COMMONS AMENDMENTS (Hansard, 20 July 1967)

§ LORD STONHAM

My Lords, I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 1 to 6, en bloc. I shall explain them as briefly as possible, which I think will 377 be to your Lordships' convenience. Amendment No. 1 is a drafting Amendment relating to the application of Part I of the Bill to Scotland and Northern Ireland. Its effect, though, is the same as that of the subsection as originally drafted. Amendment No. 2 postpones the date on which Part I of the Bill comes into effect from August 29 this year until January 1, 1968. This was done to ensure that courts and practitioners had enough time to study the changes involved before they came into effect. Past experience has shown that many practitioners rely on information about changes in the law being published in a supplement to Archbold, and there would be insufficient time for that before August 29. It was therefore desirable to defer the date to ensure that all concerned had time to absorb the changes. To ensure the minimum inconvenience to the courts the date had to be one when there was a minimum of current business. The first convenient date to meet that requirement was January 1 next year.

Amendment No. 3 to Schedule 2 is an Amendment of some substance and was made to meet representations by the Magistrates' Association, the Justices Clerks' Society and the Royal Automobile Club, that criminal courts ought not to have to consider awarding compensation for damage arising from motoring offences in which difficult issues of contributory negligence may arise. The Amendment excludes such damage from the provisions in paragraph 9 of Schedule 2 to the Bill which extends the powers of courts to award compensation under Section 4 of the Forfeiture Act 1870. Amendments Nos. 4 and 5 are both technical Amendments relating to an entry in Schedule 2 amending the Regimental Debts Act 1893, and they are required because of the provisions for suspended sentences in the Criminal Justice Bill.

Amendment No. 6 was made to bring a provision in the Companies Act, in relation to the property of companies, in line with a comparable provision in relation to the property of bankrupts, which was already dealt with in paragraph 12(2) of Schedule 2 to the Bill. Under Section 328(2) of the Companies Act 1948, a person who takes in pawn or pledge or otherwise receives the property of a company in liquidation knowing it to have been disposed of in certain criminal circumstances, 378 is liable to be punished as if he had received the property knowing it to have been obtained by a misdemeanour. Under the present law this carries a maximum of seven years. The effect of the Bill without the Amendment, to which I now ask your Lordships to agree, would have been to increase that maximum to 14 years. The Amendment preserves the existing maximum of seven years in line with the provision in paragraph 12(2) of Schedule 2 to the Bill in relation to the property of bankrupts. That, briefly, is the effect of these Amendments, and I beg to move.