and with all honesty I withdrew a short pace on that.

LORD CHORLEY

My Lords, the noble Lord said that he had discovered quite a number of cases. I should have thought that what he said made it perfectly clear that there was a strong case for making a real attempt to deal with this situation. What this Amendment is doing is to offer to the Government additional powers which they can use in the light of experience. We have here a Bill—an important and ambitious Bill—which, when it reaches the Statute Book, is likely to remain there for a very long time without a great deal of amendment. In this particular clause it confers what seem to many people to be rather weak powers on the Board of Trade for the making of regulations, which are limited almost entirely to questions of quantity and weight. Now it may be that the noble Lord's advisers in the Board of Trade say that it would be difficult, as they are at present advised, to make use of the powers which we are asking the Government to give to them: but, in a quite short time, as things develop, they may (and I should think they almost certainly will) find that their armoury is not sufficiently strong to enable them to deal with the sort of matters with which they want to deal. They will then be told, "You had your Bill in 1961, and you must wait now for ten years before you get another one".

It seems to me that the noble Lord does not really understand that what we are doing in this Amendment is to offer to the Board of Trade the power to make regulations; we are not actually legislating in regard to these matters. In this Amendment this afternoon we are making provisions which the Board of Trade may use. They need not use all of them; they may use only those parts which experience teaches them can be effectively used: and it may well be that new officials or new members of the Legal Department of the Board of Trade may, in quite a short time, come to an opinion different from that which they have briefed the noble Lord to express to your Lordships this afternoon.

I should have thought that this case was really very well made out. There is clearly a great deal more to be done in the way of regulating the size and shape of containers in such a way as to give protection not only to the housewife but to the children (who were referred to by the noble Duke, the Duke of Atholl, I think, on the last occasion) and to other consumers who can be protected in this sort of way. It seems to me an absurd attitude to take up to say that such people as the Consumers' Council, who have been set up for the purpose of studying problems of this sort, who have given a very great deal of thought and attention to them and who have, after long discussions, arrived at what they think would be useful powers to confer upon the Government Department for the purpose of checking these abuses, should have their views and opinions ignored, in effect, by the Government in regard to these matters, and that this very useful Amendment should be rejected in this sort of way.

LORD DERWENT

My Lords, I feel that, in any case, this Amendment goes much too far, and I believe it to be unworkable, particularly in the words which say that these goods must not be packed in such a way as misleadingly to suggest that they contain something more than they do. I believe that something in the nature of what my noble friend Lord Hawke has suggested is the only answer.

I will take one example only, as cosmetics have been mentioned, and that is the question of bottles of scent. All your Lordships with wives or girl friends know that when one buys a bottle of scent for them there is a very large package, and that, when you open it, there is only a little bottle inside. I am talking about the more expensive scents. My Lords, that is quite deliberate. The man who goes in to buy it prefers it like that, because it looks more expensive than it really is. It is partly done, of course, for safe packaging, but it is not only that; it is really done for appearance. It is given to the girl, who of course knows (or who soon knows when she has opened it) that there is only a small bottle inside. But she prefers the present that way because it looks better when she is given it and she can pretend it is more expensive. My Lords, that package is undoubtedly misleading. It is meant to be misleading and it is misleading; hut, evidently, it is what some people want. I think that this Amendment, for various reasons of that kind—I will not keep your Lordships—really goes much too far. I am sure that the answer is some clause whereby an action can be brought and a court can find whether or not a package or an amount has been deliberately misleading; but I do not believe that that can be done by ordinary regulation.

THE DUKE OF ATHOLL

My Lords, I think that probably this Amendment is not entirely practical, but I hope that the people concerned with it will not give up the attempt to find something which will be agreeable, because I feel that there is a very real need for some Amendment on these lines—possibly, as my noble friend Lord Hawke has suggested, giving the courts the power to decide.

I should like to draw one more thing to the attention of your Lordships on this particular question of deception, and that is as to articles which are put into special Christmas wrappings. They appear to come in profusion just about the beginning of December, and the wrapping is double the size of the normal wrapping around the article, but when you open it you find exactly the same bar of soap inside. It probably costs a penny more, or something like that, for the joy of having such a wrapper. With a commodity such as soap, I strongly suspect that 90 per cent. is bought regularly for use in the house and that a very small percentage is in fact used for Christmas presents; therefore these special wrappings are not appreciated. I feel that that is another attempt to persuade the housewife to buy one particular brand of goods as opposed to another, and that it is to a certain degree deceptive, though perhaps not deceptive in the way that certain articles in the cosmetic trade and similar things are.

I should also like to plead, once again, for chocolates and children. Chocolate boxes still seem to contain a lot of paper shavings at the bottom, and I feel that this is very deceptive to children, who cannot possibly tell what a pound is but who buy entirely on what the thing looks like.

LORD AUCKLAND

My Lords, I think the essence of this Amendment has much to commend it, but, like other noble Lords on this side of the House, I feel it goes rather too far. It is human nature that a housewife who sees four-pence off one washing powder and five-pence off another is almost invariably going to plump for the one with five-pence off, no matter what Government regulation there may be—and these washing powders very largely contain the same type of material. Basically, there is not very much difference between the contents of any of them; and the whole villain of the piece, really, is this business of four-pence or five-pence off. Why cannot these goods be sold at the proper price? That, my Lords, is what is deceiving the housewife.

LORD SHEPHERD

My Lords, if the noble Lord will forgive my saying so, he is quite right about the fourpence or fivepence off, but the customer is not getting the original amount of soap. It is the same box and it has the price knocked off, but it does not have the same amount of soap.

LORD AUCKLAND

Yes; I would agree with the noble Lord there. Of course, price-fixing is not, as I understand it, within the scope of this Bill, and is another matter. But that, really, is one of the prime deceptions to which the housewife is subjected. These detergents are made primarily by about three main companies, all large companies and all of long experience and integrity. I do not think the manufacturers of washing powders are really intentional deceivers. Such deceivers as there are, are mostly confined to manufacturers of the smaller products and are few in number.

But I think that, while the Amendment is well meaning, it goes too far in this case.

LORD SILKIN

My Lords, I think that practically everyone who has spoken to this Amendment has the same objective in view, and that is to prevent the housewife from being deceived. The noble Lord who spoke from the Government side considers, I think, that the mere statement on the package of the weight or number of the article will prevent the housewife from any longer being deceived.

LORD ST. OSWALD

"Displayed with sufficient prominence".

LORD SILKIN

My Lords, I am not satisfied that that is the case, and I think most noble Lords would like some further protection. I am impressed by the statements that noble Lords opposite have made to the effect that this Amendment itself is, possibly, not the best machine for providing the further safeguard, and in some respects I think it does go rather far. I think that regulating the size, shape, material, colour, and so on, goes rather far in preventing the housewife from being deceived.

Therefore I would suggest to the Government that they look at this matter again in order to see whether they would not agree that some further safeguard in addition to stating the weight or the contents is necessary where a purchaser is liable to be deceived as to the contents of a package. I have not, of course, consulted with my noble friends on this Amendment, but if the Government are prepared to do that, I should feel satisfied that the general wish of the House had been met. We are really discussing machinery for safeguarding the housewife, and, as I say, I myself am not satisfied that the making of a regulation is necessarily the best way of providing such safeguard. If some other provision can be inserted in the Bill, well and good; but the mere fact that the weight is stated on the package is not conclusive that the purchaser is not being deceived, if the package is otherwise grossly misleading.

6.23 p.m.

LORD SHEPHERD

My Lords, I have no permission, but before I am called upon to make up my mind on this Amendment, as my noble friends want me to, I was wondering whether the Government, by leave, could make a statement. I think they must be aware of the broad feeling of the House.

LORD ST. OSWALD

My Lords, I hope the noble Lord knows how much I always wish to meet his wishes, but we have not approached this in any doctrinaire way, and I sincerely hope that I am not to gather from the words of the noble Viscount that I was accusing noble Lords opposite of approaching it in a doctrinaire way. If I had regarded it as a doctrinaire question, I would have spent a great deal less time in grocers' shops during the Christmas Recess. I feel that we have gone into this question as deeply as we can. We have looked at all the arguments of noble Lords, and it is our belief that the weight, prominently displayed—and I emphasise that it must be prominently displayed; the regulations will have the purpose of insisting on that—will be a sufficient safeguard for the housewife.

VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH

My Lords, I do not think we want to prolong the discussion further, but in view of what I said previously about the suggestion that consideration was being given to an Amendment to the Bill which would provide for the making of regulations afterwards—whatever they may be—when one could take account of the various criticisms of that procedure, if I understand that the noble Lord will submit at the Third Reading stage, the necessary covering Amendment under which regulations may be introduced, I think we can let this Amendment go now.

LORD ST. OSWALD

My Lords, I am sure we can consider the making of any regulations, so far as the making of any regulations can meet the points of noble Lords opposite. The noble Lord, Lord Silkin, is quite right in saying that we have the same purpose together in this. There is no division there. We have a different approach. But as far as regulations are concerned, we will do our best. With regard to the reference I made to cosmetics and our intention to introduce something later in the Bill I cannot agree that there has been undue delay. We have to approach for advice the various trade bodies and obtain their opinions, and the whole matter has not yet been fully canvassed. Therefore we consider it wrong to put anything in the Bill without canvassing interested parties first.

LORD SHEPHERD

My Lords, in view of the first few words of the last statement, I beg to withdraw my Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

6.26 p.m.

LORD ST. OSWALD moved to omit the first two lines of subsection (5) and to substitute: (5) The Board may by order grant and from time to time vary or revoke, with respect to goods or sales of such descriptions as may be specified in the order, exemption, either generally or in such circumstances as may be so specified, from all or any requirements imposed by or under this section; and, until otherwise provided by such an order, the following shall be exempted from all such requirements, that is to say—

The noble Lord said: With your Lordships' permission I will deal with Amendments Nos. 25 and 26 together, as they are connected. They relate to subsection (5) of Clause 22, which sets out, in paragraphs (a) to (d), the various cases in which the provisions in the Fifth to Ninth Schedules concerning the sale of goods are not to apply. As presently worded it also gives the Board of Trade power, by order, to exempt other goods or sales from those provisions, either generally or in special circumstances. This order-making power confers a flexibility which may be extremely useful in the future, in view of the changes in methods of trading that can take place over a period of years. On consideration, the Government believe that a similar sort of flexibility may also prove useful in respect of the excepted cases specified in paragraphs (a) to (d). As the Bill is at present drafted, however, these exemptions are part of the Bill itself and could be varied only by an amending Act. The purpose of these Amendments, therefore, is to enable these provisions for exemption to be varied by order, if this should prove desirable in the passage of time. Such an order would, by virtue of Clause 55, have to be preceded by consultations with the interests affected and would have to be approved, by a Resolution of each House of Parliament.

The noble Lord, Lord Latham, has an Amendment on the Order Paper following this one to leave out the exception set out in paragraph (d) of the subsection, and with your Lordships' permission I should like to speak now about that Amendment, because it has some connection, as he will have realised, with the Amendments I am about to move. Paragraph (d) exempts from the operation of Clause 22 all assortments of articles of food pre-packed together and ready for consumption as a meal. This is intended to cover, for example, anything from a packet of sandwiches to a full-scale luncheon hamper, where it would hardly be reasonable to require the various components to be made up and marked in the manner which the Bill requires when they are sold separately.

In Committee, the noble Lord expressed concern that this was a vaguely drafted provision which might exempt certain articles which ought not to be exempted, such as packets of potato crisps with salt in them. I do not want to go into too much argument here on the merits of that Amendment, but the Government do not believe that it is possible to be more precise than this. Moreover, roughly the same words have been used for many years under existing weights and measures law without causing any difficulty to traders and without exposing the public to fraud. It is conceivable, however, that over a period of years an improved form of wording might suggest itself; and it is also possible that the courts might decide that certain assortments were exempted as a meal, although the Government of the day might nevertheless consider that, in the public interest, they should not be exempted from the operation of Clause 22. In this connection the virtue of the present Amendments is that they would enable orders to be made in future either to improve the wording of paragraph (d) and the three preceding paragraphs, or else vary the circumstances in which these exceptions prevail, or even revoke them. That facility, which my noble friend has power to exercise, should be helpful both to the public and to traders in giving flexibility in the light of experience, and should thus provide a safeguard against any undue rigidity, to which the noble Lord, Lord Latham, referred on Committee stage, which as conditions change might give rise to anomalies and loopholes. We are grate- ful to the noble Lord for bringing this possibility to our notice and I hope we have succeeded in meeting the point. I beg to move.

Amendment moved—

Page 21, leave out lines 8 and 9, and insert the said new words.—(Lord St. Oswald.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

LORD ST. OSWALD

My Lords, with your Lordships' permission, I will move Amendments Nos. 25 and 26 together, since they both relate to the same provision in Clause 22. This clause gives effect to the various requirements in the Fifth and Ninth Schedules governing the sale and packaging of various goods, and empowers the Board of Trade to make similar requirements by order in respect of any other goods. Subsection 5 (a), to which both of these Amendments relate, exempts from all such requirements goods specially packed for the use of Her Majesty's forces or certain other forces within the United Kingdom, because these forces may wish to have goods, such as food, polishes and soap, packed for their use in a different manner from that laid down in the Bill relating to ordinary civilian use.

In Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, inquired about what would be the position if goods specially packed for the forces were subsequently disposed of for civilian use. Clearly, the public need the same protection in this case as they do in respect of goods which reach them through the ordinary channels of distribution, and the Government have looked again at subsection (5) (a) of this clause to see if any clarification of the word is needed. The noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, is not here, and I hope that the wording we have chosen will satisfy him. I feel that it will not be necessary to go into the rather elaborate details of the wording, which I hope will be self-explanatory to your Lordships who have so much experience in legislation of this kind. I beg to move.

Amendments moved—

Page 21, line 10, leave out ("specially pre-packed") and insert ("made up in containers for sale only")

Page 21, line 13, at end insert ("and not sold or offered, exposed or in any person's possession for sale for any other use").—(Lord St. Oswald.)

On Question, Amendments agreed to.

LORD ST. OSWALD

My Lords this Amendment has been tabled for the same reason as a number of others were tabled in Committee, to cover exposure for sale as well as offering for sale. Noble Lords will recall that, in a recent court case relating to flick-knives, it was held that exposure for sale was not the same thing as offering for sale; and accordingly, in all parts of the present Bill where this is relevant, the Government are anxious to ensure that exposure, as well as offering, is dealt with. The Amendment will achieve this in respect of subsection (5) (c) of Clause 22, where the need for an insertion on these lines was overlooked until now. My noble friend Lord Dundee and I would like to apologise to the House for the fact that this particular Amendment was not tabled at the same time as the other similar ones considered at the Committee stage. I beg to move.

Amendment moved—

Page 21, line 23, after ("offered") insert ("exposed").—(Lord St. Oswald.)

LORD HAWKE

My Lords, could the noble Lord tell as exactly what he has in mind? I cannot quite follow what paragraph (c) is intended to cover.

LORD ST. OSWALD

My Lords, I am not quite clear about what my noble friend is asking me. This is a descriptive paragraph, which is as descriptive as I can make it.

LORD HAWKE

My Lords, what type of goods and what type of premises is it particularly designed to deal with? I cannot quite visualise what type of premises it is intended to cover. It is not a public house?

LORD ST. OSWALD

My Lords, I am sorry to be caught at a loss like this, but I cannot specify any more than the Bill attempts in its text to specify. I understand that it is intended to refer mainly to restaurants.

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

6.38 p.m.

LORD LATHAM moved, in subsection (5), to leave out paragraph (d). The noble Lord said: My Lords, before I move this Amendment, I should like to make a personal explanation. A little time ago, when we were discussing Clause 19, greatly daring, I corrected the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, in connection with his statement about an Amendment put down by my noble friend Lord Burden incorporating a reference to magistrates' courts. I confused that with Clause 46. The noble Earl was quite right and I was quite wrong, and I apologise to him.

With regard to this Amendment, the noble Lord, Lord St. Oswald, has been good enough to answer me in advance, as it were. I do not object to that, but I must say that I was not in any way convinced by his supplementation of what he said on Committee stage. He admitted that the subsection was vaguely drafted and hoped that at same later stage it might be given an element of precision by Government action or otherwise, which is a rather tenuous expectation in any case, or that it might be dealt with in the courts. I understand that, so far as experience goes, we have had no great assistance or comfort from the courts. I am informed that great difficulty has been experienced by those in authority in determining what is a meal under the Shops Act, 1950, Since it has been determined in the High Court that even a raw kipper is a meal, it could be held that a tin of beans containing pork or a packet of potato crisps with salt constituted a meal ready for consumption without being cooked. It seems to me that those are additions to the items that were mentioned when the matter was being discussed in Committee recently.

This exemption from the provisions of Clause 22 is much too wide and will, I am sure, lead to abuse. Moreover, the noble Lord said that the Board could, by order, take out of the exemptions such items or articles as might be decided upon. But as I read the Marshalled List of Amendments, the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, has an Amendment to delete the words from line 30 to line 33. Those lines are as follows: and the Board may by order exempt from all or any of the requirements aforesaid, either generally or in such circumstances as may be specified in the order, any other goods or sale so specified. The deletion of those words is a desirable Amendment. But if that be the case, it seems to me that the Board will then have no power to make orders, as is suggested by the noble Lord, Lord St. Oswald. I should be glad to have some clarification of that point. I beg to move.

Amendment moved—

Page 21, line 26, leave out paragraph (d).—(Lord Latham.)

LORD ST. OSWALD

My Lords, in Committee the noble Lord, Lord Latham, expressed concern at the apparent vagueness of the terms of the exemption contained in the paragraph and at the possibility of its exempting a wider range of food assortments than was intended—such as, he said, potato crisps and salt. As I said earlier in the Amendment I moved to this clause, the Amendment as moved should enable the Government to meet any difficulties which arise in practice in regard to the exceptions to the clause set out in the paragraphs to subsection (5). At that time I also gave a general indication that the Government could not accept fully Lord Latham's original arguments. Admittedly, in connection with other legislation there bas been doubt on occasions about the meaning of "meal", but the courts have indicated that its meaning in any case must depend upon the circumstances—that is to say, for instance, the circumstances of sale—and each case must depend on its merits.

I recall that the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, instanced the case of a punnet of strawberries with cream, and I was unable to understand what he meant by "pre-packed strawberries and cream." The noble Lord explained to me afterwards that what he visualised was a punnet of strawberries with an enclosed carton of cream wrapped up inside. Was that a meal? Taking that as an example, I can tell your Lordships that that would depend on the circumstances of sale. If it were sold in a station buffet, to be taken away and eaten on the train, or in a charabanc, it would be exempted; but if it were sold across the counter of a shop, it would not. We believe that the same must be true of the provision in this Bill, and suggest to your Lordships that the word "meal" is a proper word to use in this context and it is fair to leave its application in any case to depend on the circumstances of that case.

On the Committee stage I described how the Amendment would, in our view, put a most unfair burden upon the packers of such an assortment, and I gave more than one example. If the examples I gave did not convince the noble Lord, Lord Latham, at the time, I do not imagine I can convince him by repetition, but will only irritate him, and do not intend to go through them again. Those are the reasons for resisting this Amendment.

LORD LATHAM

My Lords, why should we put the burden upon the consumer rather than put a proper burden on the packer? After all, the packer gets profit from his activities in packing, but the consumer does not. Why should not the consumer be protected and not the packer?

LORD ST. OSWALD

We simply believe that this will be to the general convenience of all.

LORD SHACKLETON

One of the most annoying things in any Committee or Report stage of a Bill is to be told by the Government that we have to wait for the courts to tell us what the Bill we are discussing is going to mean. That is in effect what the noble Lord has said. We fully grant that the examples he has given are of a kind that the Government properly wish to be exempted, but there are likely to be others for which it would be undesirable to provide such exemption, and our complaint is that the Government are not, in fact, going to have the power to do what might be desirable in some cases. I think this is an aspect of the Bill which is likely to give further trouble. We may not perhaps have the opportunity to do much more here, and it will be other Ministers in another place who will have the pleasure of dealing with these queries, but it certainly is a very unhappy and loose part of the Bill.

On Question. Amendment negatived.

LORD AIREDALEhad given notice to move in subsection (5) (d) after "ready" to insert "at the time of sale". The noble Lord said: My Lords, I think that the answer given in advance to Amendment No. 28 by the noble Lord, Lord St. Oswald, in moving Amendment No. 24, would be an effective answer to this Amendment, as well. For that reason, I do not need to move the Amendment.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, I beg to move the next Amendment.

LORD LATHAM

My Lords, would the noble Earl explain what is the purpose of this Amendment?

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My noble friend Lord St. Oswald moved this Amendment together with No. 24.

Amendment moved—

Page 21, leave out lines 30 to 33.—(The Earl of Dundee.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

Clause 24 [Quantity to be stated in writing in certain cases]:

THE EARL OF DUNDEE moved to add to subsection (2): Provided that this subsection shall not apply to any sale by wholesale where, by agreement with the buyer, the quantity of the goods sold is to be determined after their delivery to him.

The noble Earl said: My Lords, this Amendment furnishes an exemption from the requirements of subsection (2)(b) of this clause. The latter requires a statement in writing of the quantity of goods sold by wholesale to be given to the buyer at or before the delivery of the goods to him in all cases where the Bill specifically requires those goods to be sold at wholesale by quantity and where the buyer does not take possession of the goods at the seller's premises. On the Question in Committee that the clause stand part, my noble friend Lord Derwent raised the matter of the practicability of the provisions of the clause in relation to the sale in bulk of such materials as bitumen, grease and heavy fuel oil, which, as he said, were materials delivered in tankers which could not be emptied completely.

We have looked into this matter and find that there are cases in which it is difficult or impossible to ascertain the exact amount of the goods sold until after their delivery to the buyer has been completed, and in which both buyer and seller are content to accept this determination after the event. One example is heavy oil sold wholesale by weight in conformity with the requirements of Part II of the Eighth Schedule. In some cases, a certain amount of oil inevitably adheres to the inside of the delivery tanker, and the only effective way of determining the weight actually delivered is to weigh the tanker when full and then reweigh it empty after it has retuned from the buyer's premises. If the buyer is agreeable to this, it seems reasonable to waive the requirements in subsection (2) which would otherwise oblige the seller to operate entirely on the basis of guesswork. I beg to move.

Amendment moved—

Page 23, line 26, at end insert the said proviso.—(The Earl of Dundee.)

LORD DERWENT

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend. I would just say that if the buyer does not like the system he will not get the oil; it is the only way of delivering it. I wish to thank my noble friend very much.

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, this Amendment is consequential on the previous one. I beg to move.

Amendment moved—

Page 24, line 9, leave out from first ("any") to ("paragraphs") and insert ("such goods or sales as are mentioned in").—(The Earl of Dundee.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

Clause 25 [Short weight, etc.]:

THE EARL OF DUNDEE had given Notice of four Amendments the first of which was, in subsection (2), after the first "sale" to insert "or purchase". The noble Earl said: This and the next three Amendments fulfil an undertaking which I gave to the noble Lord, Lord Faringdon, in Committee. The noble Lord moved an Amendment to insert the words "or seller" after "buyer" in line 23, on page 24. The noble Lord withdrew his Amendment on the understanding that I would consider the matter further and move a more suitable Amendment later to give effect to the noble Lord's purpose. These four Amendments which we have now put down close the loophole in the clause as it stands, by which a purchaser would be in a position to defraud a seller in cases where he, the purchaser, himself determines the weight of goods offered to him by the seller. I think it gives effect to the purpose of Lord Faringdon which I agreed to accept. I beg to move.

Amendments moved—

Page 24, line 21, after ("sale") insert ("or purchase")

Page 24, line 24, after ("sold") insert ("or in offering to purchase any goods")

Page 24, line 25, leave out ("who")

Page 24, line 26, leave out from ("mislead") to ("shall") in line 27 and insert ("a person buying or selling goods as to the quantity thereof,").—(The Earl of Dundee.)

On Question, Amendments agreed to.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, this is a drafting Amendment. I beg to move.

Amendment moved—

Page 25, line. 37, leave out from ("any") to ("(b)") in line 38 and insert ("such goods or sales as are mentioned in paragraphs (a) and").—(The Earl of Dundee.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE had given Notice of three Amendments, the first of which was, in subsection (7)(a), to leave out "of goods" and insert "which is". The noble Earl said: My Lords, this Amendment, together with Amendments Nos. 39 and 40, relate to subsection (7) of Clause 25, which is designed to exempt from the general short weight provisions of this clause sales of goods which are used in constructional work or for manufacture. The present wording of paragraph (a) has caused some apprehension, and we think now that it goes too wide and may bring back within the short weight provision transactions which are intended to be exempted.

For example, Part V of the Eighth Schedule requires cleansing powders, when sold by retail, to be sold only by net weight, and it would seem on the present wording of paragraph (a) of subsection (7) that these goods, even on a wholesale sale for use in a manufacturing business, would fall within paragraph (a) and remain subject to the general short weight provision. That was not the Government's intention. It was the intention that these goods should be covered by paragraph (a) only as respects any sale to which the requirement to sell those goods by quantity expressed in a particular manner applied. The effect of these Amendments is to secure that paragraph (a) will give effect to the Government's intention, and it is therefore limited to the particular sales in question. I beg to move.

Amendments moved—

Page 25, line 40, leave out ("of goods") and insert ("which is")

Page 25, line 40, leave out ("sold") and insert ("made")

Page 25, line 42, leave out ("of goods").—(The Earl of Dundee.)

On Question, Amendments agreed to.

6.57 p.m.

LORD JESSELhad given Notice of three Amendments to Clause 25, the first being, after "use" to insert, "or con- sumption". The noble Lord said: My Lords, with your Lordships' permission I will take Amendments Nos. 41, 42 and 43 together and address my arguments to them at the same time. If these Amendments are accepted, the subsection will read: … nothing in this section shall apply to any goods if the sale or carriage in question is with a view to the use or consumption of those goods—

1. (i) in constructional or demolition work; or
2. (ii) in manufacturing work, or for incorporation in, goods of a different description,

in the course of carrying on of a business. Manufacturing industry has no objection at all to—and in fact fully supports—these short-weight provisions, which are obviously for the protection of the general public, but it maintains that there is no need for such provisions in regard to transactions actually between manufacturers. Industrial concerns can, and do, check quantities of goods purchased by them, and if short-weight measure is found then subsequent adjustment is made between the parties. This practice has been accepted by both sellers and buyers for years. Therefore to impose statutory requirements where they are not needed for the protection of industry, or for the general consumer, would, I submit, hamper the supplier by forcing him to take unnecessarily elaborate precautions which would result merely in slowing down production and putting up costs.

The Government have accepted the principle of an exemption for goods in manufacture and have sought to give effect to this principle in Clause 25 (7) of this Bill. My chief criticism of the subsection as at present drafted is that it appears to be unnecessarily restrictive, and perhaps more restrictive than was originally intended. The words in the manufacture of, or for incorporation in, goods of a different description restrict the exemption of goods ultimately embodied in the manufactured article, and goods used in the course of the manufacturing process or the process ancillary to manufacture might be excluded. The main purpose of my Amendments is to remove all doubt on this complicated matter by ensuring that whenever goods are supplied for use or consumption to manufacturing work they are clearly within the scope of the exemption. The words, "use or consumption in manufacturing work" are rather wider than the words "use in the manufacture of goods of a different description". They cover goods such as solvents, which are used or consumed in the course of manufacture or in wholesale processes, which might be outside the scope of the subsection.

Just one word about demolition. The proposed inclusion of demolition in subparagraph (i) of the subsection is perfectly proper and logical. The term, "constructional work" does not cover demolition—at least, unless there is an element of construction involved. In the ordinary meaning of the words, construction and demolition are of course entirely opposite. Both are often undertaken by the same industry, however, and it appears illogical for goods supplied for constructional work to be included for the purposes of this clause if goods supplied for demolition are not. I beg to move the first Amendment.

Amendment moved—

Page 26, line 10, after ("use") insert ("or consumption").—(Lord Jessel.)

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, the noble Lord has discussed with this Amendment Nos. 42 and 43, and I take it that his subsequent Amendments, Nos. 50, 51 and 52, would also be consequential on this. I appreciate what my noble friend has said, that it is often unnecessary to give protection against short weight or measure in transactions involving the supply of goods to industrial consumers who are in a position to safeguard their own interests; and the noble Lord has given a number of examples of that. I think there are objections to these particular Amendments. For instance, the word "consumption" in line 10 does not appear to add very much to the word "use" in that line, and might, indeed, even limit its meaning. As to the word "demolition", we are not quite clear whether there are, in fact, many goods sold by quantity which are used in demolition. We should like to consider actual cases.

As to the words "manufacturing work", which the noble Lord proposes to substitute in line 12 for "in the manufacture of", I am not quite sure if they go wider, or, if so, how wide they go. Then their effect on the immediate following words, "for incorporation in, goods of a different description", is not, I think, quite clear. We are certainly not opposed to a change in the wording of lines 9 to 14 on page 26, however, and the industries likely to be most affected have been invited to send details of cases in which the present wording of these lines might create practical difficulties. The Government would be glad to consider such Amendments as can be made to cover them without withdrawing the protection which the clause affords generally to wholesalers and retailers and consumers, and to large bulk purchasers, such as local authorities. We will consider that either between now and Third Reading or in another place, if the noble Lord will agree to that course.

LORD JESSEL

I am very grateful to the noble Lord. Of course I am not wedded to my wording. As he has been kind enough to say he accepts the principle behind the suggested Amendments, I beg leave to withdraw this Amendment, and will not move the next two.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 26:

Pleading of warranty as defence

26.—(1) Subject to the provisions of this section, in any proceedings for an offence under this Part of this Act or any instrument made thereunder, being an offence relating to the quantity or pre-packing of any goods, it shall be a defence for the person charged to prove—

(c) that he took all reasonable steps to check, and did in fact believe in, the accuracy of the statement contained in the warranty; and

LORD DERWENTmoved, in subsection (1), at the beginning of paragraph (c) to insert in the case of a warranty given by a person outside the United Kingdom,". The noble Lord said: My Lords, this Amendment is one of very great importance, I think, to all retailers. The clause as it stands goes a long way towards abolishing the defence of warranty for a retailer. At the present time the defence of warranty in this country does not contain any requirement for checking, which appears in this subsection, and it is frequently quite impracticable for a retailer to cheek the contents of pre-packed goods—for example, tinned goods —without destroying the merchandise.

I know that the Board will probably say, if this clause stays as it is, that the phrase, "all reasonable steps to check", and so on, would cover the retailer. But it is not the Board of Trade that brings the prosecutions; it is the local authorities at the request of the inspectors. And it frequently happens in court that the prosecution says that no steps have been taken to carry out the requirements of the law. The requirements of the law in this case are for checking, and in so far as goods are concerned where the manufacturers and packers are in this country the checking, and therefore the virtual doing away with the defence of warranty by the retailer, ought not to be brought to that extent into effect; it is the manufacturer at an earlier stage who is responsible. When it comes to a retailer buying imported goods, where the manufacturer is out of this country, then I think it is perfectly reasonable that the retailer, the purchaser, should take some steps, including checking, to see that the goods are as described. But where the manufacturer is in this country it seems to me that this clause, as it stands, virtually does away with the defence of warranty for the retailer. I beg to move.

Amendment moved—

Page 26, line 34, at beginning insert ("in case of a warranty given by a person outside the United Kingdom,").—(Lord Derwent.)

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, this is, I think, a new proposal which was not discussed in Committee. As my noble friend has said, it is true that under the Food and Drugs Act, 1955, which is our most recent instrument for protecting the consumer in these matters, the retailer has himself to take steps to implement the warranty which has been supplied only in the case of goods which come from abroad, and not in the case of goods which he buys in the United Kingdom. But, of course, that was not the case under the Food Act, 1926. The reason why this requirement is not in the 1955 Act is that the Food and Drugs Act, 1955, concerns quality just as much as quantity, although it is the most recent instrument for all kinds of protection at the moment. In the case of guarantees of quality, which often go with Quantity, it obviously would not be practicable for the retailer to take steps himself to verify the statements that have been made to to him by the wholesale supplier.

We think that if we were to continue that in this Weights and Measures Bill, which applies only to quantity, it would reduce the protection which is afforded to the consumer. The retailer might occasionally sell some pre-packs from some less well-known supplier—possibly someone who comes under the class sometimes called the "fly-by-night" trader, who shifts from one business to another very quickly: he might not be a well-known trader with a reputation. Or the retailer might receive from his ordinary suppliers goods which have been damaged in some way in transit. We quite realise, of course, that there are many cases, and that it would be quite unreasonable in the case of some pre-packed goods for the retailer to check the warranty. But we also think that he should not be able to invoke the defence of warranty, if the goods are deficient, simply by sitting back and doing nothing to make sure that the warranty is right.

He has only to take reasonable steps. I think the word "reasonable" is the best protection for the person who might be prosecuted. He has not to take efficient or effective steps, but only "reasonable" steps. Opening a package which could not be repacked again would not be a reasonable step unless he was satisfied in the case of a large quantity of goods that there was reason to suspect they were under a false warranty. Then it might be considered reasonable for him to open one or two in order to see if there were any samples which were under weight. But I think that the word reasonable" is usually a sufficient protection. We do not expect him to do anything which is unreasonable. We only want him to take some steps to look at goods which he has got, say, from a passing lorry, the warranty in which consists of something which could be written out by the man driving the lorry, and not simply feel that in every case he can sit back and say, "There has been a warranty and I am not going to do anything about it." I think that would reduce the protection which we want to give to the consumer, and in those circumstances I think my noble friend might perhaps consider not pressing his Amendment.

LORD DERWENT

My Lords, before my noble friend sits down, may I point out that he referred to the 1926 Act, which I think did not deal with quality. According to the Act, the retailer is required to have no reason to believe that the article or its wrapper or container did not comply with what was contained thereon. There is nothing to do with checking. That is virtually impossible. What is a retailer to do who is "run in" because his goods have not been checked, and the prosecution then say in court, "He took no steps to check. It is in the Act"? I am sure that it is this word "checked" which is the trouble. It is not any question of a warranty. I think it is of the utmost importance that at any rate that word should come out.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, I will see whether it is still possible to improve the wording. All I would say is that in order to protect the consumer we think it is reasonable to provide in some cases that the retailer should not be entirely exempt from the duty of checking up on his warranty simply because the warranty is there.

7.13 p.m.

VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH

My Lords, I am extremely interested, in the argument of Lord Derwent, and I think he has a case. As I see it, what he seeks to do is to amend the proposal in the Bill by confining it to cases where a wholesaler is not in this country. It brings to one's mind a number of practices that go on. You may get a job lot—a consignment of canned goods which have not been sold, and have been bought by somebody who acts as a sort of commercial traveller or commission agent. That job lot may be bought in quantities of 1,000 or 2,000 cans, and there is not much information as to whether it is still in good condition or not. If he were to say that he had a warranty from somebody abroad, and this would be the only excuse that the retailer had, it would leave him in a very poor position, if it were not made perfectly clear in the Statute that when in such cases he is not buying through a responsible wholesaler in this country this exemption would not operate and that he would have actually to sample goods although they are odd job lots. I think that we should make sure that he is giving a square deal to the consumer.

I should have thought that there is nothing derogatory to the purpose of the clause at large, or to the consumer, in accepting Lord Derwent's Amendment. Where you have responsible wholesalers in this country who are in a large way of business and they give a warranty, then I think the retailer ought to be able to stand on that warranty. I think that is the main intention of the clause as it operates now. But where, for various reasons, you get odd lots appearing from abroad, I want to see that the consumer is protected from any lack of check.

EARL OF DUNDEE

That is why we do not think we can accept the Amendment.

VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH

I think you could accept it.

LORD SILKIN

My Lords, I wonder whether it is due to the lateness of the hour, to the length of time that we have been sitting, or to the atmosphere in this Chamber, but it seems to me that the effect of this Amendment would be to deprive all retailers who are dealing with people within the country of the protection of a defence in respect of warranty. It would be limited then only to cases where the goods are purchased from abroad. Is not that so? By introducing these words the defence would apply only to that limited class of case where the goods were purchased from abroad. If I am right in my interpretation, is that what the noble Lord wants?

LORD DERWENT

My Lords, with the permission of the House, may I say that I do not think that is the effect; but who am I to argue on legal interpretations with the noble Lord, Lord Silkin? I think that if the clause were taken out there would still be a defence in regard to warranty, but of course not under that subsection. It would still lie. It would still be there. But I maintain that this clause as it stands takes it away from the retailer. If my Amendment went in under paragraph (c), which is a limited paragraph it would deal with warranty only on those goods purchased abroad, but as it would be dealing only with goods purchased abroad it would not affect a defence in regard to home goods which the retailer would have anyway. I think that is the argument. I do not want to go on prolonging this discussion at the moment. May I thank the noble Viscount the Leader of the Opposition for his support? He knows much more than I about these things. On the understanding which I have been given, that my noble friend is going to look at this question again to see whether we can get over our difficulty—I believe that was the undertaking—before Third Reading, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 27 [Additional defences and safeguards for Traders]:

7.19 p.m.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, subsection (3) of Clause 27 provides a defence for giving over-weight. It says: it shall be a defence for the person charged to prove that the excess was reasonable and necessary in order to avoid a further offence arising at a subsequent time by reason of the goods having by then become deficient in quantity". We think it is desirable to make that a little more comprehensive. Therefore we are proposing to take out all words after "offence" and to substitute: attributable to the taking of measures reasonably necessary in order to avoid the commission of an offence in respect of a deficiency in those or other goods. That would cover the case in which a mechanical pre-packer which has a slight variation in the weight which it packs might have to be set well above the average in order to be sure that nothing would be deficient. The result might be that some would be a little over-weight —perhaps sufficiently over-weight to put the retailer in jeopardy of prosecution. I beg to move.

Amendment moved—

Page 28, leave out lines 20 to 22 and insert ("attributable to the taking of measures reasonably necessary in order to avoid the commission of an offence in respect of a deficiency in those of other goods.")—(The Earl of Dundee.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to

THE EARL OF DUNDEEmoved in subsection (4) to leave out the opening words, "In any" and to insert instead "If". The noble Earl said: The next three Amendments, Nos. 46, 47 and 48, go together. They are all designed to meet what was said by a number of your Lordships about a reasonable sample being taken. I believe the Amendment actually moved was in the name of my noble friend Lord Spens, but there were two or three noble Lords opposite who wished to bring up the same point. These Amendments, Nos. 46 to 48, are designed to cover the matters about which concern was expressed by your Lordships on the Committee stage.

First of all, some of your Lordships were afraid that the clause as drafted did not impose a sufficiently clear obligation upon an inspector to test a reasonable sample of pre-packed goods or similar articles if he were, in fact, able to do so, as would normally be the case when testing such goods in a shop or upon wholesale premises. The Amendment achieves this by ensuring that no conviction can be obtained in respect of any article unless a reasonable number of similar articles are tested wherever they are available for testing, on the same occasion; and the court is required to have regard to the average quantity of all the articles so tested. Your Lordships will appreciate, however, that the possibility must be left open for a conviction Where the inspector finds that the deficient article is the only one of its kind in the shop, or where it is brought to him by a member of the public after sale and in circumstances which do not allow similar articles of the same kind to be tested.

The other point was whether the clause as directed made it sufficiently clear that in all prosecutions in respect to articles to which this clause applies the court should have regard generally to all the circumstances of the case, whether the prosecution is in respect of a single article or a number of articles. The Government consider that the clause as originally drafted had this effect; but in the light of the discussion in Committee we see considerable advantage in putting the matter beyond all doubt, as is done in this Amendment. I see both the noble Lords, Lord Shepherd, and Lord Silkin, on the Bench opposite. At the end of our discussion they took a slightly different view about what should be done. I hope that these Amendments will achieve a reasonable compromise which will satisfy both noble Lords. I beg to move Amendment No. 46.

Amendment moved—

Page 28, line 23, leave out ("In any") and insert ("If").—(The Earl of Dundee.)

LORD HAWKE

My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for having met a point which I believe I raised originally. It seemed entirely wrong to me that it should be an offence to give anybody over-weight; and it would appear that the vast majority of cases are likely to be covered by this clause. Incidentally, your Lordships may have read recently in one of the Sunday newpapers of a baker who was said to have been fined for supplying over-weight. Whether this is the old case that we have all kept on quoting from time to time on this Bill, or a new one, I do not know. At any rate, it appears from this Amendment as drafted that in future a baker will have very much less to fear than he has at the moment.

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

I beg to move this Amendment.

Amendment moved—

Page 28, line 24, leave out ("being an offence").—(The Earl of Dundee.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

I beg to move.

Amendment moved—

Page 28, leave out lines 32 to 43 and insert ("are brought with respect to any article, and it is proved that, on the occasion on which that article was tested, other articles of the same kind, being articles which, or articles containing goods which, had been sold by the person charged or were in that person's possession for sale, were available for testing, the person charged shall not he convicted of such an offence with respect to that article unless a reasonable number of those other articles was also tested; and in any proceedings for such an offence the court—

1. (i) if the proceedings are with respect to one or more of a number of articles tested on the same occasion, shall have regard to the average quantity in all the articles tested;
2. (ii) if the proceedings are with respect to a single article, shall disregard any inconsiderable deficiency or excess; and
3. (iii) shall have regard generally to all the circumstances of the case.")—(The Earl of Dundee.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

LORD SHEPHERDmoved to add to the clause: () For the purposes of this Act and of any instrument made thereunder, goods or containers shall be deemed not to be marked with a weight or quantity unless they are clearly and prominently so marked.

The noble Lord said: I believe this Amendment is perfectly clear and does not require a great deal of explanation of what it would do. I put the Amendment down because I could not find in the Bill anything which laid down that weights and quantities which are required to be shown on many articles should be stamped clearly and legibly on the article. I believe that this is of great importance. At the moment many articles are being sold with net weights stamped on the label. Many markings are very small in size and there could be many abuses in this matter. I am thinking, also, of trade marks.

There is a further aspect which emphasises the necessity for this. Certain goods coming from what was called the Empire are required to be marked "Empire made" on the label, but many times one will find these words in a scroll or so designed that one cannot see the words "Empire made"; and these goods are being passed off as British goods. I think it would be quite wrong if we were to pass this Bill saying that these goods should have their net weight marked but with no requirement that the markings should be clear. I beg to move.

Amendment moved—

Page 33, line 27, at end insert the said new subsection.—(Lord Shepherd.)

LORD ST. OSWALD

Clause 34 as it stands is concerned with specifying certain ways in which the quantity of goods shall be deemed to have been made known to the buyer and with defining the procedure for "weighing in the presence of" the buyer. To these provisions the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, proposes to add a declaratory provision to the effect that goods or containers shall be deemed to have been marked with their quantity for the purposes of the Bill only if the marking is clear and prominent. I hope it is clear from what I have said on an earlier Amendment that we fully support his objective.

The marking of quantity on pre-packed goods is one of the most important aspects of consumer protection under this Bill; and clearly the purpose of this will, as he says, be frustrated unless such markings are clear and prominent, so that the public can see at a glance what the quantity is. However, the Bill already enables this objective to be achieved by a rather different method, which renders the noble Lord's Amendment unnecessary. The relevant passage in the Bill is subsection (4) (a) of Clause 22 which empowers the Board of Trade to make regulations as to the manner of marking the quantity of any containers which are required to be so marked, either by virtue of the Fifth to Ninth Schedules or by virtue of an order made under Clause 22.

This power will be used to ensure that the markings are made in a clear and prominent manner; and indeed, following the broad pattern of the existing Marking Regulations governing pre-packed foods, it is likely that the regulations will have to go into such detail as the need for contrasting colours as between the lettering and its background and the permissibility of putting the markings on stoppers and lids, of using methods of embossing the markings, giving metric equivalents, and so on. Also, consideration is already being given by the Board of Trade as to whether the marking might, for example, be required in certain cases to be on the main advertisement panel of the container.

The noble Lord thus may be assured that the objective of his Amendment will be fully achieved by virtue of the regulations to be made under subsection (4) of Clause 22. Despite the complete identity of views between us on the objective, our objection to adopting his Amendment is that, being in very general terms, it would in fact not itself give all the protection that the public need, and there might be the danger that, being enshrined in the text of the Bill, its generality might be held by the courts to override any of the detailed provisions that will need to be made in the marking regulations. On the assurances given now and previously on the Government's sympathy with the objective, I hope the noble Lord may see his way to withdraw the Amendment.

LORD SHEPHERD

My Lords, I am extremely gratified that the last few words of to-day's Sitting should be those which we have just had. I am very grateful, and am sure that they will make all the difference to the carrying out of this Bill I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, it is now half past seven, and I think that the noble Lord, Lord Latham, might be interested in the next Amendment I have on the Paper. I will therefore, with your Lordships' permission, move that consideration of the Bill be now adjourned.

Moved, that consideration of the Bill be now adjourned.—(The Earl of Dundee.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.