Lords Sitting of 30 November 1967

Preamble
The House met at three of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Portsmouth

ABORTIONS: LICENCE APPLICATIONS FROM PRIVATE INSTITUTIONS
3.6 p.m.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the first Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many applications were received up to November 24 from places, other than National Health hospitals, for approval under Section 1(3) of the Abortion Act 1967; and what is their total bed capacity.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF HOUSING AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT (LORD KENNET): My Lords, by November 24 100 applications for approval forms had been received by the Minister of Health and nine by the Secretary of State for Scotland. I cannot yet say the total bed capacity of the premises concerned since many of the approval forms themselves which will give this information have not yet been completed and returned.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, I should like to thank my noble friend for that reply. Is November 24 really to be the final date on which these applications are to be submitted, and do the Government think that the available bed capacity will suffice to cope with the possible flood of abortion cases? What additional steps will they take to enable patients who are deprived of hospital accommodation to undergo a proper operation and not to have to seek recourse to the back-street abortionist?
LORD KENNET: No, my Lords, there is no question of the Ministers declining to consider applications which are received late.
VISCOUNT BARRINGTON: My Lords, may I ask whether the Minister regards this figure as satisfactory or as disappointingly low? If the latter, has it anything to do with the, I believe, widespread opinion in the medical profession, particularly as reflected in the presidential address of the President of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynæcologists, that doctors do not yet quite know where they are in this matter? Might not this fact have affected adversely the number of institutions which answered the advertisement?
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I am not aware of any reason for disappointment in the number of requests for application forms which have been received. I would remind the House that in this field we are talking only about private institutions, not about National Health Service hospitals.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, as the demand for abortion beds may greatly exceed the available supply, both in hospitals and in nursing homes, and as it is often impossible to forecast within a day or two the exact date of onset of a normal confinement, could not unoccupied beds in maternity hospitals be made available for emergency abortion cases as soon as the Act comes into force?
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I will brine that suggestion to the attention of my right honourable friend.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, since the Act does not come into operation until May, is it not rather early to be putting these questions and creating these doubts?
LORD KENNET: I think it is, my Lords. The Act comes into operation on April 26. A perfectly normal process of advertising for applications, of considering applications and of inspecting the premises of applicants is now under way. It has not yet reached a point where one can make any final conclusions.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, before my noble friend carries forward to the Minister the suggestion that maternity homes should be used for abortion operations, will he give attention to the unfortunate psychological effect which this might have on mothers-to-be?
LORD KENNET: My Lords, there are clearly considerations on both sides which would have to be weighed.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, can my noble friend, however, give an assurance that the Government will not be overtaken by the pressure of unforeseen events?

DANGEROUS DRUGS: HEROIN ADDICTS
3.11 p.m.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the second Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their estimate, on the basis of previous records, of the number of heroin addicts who are likely to be notified under the Dangerous Drugs Act, and when accurate statistics are likely to become available.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD STONHAM): My Lords, the number of known heroin addicts in 1966 was 899, but we cannot firmly estimate the number who will be notified under the Dangerous Drugs Act 1967 until the regulations requiring notification are in force, which we hope will be early next year.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that reply. In order to control the spread of this dreadful addiction, would the Government urge all doctors to avoid any additions to the number of heroin addicts after notification day and also to see that the total consumption of heroin is not increased?
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, doctors have to treat their patients, and they must treat them according to their best medical judgment. One of the regulations to which I referred will require the medical practitioner who attends a person whom he considers, or suspects, to be addicted to drugs of any description to notify particulars of that person to a central authority. The other regulation will restrict the prescribing of heroin and cocaine to addicts, and that regulation is being drafted. These are both regulations which were made under the Act, which was expressly designed to deal with the problem to which my noble friend referred.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, as research is of the utmost importance in the control and treatment of heroin addiction, could the notification forms for heroin addicts also be made to give some additional information, such as the occupation, the country of origin, whether the addicts are on sickness or unemployment benefit, or any other details which may be of value?
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, the forms which will be completed under the regulations will give all the information that we think is necessary. However, we are in process of making a change, in that the central records are being transferred from the Drugs Branch of the Home Office to the Statistical Branch, which is better equipped to maintain them. Some of the items of information which my noble friend suggested may not be required, but we will look at all of them.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, I should like to thank my noble friend for that reply.

FOOT-AND-MOUTH DISEASE AND IMPORTED MEAT
3.13 p.m.
LORD CRAWSHAW: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, since foreign meat is probably one of the main sources of infection of foot-and-mouth disease, they would be prepared to impose more stringent restrictions upon its import.]
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, evidence as to the origin of foot-and-mouth disease can only be circumstantial, but the Ministry of Agriculture's veterinary staff have associated about 49 per cent. of the primary outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease since 1938 either with swill containing some meat of imported origin, or with contact with imported meat and bones. In a further 6 per cent. origins are obscure, but there has been some possible contact with swill. Her Majesty's Government are considering whether the existing safeguards on imports of meat are adequate.
LORD CRAWSHAW: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his reply. I should like to ask him whether he is aware that we shall never conquer this dreaded disease without far more careful and stringent restrictions on the import of foreign meat, and also whether he is aware that such careful restrictions have proved successful in countries such as the United States.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, when I say that Her Majesty's Government are considering the existing safeguards, I assure the noble Lord that this is exactly what I mean. They are considering them very carefully and I anticipate that a statement on this will be made in the very near future.
LORD ROYLE: My Lords, I wonder if my noble friend can say whether the Pirbright research establishment has any idea about the theory which has been around in the trade for many years, that foot-and-mouth disease cannot travel in the meat, in the flesh, but that it certainly can travel in the bone. Does my noble friend know anything about this, so far as the Pirbright establishment's activities are concerned?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I know nothing about any particular statement or any particular finding of the Pirbright establishment, except, of course, that my original Answer was composed with the full knowledge and consent, and based largely on the work, of the Pirbright establishment.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: My Lords, can the noble Lord say whether any of the present outbreaks have been traced to swill, or whether any of the causes of the spread of the infection have been traced and identified?
LORD BESWICK: No, my Lords. Of course, one of the terrible factors of the present situation is that there is no conclusive proof as to the origin of the disease or as to how it is being spread.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: My Lords, the noble Lord referred a little time ago to "circumstantial evidence"? Is there any circumstantial evidence which indicates that the origin is due to swill?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I referred to circumstantial evidence in cases
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which have been studied very carefully, and after they have been cleared up. In the present situation it is impossible at the moment to say with any certainty what was the cause of the outbreak.
LORD OAKSHOTT: My Lords, would the noble Lord not agree that, particularly among the farming community, there is a good deal of confusion about the pros and cons of a vaccination policy? Would he consider the advisability of the Government's making a statement in the near future, setting out such knowledge as is available to us and to them, in regard to the effectiveness, the cost, the availability, the risks of passing the disease through a carrier after inoculation, the possible effect on the export market, and so on? Does the noble Lord not agree that if we could have a statement like that, which would receive very wide publicity among the farming community, it might help to clear up some of the confusion? It might help, also, if the Government would share their knowledge with the public.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I understand the point which the noble Lord makes, and I think it is an extremely good one. Indeed, it is very similar to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, earlier in the week, and I made representations to the Minister that something of this sort should be done. As a matter of fact, as many noble Lords will know, a broadcast was made last night, both on radio and on television, in which the Minister attempted to deal precisely with the picture to which the noble Lord refers. I have a copy of the transcript here, and I should be glad to show it to the noble Lord. If it is thought that some further statement of a more permanent character should be made, then that is a matter for consideration. But, of course, one of the difficulties here is that the position is changing from day to day.
LORD OAKSHOTT: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord very much for what I think is a very encouraging answer. Is he aware that my latest information tells me that there is a football team in South Wales which, the day after tomorrow, along with a great many supporters, is going North to play a game in Chester? In view of the cancellation of a number of gatherings of this kind

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which has been thought necessary in the last week or so, does he think it wise that this fixture should take place?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, the noble Lord was kind enough to let me know about this football match, and I have been endeavouring to make some inquiries about it. As the noble Lord will know, and as was made clear in the broadcast to which I referred, many gatherings have been cancelled, but up to the present time the Minister does not think he can ask that football matches should be cancelled. But what he has asked, and what he emphasised last night, is that farmers and others who have contact with livestock should keep away from large gatherings at the present time; and, of course, this advice would apply with special force to that football match.
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: My Lords, have not the Government considered whether there should be a proper inquiry, perhaps by a Royal Commission, into this whole matter—its origin, the causes, the control and the circumstances in which it has been spread?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, of course there must be an inquiry, but again, as I said earlier in the week, the nature of the inquiry which will follow this outbreak has not yet been decided.
LORD BALERNO: My Lords, has the noble Lord read the article in The Times to-day which quotes Dr. Brooksby, the Chief Virologist at Pirbright, and which sets out in considerable detail and in very understandable language the type of the present virus, and discusses the pros and cons of vaccination?
LORD BESWICK: I am much obliged to the noble Lord for calling attention to this article, and I hope that it will gain a wider readership as a result of his supplementary question.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, may I press the question put by the noble Earl, Lord Selkirk? This is not a question of making an inquiry into this particular outbreak. These outbreaks take place periodically, and we know so little about their origins or how to deal with them. Is it not time that we had a full-scale inquiry, possibly by a Royal Commission, to investigate the whole subject?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, there have been full-scale inquiries into these outbreaks. The most recent one was the Gowers Committee, which reported in, I think, the 'fifties, although I forget the actual date. What I said to the noble Earl, Lord Selkirk, was that there is an inquiry after each outbreak. After this very serious outbreak there must clearly be a specially searching inquiry, but the nature of that inquiry, whether it be by Royal Commission or in some other form, has not as yet been decided. It will be decided presumably after the outbreak has been contained.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: My Lords, would the noble Lord bear in mind that it is very desirable that there should be a Royal Commission, and that this inquiry should be held in public, so that people throughout the country will have an opportunity of considering and reading about the evidence given and the conclusions? I take it from the noble Lord's answer that that step is not excluded.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I gladly give the answer that such a proposal will not be excluded from consideration.
LORD MAELOR: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that only this week, within a few miles of Oswestry where this outbreak commenced, a shooting party was arranged? Should not the person responsible be prosecuted under some Act of Parliament or other and put in gaol until the spread of this disease has ceased?
LORD BESWICK: I am sorry, my Lords, but I was not aware of the shooting party and I cannot comment upon it.
LORD OAKSHOTT: My Lords, can the noble Lord say—
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD SHACKLETON): My Lords, I wonder whether I might intervene at this point. As I understand it, this is a Question on the import of foreign meat. My noble friend has, I think, done extremely well in answering. It may be that the noble Lord's supplementary question relates to the original Question. If not, perhaps we might bring this discussion to an end.
LORD OAKSHOTT: My Lords, I was going to ask the noble Lord whether he has any confirmation of the rumour that there is an outbreak in Cornwall.
LORD BESWICK: No, my Lords, I have no information on that.
LORD BELSTEAD: My Lords, supplementary to the Question of my noble friend Lord Crawshaw, may I ask whether it is possible to carry out immediately random tests on samples of imported meat, or is this in fact already done?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, there is a most close and searching examination of imported meat, and it is supposed to be certified before it leaves its country of origin.

ALBERT EMBANKMENT POST OFFICE FACILITIES
3.24 p.m.
LORD CROOK: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, in the light of the robbery at the Kennington Lane Sub-Post Office near Vauxhall Station, the Post Office will now reconsider their consistent attitude not to provide a main post office at or near the Albert Embankment, but to insist that all the newly developed offices on the Albert Embankment between Vauxhall Station and Lambeth Bridge, and the re-developed areas in the rear, must rely for their postal services on the two sub-offices, namely, that at Kennington Lane, Vauxhall Station, and at Black Prince Road.]
LORD HILTON OF UPTON: My Lords, the considerations behind the Post Office decision not to provide a Crown Office in this area are unaffected by the recent robbery. The level of business in the area would not justify the additional cost of a Crown post office even if one or both of the two existing sub-post offices were closed. Nor would the service given be so convenient. These offices serve not only the business area between the Waterloo railway line and the Albert Embankment, but also the residential area behind the railway line. If either was closed, residents in the vicinity would be put to inconvenience.
LORD CROOK: My Lords, may I ask whether the Minister is aware that the big business and commercial organisations which developed the area on the Lambeth Embankment have been pressing ever since the commencement of development more than ten years ago for the facilities of a main post office; that at the moment there are large numbers of homes going up behind; that the Greater London Council is about to conclude its Lambeth Walk comprehensive development scheme and that if the General Post Office misses the boat this time, as it did on the Albert Embankment, the chance of any new post office in the area is completely "out" for very many years? Will my noble friend ask his right honourable friend to look at the matter again and not keep on telling the joint committee of the organisation which was set up that, after all, they have three post offices at Lambeth, Kennington Park and the Elephant and Castle each of which is a mile away?
LORD HILTON OF UPTON: My Lords, I am quite prepared to ask my right honourable friend to have a look at this matter again, but I must tell my noble friend that a great deal of consideration has already been given to this subject, as I believe my noble friend is aware, and that the latest information received from the G.L.C. about future development in the area is that it will be largely residential and the pattern and level of business will not change very much. My right honourable friend is of the opinion that the service given at the moment with the two sub-post offices is adequate. I would remind my noble friend that the financial position comes into this matter as well. At the moment, the two sub-post offices annually cost £7,500, and the estimated cost of a Crown office would be in the region of £10,000 to £12,000. As it is not considered that the service would be any better, my right honourable friend is of the opinion that he cannot accede to my noble friend's request.
LORD ROWLEY: My Lords, whatever justification there may be for retaining these two sub-post offices, may we take it that the Postmaster General is giving serious consideration to a situation in which £50,000 worth of postal orders and insurance stamps are kept in a safe the combination of which is

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known to a lady, the sub-post mistress, who keeps the key? As we all know, the Kennington sub-postmistress was compelled to disclose the combination of the safe, and thugs got away with a vast amount of loot. Is it necessary to keep such a large amount of cash, insurance stamps and postal orders in a sub-post office for the purposes of business?
LORD HILTON OF UPTON: My Lords, my right honourable friend is aware of the facts as outlined by my noble friend. The loss was approximately £83,000, but of this amount £75,000 was in fact in National Insurance stamps. This was an exceptionally large stock of these stamps because the post office had just restocked, and the amount carried was far in excess of normal. But there was this amount of £75,000 in National Insurance stamps alone.
LORD ROWLEY: My Lords, with great respect, my question was: what is going to be done to prevent there being this temptation to these thugs to set about a lady carrying out her lawful duties? Surely it is not necessary to keep £75,000 worth of stamps, et cetera, in a sub-post office.
LORD CROOK: My Lords, before my noble friend replies, as a supplementary to that question may I very relevantly ask whether the Minister will not agree that the real reason that this large stock is carried in such sub-post offices as these is that there is this large demand by industrial and commercial concerns, and that a proper post office with facilities for looking after the stamps has not been provided?
LORD HILTON OF UPTON: My Lords, in reply to those two supplementaries I would remind my noble friend Lord Rowley that in view of the interesting debate which he initiated yesterday I am sure he would be the first to agree that there are few safeguards against this sort of robbery. Yesterday we had described the kind of gentlemen who indulge in this kind of raid; and all the time my right honourable friend was trying to work out ways and means to prevent robbery of that sort. But I am sure that both my noble friends will appreciate that it is a very difficult matter to try to prevent.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, would the Government not agree that the proper method of prevention is to abolish completely the sticking of stamps and arrange a different system of payment altogether?

BUSINESS
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, I beg leave to ask a Question of which I have already given Private Notice; namely, Whether Her Majesty's Government will make a statement on the conclusion of the standby loan to Britain by the International Monetary Fund?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I will reply to this question in the form of a Statement at a convenient moment after 3.30 p.m. I hope that it will be to the convenience of the House if I say that there will be a cold buffet dinner tonight from 7.30 p.m. to 8 p.m. It is not intended to break into the Committee stage of the Consumer Protection Bill, but to continue it until about 9 p.m. Arrangements for dinner on Monday, December 4, will be announced on that day.

EPPING FOREST (WATERWORKS CORNER) BILL [H.L.]
Read 3a; an Amendment (privilege) made; Bill passed, and sent to the Commons.

STREET OFFENCES BILL [H.L.]
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, I beg leave to introduce a Bill to amend the Street Offences Act 1959. I beg to move that the Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a.—(Lord Chorley.)
On Question, Bill read 1a, and to be printed.

FAMILY ALLOWANCES AND NATIONAL INSURANCE BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.

CONSUMER PROTECTION BILL [H.L.]
3.33 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, BOARD OF TRADE (LORD BROWN): My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Brown.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD DOUGLAS OF BARLOCH in the Chair.]
Clause 1:
Prohibition of false trade descriptions
1.—(1) Any person who, in the course of a trade or business,—

(a) applies a false trade description to any goods; or

(b) supplies or offers to supply any goods to which a false trade description is applied;

shall, subject to the provisions of this Act, be guilty of an offence.
LORD AIREDALE LORD AIREDALE moved, in subsection (1)(b), to leave out "or offers to supply" and insert:
"offers to supply or has in his possession for supply".
The noble Lord said: After a false start last Tuesday evening, we now come to the beginning of what I think promises to be a lengthy Committee stage. Perhaps I could say, by way of introduction, that I feel sure that if the Minister gives to these Amendments the same careful and sympathetic attention that he gave to our criticisms on Second Reading when he made the winding-up speech, the Committee will feel that we have had a very useful and worthwhile Committee stage.
This is an Amendment to Clause 1; but I hope I may have the leave of the Committee to speak at the same time to Amendment No. 11 in my name, which is an Amendment to Clause 6. These two Amendments are completely interlinked. Perhaps also I could take a passing glance, and no more, at Amendment No. 13, which is not in my name, simply to say that if it were to be indicated that Her Majesty's Government might accept Amendment No. 13, that would undoubtedly take a good real of the "fizz"
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out of what I propose to say on this Amendment and would enable me to be more brief, although I hope I shall be reasonably brief in any event. Amendment No. 11 is an Amendment to Clause 6, and I quarrel with Clause 6 on two grounds. First, it is a clause in a criminal Bill, creating a criminal offence and doing it in a roundabout way—a way quite contrary to the hopes expressed by the Molony Committee on Consumer Protection, who said that they hoped that any resulting legislation would be drafted in terms as clear and concise as human wit could devise. When you examine Clause 6, which is quite short, you find that it says:
"A person … having goods in his possession for sale shall be deemed to offer them for sale …",
and you have to look from that clause back to Clause 1 to find that offering goods for sale with a misdescription amounts to an offence and, therefore, the person who contravenes Clause 6 commits an offence, although Clause 6 itself does not say so.
But I have a more substantial reason than that for criticising Clause 6; because in my submission Clause 6, in its present form, can in some cases positively take away an innocent trader's defence to the charge. May I revert to the example I gave on Second Reading? Suppose a greengrocer has in his warehouse a number of crates of oranges which he knows to be wrapped in wrappers which in some way contravene the provisions of this Bill, when it becomes an Act. And suppose, knowing that, he decides he is not going to put the oranges wrapped in that way on sale in the shop but that he is going to rewrap them or remove the wrappers. And, suppose he were to be prosecuted for having those oranges in his possession for sale, in his warehouse. The first thing he would want to say to the court would be; "But I never proposed or intended to offer those goods for sale in my shop until the offending wrappers had been removed." But the moment he started to say that, the court would be liable—to my mind it would be bound—to say to him, "Mr. So-and-So, we cannot hear an argument from you on those lines, because Parliament has expressed its will in Section 6 of the Act, which says that in these circumstances you are deemed to offer these oranges for sale. We therefore cannot hear an

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argument from you to the contrary." I feel that it is unfair and unsatisfactory to place a trader in that position.
There is one advantage in our having been over this course before, two years ago, when we had the ill-fated Consumer Protection Bill which ended with the General Election. One knows from that past experience the kind of fences one is going to be asked to surmount on the present occasion. On that occasion the former Minister, when replying to a similar Amendment, used what I now submit was a very refined argument indeed. He said that the oranges in my example in the warehouse would not be oranges in the trader's possession for sale; that they would not become oranges for sale until he had brought them out of the warehouse and into the shop. I do not know whether that refined argument appeals to the present Minister. If it does, may I remind the noble Lord that a Minister may make refined arguments at the Dispatch Box about what a Bill means, but courts have no power to listen to what a Minister has said or take notice of it. The courts have to consider the wording of an Act. I should have thought that magistrates, looking at the Act and considering my example, would be most likely to come to the conclusion that the oranges, even though they were in the warehouse and still improperly wrapped, were, nevertheless, oranges for sale.
The other fence which I was going to have to leap looked, at first sight, much more formidable. The former Minister said, "I really do not know what all this difficulty is about. The words in Clause 6 have been taken straight from the Act of 1887, which in 80 years has never given rise to any difficulty at all on this point; so what really is the difficulty?". But when you look at the 1887 Act you find that the wording is not the wording of this Bill at all; it is the wording of my Amendment, because the 1887 Act says that
"Every person who has in his possession for sale any goods to which a false description is applied "—
et cetera, shall be guilty of an offence. So I am saying that this fence is a fence for Her Majesty's Government to jump, and not for me. I say that if, as the Government so rightly say, the wording
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of the 1887 Act has never in 80 years given rise to any difficulty on this point, why are they now proposing to change the wording in this Bill? I hope I have said enough to show that this Amendment is worth while, and indeed necessary, and I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 1, line 8, leave out ("or offers to supply") and insert ("offers to supply or has in his possession for supply").—(Lord Airedale.)
3.43 p.m.
LORD BROWN: The noble Lord, Lord Airedale, has made clear on more than one occasion that he does not like the way in which Clauses 1 and 6 are drafted. The Government are in full sympathy with the noble Lord's object, which is to improve and simplify the drafting of the Bill. We have therefore again considered whether it would make it easier for the reader if Clauses 1(1)(b) and 6 were rearranged as suggested by the noble Lord. We have reached the conclusions that the present scheme of exposition is the better, namely, to state briefly and simply at the outset what are the essential offences and to leave the inevitable definitions and refinements until later. Indeed, I think that the noble Lord himself would accept this in principle, and I am sure he would agree that we could not put the whole of Clauses 2 and 6 into Clause 1.
The essential offences in relation to goods improperly marked is supplying them and offering to supply them. It is true that for the sake of effective enforcement we must also catch the related acts of exposing for supply and having in possession for supply; but these are subsidiary matters which are more suitably dealt with separately in the Bill. The result of the Amendment would be that all the references to offering to supply in other clauses of the Bill would have to be expanded to read, "offer to supply or have in possession for supply", which would mean a great deal of extra words in total. I hope, therefore, that the noble Lord will be willing to withdraw his Amendment.
The noble Lord has also spoken, in support of this Amendment, about his proposed Amendment to Clause 6. Here I am in a little difficulty, as my noble friend Lord Winterbottom is going to answer a number of proposed Amendments to Clause 6 later. Perhaps if I

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give a brief comment on this point it will satisfy the noble Lord. During the Second Reading debate he criticised Clause 6 on the grounds that it was unjust to make a trader guilty of an offence merely because he had goods bearing a false description in his possession for sale, and the noble Lord has done it again to-day. At col. 610 of the OFFICIAL REPORT for November 14 your Lordships will find an example of the sort of case which the noble Lord had in mind. I will not repeat the details, but I think it fair to say that the noble Lord feared that a trader who had received goods bearing a false trade description and who had taken steps to see that those goods were not put on sale until the marking was put right, was still liable to be convicted of the offence of having these goods in his possession. We are advised that in such a case the trader would not, for the purposes of this Bill, be in possession of the goods for sale.
I know that the noble Lord was not satisfied with that explanation when the matter was discussed in Committee stage on the previous Bill. Since then, however, the meaning of the words "have in possession for sale" as used in the Weights and Measures Act 1963 has been considered by the Divisional Court. The noble Lord may like to refer to the case of Ben Worsley v. Harvey, which is reported in both the Weekly Law Reports and in the All England Reports. I will give the references for the record. They are [1697] 2 A.E.R. 507; and [1967] I.W.L.R. 889.
The facts, very briefly, are that a weights and measures inspector found some under-weight loaves in the dispatch room of a bakery. The evidence showed that the owner of the business had taken steps to ensure that the bread in the dispatch room should not be put on sale until it had been checked by the supervisor. The owner of the business was charged before the justices with having under-weight loaves in his possession for sale—an offence under the Weights and Measures Act. He was convicted by the justices, but on appeal the Divisional Court, in an unanimous judgment, held that the goods were not in his possession for sale for the purposes of the Weights and Measures Act. I agree that the circumstances are not quite identical to those
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outlined by the noble Lord in the case he quoted during the Second Reading debate, and indeed the case he has quoted this afternoon, but I submit that the principle is the same and that we are right in our view that in the case cited by the noble Lord an honest and careful trader has nothing to fear. Therefore I invite the noble Lord to withdraw his Amendment.
I understand that we are now to have the Statement and therefore I beg to move that the House do now resume.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.

I.M.F. STANDBY CREDIT
3.48 p.m.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, perhaps I may now give your Lordships the Statement made in another place by my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer to which I referred just now. It is as follows:
"The House will note that a standby credit of 1·4 billion dollars has now been made available to us by the International Monetary Fund. We have no intention of drawing on this credit in the near future. Its availability, however, is of great importance not only in reinforcing confidence in the new parity of sterling, but also for the stability of the international monetary system as a whole.
"In spite of misleading reports to the contrary, there has been no question of the Fund attaching conditions to this credit. I am proposing circulating in the OFFICIAL REPORT the text of Letter of Intent sent by my predecessor to the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund on November 23. This letter sets out the policies already announced to the House that the Government is following. These are designed to make certain that full advantage can be taken of the improvement in our competitive position resulting from devaluation and to ensure that sufficient capacity at home is, available to meet the expected increase in export demand as it builds up over the time."
Following is the text of the Letter of Intent referred to by Lord Beswick:
23rd November, 1967.
"My dear Mr. Schweitzer,
I am setting out in this letter a statement of the policies and intentions of the Government of the United Kingdom.
2. The United Kingdom Government reached their decision to seek the International Monetary Fund's agreement to a reduction in the parity of the pound sterling in the light of their latest periodic review of the position and prospects of the United Kingdom economy, including the outlook for the balance of payments, to the end of 1968.
3. The Government's main objectives of policy remain the achievement and maintenance of a strong balance of payments, together with a high rate of economic growth which will make for full employment.
4. So far as the balance of payments is concerned, the Government's aim, at the new rate of exchange which has been concurred in by the Fund, is an improvement of at least £500 million a year. On present prospects for world trade this should mean a surplus in the second half of 1968 at an annual rate of at least £200 million. Beyond that there should be a further substantial rise in the surplus as the full benefits of the change in the United Kingdom's competitive position are felt.
5. At the same time as they took their decision on the rate of exchange, the Government decided that measures should be taken as and when required to free resources from domestic use on the scale necessary to secure the improvement referred to in paragraph 4 above.
6. As the Fund Board will be aware, calculations of the effect of a change in the parity of a currency, and still more of the timing of such effects, are necessarily extremely speculative. This makes it difficult to decide precisely, in the initial stages, on the scale and timing of the measures that are required to make sure that the improvement in the competitive position is not lost through insufficient capacity at home being available to meet the expected increase in demand as it builds up over time.
7. The Government is satisfied that the measures announced on 18 November, 1967 will bring about a sufficient shift in resources in the coming months to go a very long way towards achieving the improvement needed to achieve their balance of payments objective. These measures—details of which are annexed to this letter—will, together with the effect on purchasing power at home of the devaluation itself, lead to a reduction of home demand by about £750 million to £800 million below what would otherwise have been the case.
8. The Government is fully aware of the possibility that further measures will be needed to maintain the momentum towards the balance of payments improvement referred to in paragraph 4 above. They intend to take further action once it becomes apparent that
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such action is required to secure the necessary balance of payments surplus.
9. The next review of the position and prospects of the United Kingdom economy and balance of payments will, in the normal course of business, be carried out in February, 1968. At this time it should be possible to assess more accurately than can be done at present the effects of the decisions announced on 18 November, 1967. In the light of the review, the Government will make a decision on the precise nature of any further action required. They will be happy to consult with the Managing Director on the results of this review, and again after the further reviews which are planned for July and November, 1968.
10. Fiscal policy will continue to play the most important role in making room for the needed improvement in the balance of payments. It is the Government's intention to ensure that the Exchequer's borrowing requirment for the financial year beginning 1 April, 1968, is kept under firm control. So far as can be seen at present, this entails holding down the borrowing requirement to not more than £1 billion—the appropriateness of which estimate and the measures necessary to ensure that it is achieved will be reviewed with the Managing Director in accordance with the time-table specified in paragraph 9.
11. The steps that have already been taken and will continue to be taken give rise to the expectation at present that bank credit expansion will be sufficiently limited to ensure that the growth of money supply will be less in 1968 than the present estimate for 1967. both absolutely and as a proportion of G.N.P., despite the expected substantial recovery of reserves. It continues to be the Government's policy to meet its own needs for finance as far as possible by the sale of debt to the non-bank public and interest rate policy will be used to this end. In the consultations mentioned in paragraph 9, the actual course of bank credit in relation to the expected course will be taken into account in determining appropriate policy actions.
12. Prices and incomes policy.
The Government's object will be to ensure, in co-operation with the T.U.C. and C.B.I. that the policy for prices and incomes measures up to the requirements of the new situation. It will be the Government's intention to maintain the policy set out in the White Paper, Prices and Incomes Policy after 30 June, 1967 (Cmnd. 3235), under which there is no entitlement to a "norm" or standard increase in pay, and increases in pay and prices have to be justified against criteria of the national interest which are equally relevant to the new situation. There is no criterion for pay increases related to changes in the cost of living. To support the application of the policy, the vetting arrangements will be strengthened in order to ensure that the rise in wages and salaries does not exceed what the economy can afford over the next twelve months.
The Government has already started talks with Management and Unions on alternative ways of achieving this objective.
Exchange control
13. The Government is determined to maintain the new parity without resort to any additional restrictions on current payments or intensification of the present restrictions. The Government, moreover, intends to abolish all remaining restrictions on current transfers and payments as soon as the balance of payments allows. Similarly, as the balance of payments strengthens, the Government will consider what relaxations can be made in the present restrictions on capital transfers.
Request for a standby
14. The Government are convinced that the above measures will lead to a strong balance of payments. It is important, however, for the stability of the international monetary system to establish confidence in the new parity from the start. The Government therefore requests a standby of $1·4 billion from the Fund to carry out its economic aims both domestic and external, which it believes are fully in conformity with the aims of the Fund.
15. Before making purchases under this requested standby arrangement with the International Monetary Fund, the Government of the United Kingdom will consult with the Managing Director on the particular currencies to be purchased from the Fund.
16. The Government believe that the policies here outlined are adequate to achieve the economic goals described in this letter. If, however, present policies should turn out to be inadequate, the Government is firmly determined to take such further measures as may be necessary to achieve these goals. If, in the opinion of the Government of the United Kingdom or the Managing Director of the Fund, the policies are not producing the desired improvement in the balance of payments, the Government of the United Kingdom will consult with the Fund, during the period of the standby arrangement and as long thereafter as Fund holdings of sterling exceed 125 per cent. of quota, to find appropriate solutions.
Yours sincerely
J. CALLAGHAN.
Measures Announced on 18 th November, 1967
1. Fiscal Policy

(a) As announced in the supplementary statement on Defence Policy of July 1967 (Cmnd. 3357), defence expenditure was planned to stay below £2,000 million a year at 1964 prices and to be down to £1,900 million by 1970–71. It has now been decided to achieve this reduction by 1968–69, so reducing the cost of the planned defence programme in that year by over £100 million (exclusive of terminal costs and expenditure arising from the change in parity).

(b) Civil public expenditure as a whole (i.e. including nationalised industry investment and local authority expenditure) is planned to rise over the next few years. Reductions will be made in 1968–69 to reduce the total planned for that year by £100 million.

(c) The premium (seven shillings and sixpence a week for men) paid to manufacturers under the Selective Employment Payments Act will be withdrawn—except in Development
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Areas. This will reduce payments by over £100 million in a full year.

(d) Payment of the export rebate will terminate on 31st March, 1968. Exports up to that date will qualify, exports thereafter will not. This will save just under £100 million in a full year, of which approximately two-thirds will be realised in 1968–69. Abolition of the rebate requires legislation which is now being prepared.

(e) The rate of Corporation Tax will be increased in the 1968 Budget from 40 per cent. to 42½ per cent. The new rate will apply to profits for the year to 31st March, 1968. Allowing for side-effects, the additional yield is estimated at about £95 million in 1969–70 and approaching two-thirds of that figure in 1968–69.

2. Monetary policy and hire-purchase restrictions
The Bank Rate has been increased to 8 per cent. from its previous level of 6½ per cent. This high rate has been chosen in order to reinforce the impact on confidence of the Government's measures by the offer of an exceptionally high rate of return on funds invested in London. By raising the cost of credit Bank Rate at this level will also reinforce the impact of the credit restrictions on demand.
Severe but selective restrictions are being placed on bank lending to the private sector. New ceilings have been imposed which will prevent aggregate advances rising above their level at 15th November in the case of the London clearing and Scottish banks, and end-October in the case of other banks.
Identified lending for exports, and under the schemes providing guaranteed finance for exports, and shipbuilding, will be excluded from the ceilings. Within these ceilings the priority categories for lending have been more narrowly defined than hitherto, leaving a wider area of non-priority borrowers whose demands can be compressed in order to accommodate priority lending.
Hire-purchase restrictions are also being tightened. The minimum deposit on cars will be raised from 25 per cent. to 33 and one third per cent., and the maximum repayment period will be reduced from thirty-six months to twenty-seven months. In addition a ceiling is being placed on lending by finance houses restricting their lending to the level at end-October. These measures are likely to reduce net borrowing by some £100 million in 1968."
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, your Lordships will be obliged to the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, for repeating that Statement, and I think that all of us will welcome the availability of this loan if it is needed to reinforce confidence in the new parity of sterling. I think that your Lordships will be interested, too, that the noble Lord has denied reports which were current, both on the B.B.C. News at 1 o'clock and in the evening newspapers about there being

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stringent conditions attached to the loan. May I ask the noble Lord this question—though I suppose I ought to know the answer? Is there a commitment fee to this very large loan, and if we do start drawing on the loan, at what rate of interest do we have to pay?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, if the noble Earl will excuse me, I would rather not answer those two questions at the present time. The letter which was despatched by my right honourable friend will be published, and though these two particular details are not those disclosed I shall be glad to give the noble Lord the information on a further occasion.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, on behalf of my colleagues on these Benches, may I say how happy we are that no strings have been attached to these facilities? Am I not right in saying that perhaps it would be better to describe this not as a loan, but as a standby credit, or standby facilities, which we may be in a position to take up either in whole or in part, and not necessarily all of it, if we do not need it? Secondly, may I ask whether, in view of the appointment of a new Chancellor of the Exchequer, we may take it that the Government are completely free to change the policies which they have already notified to the International Monetary Fund without prior approval of the Fund, because many of us hope that the new Chancellor will wish to bring in new policies for new incentives to economic growth?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I confirm part of what the noble Lord said at the beginning, that this is not a loan on which we propose to draw. This is a standby loan which, as the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, said, will help to establish and make certain that confidence is there. It may well be that later on some drawings may be made, but there is no intention at this moment; nor is there any need, provided that nothing is done to upset confidence, to make any drawing upon this amount.
So far as the noble Lord's second question is concerned, when he reads the letter, he will see that it sets out clearly and very forcefully the policy which Her Majesty's Government believe is the right one to make absolutely certain that devaluation leads to a success-
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ful achievement of the objective we have set out. This is our policy which is set out in this letter. It is the policy which Her Majesty's Government believe is the right one, and we propose to follow it. If, during the course of the year, things turn out differently from what we now believe, again the letter sets out the fact that, as in other cases, we shall consult with the International Monetary Fund as to other courses that may be taken.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, do we have to get prior approval before we change the policy?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, the letter sets out our intention to consult. This is common form. Any standby loan of this kind would naturally carry with it an undertaking to consult if the economic developments so required. Again I stress that what we have said we will do is what we believe to be the right thing to do in the present circumstances.
LORD ROWLEY: My Lords, can my noble friend say whether these misleading reports emanate from Paris; and, if so, do they emanate from responsible sources there?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, where they emanate from I should not like to say. Some of the points made in the morning Press are correct; others are incorrect; and others have a grain of truth in them. I hope that my noble friend will study the letter that it is proposed to publish.
VISCOUNT BRENTFORD: My Lords, could the noble Lord give some greater indication of the legal effect of this Letter of Intent? Is it a part of the contract for this standby credit?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I hesitate to say whether there is any legal status attached to this Letter. I think, as the noble Viscount will know, that in matters of banking and the creditworthiness of borrowers, there must be faith and confidence between the parties concerned. There would be absolutely no question of anyone in these circumstances resting on any legal definition of the document. We have set out clearly the economic policies we propose to pursue and we stand by those policies.
LORD GRIMSTON OF WESTBURY: My Lords, am I right in assuming that

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the loan would not have been available if the Letter of Intent had not first been received?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I think that the noble Lord would be assuming too much if he were to do that.

CONSUMER PROTECTION BILL [H.L.]
3.56 p.m.
Committee stage resumed.
LORD DRUMALBYN: May I make one or two general observations at this point? I feel sure that the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, will not wish to press this Amendment to a Division on this occasion. I am sure that we shall have many discussions on matters which we prefer to leave open at this stage, because we should like the Government to consider what is said in the Committee and then make up their minds as to what action they take.
In this case, I think the noble Lord, Lord Brown, exposed a flank when he said that this was a judgment for the purposes of the Weights and Measures Act. This will occur time and time again in the course of these discussions, because there is overlapping legislation in this area. I think that there is a great deal in what the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, said on this, and after listening to the argument I am sure that he will go a little further and put in the whole of the words in the 1877 Act. At least, that would make the second sentence of Clause 6 a little more intelligible. In the 1877 Act, as quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, at an earlier stage, it says:
"or has in his possession for sale or for any purpose of trade or manufacturing"
If those words were in, it would still further ease the difficult position in Clause 6.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: May I ask my noble friend whether he can help me? I have considerable sympathy with what the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, is trying to do. If this Amendment is not pressed, or if it is pressed and fails, would it mean that the noble Lord's Amendment No. 11 would also be unacceptable to the Government, because No. 11 is something about which I feel strongly?
LORD BROWN: If the noble Lord wishes to do so, we shall have to divide on this Amendment, but I hope that he will withdraw it, because it is a drafting Amendment—of a rather large sort, but nevertheless drafting. The main part of the debate will be about Clause 6, to which there are a number of other Amendments, and with respect I suggest that the noble Lord withdraws this Amendment now and then we can debate the matter on Amendment No. 11 and the other Amendments on Clause 6 when they arise.
LORD SILKIN: Before the Amendment is withdrawn, if it is going to be withdrawn, I should be glad if the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, would verify or otherwise whether it is only a drafting Amendment, or whether he is seeking to extend the scope of this clause. As I read it, this is a material and important extension of the clause, by making it an offence not only to offer goods for sale or have them available for sale, but also to have them in stock, when they are not even offered for sale.
This seems to me to be more than a drafting Amendment. I know the noble Lord, Lord Brown, has said that it is a rather large drafting Amendment, but it seems to me to be an Amendment of some importance that would very much widen the scope of the clause. If this is so, I am very much opposed to it, because I do not think we should lightly extend the scope of criminal offences unless there is good reason for doing so, and the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, has not given us any reason why it should be extended in the way that he suggests.
LORD AIREDALE: I think the answer to the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, is that this Amendment is in truth a drafting Amendment. I had to discuss it together with Amendment No. 11 in order to make myself intelligible. Nevertheless, having withdrawn this Amendment, as I propose to do in a few moments, I still propose to move Amendment No. 11 in order to open the way for the debate which the noble Baroness, Lady Burton of Coventry, and a number of your Lordships wish to have on Clause 6. I think that is the answer.
I am grateful to the Minister for the great trouble that he has taken. The

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reference he gave was to the All England Law Reports, and perhaps I could say at this stage that it would be useful if those who are advising Ministers about cases which they are asking a Minister to cite, and who are not members of the legal profession, would not use these rather cryptic shorthand references to law reports which lawyers know and understand, but which nobody else understands at all. Having said that, and having thanked the Minister, I will only say this. I still very much prefer the straightforward method of criminal legislation adopted by our Victorian grandfathers in 1887 than this roundabout way of doing it which we in our wisdom adopt in 1967. Having said that, and having, I may say, high hopes that the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, and the noble Lord, Lord Cawley, will carry their Amendment No. 13, which will take away a great deal of what I object to in Clause 6, I am quite happy at this stage to withdraw this Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
4.4 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN LORD DRUMALBYN moved, in subsection (1), after paragraph (b), to insert:
"(c) publishes or causes to be published any advertisement in which a false description is applied to goods which he is supplying or offering to supply;".
The noble Lord said: This Amendment really has three purposes. The first is to make effective the major extension in the law about advertisements, not just indirectly as in Clause 4(1)(a), as extended by Clause 5, but directly by making it an offence to publish or cause to be published an advertisement containing a false description. The point here, as I understand it, is that in the past the difficulty has arisen of defining in what circumstances a trade description is applied in an advertisement. I should have thought that when you had been confronted with a difficulty of that kind it would have been better to cut the knot and to introduce a new principal offence straight away dealing with publication in advertisements. That is what this Amendment seeks to do. It says:
"publishes or causes to be published any advertisement in which a false description is applied to goods which he is supplying or offering to supply".
The second purpose is to lay the blame primarily on those to whom the primary responsibility belongs; that is, upon those whose goods or services are advertised. It is they who use the technical services and advertising agencies; it is they who brief them; and it is they who check, or ought to check, any advertisement that an agency may devise. It seems to me to be right that all who knowingly are responsible for the circulation of false descriptions should bear the blame; but it is also right that the major blame should be attached where it belongs—that is, to those who are selling the goods or services.
The third purpose is this. It seems to me that we ought not to provide in this Bill a soft option for enforcement authorities. It may in certain cases be easier for them to prosecute the party who, for example, devises the advertisement, or indeed who prints it. In my view, the primary duty of the enforcement authority should be to go for the person primarily responsible for the advertisement. For example, in the case of goods manufactured and sold through a retailer, the temptation is to go for the retailer because that is the point at which the goods are sold. But if the false description is applied by the manufacturer in the first place, then surely it is the manufacturer who should be prosecuted and not the retailer; and the retailer should not even be brought into court.
I regard this as an important Amendment. I think it has these three primary purposes, and I hope that the noble Lord will be able to meet us with regard to them, if not in this way, then in some other way. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 1, line 9, at end insert the said paragraph.—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD: I should like to support this Amendment which the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, has explained so clearly. This clarifies the opening shot of the Bill by making it clear beyond doubt that the whole thing deals with advertisements, as well as with trade descriptions in the old-fashioned sense. We have discussed this at some length. I was not quite clear in my mind how it would work, but if this Amendment is accepted, then it will be clear beyond doubt who is responsible. I support the Amendment wholeheartedly.
LORD AUCKLAND: I, too, should like to support this Amendment. The manufacturer these days has all the modern advances of technology open to him to make quite sure that before the goods reach the retailer they are accurately described. There are all too many people who are inclined to blame the retailer and take their trade away from him because of false descriptions in advertising. Therefore, I hope the Government will look at this seriously. It seems to me that this Amendment is one of the linch-pins of the whole Bill, and if it is accepted it will put the blame, inasmuch as there is blame, quite fairly and squarely where it should lie.
LORD LEATHERLAND: The various speakers in support of this Amendment have suggested that the blame should be put where the primary responsibility lies, and that this will in some cases be the manufacturer. But that is not what the Amendment says. The Amendment says:
"publishes or causes to be published any advertisement …"
This is putting the responsibility on the newspaper. When magistrates and learned judges come to interpret this Amendment in the light of any case which may be brought before them, they will not have regard to what noble Lords have said in this Committee this afternoon; they will have regard to the actual wording of the clause.
LORD DRUMALBYN: Perhaps I may draw the attention of the noble Lord to the actual wording of the clause. It says
"Any person who … publishes or causes to be published any advertisement in which a false description is applied to goods which he"—
that person—
"is supplying or offering to supply …"
It cannot be in this case the publisher of the newspaper.
LORD LEATHERLAND: I still feel that the publisher of the newspaper runs some risk here. Noble Lords will recall that on Second Reading we raised the whole question as to who really was the person who publishes, because we felt that this word "publishes" which appears in the Bill is a very serious one indeed. The noble Lord, Lord Brown, said:
"I am not sufficiently familiar with the Bill to distinguish between an advertiser and a
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person who publishes … The 'advertiser' may be an advertising agent who has taken ever total responsibility from the manufacturer for producing the copy … and getting it, into the newspaper. Or it may be the newsraper."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 14/11/67, col. 670.]
Then the noble Lord continued, in column 671:
"What I am trying to point out is that the 'advertiser', or the person who publishes, is whoever is responsible for the content of the advertisement. It is the content with which we are concerned."
I suggest that that still leaves the newspaper exposed to prosecution—exposed not to a civil action for misrepresentation, but exposed to criminal prosecution—and I hope we shall not go very lightly into the inclusion of this particular Amendment in the Bill.
It is a fact that newspapers are extremely careful about accepting advertisements. I have known, in my newspaper life, of one advertisement after another being rejected, and probably the whole layout of the paper that night, for which I was responsible, being put in jeopardy a few minutes before the time of going to press. The Newspaper Proprietors' Association and the Newspaper Society have jointly produced a form which they require all would-be advertisers to fill up before an advertisement is accepted. This requires details to be given of the capital of the firm that wishes to advertise, its directors, its business name, where it keeps its stock and how long it has been in business. It has to give two trade references and the name of its bankers. It has to say that it will be willing to supply samples to the newspapers; it has to say that if it does not despatch the goods in seven days it will offer a refund; it has to say—and sign—that if the customer is dissatisfied with the goods and returns them he will have his money refunded. If the advertiser fails to refund the money the newspaper itself, out of its own pocket, will refund that money. The newspapers, of course, do not do this out of generosity, but to keep their readers happy.
I feel that newspapers are taking a very responsible line indeed in regard to advertisements they will accept, and it seems to me very unfair that they should stand the risk of being prosecuted on a criminal charge if, by some accidental chance, an advertisement gets through which is not quite correct. I think that

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if the first two words of the Amendment were omitted—that is to say "publishes or"—so that the Amendment would read,
"causes to be published any advertisement in which a false description is applied …"
it would then be perfectly acceptable. It would be putting the blame where it really belonged and excusing the newspaper from any innocent mistake it might make.
LORD BUCKTON: I should be among the first to support the noble Lord in what he has said about not doing anything to harm the responsible attitude which newspapers are taking to ensure that the contents of the advertisements in their papers are kept as clean and right as they should be. But I think he is mistaken in this particular Amendment. It seems to me quite clear that it is only the person supplying the goods who is really affected by this Amendment.
LORD STRABOLGI: Following what the noble Lord has just said, I also have to differ from my noble friend Lord Leatherland—and I am sorry to do this, as mostly I agree with him—because I think my noble friend has mistaken in this context the word "advertisement". Clause 37 says:
"'advertisement' includes a catalogue, a circular and a price list".
I think that in this context, as the noble Lord opposite has just pointed out, it does not apply, as this Amendment refers to an advertisement published by the person who is supplying, or offering to supply.
Arising out of this, I would say that I agree fully with the Amendment and I hope the Government will accept it. I think the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, has pointed out an important lacuna in Clause 1, in that at the present time it is so worded that any person who applies a trade description to the goods, or supplies or offers to supply them, lays himself at risk. It does not safeguard the innocent trader who applies a false trade description which has been furnished by someone else. This could well occur in the case, say, of toilet and cosmetic goods, a great many of which come from abroad, and where showcards are produced from abroad and exhibited on cosmetic counters. Those showcards
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might quite easily not be accurate or might infringe against the regulations in this Bill, but under the Bill as it at present stands the person who would be held guilty of affixing a false trade description, although it was produced in a Continental country, would be the retailer. Therefore this extra paragraph (c) appears to be essential, and I hope the Government will accept it.
LORD SILKIN: I am not sure about the wording of this Amendment, but I am quite sure that the intention is right. It may be that the wording can be improved to meet some of the points that have been made in the course of the discussion. It is quite clear that what the Amendment is designed to do is to put the responsibility where it really ought to lie: with the person who is responsible for the advertisement. Generally speaking, it is not the newspaper. The newspaper is bound to accept from the advertiser the description of the goods which he provides for the advertisement. The newspaper is not in a position to test whether all the statements made to boost the product are justified or not. Therefore, if there is anything wrong, it is the person who is responsible for the advertisement and supplies the information who ought to be prosecuted; and that, I take it, is the purpose of the Amendment.
It may go a little too far. I think that in cases where the retailer is prosecuted, as he sometimes is, he is in a position to bring in the wholesaler. In my young days I used actually to prosecute retailers on behalf of a local authority for just this sort of thing. It was quite common for the retailer then to obtain an adjournment of the case and bring in the wholesaler, or even the manufacturer, who was responsible for the advertisement; and invariably, if it could be brought home that the manufacturer or wholesaler was responsible for the terms of the advertisement, he would be found guilty, and not the actual retailer, so long as there was no negligence on the part of the retailer. So I would respectfully suggest to my noble friend that this is a case where he might accept in principle the idea of this Amendment. But the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, might be prepared to take it back and let the actual wording be examined to see whether it really meets the case he has put forward.
LORD BROWN: The noble Lord, Lord Silkin, has asked: do I accept the principle of the Amendment? It may sound rather extraordinary to the ears of those who are taking part in this discussion, but in fact I think the case is that we do accept the principle. The trouble with this Bill, perhaps, is the fact that one cannot seriously understand Clause 1 unless one takes into account Clauses 2 to 6 also. At the first reading of the Bill I admit I was a little puzzled about this myself, but if one goes into the alternative ways of tackling the drafting problems which arise one finds that they seem much more difficult.
The purpose of this Amendment, as I understand it from the discussion, is to establish that if the manufacturer or distributor is the advertiser he should be clearly, in law, the individual to whom the offence can be brought home. This is made quite clear if one turns to Clause 4(1), which reads:
"A person applies a trade description to goods if he"—
and then paragraph (c) says;
"uses the trade description in any manner likely to be taken as referring to the goods."
It is therefore my contention, with great respect, that this Amendment is in fact unnecessary, since a person who, in publishing or causing to be published an advertisement uses a false trade description in relation to goods which he is supplying or offering to supply, commits an offence under the Bill as now drafted. When he publishes the advertisement (and I am advised that a person who causes it to be published is to be regarded as publishing it for the purposes of this Bill; in other words, it is the person who is responsible for the "copy", to put it in the vernacular), the trade description refers, by virtue of Clause 5(2), to all goods of the class to which it relates. He has therefore applied the false trade description to the goods by virtue of Clause 4(1)(c) because he has used it in a manner likely to be taken as referring to the goods, and he has thereby committed an offence under Clause 1(1)(a). Also, when he supplies or offers the goods he commits an offence under Clause 1(1)(b). It is my contention that the point we are debating is one upon which we are agreed, and that this is in fact a debate about the method of drafting and not about the principle.
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Therefore, in the light of the difficulties that have arisen in drafting this Bill I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his Amendment.
LORD HAWKE: I have listened to the speeches on this Amendment and to the explanation given by the Minister. This is not a type of Bill of which I am particularly enamoured, but if we are to have a Bill of this nature I should have thought that the advertisement clause was the most important of all, and therefore to have the offence created by a false advertisement wrapped up in the extraordinary phraseology to be found in Clause 4(2)(c) and Clause 5(2) is altogether wrong. It may be that one is duplicating the wording but, from the point of view that there has been a straightforward list of what constitutes an offence in trading, I think it is most important to put in somewhere, clearly and unequivocally, words similar to those of my noble friend.
LORD REDESDALE: I thought the Minister had made a perfectly good case that the person responsible for the copy would in fact be the advertising agent, and, therefore, would be the person responsible under this Bill. But I am sure that that was not his intention. Could he clear up that point?
LORD BROWN: I am sorry if I gave that impression. I have no recollection of using words to that effect. I referred to the fact that the person responsible for the copy was the advertiser. In fact, this may be the manufacturer, because it is not the prerogative of advertising agents al ways to be responsible for the content of the copy contained in the advertisement. They may actually decide on the phraseology and the floweriness thereof, bit the substance goes back to the manufacturer. In some cases the person responsible may be an advertising agent. In exceptional cases, it might even be the newspaper, but it is the person responsible for the substance and the message contained in the copy which constitutes a false trade description who is the guilty party.
Replying to the general points, I have no wish to appear difficult or obstinate in any way, but I think I ought to point out that Clauses 1 to 6 are drafted in a particular way, and were the Government to accept this Amendment it would not

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stop there. I think that without question the number of consequential Amendments required would be extremely heavy, because it would begin to alter the whole balance of the way in which these clauses are drafted. I have no wish to impose on the House at a later stage a complete turn-round of the drafting of the clauses.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: May I just make one point? To say that subsequent Amendments would be required is, I think, quite irrelevant to the point about whether or not the clause should be amended. However, I have been listening carefully to this discussion and I am wondering whether my noble friend Lord Brown told us that what the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, wishes to do will, in effect, be done even if this Amendment is not passed? I think that is what he said, and it would help me to know whether that is so.
LORD BROWN: That is quite correct; we are not disagreed in principle.
LORD DRUMALBYN: With great respect, I am not so sure about that. When the noble Lord, Lord Brown, replied to my noble friend Lord Redesdale on this matter he gave an indication that the person who was primarily responsible for the advertisement was not necessarily the person supplying the goods. One of the objects of this Amendment is to attach the primary responsibility in all cases to the person who is supplying the goods, because he is the person who commissions the advertisement, who pays for it and is generally responsible for it, and he has a duty always to see that the advertisement is correctly drafted. It is not the advertising agency which is finally responsible for the drafting of the advertisement. The agency does it for the manufacturer or distributor, and I venture to say that it is quite wrong not to lay that primary responsibility where it belongs.
I do not think we are really on the same point, because the noble Lord, Lord Brown, says that this will not make any difference. I am sure that it will, and the very fact that he says acceptance of this Amendment would require consequential Amendments right through is an indication of that. I agree that it would be possible for the enforcement authori
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ties to go after the person primarily responsible for the advertisement, but it is not mandatory upon them to do that, and my object is to ensure that it should be mandatory on them. I ask the noble Lord, if he does not like my wording, to bend his mind to some easy alteration other than this, because I am sure from the debate we have just had that this is what your Lordships want.
I am not going to carry this Amendment further to-day. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Burton of Coventry, that the mere fact that this Amendment would entail other Amendments is neither here nor there. What we have to do is to produce a Bill which will be intelligible. This is something on which every trader will have to work, and it cannot be left simply to some abstruse interpretation of law as to what this Bill means. If it is really the case that one has to look through Clause 4 and then Clause 5 to find out what the responsibilities of the advertiser are as regards false trade descriptions, then I think some redrafting is necessary, and this is what we are urging the noble Lord to do.
LORD LEATHERLAND: May I ask my noble friend whether he will give us an assurance that under this Amendment a newspaper will not be prosecuted, first, for a primary offence and, secondly, for aiding and abetting the supplier of the goods?
LORD BROWN: I shall answer this question, and in doing so I must make a point about what has just been said by the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn. I think it would be a very strange Bill if it were so worded that, whatever a newspaper or advertising agency had done, or whatever responsibility they held for an advertisement, the manufacturer was actually held responsible at law. We could not have such a situation. We have a situation at present in which the manufacturer hands over the whole responsibility and pays large fees to an advertising agency to conduct the advertising. If this firm flout the law then they are the responsible party. There are cases where a newspaper, because it flouted orders made under this Bill, would be the responsible party; but, as I understand the object of the Amendment, it is to make certain that where the manufacturer is clearly responsible for a false trade

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description the offence is brought home to him, and I can assure the Committee that the Bill as drafted will achieve precisely that.
LORD DRUMALBYN: Perhaps I might be allowed to say, in view of what the noble Lord has said, that we do not mean to confine the responsibility entirely to the manufacturer or distributor, the person supplying the goods, if in fact the responsibility is shared, or if it lies elsewhere. If so, the defences will apply for the manufacturer as for everybody else. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
On Question, Whether Clause 1 shall stand part of the Bill?
LORD DRUMALBYN: May I ask a question, which I think is an important one, about this clause? I am wondering whether a saving is not required for certain kinds of persons—and I think the noble Lord, Lord Leatherland, will be interested in this. The Bill refers to people
"who, in the course of trade or business, apply a false … description to … goods",
and this wording differs from that of the Merchandise Marks Act. Alternatively, it may be necessary to define what is a trade or business. The first kind of person I have in mind is persons who publish newspapers or periodicals. They are indisputably conducting a trade or business. What happens if a newspaper article—nothing to do with an advertisement—describes goods and applies a false description to them? The publishers are conducting a business. Many articles are written about goods, fashion goods, cosmetics, motor cars, branded goods, wines and so on. Is it intended to catch them? If not, I suggest that an Amendment is probably required.
Secondly (this is a more general point, and does concern advertisements), what about an actor or other person employed to present a product—I believe that is the technical expression—in a television commercial? I am told that they are called "presenters"—not to be confused with the old Scottish church "precentors". I should like to ask whether either of those classes of persons, or possibly both, are liable to prosecution. If they were, of course, they would be able to rely on the defences in Clauses 22, 23 and 24. But it suggests to me that it is
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a matter of very considerable concern, and that it would be rather a new departure if they were to be considered even open to prosecution in matters of this kind. I would ask the noble Lord to explain the position.
LORD BROWN: The Committee is well aware that I am not a learned man in law. Had I been, I imagine that I might well have been able to reassure the noble Lord immediately by drawing attention to the interpretation that has been put on this in the past. However, I will undertake to have a look at it at a later stage.
Clause 1 agreed to.
Clause 2:
Trade description
2.—(1) A trade description is an indication, direct or indirect, and by whatever means given, of any of the following matters with respect to any goods or parts of goods, that is to say—

(f) testing by any person and results thereof;

(g) conformity with a type approved by any person;

4.34 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN LORD DRUMALBYN moved in subsection (1), after paragraph (c), to insert:
"( ) specification;"
The noble Lord said: This is an Amendment which does not seem to be covered under the scope of the words in paragraph (e),
"physical characteristics not included in the preceding paragraphs".
Perhaps the noble Lord will be able to reassure me. A case came my way the other day where a washing machine was offered, in an advertisement, with a certain number of accessories. It turned out that the advertisement had been used in another country and that it was not intended to offer those accessories with the goods in this country. This could have been ascertained from a different advertisement, another leaflet which was lying around, but apparently a person did rely on what was said in the advertisement which included the reference to accessories. This is the sort of thing I have in mind when I am talking about specification, and I am not sure it is covered by the words "physical characteristics" or any of the other items—certainly not

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by "composition". That is a detail of what is comprised in the goods offered for sale. I think possibly it might clarify the situation if this word were introduced. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 2, line 7, at end insert ("( ) specification;").—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
LORD BROWN: When I read this Amendment, perhaps because I have an engineering background, my mind put quite a different interpretation on the word "specification" from that which the noble Lord has used. There are alternative uses and this is the difficulty of using the word "specification", which is not a very precise word. The qualities and properties covered in the clause are an attempt to avoid a reference to "specification", because there may be included in "specification" matters that we do not wish to be made the subject of criminal prosecution if they are falsely referred to, whereas all the matters commonly attributed to goods are referred to in the long list of qualities and properties appearing in Clause 2. It therefore seems unwise to involve ourselves in adding "specification". It introduces ambiguity and might well involve us in proceedings we have no wish to involve ourselves in, because they lie outside the ambit of false trade descriptions which we want to catch in this Bill.
LORD DRUMALBYN: "Contents" might be another word. There is something missing. I do not think that "contents" are "physical characteristics". However, I may be wrong. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
LORD DRUMALBYN LORD DRUMALBYN moved, in subsection (1)(f), after "person" to insert "or institution". The noble Lord said: The purpose of this Amendment is to make clear that "any person" includes an institution. I am not sure whether it does or not. The wording is "testing by any person and results thereof". There are, for example, universities; I am not certain they are "persons". They may do testing in certain circumstances. Various organisations which are not covered by the word "person" could do testing. I put this Amendment down exploratorily. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 2, line 12, after ("person") insert ("or institution").—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
LORD BROWN: I am happy to reassure the noble Lord. Section 19 of the Interpretation Act 1889 provides that the expression "person" when used in a Statute includes any body of persons corporate or unincorporated, and I submit, therefore, that the word "person" in the Bill includes an institution which may test goods or approve a type of goods.
LORD DRUMALBYN: Perhaps the noble Lord could also tell we whether it includes a Government department, which might, in certain circumstances, do testing.
LORD BROWN: The noble Lord has asked me a question I cannot answer. I will have it investigated, if he will withdraw his Amendment. In the event of its not including a Government department I will have an Amendment considered.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am much obliged. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
LORD DRUMALBYN LORD DRUMALBYN moved, in subsection (1)(g), after "type" to insert "or standard". The noble Lord said: This is an Amendment in which I am on rather surer ground, because I do not think the word "type" is defined in the Interpretation Act. This Amendment was put in at an earlier stage at the instance of the noble Lord, Lord Peddie. I think it would be self-evident that "type" and "standard" are not the same words. "Conformity with a type" is a matter of specification, whereas "standard" may be a matter of quality, which is a different thing altogether, and may be both. I think these words are quite different in origin and have a different connotation. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 2, line 13, after ("type") insert ("or standard").—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: I should like to support this Amendment. As a matter of fact, before I saw the revised Marshalled List of Amendments for to-day it was my intention to ask

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the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, whether he accepted the words "or standard" in the other Amendment that he moved, because it seemed to me that if we added them after the word "type" it would remove any doubt. I noticed what I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Brown, also has seen, that the word "standard" is used in Clause 3(4) of the Bill, and I wanted to ask him what reason there was for omitting it here. I have much pleasure in supporting the Amendment of the noble Lord.
LORD BROWN: The addition of conformity with a standard approved by any person to the list of matters set out in Clause 2(1) would, I submit, be largely unnecessary; and to the extent that it added nothing to the list as drafted it would in my view be undesirable. Claims to conformity with a standard which contain specifications relating to any of the matters listed in Clause 2(1) are in fact already embraced in the definition of a trade description. If an article is marked, for instance, "British Standard 1234", and that standard contains specifications relating to any of the matters listed in Clause 2(1)(a) to (j) which may be the subject of a trade description, then if the article does not comply with those specifications, the marking BS.1234 constitutes a false trade description. This has been established by the courts in relation to the existing legislation. To this extent the Amendment is unnecessary. It is however just possible, although I do not say it is likely, that some standard may incorporate conditions which do not relate to any of the matters specified in Clause 2(1).
We have included there everything which, if it is misdescribed to a material degree, we consider should give rise to a criminal offence. Having deliberately decided that it is not justifiable to make a false statement about matters outside that field an offence when the statement is made directly, it would be wholly wrong in principle to make it an offence if it were merely implied by a claim of compliance with a standard. For that reason, I do not think the Amendment is necessary, and I would ask your Lordships to reject it.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: I know that the noble Lord, Lord
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Drumalbyn, will probably want to come back on that; but I should like to ask my noble friend why, when the word "standard" is used in Clause 3(4), it is not necessary here.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I do not know whether the noble Lord is able to answer that question before I speak again.
LORD BROWN: I think I can answer the question. Subject to a quick reference to Clause 3(4), I think we are there dealing with references to standards which do not exist. That is a different matter.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I think the noble Lord must be right about this one, SO I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
4.45 p.m.
On Question, Whether Clause 2 shall stand part of the Bill?
LORD DRUMALBYN: Before this clause is disposed of I must apologise to your Lordships in that there is a point which I think I ought to raise here. Clause 2(1)(i) talks about a false indication by a person by whom the goods are manufactured, produced, processed or reconditioned. Some misgiving has been expressed by those who have goods packed under their own labels, that is to say, those distributors who ask manufacturers to make up goods for them under their own label. It could be said that if they put their own names on them that is an indication that they manufacture the goods. As I say, some misgiving has been expressed about this. I am not going to ask the noble Lord to give an answer now, but I think it ought to be considered whether there is some way in which it can be made plain that this is a perfectly legitimate practice. Of course, they can say "packed by so-and-so", but I believe it is not always the case that they do so; they simply have their names put on the goods.
LORD BROWN: I think the noble Lord may have raised an important pint, and I shall certainly have it considered.
Clause 2 agreed to.
Clause 3:
False trade description
3.—(1) A false trade description is a trade description which is false to a material degree.
(2) A trade description which, though not false, is misleading, that is to say, likely to be taken for such an indication of any of the matters specified in Section 2 of this Act as would be false to a material degree, shall be deemed to be a false trade description.
4.47 p.m.
LORD AIREDALE LORD AIREDALE moved, in subsection (1), to leave out "A false trade description is" and insert
"In this Act a false trade description means".
The noble Lord said: I venture to suggest that subsection (1) of this clause is rather a curiosity. It is quite short; it is only a line and a half long. It is a statement of fact and, as a statement of fact, it is manifestly totally untrue. It says:
"A false trade description is a trade description which is false to a material degree."
It makes the truth of falsity of something depend upon whether it is material or not, whether it matters or not. This manifestly must be wrong. If I say that a box of matches contains 50 matches and it contains only 49, quite likely that is immaterial, but that does not save my statement from being false.
What is so Gilbertian about this is that this false statement in subsection (1) is trying to describe what a false trade description is. So surely we must get this right! We must have a description of a false trade description which is not itself false. Surely what the draftsman intends to say is what my Amendment says:
"In this Act a false trade description means a trade description which is false to a material degree."
That is a well-known device adopted purely in order that the words "to a material degree" do not have to be used all the way through the Bill wherever the word "false" appears, so adding about a page or two to the length of the Bill. Surely that is the point here; and surely this drafting Amendment is absolutely necessary. I hope it will be accepted. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page, 3, line 9, leave out ("A false trade description is") and insert ("In this Act a false trade description means").—(Lord Airedale.)
LORD BROWN: I am tempted to start a wonderful discussion of a most interest-
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ing sort on the basis of what the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, asks. I could have started by suggesting that, knowing him to be an absolutely sincere person, supposing he were to stand up and make one insincere remark, then he is insincere; but is he an insincere man or a sincere man? It is always a question of degree, and for the purpose of the law one must try to keep within bounds the way one uses words. As I understand it, the purpose of the noble Lord's Amendment is to make clear that this Bill is not trying to lay down for all purposes a sort of general proposition of philosophy or ethics. Nothing could be more unwise, and to that extent I am in full sympathy with the noble Lord. But that is not in fact what Clause 3(1) does. It can operate only for the purpose of construing Clause 1(1).
I would refer the noble Lord to Clause 1(2) and Clause 37. I submit that these make it quite clear that Clauses 2 to 6 operate only for the purpose of construing this Bill. As the Amendment may have been based on the misconception that this interpretation of the terms "a false trade description" is to have a wider usage than is displayed by me in these comments, I suggest that the noble Lord might consider withdrawing his Amendment.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, with respect to the noble Lord I do not think he believes a word of what he said. I am quite sure that he himself is fully in agreement with this Amendment. It is common sense, and it ought to be made.
LORD BROWN: I am in a difficulty. I assure the Committee of my sincerity. I see nothing wrong in taking a term like "a false trade description" and saying that for the purposes of this Bill we have to interpret in some way what it means, because the slightest degree of falsity would bring an act within the meaning of the Bill if one did not in some way limit what one meant. So one says, "to a material degree", and it seems to me a thoroughly proper way of doing it. I admit that there may be some trifling with the syntax of the English language, but if we get the Bill to work effectively, surely that is what matters.
LORD AIREDALE: May I put this proposition to the noble Lord? What he

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said in his first reply was that this subsection was necessary for the purpose of interpreting two other provisions of the Bill, one of which was Clause 1(1) and the other Clause 37. If I were to withdraw this Amendment—and I do not feel inclined to do so—would the Minister carefully consider an Amendment at the next stage of the Bill which would say that "For the purposes of clauses so-and-so of this Act, a false trade description means" and so on? Unless I can have some assurance, I feel that we must divide on this because as things stand it looks as though I should win hands down.
LORD BROWN: I will certainly have the matter considered. I was defending the wording in the Bill in order to try to prevent a change being brought about which I honestly consider to be unnecessary. But in view of the strong opinions expressed, I will not uphold my own opinion against the Committee. I will have the matter considered. I am not saying that I shall accept it, because in accepting Amendments one often has the possibility of running into consequential matters and these have to be looked at. But I will have the matter very seriously considered, and if we do not produce an Amendment on Report stage, no doubt the noble Lord will press his Amendment on that occasion.
LORD AIREDALE: In view of that solemn assurance, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD moved, in subsection (2), after "taken" to insert "whether by reason of ambiguity, omission or inference,". The noble Baroness said: This Amendment follows on my remarks during Second Reading debate about the need for a general misdescriptions clause. Since then, however, my noble friend Lord Drumalbyn has tabled Amendment No. 85 to Clause 37 which would deal with a major part of the need for a general misdescriptions clause of the kind I have been canvassing. Nevertheless, I wish to move my Amendment because as it now stands, coupled with the consequential Amendments to Clauses 11 and 13, it deals with the remaining limb of my plea for a general misdescriptions clause. This is a relatively simple point, and since your Lordships have heard me
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speak at some length on this matter on other occasions I do not need to deploy all the arguments over again, though I believe that they are substantial, persuasive and decisive.
Broadly, the unspoken word, the unwritten gesture, can be as persuasive as a positive statement or other tangible indication. I use the word "indication" deliberately because it is part of the fabric of the Bill from Clause 2(1) onwards. It says that a trade description is an indication, or anything likely to be taken as an indication. It would be difficult and unnecessary perhaps to define "an indication"; that would be putting too little faith in the ordinary usage of language. Yet the fact remains that its interpretation leaves too many doubts. Even supposing that it could include indications created by ambiguity, omission or inference in the part of the Bill dealing with goods, the use of the word "statement" or anything likely to be taken as such, about the services in Clause 13, surely rules out those facts which may be deliberately left unsaid. I will give an example. A travel brochure may paint a picture of a house adjacent to sun-drenched beaches, without disclosing the fact that the hotel is twenty minutes' walk from this exquisite elysium; or it may boldly imply that accommodation overlooks the sea, whereas it offers only a backward glance over a tidal estuary. Holidaymakers, particularly those with children, may be grossly misled by such non-statements.
I will not go over old ground, but I would refer briefly to my remarks on Second Reading on this Bill, reported in Hansard of November 14, about the Government's attitude to the reasoning of this Amendment, an attitude which I feel is sympathetic in principle. They believe that the words in Clause 2(1):
"an indication direct or indirect by whatever means given"
go some distance to meet my case. I hope I have shown that they do not go far enough and that the clear guidance given by the words "ambiguity, omission or inference" (which are borrowed from the food and drugs legislation) are essential in a measure of such general application as this Bill. Nor can the Government sustain the view that criminal offences must be positively spelt out in objective terms in this Bill, because to

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that I should retort that the use of the word "indication" exceeds in vagueness, by a long chalk, the more specific intentions which my Amendments carry. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 3, line 12, after ("taken") insert the said words.—(Baroness Elliot of Harwood.)
LORD STRABOLGI: I have a great deal of sympathy with the intention of this Amendment, but I hope the Government will not accept it, as I feel that its purpose will be difficult to prove. I recognise what the noble Baroness has said with such force. Indeed, I once stayed in the South-West of England in an hotel whose brochure mentioned "magnificent grounds running down to the sea", but when one arrived there one found that there was running through the grounds a main road which was hidden from the point from which the photograph had been taken. But however strongly one may feel about these things, they would be very difficult to prove in law. Indeed, the whole matter of vague claims, et cetera was dealt with by the Molony Committee in their Report, and I should like to read these words from paragraph 760:
"What is a 'reasonable' inference? What is 'undue' exaggeration? We cannot answer such questions in the abstract, and we doubt if anyone else can."
Therefore, for reasons such as those, I hope that the Committee will not accept this Amendment.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: I am sorry not to be able to support the noble Baroness in her Amendment. I sympathise with what she is trying to do but, having looked at the Amendment, I feel that its purpose would be impossible to deal with or to prove in the courts. I do not know how one deals with "ambiguity, omission or inference". I hope that the Government will not accept the Amendment.
LORD DRUMALBYN: If these words do anything at all, they have a limiting effect, and I can conceive of other ways of misleading than by "ambiguity, omission or inference". I do not think the words as they stand achieve anything, and I hope that my noble friend will not press her Amendment.
LORD BROWN: I should like to make a small point first. Reference has been made, as an example, to certain types of services—hotels and so on—but I do not think this clause has anything to do with services; it has to do with goods. May I join with the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, in pointing out that if you have an omnibus phrase—and this clause really contains an omnibus phrase—you do not make more certain that you will catch your criminal by quoting examples of how the phrase might apply. In fact, you weaken it by the inference that some other things are excluded because you do not quote all of them. I would strongly advise the noble Baroness to withdraw this Amendment, because, with great respect, I do not think it does what she seeks to do. It will not strengthen the Bill; it will weaken it.
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD: In view of the doubts of my noble friends, I will not press the Amendment, but I am still a little unhappy, because, surely, if you have a very wide word like "indication", which apparently at no point is defined, the vagueness is such that a great many offenders will be able to escape prosecution because they can be claimed to be "not indicated", so to speak, by this Bill. But if you try to put down words which specify the kind of thing for which someone can be prosecuted—namely, an omission or a false description; my instance was a travel one, but of course there are many others—at least a person can be pinned down. If you can pin down such a person under the Bill as it stands, well and good, but it did not seem to me that you could. However, in view of what has been said, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
On Question, Whether Clause 3 shall stand part of the Bill?
LORD HAWKE: Before we part with this clause, could the noble Lord, the Minister, give me some guidance as to what constitutes "a material degree"? It seems to me that the law suits that will ultimately arise from this Bill will invariably turn on whether or not something is "a material degree" of misstatement.
LORD BROWN: It is left to the discretion of the courts to decide what is

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"a material degree", in the light of all the circumstances surrounding a particular prosecution.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: I should like to return to the point of the word "standard", and I do so simply because I sought a legal opinion on this matter and the answer given to me does not seem to be the same as that given to the noble Lord. The opinion given to him may well be better than mine—I do not know about—that—but obviously—
LORD BROWN: Could the noble Baroness refer me to the part of the clause which she is talking about?
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: I am sorry; I was referring back to the inclusion of the word "standard", which I said occurred in this clause and which I wanted the noble Lord to add in subsection (1)(g) of Clause 2. I think I am in order. I am speaking on the Question, Whether Clause 3 shall stand part of the Bill. I am sorry if I have not made matters clear to my noble friend, but perhaps he can make this clear to me. Looking at Clause 3, in general, one sees that it is obviously an offence to describe an article as complying with a standard if no such standard exists, and I understand that. But I was advised that unless the words "type" and "standard" are to be construed as meaning the same, it would not be an offence to describe an article as complying with a standard if it does not conform to that standard. It is for that reason that I supported the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, in suggesting the addition of the words "or standard" after the word "type" in subsection (1)(g) of Clause 2. I do not know whether my noble friend can clear up that point for me. Are the words "type" and "standard" to be construed as meaning the same in law?
LORD DRUMALBYN: Before the noble Lord, Lord Brown, answers that question, may I say to my noble friend Lord Hawke that I think he is right to raise this question about "to a material degree" here, although I have down an Amendment, which is No. 85, supported by my noble friend Lady Elliot of Harwood, to define the words "to a material degree" along the lines of the definition in the Report of the
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Molony Committee. We shall come to that in due course. On the point with which the noble Baroness, Lady Burton of Coventry, is dealing, or on a point very near it, I take it that the reason for having a standard referred to here is because it is a standard approved by a person who does not exist. I come back to another point which I made before. Does the word "person" here cover a Government Department or a local authority, because I remember that my noble friend Lord Cawley, who is not present here to-day, pointed out that it would be quite possible to invent a fictitious local authority, or indeed a fictitious country or dignatory of one kind or another, as one to whom goods are supplied. But, certainly, both Governments and local authorities ought to be covered by this particular subsection.
LORD BROWN: First of all, in reply to the noble Baroness, Lady Burton of Coventry, and subject to checking with those who assist me in these matters, may I say that I have understood that the reference to "a type approved by any person" is a reference to the common custom of saying that this is the type of goods which some eminent person has used and, therefore, because he has used it, it should be good. There is no implicit reference here to the particular qualities or characteristics of the article. The use of the word "standard", however, is a reference to some list of objective qualities which the goods will maintain if they conform to the standard. So I have understood that, in this way, the word "type" and the word "standard" are to be differentiated. I do not know whether that is a sufficient answer to the noble Lady. Perhaps it would be wise to add—and I think I have already said this on a previous Amendment—that we have not used the word "standard" in the list of qualities because we do not want to embrace nonobjective qualities which sometimes can appear in standards. Therefore, we tied the criminal offence to false trade descriptions which refer to objective qualities, and we do not think there can be objective statements about goods in a standard which does not appear in the list in Clause 2.
With regard to the point of the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, about whether

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"a person" includes a Government department, I undertake to see to it that all references of this kind in the Bill are examined. I will not confine my examination only to the particular point which the noble Lord raised at an earlier stage.
Clause 3 agreed to.
Clause 4:
Applying a trade description to goods
4.—
(2) An oral statement may amount to the use of a trade description.
5.8 p.m.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY moved to leave out subsection (2). The noble Baroness said: I do not propose to take up a great deal of time on this matter, because we have discussed it at considerable length and I have no desire to be tedious. But I hope that when I come to the end the noble Lord, Lord Brown, may be able to give me a more helpful answer than he has so far been able to give. Subsection (2) of clause 4 is one which I have from the beginning sought to remove, because I think it is unenforceable where small transactions over the counter are concerned. I agree entirely with what it seeks to do, but it is my contention that if we put into a Bill clauses which are not enforceable we thereby weaken the Bill, however good our intentions may be. I have said before that I think this subsection is unenforceable, and I think it may well lead to a trend towards less information for shoppers.
On the Second Reading the noble Lord, Lord Brown said:
"We have a serious choice to make in drawing a line between descriptions thought to be false without power to do anything about them and tackling this extremely difficult issue in legislation, knowing that prosecution might in many cases be difficult. We have to choose between some degree of imprecision on this matter or nothing at all."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 14/11/67, col. 669.]
From that, the noble Lord obviously recognises that it would be very difficult to enforce. But I would ask him whether we have to choose between "some degree of imprecision on this matter or nothing at all".
I should like to ask my noble friend two questions. Would I be correct in saying that nowhere in the Bill is it stated that a trade description must be limited to a written description? I have read it very carefully, although I may well have missed some examples; but it is obviously very germane to the matter I am now raising. The second question, which I think is equally germane, is this. Would my noble friend tell me, when he comes to reply, why subsection (1)(c) of Clause 4 does not cover oral statements? My noble friend referred to this provision in a previous matter this afternoon. Subsection (1)(c) says:
"A person applies a trade description to goods if he …
(c) uses the trade description in any manner likely to be taken as referring to the goods".
I wish to know whether that does not cover oral statements. If there is no reference in the Bill to the fact that a trade description must be limited to a written one, and if subsection (1)(c) covers oral statements, then I would ask my noble friend to accept the deletion of subsection (2) on the ground of its being quite unnecessary. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 3, line 38, leave out subsection (2).—(Baroness Burton of Coventry.)
LORD STRABOLGI: I should like to support my noble friend Baroness Burton of Coventry on this Amendment, to which I have added my name. I think Parliament should be very careful about passing legislation which is virtually unenforceable because it requires proof of things which are difficult to prove. It does nothing but bring the law into disrepute. The Molony Committee recognised the difficulty with regard to oral descriptions. They dealt with it in paragraphs 659 and 660 of their Report, but after examining it at length they did not recommend that these should be made an offence—and in my view rightly so.
This subsection will put retailers at considerable risk from cantankerous customers who have a grievance or who are eccentric in some way; and also, indeed, from "stooge" customers who are sent in by rival firms in order to get at a particular shopkeeper. The charges will be very difficult to prove, particularly in the retail trade, where there is a very rapid turnover of stocks; and one

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observes that under Clause 18 a prosecution can be brought up to
"three years from the commission of the offence or one year from its discovery by the prosecutor, whichever is the earlier."
I admit that other legislation covers oral misdescriptions. For example, as I know your Lordships are aware, there is the weights and measures and food and drugs legislation; but I would submit that cases under that legislation are not nearly so open to factual dispute as those under this merchandise marks Bill. Indeed, most foods are perishable, and the cost of products covered by that other legislation is much lower than a great deal of the merchandise covered by this Bill. Therefore, for the reasons given by my noble friend Lady Burton of Coventry, and for these additional reasons, I hope that the Government will accept this Amendment.
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD: I rise to support the Government on this occasion and, with great regret, to oppose my noble friend Baroness Burton of Coventry. I know that we have discussed this before, but I remain convinced that this is a right and proper provision to put into the Bill, for this reason. I do not think that during the course of our previous discussions anyone argued that people should be free to utter damaging misinformation, or that the curtailment of this activity amounted to a restriction upon individual liberty. The strongest argument against this provision in the Bill (I will not say the only argument, but I do not think there were others of much substance) was that it could not be enforced. This was referred to by my noble friend Lord Strabolgi just now.
We all know—I for one regret it, and I am sure many of your Lordships would agree—that the speed limit is flouted all too often, and that enforcement is sporadic. Should we, for this reason alone, abolish the speed limit and so remove that moderating influence that keeps most drivers down to 40, if not 30, miles an hour? Like this provision in the Bill, the speed limit acts as a deterrent. However few cases reach the courts, the deterrent effect of this provision will continue to operate upon the majority of those who sell by deceit. I need not recapitulate the precedents from other fields of
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law, nor refer to the defences provided by Clause 23 of the Bill. Nor, perhaps, need I refer to the absurdity of providing all the fair and sensible safeguards against misdescriptions which are contained in the Bill and then permitting oral misdescriptions. If the argument is that you cannot oblige people to tell the truth, it would follow that evidence given on oath in court is valueless. We need not forget that a person charged with oral misdescriptions may have to repeat in court on oath what they have said, and the dangers of perjury are surely a very strong deterrent. So I think that the difficulties of enforcement are neither 2s important nor as grave as has been suggested; and I am sure that the deterrent effect will make the reckless or deceitful traders, few though they may be, more careful. I therefore hope that the Government will stand by this provision in the Bill.
LORD REDESDALE: I am very sorry to hear the noble Baroness take such a restrictionist attitude over this particular provision, and I certainly support the noble Baroness, Lady Burton of Coventry. I feel that it is a slightly dangerous provision because, as has already been stated, it leaves it open for malicious charges to be brought against even the most reputable trader. What it really amounts to is that if two people should go up in a slightly aggressive way to a retailer, he would immediately have to call another sales assistant to his aid to act as a witness as to anything that may be said. I reel that the trader who is setting out to deceive, and who we all obviously wish to see prosecuted, will not just stop at an oral statement but will go further in terms of written and other material. But if it is left as it is at the moment, then I feel that even the most reputable trader is open to attack by people who wish to bring a prosecution without due cause.
LORD ILFORD: I hope the noble Lord will be able to see his way clear to accept this Amendment because, in the first place, it is going to be extremely difficult to get a conviction under this subsection. Any proceedings which are based upon verbal statements are always difficult, because it becomes a slanging match between two persons and a third person who did not hear very clearly what was said. For that reason, and that reason alone, I hope that the noble Lord will

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see his way clear to take this provision out of the Bill.
I should like to ask the noble Lord this question. If an old man comes to my front door, saying that he is an ex-Serviceman of the First World War, and invites me to buy a carpet sweeper or hair-brush or something of that sort, accompanying his offer with a description of the carpet sweeper or hair-brush which is quite untrue, does it mean that a trivial incident of that sort is to be made the basis of a prosecution in a magistrates' court? It really is extending the scope of the law to incidents which are of a very trivial character.
LORD BROWN: May I remind the noble Lord that the words are "to a material degree" as interpreted by the courts?
LORD ILFORD: However that may be, I hope that the noble Lord will be able to see his way clear to accepting this Amendment and taking this provision out of the Bill.
LORD SAINSBURY: I find this one of the most difficult subsections about which to make up my mind. On Second Reading I referred to the grave difficulties and complications of enforcement, and for that reason I have very great sympathies with the point of view of my noble friend Baroness Burton of Coventry. But if her Amendment has the effect of taking out oral misrepresentation from the Bill, if it were forced to a Division I would find myself unable to support it—first, because I believe that it can exercise some restraint on the unscrupulous trader; and, secondly, because from experience I do not believe that local authorities responsible for weights and measures will bring prosecutions without substantial evidence. I do not like being in a different camp, but on this occasion, weighing up these two factors—restraint on the one hand and the difficulties of enforcement on the other hand—I come down in favour of restraint of unscrupulous practices.
LORD HAWKE: Parliament is engaged in one of its favourite occupations: the hunting of the dishonest man; and it is usually a very sterile hunt for it ends in the imposition of all kinds of restrictions that have most "back-hands" and unfortunate effects on the honest man. The
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noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, is in a special type of trade. He has immense supermarkets and some shops which are not supermarkets. They are all very crowded, and generally the people have not time to question his assistants as to whether a particular joint will boil nicely or roast nicely. They have not the time; they are too busy shoving their money into the tills which are nearly red-hot most of the day. But consider the ironmonger. The ironmonger is not only a retailer of goods, he is a general sort of helper to anybody who comes in and asks his assistance. One goes in and asks for a tin of paint. "How much do I need to cover a door?" one asks, or something like that. He says that the tin of paint will cover so much. If it does not, that is a false description.
Consider the buying of a motor car. "How many miles to the gallon will this car go?" The salesman says that it will go X miles. A sensible person knows that the right answer is X–5 miles; but if it does not go X miles the salesman can be prosecuted. What is going to be the result of this? Any cautious trader is going to tell his assistants—and most of them nowadays are little boys and girls—"On no account open your mouth at all when you are selling goods. Don't answer questions. If you do, I can be prosecuted and heavily fined." I think that this is one of the silliest clauses in a Bill which, itself, is rather silly in many respects.
5.23 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: Before we go much further on this, I should like to ask what would be the effect of leaving out these words. With great respect, what the noble Lord said on Second Reading—the passage the noble Baroness quoted—
"We have to choose between some degree of imprecision in this matter or nothing at all"—
is open to two interpretations. Does it mean on saying anything about this? Or on legislating about this? It seems to me (I may be wrong) that as the Bill stands oral misdescriptions are already covered in the Bill. Clause 2(1) starts by saying:
"A trade description is an indication, direct or indirect and by whatever means given.…"
LORD BROWN: I hesitate to interrupt the noble Lord. I had better give the

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interpretation I have. The interpretation is that there is no provision in the Bill that trade description is limited to a written description. Clause 4(2), however, puts it beyond doubt that oral description is covered. If Clause 4(2) were not included there would be doubt because of the interpretation which has been given to the existing Merchandise Marks Act. This means that if we eliminate Clause 4(2) we shall have to write something else into the Bill to prevent the matter from being left in doubt. I recognise that the intention of the noble Baroness who moved the Amendment is to abolish oral misdescription as a criminal offence. I hope, however—
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: I do not know whether it is in order for two people to interrupt the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn. The information we are now getting is that for which I asked and which I hoped to get at the end. The noble Lord has told the Committee that nowhere in the Bill is there a statement limiting false trade description to a written statement. I am not a lawyer, but I should have thought that that meant it was not limited to a written statement and that it was not necessary to say it was not limited by putting in this subsection. I should have thought that was patently obvious. I do not see that it is necessary to write in all these other means of misrepresenting. Concerning what the noble Lord said about the Merchandise Marks Act, is it not correct to say that when this Bill becomes an Act the Merchandise Marks Act will have been abolished, so that that part of his statement would not matter? Again, I am sorry to have interrupted the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn.
LORD BROWN: What I have said is that if Clause 4(2) is abolished then there will be dubiety as to whether—
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: Rubbish!
LORD BROWN: I am not quoting my own opinion: I am quoting as I am advised, and according to the legal interpretation that has been given to the Merchandise Marks Act. There is dubiety about this matter if this subsection is removed, and it will be necessary to pay attention to this matter. I am not using this in any way as an argument against
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the Amendment of the noble Baroness. I am trying to make her a little more knowledgeable about the meaning of the Bill and about that part to which she is trying to make an Amendment. I am not sure whether the noble Baroness wishes to make any further comment. If not, I shall go on—
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, was interrupted.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I gave way to the noble Lord. Perhaps I might be able now to pursue what I was saying. What the noble Lord has now said places the Committee in some difficulty, because, instead of discussing whether oral trade descriptions should or should not be banned by this Bill, we are discussing merely whether we should make clear what the Bill already says. This is what the Amendment does. I think it would be within the customs of the Committee, if not within the Rules, if we considered the "guts" of the problem as well as the mere words.
There are some considerations here which are certainly important. One is that since the last time we had a look at this Bill—or something like this Bill—Parliament has passed the Misrepresentation Act which gives the customer, or any party to a contract, the right to damages in case of misrepresentation in certain circumstances. That obviously covers oral misrepresentation. So we are in a slightly better position, so far as the protection of the consumer is concerned, than we were at the time when we last discussed this matter.
The second consideration is one which undoubtedly weighs heavily: what will be the effect on the service to the consumer? Is it a fact, is it likely to be a fact, that, as some people say, it will cause the retailers to dry up altogether as a source of information and not to allow their employees to commit themselves in any way? In any case, employees are often taught to be wary about how they commit themselves. They are much more likely to say, "My cousin has tried this and finds it very nice" than to give any definite description of the goods. I think it is perhaps possible to overstate this great difficulty even at a time of considerable turnover and

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shortage of retail staff. I think that anybody who sets out to give a service to the consumer is bound to give that service. They will not just dry up, whatever the law says, and I think the common sense of this is that it will only make people more careful about what they do say.
I think it is perfectly true—I am sure it is true—that it is going to be very difficult to enforce this and to prove it in particular circumstances. But, as has been pointed out, and as the noble Lord intervened to say, the words, "to a material degree" do come into this, and I should have thought that it was only in cases of persistent oral misrepresentation, or in a very bad case, that anyone would bother to prosecute on the basis of this Bill, whether or not we put in this subsection which is really a declaratory subsection. So I think it would be difficult to argue that in bad cases of oral misrepresentation there should not be a prosecution. I find it difficult to accept that as a proposition, and I also accept as a proposition that in the ordinary way it would be extremely difficult to succeed with a prosecution. So that I think between the two it seems sensible to put in here words of this kind. After all, they would make it clear that anybody who sets out to deceive by oral misdescription is at risk; and I should have thought that the Committee would take the view that such people ought to be proceeded against.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: Before the noble Lord sits down, may I ask whether he will clarify one point? If there is nothing in the Bill which precludes prosecutions for oral misdescription, does the noble Lord think it necessary to write in something, even if it is already covered?
LORD DRUMALBYN: That is the point of the actual Amendment which the noble Baroness is putting here and which I think it is for the Government, in the first place, to answer. My own view is that in view of the fact, as I understand it, that oral misdescriptions have not been subject to the Merchandise Marks Act, it is just as well to mark this change in the law by mentioning it in the Bill.
LORD AIREDALE: Both sides of this question have been extremely well argued and I think I come down on the side of the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood and the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury. I think that we must bear in mind that there might be very flagrant examples of oral trade misdescriptions. There might be a street trader who had for weeks been shouting some flagrant trade misdescription at the top of his voice, and there would not be the slightest difficulty about getting any number of people to troop into the witness box, one after the other, and repeat what the man had said.
LORD HAWKE: Does the noble Lord, or anybody else, ever believe a word that a street trader shouts about his wares?
LORD AIREDALE: I am always cautious about it, but they do seem to manage to sell the goods on the strength of the things they shout. However, that may be, apart from this large army of witnesses which could probably be collected, if necessary, in such a case, I suppose that, in these days of tape-recording machines, the Board of Trade inspector or the local authority inspector could easily record the shouting of a street trader, and the matter would be quite beyond a peradventure. I appreciate that when the noble Lord, Lord Ilford, says that this subsection is only opening the door to a lot of slanging matches, that is perfectly true. But I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, had the answer when he said that surely this is legislation which will be enforced by responsible administrative bodies, who surely can be relied on to select the proper cases for prosecution and not to prosecute in doubtful cases which are merely slanging matches. So, on balance, I should be in favour of the subsection and not of the Amendment.
LORD ILFORD: Perhaps I should have said "hard swearing" and not "slanging".
LORD BROWN: I do not wish to prolong the debate; I think that we have had a very good exchange of views. The fact is that if the Amendment were passed it would remove one of the more important new pieces of protection which we are trying to give the consumer. That is quite clear, and the Government can

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see no justification for distinguishing between oral misdescription or any other. It makes no difference to the consumer whether the application of a false trade description is spoken or written. On those grounds we think that this protection against oral misdescription, difficult though we recognise it to be, should be maintained in the Bill. I therefore ask the noble Baroness whether she can see her way to withdraw the Amendment.
LORD HAWKE: May I ask the noble Lord, Lord Brown, one question? Obviously, the enforcement of this Bill in respect of non-oral statements will require the enlistment and work of many thousands of new civil servants. How many extra ones would be required to go round with a tape recorder to do the type of thing the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, suggested would be required in respect of oral statements?
LORD BROWN: The noble Lord, Lord Hawke, has asked an inferential question on the assumption that many thousands more civil servants would be required to implement this Bill in respect of written misdescriptions. It is not at all clear that there would be many thousands more. There is already a staff of weights and measures inspectors, and it may be that some trivial supplement will do the job. I do not know. But there is no reason to suppose that the number will be many thousands. I am afraid that I cannot answer the second question about oral misrepresentation, but enforcement will be done, roughly speaking, by the same staff; and I think that the suggestion about the numbers likely to be employed in prosecuting under this Bill is probably exaggerated.
LORD HAWKE: Is this to be done without having any regard to the cost? The noble Lord must ascertain the cost.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: Before I comment on what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Brown, will he answer my second question? I asked only two questions, and the second one was whether subsection (1)(c) of Clause 4 does or does not cover oral statements.
LORD BROWN: I am a little puzzled by this. I went to a good deal of trouble to answer the noble Lady.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: No. My noble friend answered the first question, when he told me that there was nothing in the Bill which limited trade description to written statements. The other and second question I asked was whether subsection (1)(c) of Clause 4 did not cover all statements—I asked only those two questions.
LORD BROWN: The answer to the second quesion is the same as the answer I gave to the first question. There is at present dubiety, owing to the interpretation given in some cases under the Merchandise Marks Act, whether Clause 4(1)(c) would or would not refer to oral statements.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: It is quite obvious that the Government never intended to give way on this, but I am not now on whether it is enforceable or on what would arise. I am on what seems to me a very strange way to write a Bill, because I cannot understand why, if the question of oral misdescription is already covered by the two points I have mentioned, it is necessary to write it in again. My noble friend talks about dubiety and that is all right; but he has told me that trade misdescriptions are not limited to written statements anywhere in the Bill. Therefore I take that to include written and oral statements, and I regard it as most unsatisfactory.
LORD BROWN: I am very sorry: we are not communicating on this. When I say that it is the subject of dubiety, what I mean is that it is not clear in which way it will be interpreted. It is because it is not clear in which way it will be interpreted that the Government have sought to clear up the matter by including subsection (2) of Clause 4, to make the matter crystal clear for the future. This is the part of the Bill which the noble Lady wishes to remove by her Amendment. She is the one who will introduce this dubiety all over again into the Bill if her Amendment succeeds. I am not using this as an argument against what I understand to be the purpose of the Amendment, which is, I gather, to take oral statements of a misleading nature out of the Bill as a criminal offence. Butt I must point out that if this comes out, it will be necessary to remove the dubiety in another way.
LORD STRANGE: Are tape recordings allowed as evidence in a criminal case?
LORD BROWN: Perhaps some other Member of the House can answer that—I cannot.
LORD LEATHERLAND: I have known of tape recordings being admitted in criminal cases, but there have been cases taken to higher courts where some dubiety has been expressed about their use. A tape can be sub-edited just as a written story can be. My noble friend Lord Brown suggested that there might be some dubiety about whether Clause 4 includes or does not include an oral statement. I beg leave to submit that it does not include an oral statement. Subsection (1)(a) says "affixes or annexes" a trade description. One cannot "fix or annex" an oral statement. That is something that is floating about in the atmosphere. It is not a fixed entity which can be pinned or stuck on to merchandise.
Paragraph (b) of subsection (1) also says "affixed or annexed to" and again that obviously does not include an oral statement. Paragraph (c) says "uses the trade description in any manner", which could conceivably include an oral statement, except for the fact that the trade description referred to in paragraph (c) is the same as that referred to in the foregoing paragraphs, which is something that has no physical presence whatsoever. If there is any dubiety—though I say that there is not—that is all the more reason for including subsection (2), which makes it quite clear that an oral statement may be admitted.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: We have had a good run for our money and I still find myself in a state of dubiety, which may be cleared up later. If your Lordships will permit me, I will withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
5.43 p.m.
LORD AIREDALE LORD AIREDALE moved, in subsection (2), to leave out "amount to the use of" and insert "apply". The noble Lord said: I am glad that this subsection has survived because it prevents the Lord Chairman from disallowing this Amendment of mine, which I now move. The sheet anchor of this Bill is Clause 1, which makes use of the expression
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"applying a false trade description". When we move to this clause we find that the side note says "Applying a trade description to goods", and the clause begins:
"A person applies a trade description to goods if he"—
does certain things. But when we come to subsection (2), it says,
"An oral statement may amount to the use of a trade description"
and not "apply". Is a different meaning intended in the five words "amount to the use of" from the single word "apply"? If not, I submit to your Lordships that we ought to stick to the word "apply". If we do not, lawyers will undoubtedly argue for hours about the meaning of the expression, "amount to the use of", because they will say that if Parliament had intended it to mean "apply", they would have used the word "apply", but as they have used five words which are slightly different they must mean something else by that. Let us clear this up. I think that the Minister means "apply". I hope that I am right about this, and that the Amendment will be accepted.
LORD PARGITER: The subsection will then read, "apply a trade description". Should it not say, "apply to a trade description".
LORD AIREDALE: The clause says, "applies a trade description to goods", and my Amendment would make the subsection read "An oral statement may apply a trade description". I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 3, line 38, leave out ("amount to the use of") and insert ("apply").—(Lord Airedale.)
LORD DRUMALBYN: On Second Reading I drew attention to my view that this subsection was too vague. I think it would be a good thing to redraft this sentence altogether. The reason why "amount to the use of" is used is that it has to be a person who applies or uses. Therefore, if this is to be changed, it should be, "A person may apply a trade description by an oral statement".
LORD BROWN: I have two objections to the Amendment. The first and more serious one is that I do not accept that subsection (2) is defective. Secondly,

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although I do not wish to labour the point, I do not think that the noble Lord's Amendment would be acceptable as it stands, because of the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn. With respect, it is not grammatical. Statements cannot apply things; people do that.
What Clause 4(1) says is that there are three ways in which you can apply a trade description to goods, the ones listed in paragraphs (a) to (c). The one that matters at present is (c); you can apply a trade description to goods by using it in such a way that people can reasonably be expected to think that you are using it about those goods. Lest there be any doubt, Clause 4(2) says that an oral statement may amount to the use of a trade description. It does not say "will"; that will depend upon what the statement is and the manner in which it was made. Another way of putting Clause 4(2) is to say, "one way of using a trade description is to make an oral statement". Then, if the conditions of Clause 4(1)(c) are satisfied, the trade description is "applied" to the goods. This leaves no room for doubt in an appropriate case. On these grounds, I would ask your Lordships to reject this Amendment.
LORD AIREDALE: I do not want to take up any more time on this Amendment because I do not think it is important enough. At a later stage, I would accept the version put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn. But I cannot allow noble Lords to get away with the suggestion that a statement cannot apply a trade description—that only a person can apply it. Are noble Lords saying that a written label cannot apply a trade description? Are they saying that if a greengrocer puts a notice on a pyramid of oranges, on which is printed "Juicy Jaffa Oranges" and they happen to be inferior dried-up oranges from heaven-knows-where, that that is not applying a trade misdescription? I should have thought that it was. I will not take up any more time, because I do not think this is important, but I do not accept the noble Lord's arguments against my proposition. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 4 agreed to.
Clause 5:
Trade descriptions used in advertisements
5.—(1) The following provisions of this section shall have effect with respect to a trade description used in an advertisement in relation to any class of goods.
(2) The trade description shall be taken as referring to all goods of the class, whether or not in existence at the time the advertisement is published—

(a) for the purpose of determining whether an offence has been committed under paragraph (a) of section 1(1) of this Act; and

(b) where goods of the class are supplied or offered to be supplied by a person publishing or displaying the advertisement, also for the purpose of determining whether an offence has been committed under paragraph (b) of the said section 1(1).

(3) In determining for the purposes of this section whether any goods are of a class to which an advertisement relates regard shall be had not only to the form and content of the advertisement but also to the time, place, manner and frequency of its publication and all other matters making it likely or unlikely that a person to whom the goods are supplied would associate the advertisement with the goods.
5.50 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN LORD DRUMALBYN moved to add to subsection (1):
"whether the class is defined in the advertisement by species of goods, trade name, brand name, mark, model or otherwise."
The noble Lord said: This is perhaps not the most contentious clause, but it is an extremely difficult one. It is the clause, a5 I understand it, which sets out to extend Clause 4 (1)(c) showing how a trade description may be used in an advertisement. I said when this Bill was before us on the last occasion that I had had a great many representations about the words "class of goods", and I said that at that time nobody seemed able to understand what it meant. The noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, did his best in several columns (columns 156 to 159 and 165 to 167), but again I have had a great number of representations, and still nobody understands what is meant by "class" in this connection. When that is so, with all respect, one must say that it cannot be disregarded.
All I am seeking to do here is to try to extract from the Government what they mean by "class", and if they agree that what they mean is what I think they mean, then to put these words into the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, said at an earlier stage that the word

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"class " is a very broad word; and I am sure that that is so. It has to be covered in this sense, so far as I can see: first, a class of goods, for example, beer, or wool, or some class of packing material, or it might be glass, or anything of that kind; the sort of thing that would be advertised by trade associations or groups of competitive traders, or even by foreign Governments over here advertising classes of goods in that way.
Secondly, it could mean a section of such a class; for example, gas is a section of the heating industry. Thirdly, it could mean a section of a species of goods: a kind of wheat, for example, with a particular trade name, such as the Manitoba hard. Stilton cheese, New Zealand butter, or anything of that kind could be a class, again perhaps advertised by a trade association or a group of traders. Fourthly, it could be a class of goods advertised by a single supplier but a general class of goods—all B.M.C. cars, for example; or it could be a particular type and brand of car, say, a Morris, or a particular mark or model of the Morris. All of these things could be a class.
It seems to me that in order to enable people to understand what is meant by "class" it should be spelt out in the Bill. Otherwise, advertisers are going to be at great risk. A court might take "class" to mean something very much wider than would be justifiable in the circumstances in associating an advertisement with particular goods. I urge the noble Lord to consider this. The one thing that "a class" cannot cover, it seems, is the range of different classes of goods which a manufacturer may advertise without specifying any one of them. I am doubtful whether different goods become a class simply by being given a common trade name—let us say, for example, "St. Peter". But I suppose the various classes would be subsumed under one name, and any particular description applied to all the classes would apply to each such class in an advertisement.
The reason why I put down the Amendment is because I have yet to meet anybody, even a lawyer, outside the Board of Trade who knows what the Board of Trade intend here. It is reasonable to suppose, if that is so—and I have had to deal with a great many people
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concerning this matter, including trade associations advised by solicitors, and the like—that some magistrates will not understand it either without some help. It is that help that this Amendment attempts to give. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 4, line 6, at end insert the said words.—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
LORD STRABOLGI: I should like to support the Amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn. Your Lordships will remember that during the passage of the last Bill we had a long discussion about this matter and an Amendment was proposed to substitute for "class" the words "specific brand or designation". One is therefore disappointed that after the long interval between the former Bill and the present one some such wording was not adopted.
I think there is great force in what the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn has said. After all, socks are a class of goods, but socks can be made in a great many different materials. Also I should have thought that the whole range of cosmetics came under class; but there are different forms of cosmetics and you can break them down. Does "class of goods" mean the whole range of cosmetics that a woman uses? On the other hand, does it mean lipsticks; does it mean some lipsticks or other lipsticks? It may well be that certain skins are allergic to certain lipstick or eye shadow, and the Board of Trade may require some specific information to be put in the advertising. Is that to be taken as referring to that particular product or to all products put out by the particular manufacturer? I give these examples to show how complicated the matter is, and also to show that "class" is not the right word for this purpose. I think the Amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, is an improvement even on the Amendment moved to the previous Bill, and I hope the Government will not only consider it carefully, but accept it.
LORD LEATHERLAND: Is there not a danger in the suggestion that the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, has made; namely, of trying to specify and subdivide the word "class"? At this time of the year one sees advertisements in most of the national and evening papers, perhaps

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by a firm like Woolworth's, a whole page on which there are such varied things as dolls, stuffed animals, roulette tables, ties and stockings, and all those are classified under the general term of "Christmas Gifts". "Christmas Gifts" has become a class. Therefore, in endeavouring to narrow down the description in the way the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, has suggested, are we not creating an additional difficulty for ourselves?—because almost anything might be specified as a "class", even though it may be merchandise of many varieties, as I have suggested, under "Christmas Gifts". I think the best thing is to leave the clause as drafted, and leave it to the magistrates to deal with it in the light of the particular cases brought before them.
LORD BROWN: "Class" may be defined in many ways, as is understood in this debate. I am impressed with the fact that much of what has been said with great sincerity about this Amendment is as much in support of my stand against the Amendment as it is in support of the Amendment. It is that kind of discussion. A trade description may be used in an advertisement in relation to all leather made by a particular manufacturer, or to a particular kind of leather made by a particular manufacturer, or to leather bearing a particular brand or trade name, or even to leather in general. There is an infinite variety of ways in which a "class of goods" can be defined. In every case, in my submission, it is necessary, in order to ascertain the class of goods to which the trade description relates, to have regard to the terms of the advertisement concerned.
We are not in dispute in principle on this matter. This is really a drafting matter. I have noted the comments made. My reaction was that as soon as we start particularising without covering the whole field we tend to exclude what is not mentioned. But I have, as I say, noted the strength and sincerity of the remarks made. If this Amendment is withdrawn, I will undertake to have another look at it. I cannot see the argument at the moment. I confess that I am not convinced at all. But let us have another look at it. I do not promise to bring back anything in the form of an Amendment; we may present the Bill at the Report stage in its present form, but I promise
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that we will have a look at the Amendment if it is withdrawn.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am grateful to the noble Lord for that offer. I see no reason for prolonging the discussion on this matter. I would only say, once again, that "class" tends to have certain connotations to people, and they cannot make it mean a lot of different things. My Amendment tries to make it mean an infinite variety of different things, and it is entirely comprehensive because it says "or otherwise" at the end. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
6.2 p.m.
LORD AIREDALE LORD AIREDALE moved, in subsection (2), to leave out paragraphs (a) and (b), and insert:
"for the purpose of determining whether an offence has been committed—

(a) under paragraph (a) of section 1(1) of this Act; and

(b) where the goods are supplied or offered to be supplied by a person publishing or displaying the advertisement, under paragraph (b) of the said section 1(1)."

The noble Lord said: I put this Amendment forward with some trepidation as being a purely drafting Amendment. I observe that paragraphs (a) and (b) of subsection (2) both contain the long expression,
"for the purpose of determining whether an offence has been committed",
and, with respect, I should have thought it might be clearer drafting if you took those words out of the two paragraphs, in which the words are common to both, and put them in front of (a) and then branched off into paragraph (a) and paragraph (b), which would then become shorter paragraphs and clearer paragraphs.
The reason why I said "with trepidation" was that I put down an exactly similar Amendment to this to the ill-fated Bill of two years ago, and the former Minister in charge of the Bill at that time, who I am very pleased to see in his place now, said that unfortunately this was not a purely drafting Amendment and that there was some point of substance in it. The noble Lord proceeded to explain this, and I am very sorry to say that I simply have

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not understood the explanation, although I have re-read it several times in Hansard. This is probably my own fault because I am too stupid to understand what I was told. If it is the opinion of the present Minister that this is more than a drafting point, could he bear to try once more to explain to me what the point of substance is, because if it is a purely drafting point I would think that this Amendment would be worth while and make the subsection clearer.
Amendment moved—
Page 4, leave out lines 10 to 17 and insert the said words and paragraphs.—(Lord Airedale.)
LORD BROWN: I have a note here that I will read. I will be quite honest: I do not think I understand it myself. I shall have something to add at the end. This Amendment is designed as a drafting Amendment, and at first sight it looks as if the noble Lord has achieved an economy of twelve words without sacrificing the clarity of the provision. In fact, his Amendment is based on the misunderstanding that the circumstances dealt with in paragraph (a) and paragraph (b) are mutually exclusive. That is not so, as the word "also" in line 15 indicates. What the two paragraphs say is that the opening words—that is, "The trade description shall be taken", and so on—apply for the purpose of offences under Clause 1(1)(a) in all circumstances, including those spelled out in the opening words of paragraph (b), and that those opening words also apply for the purpose of offences under Clause 1(1)(b), but only in the special circumstances spelled out in the opening words of paragraph (b).
I hope the noble Lord has understood that explanation better than I have, but in case he has not may I make this offer? As this is a drafting Amendment—or as it is proposed as a drafting Amendment, if I may put it that way—and therefore somewhat difficult to debate in the usual manner in Committee to-day, I offer the noble Lord the opportunity of discussing this matter with those who drafted the clause, and give him the opportunity of convincing them of the error of their ways, if he can. Of course, if he cannot, then I take it that he will be prepared to accept our drafting. If he will withdraw, I will open up this avenue.
LORD HAWKE: May I ask the noble Lord a question? Has anybody ever convinced the draftsmen in the Department of the error of their ways?
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: The only point that has just occurred to me about this is: What are the magistrates going to say? If the noble Lord cannot understand the reason why the wording is like this, what is going to happen when a prosecution comes up before the court? I should have thought that it is going to lead to the most terrible trouble, and I would very much hope that if there is going to be further discussion about this wording it might be possible in some way to simplify it. Can it not be split up so that there are two propositions, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive but recognisable as separate propositions, and not rolled into one in this way? I should have thought there must be some merit in getting this a little easier to understand.
LORD BROWN: I am in full flight. I am not going to attempt to argue this question, especially with the noble Viscount, who has a very logical mind. If the Amendment is withdrawn, I should like to open up the opportunity I have mentioned to the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, and we will have a look at it. I think this is a difficult matter, but I note the remarks made by noble Lords.
LORD AIREDALE: I am very much obliged to the Minister for making a very handsome offer to me. It seems that this matter was worth raising. Of course, I shall study closely in Hansard what he said in his opening observations. It is not a matter easy to understand as the explanation comes across the Floor of the Chamber. Certainly I shall be very pleased to ask leave to withdraw this Amendment now.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
6.8 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN LORD DRUMALBYN moved, in subsection (3), to leave out "associate the advertisement with the goods", and insert "reasonably take the trade description as referring to the goods". The noble Lord said: We now come on to what I think is the most important part of this clause. What we are really being asked to do is to provide an entirely subjective test of whether an advertisement relates

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to the goods or not, and the test is whether the person to whom the goods were offered would associate them with the advertisement of the goods. I say to the Government that I think association is altogether too wide a concept. Whenever I see an advertisement, for example, for a particular brand of wireless set, I am reminded of the one I possess and associate the advertisement with that. That is how the association of ideas works. It is very broad, and it is very inaccurate. It is open to question whether a subjective test of this kind is either right or fair.
Assuming that it is, one must make certain assumptions, I suggest, at least based on reasonable reflection. Mere unthinking association would be neither right nor fair. Yet this is what the clause, as drafted, implies. One must at least get into the clause the concept that the person to whom the goods are supplied must take due care and exercise reasonable common sense. It would be most unreasonable for a consumer to assume that an advertisement of twelve months ago necessarily referred to goods he bought to-day. It might do; but he should find out whether it does or not. Association just is not good enough.
Secondly, if goods which a person has bought turn out to be not quite what he expected, all my experience tends to show that he is apt to blame somebody else rather than himself, to blame the advertisement or the salesman rather than himself, and it is right therefore that the idea that he should be acting reasonably should be firmly written into the clause. It is not clear that any such presumption is implied in the clause as drafted. An advertisement may deal with more than one type of goods and the consumer may, quite reasonably, associate the whole advertisement with the goods in question whereas what matters is the particular trade description applied to the goods. Therefore, I think the words which I have suggested are better. Instead of saying:
"a person to whom the goods are supplied would associate the advertisement with the goods"
it would read:
"a person to whom the goods are supplied would reasonably take the trade description as referring to the goods"
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because that is what matters. It is not the advertisement as a whole, but the trade description as applying to the goods that matters. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 4, line 23, leave out from ("would") to the end of line 24 and insert the said words.—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
LORD BROWN: I am afraid this is another case where, in a sense, we are involved in legalities. I have sympathy with the noble Lord's intention in putting clown this Amendment, but if he will look more closely at Clause 5(3) I think he will see that it is so constructed that it relates not to the question of whether goods are goods of a class to which a trade description relates, but to the question whether goods are goods of a class to which an advertisement relates. The essential attempt here is to establish a connection between goods and advertisements, and not goods and a trade description. In my respectful submission, the drafting Amendment which has been proposed is not therefore appropriate in this context. I wonder whether the noble Lord would think again about this? I think he has mistaken the basic intention of the clause and that his Amendment is based on a misconception of what the clause is trying to achieve.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I have thought a great deal about this, and at one time I wondered whether this was not so. I quite see that the purpose is to link the advertisement with the goods. What I am saying is that if we are going to put this down as a test of whether or not an offence has been committed, and the test is to be the subjective one of whether a person to whom the goods are supplied would associate the advertisement with the goods, it is absolutely essential that the word "reasonably" is included. The noble Lord may be right on the other point, but possibly we could consider this together before the next stage of the Bill, as I think it is likely to cause almost as much difficulty as any other particular point in the Bill. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 5 agreed to.
Clause 6:
Offer to supply
6. A person exposing goods for sale or having goods in his possession for sale shall be deemed to offer them for sale, and similarly with respect to any manner of supplying goods otherwise than by sale.
LORD DRUMALBYN LORD DRUMALBYN moved, at the beginning of the clause, to insert "For the purposes of this Act". The noble Lord said: Once we get through this clause I think we shall be sailing a little more plainly for a time. The purpose of this Amendment is to introduce the words "For the purposes of this Act". This is an Amendment that was moved, but not by me, when this Bill was being dealt with on a former occasion. The noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, who I see is in his place, dealt with it at that time in cols. 197–200 and 202 to 205 [OFFICIAL REPORT, 22/2/66], but I must say that he did not altogether convince me that the words I am proposing to add are unnecessary. It is certainly one of the things that would have been looked at again on the Report stage of that Bill, had there been a Report stage.
I quite accept that this is a clause—if I may put it this way—which is intended to clothe the naked skeleton of Clause 1 and is to be read with Clause 1 in interpreting the Bill. But what happens in other cases? That is what we were concerned with, and I do not think it really emerged from the discussions. I find it hard to believe that unless the clause is expressly stated only to relate to this Bill, Clause 6 could not be taken in a case outside the scope of this Bill to change the law concerning persons exposing goods for sale, or having goods in their possession for sale. I feel strongly that if there is any risk of this at all we should not take it. In this Bill we ought not to open up to question the Common Law rules on offer and acceptance. The argument that if we put words in here they may have to be put in elsewhere carries no conviction. If a similar risk exists in other clauses the words ought to be put in there, too, and if there is no such risk in other clauses the words need not be put in. But I submit that in this clause there is such a risk. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 4, line 25, at beginning insert ("For the purposes of this Act").—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: This is very much a question for lawyers. I am not a lawyer, but I think the fears expressed by the noble Lord are in fact adequately answered in Clause 1(2), where it says:
"In this Act expressions used in this section shall be construed in accordance with Sections 2 to 6 of this Act."
So to my mind Clause 6 applies purely to the function of making Clause 1 more comprehensible and more precise, and does not go outside that scope and alter the general law of contract. As, I have said, I am not a lawyer, and therefore I can only reply to the noble Lord in terms given to me by lawyers, but I should have thought that this was a question of something which could be defined fairly precisely. If the noble Lord is right and I am wrong, this is surely something which we can put right at a later stage. I give the Committee the undertaking that I will consult with lawyers in order to see whether, if we reject the noble Lord's Amendment, we are altering the general law of contract by this particular clause of the Bill.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I hope the noble Lord will consult with a fair cross-section of lawyers about this point, because I do not think one can rely on one opinion alone. The noble Lord has referred to Clause 1(2), which only says:
"expressions used in this section shall be construed in accordance with Sections 2 to 6 of this Act."
It does not say that Sections 2 to 6 shall only be construed with Section 1. This is a totally different proposition, and the point I was trying to make before was that it is by no means the same thing. I hope if there is any doubt about the matter at all these words will be inserted. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
6.19 p.m.
LORD AIREDALE LORD AIREDALE moved to leave out "or having goods in his possession for sale". The noble Lord said: This is the Amendment to which I referred when I was moving the first Amendment. I had to do so in order to make my argument coherent. I withdrew the first Amendment, but I then gave an undertaking, particularly to the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, that I would not fail to

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move the present Amendment because I understood that noble Lords were anxious for this Amendment to be moved in order to give the Committee an opportunity to debate the general question whether it ought to be an offence to have in one's possession for sale goods which were falsely misdescribed.
I have not sought to argue this matter one way or the other, and I do not do so now. All I have sought to say is that if it is to be an offence to have in one's possession for sale falsely mis-described goods it ought to be a specific offence, as it was in the 1887 Act, whereas the way in which it is made an offence in this clause is a roundabout way of creating a criminal offence. I am not going to weary the Committee by going on with this argument, because I put it forward as my argument on Amendment No. 1. I now formally move this Amendment in order that noble Lords may debate, if they wish, the question of principle whether it ought to be an offence to have goods which are falsely mis-described in one's possession for sale. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 4, line 25, leave out from ("sale") to ("shall") in line 26.—(Lord Airedale.)
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: Perhaps, since this is an important issue, I could speak at a little length on it. First of all, this clause is necessary, as it is presented to catch the person who exposes goods for supply; because in law a shopkeeper who exposes goods in his window or on his shelves does not offer to sell them, he invites offers to buy. Some people have misunderstood its purely interpretive role and have feared that the deeming of exposing and having in possession for sale to be offering for sale might possibly have a wider significance affecting the general law. The wording of Clause 1(2) makes it clear, as I said earlier, that the provisions of Clause 6 apply solely for the purpose of interpreting the preceding clauses of this Bill. So again, as in the earlier case, I do not believe that in this case we are in fact taking the meaning of the words beyond the actual first six clauses of this Bill.
The noble Lord to-day, as in the past, I think rightly, has drawn the attention of the Committee to the risk of a grave
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injustice being done to a trader who in fact is holding goods in his warehouse which are wrongly marked but which, for various reasons, he may not know are wrongly marked; or, alternatively, knowing they are wrongly marked it may be his intention not to present them to the public. Those two situations can exist, and it is our belief that in point of fact those risks are covered. In the first place, the shopkeeper who is genuinely unaware that goods in his possession have a false trade description—which is quite a conceivable situation—can plead the ignorance defence provided in Clause 23(2). He is permitted to have an honest ignorance of the situation. On the other hand, he is again protected if the offender is someone other than himself, by Clause 22. But if the second situation arose, and the shopkeeper, being aware that the goods were wrongly described, had taken steps to ensure that they were not to be exposed or offered for sale until the description had been corrected, he could not be held to have the goods in possession for sale. He had them in possession for something else but he was not holding them in possession for sale.
I realise that this is a very nice point, but the words "possession for sale" in the Weights and Measures Act 1963 were considered by the divisional court in the case of Ben Worsley v. Harvey. Noble Lords will remember that the situation was that certain loaves were underweight. The baker knew they were underweight and had put them on one side until such time as the supervisor had checked them. Your Lordships may ask, would the ruling given in that particular case under the Weights and Measures Act 1963 apply to this Bill when it became law? I am assured that in point of fact in similar circumstances the ruling given under the Weights and Measures Act 1963 would also apply to this particular Bill when it became law.
If the shopkeeper could prove that he was genuinely ignorant that the goods he was proposing to move from his warehouse on to his shop front were wrongly marked, or if he knew they were wrongly marked but was not going to offer them for sale, then he would not be at any risk. Of course, if he knew they were wrongly marked and was proposing to sell them,

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he would fall under the penalties of this Bill; but that is surely what we are legislating about. What we want to be certain of is that the man not intending to carry out an offence should not be caught unfairly by this legislation. I hope I have made the position clear to the noble Lord.
LORD STRABOLGI: Before the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, replies, I should like to ask the Government whether this protection also applies where the goods which are not for sale for some reason are in the shop and not just in the warehouse, because many small businesses do not have a warehouse. They have some goods which are for sale; other goods may have been brought into the shop for some reason but not yet put up on sale. On the other hand, with particular regard to, say, secondhand goods, a dealer may have brought in some goods from an auction sale which are marked with quite wrong prices. This is particularly so in the case of secondhand books, which may be one hundred times more value than the price marked, or considerably less. There may be a secondhand bookshop where there is a pile of books for sale and others not yet for sale. It is not just a question of two places. I should like to know the position where the two categories are in the same place, in some cases adjacent to each other.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: I think the noble Lord has raised a valid point. I do not believe the law is always an ass, and I believe that a situation where—shall we say?—there was a certain type of canned goods displayed in the window and a similar type wrongly marked was under the counter but not displayed for sale, would be covered by the defences mentioned when the goods were kept in a warehouse. I believe the magistrates would define goods separated in one section of the shop in the same way as they would define goods separated in a separate room or warehouse. I will give the noble Lord an undertaking to confirm this.
LORD HAWKE: May I ask the Minister a question? He has pointed out the defence under Clause 23. It would make a difference to our attitude to this clause if we knew he was going to accept the Amendment of my noble friend to
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Clause 23—"or" instead of "and". It is No. 47.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: I am afraid it is not going to be my responsibility to answer your Lordships on that particular clause, and therefore I cannot commit my noble friend. I cannot comment on Clause 23.
LORD HAWKE: The Minister is answering for the Government, and if he cannot give vital information of that sort he should get it as quickly as he can.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: I will do my best, but perhaps we can get Clause 6 out of the way before we deal with Clause 23.
LORD HAWKE: No.
LORD AIREDALE: I am grateful for the detailed reply the Minister has given on this Amendment. I was pleased to hear the Minister admitting that part of his argument involved a nice point of law, and that calls back to my mind the words of the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, about ten minutes ago. If the Minister finds the Bill not so easy to understand, what are the magistrates going to make of it? Because it is they who have to understand and operate the Bill. Although I said it on my first Amendment, I think I should just repeat that it is a curious thing that when the courts administer justice they are not allowed to examine the words of the Minister at the Despatch Box in Parliament; they are allowed to look only at the wording of the Act. So it is vitally important to get these Statutes as clearly understandable as possible by ordinary people, because magistrates are ordinary people. I think I made it clear when I moved this Amendment that I was doing so almost formally, and certainly that I was going to ask leave to withdraw it. Accordingly I ask leave to withdraw it.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
6.31 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: This Amendment, No. 12, seeks to leave out the words "them for sale" and instead to insert "to supply them,". The words "offer to supply" occur throughout the Bill and particularly in Clause 1, and I wonder why the Government have departed from them in this case. The

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offence is invariably connected with offering to supply. I do not want to take this and the next Amendment together, but it occurs to me that if the words were, "offer to supply", it might then not be necessary to have this extraordinary second sentence in the clause. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 4, line 26, leave out ("them for sale") and insert ("to supply them,").—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
LORD AIREDALE: I should like to support this Amendment, too. Again, if this Amendment were acceptable, I am sure that it would make the Bill much more easily understandable to magistrates.
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD: I, too, support this Amendment. The same suggestion has been put to me. I think it would be much more simple if the same language were used.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: I would agree with noble Lords opposite in asking: If we cannot understand a clause in the Bill, how can magistrates function? I think this is where a detailed discussion of a complex measure like this is valuable. We are able to give the Bill what I might call a "dummy run", so that intelligent laymen can see what is likely to happen when we get in front of the magistrates. I will answer the noble Lord as well as I can on his Amendment No. 12. In my own mind I was rather linking Amendments Nos. 12 and 13 together. On the other hand, Amendment No. 12 stands by itself.
There is a situation where goods are supplied in shops for reasons other than for direct sale. They may, for example, be exposed for sale by hire-purchase. The goods themselves are not immediately sold; they are subject to a hire-purchase agreement. Situations may also arise where goods are exposed as part of a gift scheme. It is for this reason that this particular clause includes the words:
"and similarly with respect to any manner of supplying goods otherwise than by sale".
It is equally bad if a shopkeeper puts in his shop window goods which bear a false trade description, or if he has goods under his counter ready for supply for reasons other than direct sale. One result
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of accepting the Amendment would be that if a dealer had a car bearing a false trade description in his shop window for sale, he would be guilty of an offence; but if he had it there for supply by way of hire-purchase he would not be guilty. I do not know whether the noble Lord is, in fact, wishing to attain this result from his Amendment.
LORD DRUMALBYN: By the word "supply" I wanted to cover every circumstance, as it appears to do in Clause 1.
LORD HAWKE: There is another obscurity that I do not quite understand in this clause. It says "having goods in his possession for sale". Supposing these goods are defective goods, does the law automatically assume that the offence will be committed and those defective goods sold? Or does the law assume that the goods will be made right before they are sold? That again is a most important point from the point of view of retailers. Has the noble Lord got my point?
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: I think I have it, but I should be grateful if the noble Lord would repeat it.
LORD HAWKE: If the shopkeeper has in his possession goods for sale, he should be deemed to offer them for sale. These goods may be defective; they may have something wrong with them, and he knows it. The inspector comes along and he sees these goods. They are sold and they are defective, and it is said that they are deemed to be offered for sale. But is it a defence for the man to say, "I am certainly not a breaker of the law, and therefore I cannot be offering them for sale when they are defective, because certainly I would put them right before they were sold".
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: I tried to answer the noble Lord earlier on that point. The onus of proof, of course, must lie with the supplier. If he can satisfy the magistrates that it was not his intention to offer these goods for sale until such time as they had been put right, either by sending them back to the manufacturer or by relabelling them, he has a valid defence to the appropriate clause of this Bill.
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD: I am not sure whether I understood the

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noble Lord aright. Did he say that one reason why he could not accept the Amendment, which I should like to support, or use the same words, was because of something to do with hire-purchase? Surely, the appropriate words are in Clause 1, and are referred to as being offers for sale. Does that mean that subsection (1)(b) does not apply to hire-purchase? I understood, when we were discussing Clause 1(1)(b), that "offers to supply" meant to supply goods in any circumstances, whether for hire purchase or not. They were being supplied and the buyer was going to buy them, in whatever circumstances he wanted to buy them. As I understood the noble Lord just now, he said that one reason why he could not accept Lord Drumalbyn's Amendment was because it would not, as a method of sale, cover hire-purchase. Surely that is rather strange.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I think we are getting into a little trouble here, because the noble Lord expected me to take these two Amendments together and has rather altered his answer to the first Amendment on that basis. I wonder if he would be so kind as to say that he will consider this point, and then perhaps I can withdraw the Amendment.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: It is extremely courteous of the noble Lord. I had expected both to be dealt with together, and I am grateful to him for his suggestion.
LORD DRUMALBYN: If the noble Lord will have another look at this point I will ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
6.39 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN LORD DRUMALBYN moved to leave out all words after "offer them for sale", and to substitute, "unless he proves otherwise". The noble Lord said: I wanted to move this Amendment separately because it is rather a separate point, and it has two sides to it. If the noble Lord had felt able to accept my first Amendment it would probably not have been necessary for me to move this one at all. At any rate, I think he could readily have accepted the leaving out of these words, which would not be necessary. But we shall come to that.
It is difficult to see what is meant by the use of the word "similarly". If one says "similarly" one ought to be able to insert the same words for any similar manner of supplying goods, and I do not know what is meant here. Taking the case of a person exposing goods for free distribution, the clause says:
"A person exposing goods for sale or having goods in his possession for sale shall be deemed to offer them …".
Offer them for what? For sale? For free distribution? What is meant? I have no idea, since I cannot understand what "similarly" means in this case. Therefore, this wording needs to be looked at again.
A further point is that if we had substituted the words "offered to supply them", the words to be added then would be "unless he proves otherwise". If I understood the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, correctly earlier, he argued that the questions of whether he was exposing the goods for sale or having them in possession for sale were questions of fact which could be proved before the court; and if it was proved that he had them in possession for sale he was then to be deemed to have been offering them for sale. With great respect, that does not follow. There is a case which the noble Lord has not mentioned, and that is the case of goods which are in possession for sale but are not to be sold before a certain time. There is a curious case which is topical at the moment, since I understand that as from to-morrow it will be lawful to sell cyclamates. It may well be that people have stocks of cyclamates at the moment. What would have happened supposing there had been a false trade description of those cyclamates? I saw a different sugar substitute described as "sugar-plus" which seemed to me a totally false description, because it was not sugar at all and therefore could not be "sugar"-plus. Supposing that had been applied to the cyclamates, what would have happened under this clause as drafted?
I put this matter forward for the noble Lord to look at. There are many other circumstances which might be caught here which ought not to be caught. I have given the noble Lord one example, and perhaps similar examples could be thought of by others. I hope the noble Lord will be able to explain

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what is meant by the word "similarly", what the effect would be and what the wretched person is to be "deemed" to be doing. I feel that a person should not be deemed to be doing something which he is not in fact doing, and should have the opportunity of proving that he was not in fact offering the goods for sale, or free distribution, or whatever it may be. Therefore, I feel that these words ought to be added. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 4, line 26, leave out from ("sale") to end of line 28 and insert ("unless he proves otherwise").—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
LORD MITCHISON: When I think of the awful things I must have said about this Bill at some earlier stage, I shudder, but my difficulty is that I do not know what the Amendment means. We are asked to put in words which will make the clause read:
"A person exposing goods for sale or having goods in his possession for sale shall be deemed to offer them for sale, unless he proves otherwise."
When one says somebody shall be "deemed" to do something, one means that what he would do without that statutory enactment might not necessarily be what he is now deemed to do. The word is inserted for that purpose, I understand.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I tried to explain that it says "deemed to offer them". That must mean to be offering at that time. I tried to make it clear that he might have no intention of offering them at that time for sale.
LORD MITCHISON: Surely the point here is that this is a provision that in certain circumstances he shall be deemed to offer for sale, "unless he proves otherwise". What does "otherwise" mean? How is he ever going to prove otherwise? This is a stipulation that in certain circumstances an act which might not necessarily amount to offering for sale shall be deemed to be an offer for sale. What conceivable meaning is there if you add afterwards, "unless he proves otherwise"? What does "otherwise" mean?
LORD HAWKE: I am not sure that the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, has ever kept a shop. Anybody who has done so would know the answer to this, and
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would be alarmed by the clause as it is now drafted. He may have goods in his cellar; he may not even have examined them. Yet if the inspector has come along and has found them to be defective, and the shopkeeper is "deemed" to be offering them for sale, he commits an offence in offering defective goods. The unfortunate shopkeeper had no intention whatsoever of putting those goods on sale, and my noble friend's Amendment would make it quite possible for him to prove that he had no such intention. He could have said to his manager, "Leave those things aside, and after Christmas we will have a look at them."
LORD MITCHISON: The noble Lord, Lord Hawke, has shown conclusively that the words have no meaning whatever. What it comes to is this. A person exposing goods for sale, or having goods in his possession for sale, shall be deemed to offer them for sale—that is laying dawn the legal effect of certain acts. But when, on top of that, there are added the words "unless he proves otherwise", I ask: what does "otherwise" mean?
LORD AIREDALE: Perhaps I could help the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, with this example. It might be said as a general proposition that anyone who goes into the members' enclosure at Newbury goes there to watch the horseracing, unless he proves otherwise. If somebody enters the enclosure and says, "I am the catering manager. I have not come to watch the horseracing. I have come to manage the catering", there is a situation where he would have been deemed to have gone there to watch the horseracing, but he has satisfactorily proved that he has gone there "otherwise".
LORD MITCHISON: I am quite unconvinced. We are supposed to be envisaging a statutory situation that certain acts shall be deemed to amount to such-and-such. There is no such Statute concerning the ring or catering place at Newbury. I have never been there, but I am sure there is no Statute about it. There is no provision that you should be "deemed" to do something or other if you go there, or if you stand on your herd on the racecourse, or something of that sort. What we are considering at the moment is this clause telling you that in certain circumstances someone is to be

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deemed to do something. Then the Amendment seeks to add, "unless he proves otherwise". How can he prove otherwise? This is a proposition of construction and nothing else.
LORD HAWKE: I have shown the noble Lord how a shopkeeper can "prove otherwise". He can prove that he said to the manager, "We will have a look at these goods after Christmas. We are not offering for sale."
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: I do not follow the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison. I think that there is a real problem here. I support the argument in favour of this Amendment. It might well be necessary for the tradesman to prove that at the time he had no intention of selling the goods. I would support the Amendment, and I hope the Government will be able to accept it.
LORD MITCHISON: Yes, but that still does not meet the point. This is not a question of what anybody should prove, or anything of that sort. It is simply a rule of construction that in certain circumstances a person shall be deemed to do something or another. The Amendment says, "Unless he proves otherwise", but nobody has yet explained what "otherwise" means.
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD: Surely it is perfectly simple, as the noble Baroness, Lady Burton of Coventry, has said. You are not going to do it: you are going to do something different, and it is perfectly simple to prove that. The word "otherwise" is as simple as anything could be.
LORD MITCHISON: I can argue with one lady but not two.
LORD DRUMALBYN: Perhaps I can add that in a Bill dealing with false indications and falsehoods, it seems to me utterly nonsensical that we should be asked to deem a falsehood if it is a falsehood.
LORD BROWN: My noble friend has asked me to deal with the questions which the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, asked about the interpretation of the meaning of the word "similarly" in this clause. It means that the emphasis of the clause is that if someone exposes
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goods for sale he shall be deemed to offer them for sale. If he has them in his possession for hire, he shall be deemed to be offering them for hire; or if he has them in his possession for hire purchase, he shall be deemed to be offering them for hire purchase. The word "similarly" is put in to obviate the necessity of giving all these other examples, as well as the simple example of "possession for sale shall be deemed to offer them for sale". It is a reference to the other ways in which goods can be supplied, as well as by sale.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I think the noble Lord has finished by making the point I wanted to be made all along. He asked me earlier: Why do we have to specify and differentiate between sale and, by implication, hire purchase, free distribution and all the rest? Are they not all methods of supplying, as the noble Lord has just said, and cannot he say so?
LORD BROWN: I have only specified for the purposes of explication. The Bill says, "any manner of supplying goods otherwise than by sale." This is not exemplified in the clause. It is giving a wide expression which embraces all these methods of offering to supply.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I shall not press this point further just now, because I am sure the noble Lord will have another look at it. But he has not really dealt with the question with which the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, dealt—the second leg—as to whether something should be deemed to be something other than it really is, and whether you should not give a person an opportunity of proving that it should not be so deemed because it is different.
LORD BROWN: I am aware that most of the people who have spoken are not with the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, but I am very much with him. To attempt to make clearer the point that I thought he made fairly clearly, may I suggest for one moment that instead of using the word "deemed," we say that a person exposing goods for sale or having goods in his possession for sale shall be interpreted for the purposes of this Act as offering them for sale. If you put it in that way, is it any use going on to add the words of the Amendment? Because the words

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that I have substituted mean very much the same as "deemed." But you could not say at the end of those words, "unless he proves otherwise," because you are laying down an interpretation.
LORD DRUMALBYN: Indeed, you could. I have just been trying to point out that a person may have goods for sale but not at that time. He may have them for sale next week or next year or something of that kind, and there is no reason whatsoever why he should be deemed to be offering them if in fact he is not offering them at that time.
LORD BROWN: With respect, the key words in this clause are "in his possession for sale," and the interpretation put on "for sale" is with the intention of selling them. So if he has them for sale with the intention of selling them he shall be deemed to offer them for sale. If he clearly has no intention of selling them—he is holding them in his store subject to inspection—he does not have the intention of selling them until he has inspected them, and he is therefore not a guilty party.
LORD HAWKE: That is a very important interpretation of the words "for sale". We all read "for sale" as meaning for sale at any future date. If the noble Lord interprets the words in such a way that the goods can only be said to be for sale if the person intends to sell them off immediately, then that throws a very different light on the whole clause.
LORD BROWN: In discussing an earlier Amendment I gave details of a case which had already been decided before the courts. It is not precisely parallel, but one is capable of deriving from that case that that is the interpretation which would be put on the words. Here was a baker with loaves in his possession. Many people would normally regard them as being in his possession for sale, but as he had not inspected them the court decided that he was not guilty. By inference, they put that interpretation on those words, and I think the same interpretation must be put on these words here, as I explained on Second Reading.
LORD HAWKE: I think that is a splendid interpretation. I am not a lawyer, and I should like some lawyer to tell me whether that legal decision is sufficiently binding to avoid repeating it
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in a Statute, because my impression was that the noble Lord said that it was at a comparatively low court that the matter was decided. If it had been decided at a very high court, I should have thought it would have been more satisfactory.
LORD BROWN: Others will know better than I what force that interpretation will have with regard to other Acts. I shall have a look at that to see whether it has the force which I think it has.
LORD AIREDALE: I think that case must have come before a Divisional Court, otherwise, it would not have been reported in the All England Law Reports.
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD: In view of the fact that this Bill is not yet an Act of Parliament and the example which the noble Lord quoted is of a prosecution under another Act, may I ask him whether there would have been any difference in that case had this Bill been an Act of Parliament? We should then see whether or not that is the interpretation which will be put on this Bill, which is different. All of us have been studying this Bill for a very long time, and not one of us, except the noble Lord, Lord Brown, and the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison—who have both been advised by the same Board of Trade lawyers—has the same interpretation as those two noble Lords. Therefore, the position seems a little unclear. I do not pretend to be a lawyer at all, but I have been looking at this Bill for quite a long time and it does not seem to me that the interpretation of the noble Lord, Lord Brown, is clear as the Bill stands.
LORD BROWN: Of course, I am full of sympathy for noble Lords who have debated this matter, because had I not had the benefit of advice on this I am quite certain that I should have been as—I shall not say as confused, but as puzzled as they are. But I am so advised and, having been advised and having looked at the matter very closely, I must in common sense agree with all the advice. But in the light of all the discussions which have taken place, I can assure your Lordships that we shall have another close look at the matter to make quite certain that the arguments which have been put forward from the Front Bench he re are in line with what is reasonably legal.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am grateful to the noble Lord. We feel that this clause is capable of improvement, and I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
6.59 p.m.
LORD AUCKLAND LORD AUCKLAND moved to add to the clause:
"( ) A person shall not be deemed to supply goods if the goods are supplied only for the purpose of demonstration or research in circumstances where the person to whom they are so supplied incurs no obligation."
The noble Lord said: This Bill is getting dangerously near to becoming a lawyer's charter, and I rise with a good deal of trepidation to move this Amendment, which may well prove to be even more puzzling to non-lawyers than the previous one. I think we are almost generally agreed that Clause 6 puts an enormous burden on the retailer. It also puts a very large burden on one other section of the community, and that is the market researcher. We live in a time of rapidly-evolving products, and it is only right and logical that a good deal of market research has to go on. This is particularly true in the field of washing powders. I do not want to go into the "whiter than white" thesis—we shall no doubt get to that when we reach Clause 11—but there are occasions when market researchers have to demonstrate products to selected consumers and deliberately make representations in order to get consumer reaction. The important point to remember here is that the consumer is aware of the situation, having been briefed beforehand.
As I say, I believe this is done particularly by manufacturers of washing powders, to make quite sure that, before their products are marketed, they are as reasonably accurate as possible as per the descriptions on the packets; and if this did not take place there would obviously be great cause for far stricter legislation against manufacturers of these products. But as Clause 6 stands at the present time these people, although they are not offering goods for sale—they are merely testing consumer reaction, with no obligation to the consumer—can be prosecuted, and the purpose of this Amendment is to ask the Government to look very closely into this matter from the point of view of this particular section of the market, which is as important as, if not more important
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than, the point of view of the retailer. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 4, line 28, at end insert the said subsection.—(Lord Auckland.)
LORD STRABOLGI: I should like to support this Amendment. I fully agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, has said about market researchers. To that, I should like to add the question of dummy packs, which are of course exposed and look exactly like the goods themselves. One has in mind particularly French scents, which deteriorate very quickly. Large bottles bearing the labels of these extremely expensive products are shown for display purposes but they contain nothing but coloured water. On the other hand, under this clause as at present drafted they are goods which are offered or deemed to be offered for sale, and I think some extra definition on the lines of this Amendment is called for. I hope that the Government will consider it very carefully, and even possibly accept it.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: My noble friend and I are grateful to the noble Lords who have tabled this Amendment. We think that the principle incorporated in it is very valuable and should be supported. It is obvious that market research is of great importance and that nothing should be done in this Bill to place unnecessary obstacles in the way of useful and justifiable market research techniques. It is perhaps not right to provide so widely drawn an exemption as this Amendment proposes, which might leave suppliers free to apply false trade descriptions to goods in a great variety of circumstances; but if the noble Lords who have tabled the Amendment will agree to withdraw it, we shall be ready to consider the drafting of a more closely-defined exemption to deal with the particular problems which the Amendment has in mind. I must not say at the moment that I am sure it will be possible to frame a suitable provision without creating a significant loophole in the Bill, but I give an undertaking that we will certainly look into it with a view to bringing forward an Amendment at a later stage if it proves practicable to do so.
Perhaps, as a suggestion, if a convincing case can be made out for excluding

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specific types of transaction from the general requirements of a proposed order, this might be done by virtue of the power in Clause 8(3) to make different provision for different circumstances, or by taking power to make exemptions by licence. Perhaps the powers which we have in Clause 8(3) might also apply to the dummy packs mentioned by my noble friend. Whatever way it is done, we will consider this Amendment carefully, because we believe that the principle embodied in it is right and should somehow appear in the Bill when it reaches a more polished state.
LORD DRUMALBYN: We are most grateful to the noble Lord for what he has said. I note in particular that he is not able to give us an assurance that it will be possible to have an Amendment drafted by the time we reach the next stage in this House. I hope it will be possible—and I am sure the noble Lord will do his best—to bring one forward in this House, but I take it that what he means is that if it is not possible to bring it forward in this House then it will be introduced in another place, and that something is going to be done on this matter in any case. Am I right in saying that?
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: As regards the second point, yes: I can give an undertaking that something will be done. On the timing, I take note of the noble Lord's wish that it should be done at this stage of the Bill rather than later.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I should myself doubt whether it would be satisfactory to have it as an order under Clause 8. I do not see how that could be done, and I do not think it would be desirable. It would be much better to let people know where they stand by writing it into the Bill.
LORD AUCKLAND: We are all grateful to the noble Lord for the undertaking which he has given, which is a vital one. I do not think any noble Lord in this Committee would condone deliberate misrepresentation by manufacturers, retailers, market researchers or anybody else; but I am glad that at least the noble Lord has accepted the spirit of this Amendment, and with renewed gratitude I beg leave to withdraw it.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 6 agreed to.
Clause 7 [Definition orders]:
On Question, Whether Clause 7 shall stand part of the Bill?
LORD DRUMALBYN: May I ask a question about this clause? I assume that, under the Interpretation Act, this clause gives the Board of Trade power to change the meaning of an expression once it has been assigned under an order. I think this is important. It was a point which was in fact made by the Molony Committee itself, that there should be power to define terms and to change the definitions of terms once they had been defined. I should like an assurance on that.
LORD BROWN: I cannot give the noble Lord a positive answer now, but if in fact there is no power to change terms once they have been defined I will investigate the matter in order to correct the situation, because if that were the situation it would appear to need correction.
Clause 7 agreed to.
Clause 8 [Marking orders]:
7.8 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: It is difficult to see circumstances in which information should not amount to or include a trade description. It is also difficult to see how it would be possible to have an order which does not do so; and it seems to me that, in general, orders ought to be limited to the matters of fact contained in Clause 2(1) of the Bill. So this Amendment is simply to leave out the words,
"whether or not amounting to or including a trade description",
and to insert the words,
"being information as to any of the matters specified in section 2(1) of this Act".
I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 10, leave out ("whether or not amounting to or including a trade description") and insert ("being information as to any of the matters specified in section 2(1) of this Act").—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: Would the Minister, when he comes to reply, answer one simple question which worries me. Listening to what the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, has said, I am

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wondering whether this is a restrictive Amendment. I should be grateful if the noble Lord could comment on that aspect.
7.10 p.m.
BARONESS PHILLIPS: As the noble Lord has just said, this Amendment would limit the powers of the Board of Trade to require goods to be labelled with information about matters which would be the subject of a trade description as set out in Clause 2(1). It is true that the Molony Committee recommended that this power should be confined even more narrowly to certain matters which would form part of the subject of a trade description. But when the Bill was prepared it was foreseen that it would be necessary to add to the Molony Committee's list, and it was decided that any attempt to incorporate an exhaustive list in the Bill might result in the powers being inadequate to deal with cases which might arise in the future but which could not be foreseen.
It is of course probable that the information required would usually relate to one or more of the matters specified in Clause 2(1). Since we have no immediate proposals for using the powers I can give only a hypothetic example of a case where information not amounting to a trade description might be thought necessary in the consumers' interest: a requirement that washing machines should be labelled with, or accompanied by, information about servicing arrangements. To narrow the power in the way proposed by the Amendment would not be in the consumers' interest and I must ask the Committee not to accept it. I hope the noble Baroness will accept my word that the clause is not narrow but that the Amendment would make it so.
LORD HAWKE: I was rather at a loss to understand in what circumstances the Board of Trade might find it necessary to make such an order. It is a very wide power indeed, to force traders to stamp statements on their goods which they had not intended to do. I wonder whether, in fact, the power is not going to be used to make cigarette manufacturers stamp on the packets of cigarettes, "These will kill you", or words to that effect. I do not know whether the Government realise what enormous powers they are
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taking under this Bill, and I strongly disapprove of the clause unless it is modified by the Amendment of my noble friend—and even then I do not like it very much.
BARONESS PHILLIPS: I would merely say to the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, that it is assumed that most labelling will be done by voluntary schemes. The noble Lord will know that the Consumer Council, with the British Standards Institution, is already responsible for a very elaborate scheme. This is merely to leave powers for dealing with a situation which might arise in the future.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her explanation and for the example that she gave. I am not certain that it is altogether viable as an example, because I do not see how, unless you also had a requirement that there must be a servicing arrangement, you could have a requirement to give information about it. However, I do not wish to press that. I am in sympathy with my noble friend Lord Hawke's remark that we do not want to take wider powers than are necessary. It is conceivable that there may be matters on which information could usefully be given outside the immediate category of Clause 2(1). I do not want to press this point, but if the Government could find some way of expressing some restriction by giving information concerning things they are certainly not going to take power to do, I think it would give some reassurance. One does not want to get the impression that all these things are meant to be the subject of regulation. I know that this is not the intention of the Government. One does not want to restrict the Government too much in the powers they take, but I think they should narrow the powers down to the very minimum required.
LORD BROWN: Before the noble Lord sits down perhaps I might give rather a dramatic example of these further powers. I was sitting at my desk at home, looking at this particular clause of the Bill. I have a tape recorder which uses mercury batteries and there were two "dud" batteries lying on the desk. My wife came in, picked them up, and said, "You surely don't need these". I said "Don't throw them into the fire. If you do so they may explode". "Then

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it ought to be written on them", she replied. I said, "If you look carefully at them you can just see a few words on the battery telling you not to put them in the fire. But you will need your glasses to read those words". I believe there is a very strong case for requiring articles of this sort—things like the batteries I have mentioned—to be clearly marked to the effect that they explode if put into the fire. This was such a dramatic example (and it occurred during the course of my reading the Bill) that I thought it worth bringing to your Lordships' attention.
LORD DRUMALBYN: That is a very useful and instructive piece of information; but I should have thought that this was definitely a physcial characteristic and would have been covered by Clause 2(1). However, I do not wish to press this. It is a good example, so far as it goes, but I do not think it proves the point. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 8 agreed to.
Clause 9:
Information, etc. to be given in advertisements
9.—(1) Where it appears to the Board of Trade necessary or expedient in the interest of persons to whom any goods are to be supplied that advertisements of the goods should contain or refer to any information (whether or not amounting to or including a trade description) or instruction relating to the goods the Board may, subject to the provisions of this Act, by order impose requirements as to the inclusion of that information or instruction, or of an indication of the means by which it may be obtained, in advertisements of the goods or any such description of such advertisements as may be specified in the order.
(2) An order under this section may specify the form and manner in which any such information, instruction or indication is to be included in advertisements of any description and may make different provision for different circumstances.
(3) Where an advertisement fails to comply with any requirement imposed under this section, any person who publishes the advertisement shall, subject to the provisions of this Act, be guilty of an offence.
THE DEPUTY CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES: I must explain to the Committee that Amendment 16 pre-empts the four following Amendments. Therefore, if Amendment No. 16 is agreed to I shall not be able to call Nos. 17 to 20 inclusive.
7.18 p.m.
LORD AUCKLAND LORD AUCKLAND moved to leave out subsection (1), and to insert instead:
"(1) Where an order under section 8 of this Act is in force with respect to goods of any description, and it appears to the Board of Trade that further provision is necessary or expedient in the interest of health or safety of persons to whom goods of that description are to be supplied, the Board may, subject to the provisions of this Act, by order impose requirements for securing that advertisements of the goods, or any such description of such advertisements as may be specified in the order, contain or refer to any information (whether or not amounting to or including a trade description) or instruction relating to the goods or include an indication of the means by which that information or instruction may be obtained."
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 16, standing in the names of my noble friend Lord Drumalbyn and myself. This, I think, will probably be one of the most controversial clauses in a rather controversial Bill because of the wide powers it appears to give to the Board of Trade. I speak as one who has no direct financial interest in the advertising profession, so anything I say may be wildly inaccurate—and if it is I shall probably be told so. To me, at any rate, Clause 9(1) is pretty well meaningless; because if we are to require particular information to be given in advertising—with all the modern trends in this profession—it must surely have some meaningful purpose. I cannot see that as Clause 9(1) is drafted this is at all apparent. So I hope that the Government will at least look sympathetically at this Amendment.
Just now the noble Lord, Lord Brown, mentioned the possibilities of an explosion when throwing batteries into the fire. The purpose of this Amendment is to give the Board of Trade powers to provide for information to be given in the interests of health and safety. It is obvious that in a television commercial of a few seconds' duration this may not be possible. For example, if an advertisement is for some kind of perfume it may not be easy to say in a "small ad" (as I believe it is called) that so-and-so's perfume should not be used by those suffering from sinus trouble or hay fever. But where it is advertised in a national journal, or in some other way, this could be done.
We also have the example of electric irons and other such commodities which

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are dangerous to those who use them and who may tamper with the commodity when their knowledge of electricity is limited. The idea behind this Amendment, as I see it, is to provide that safety and health regulations should be incorporated as a substantive part of an advertisement; in other words, something helpful to the Government, rather than the somewhat meaningless long-winded subsection (1) of Clause 9. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 29, leave out subsection (1) and insert the said new subsection.—(Lord Auckland.)
LORD STRABOLGI: I hope that during the debate on this Amendment and the following proposed Amendments to Clause 9 the Government will give us some information about what they intend, because, as the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, has said, there are certain sectors where it is virtually impossible to include in this requirement this type of information; or if it is done, it is impossible to do so without giving undue weight and prominence to it. I agree fully with the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, that it is really justified only in the case of dangerous goods, where some particular precautionary information has to be given. In the case of most other goods I should have thought that where particular information had to be given it would be much better to give it at the point of sale. Most advertising is really either reminder advertising or is designed to bring information about the product to the potential consumer. It directs the consumer into the shop, and when she is choosing and deciding whether or not to buy you want to ensure that she is given this particular information. I concede that there is a case in respect of dangerous goods, and I fully agree with the Amendment which would seek to substitute this new drafting for subsection (1).
LORD DRUMALBYN: There is one point that I should like to make. It would be much easier to deal with this subsection if at some point we had a definition of "advertisement". There are a number of definitions in different Acts of Parliament generally for the particular purpose of the Act. Here in the interpretation clause we are told that
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"'advertisement' includes a catalogue, a circular and a price list".
As the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, has said, there are appropriate and inappropriate places for giving information and instruction. For example, as the next Amendment makes clear, instruction is normally given in connection with the goods or attached to the goods in some way; and I hope that the noble Lord will be able to tell us that "advertisement" does not include—as we have a later Amendment down to say—labelling and packaging. Then we shall know a good deal more about what this clause is supposed to do and the sort of cases in which the Government envisage that it will make orders requiring information for instruction to be given.
I think there is a good deal to be said for limiting the powers for specific purposes, and I hope that the noble Lord will be able to tell us about that. It may be that he will be able to tell us what purposes, other than those connected with health and safety, he is thinking of covering. At any rate, I think that Parliament should never be asked to hand over very wide powers to the Government unless real justification for those powers is given. From what my noble friend Lord Auckland and the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, have said, it is clear that Parliament would be very willing to concede this kind of power in respect of health and safety; but what we should like to know, as the clause as drafted is not limited to health and safety, is what other kinds of things the Government have in mind in respect of which information will be required.
LORD REDESDALE: I should like to add to what has been said by my noble friend concerning advertising where there are several products—I have been concerned with this matter over some years. If one has a large range, as some manufacturers of electrical goods have, to be forced to put in information about every single model would mean about a page-size advertisement and the whole thing would have to be set solid in 4-point Bible. The clause, to which I take exception, refers to the form in which this information should be shown. If it were as limited as was recently indicated when some person in the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food said that everything had to be set in sans serif, and

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specified the exact size, to anybody in the business that is complete and utter nonsense. The sans serif gill face referred to was one of the least legible of the type faces and it requires more leading than most other faces—
LORD DRUMALBYN: I think my noble friend has got on to the next set of Amendments.
LORD REDESDALE: With respect, the clause says "form"—not the Amendment, but the actual clause. However, if my noble friend feels that this relates to the next set of Amendments I will come back to the matter later.
LORD BROWN: To get the matter clear, this Amendment would mean that an order requiring information or instruction to be given in advertisements could not be made unless a marking order relating to the goods had already been made under Clause 8 and unless the absence of information from the advertisement would entail danger to the consumer. We agree that safety is one matter in relation to which it is particularly likely that the power under this clause might be needed. No comparable power exists under the Consumer Protection Act 1961. There are, however, other matters which it may be essential or desirable to bring to the notice of consumers by way of advertisement. It might for instance be a good thing for shoppers to have their attention drawn in advertisements to the fact that particular equipment may be needed with the goods, such as plumbing with a washing machine.
We cannot agree that the power should relate only to safety. There is, for example, mail order selling. This would come within the terms of advertising. It has been conducted, so far as I can see, in a very honest way, and I should not like people to think that anything I say imputes an attempt to deceive. But it is a manner of selling goods to people where deceit is very easily carried out if there is the intention. It is one thing to confine the need to describe goods to the qualities of the goods, but you may have to relate goods to their environment—to put it in a very general way. You may have to make clear that if they are bought, the cost does not stop at the price of the goods: there may be substantial installation charges to be met. I think that
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people should be protected from such dangers.
The noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, has shared my experience in the Board of Trade and he knows that at times there arrive spates of letters—tragic letters—from people who have been "done down". We turn to the solicitor's department, and we are told that we have now power to deal with these complaints. It is one thing to criticise powers in relation to new legislation, but if we were to believe that the Board of Trade meant to go berserk and be completely irresponsible in their use of new powers, then we would pass no legislation at all. But I think Government Departments are very cautious about exercising their powers. I think it is desirable that the Board of Trade should have this power to deal with advertising campaigns which in the future are going to be used more and more to persuade our citizens to buy things on trust. If we narrow this clause, we shall lessen the protection given to the consumer, and I ask your Lordships to reject this Amendment.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: I was glad to hear what my noble friend said about this. Although I sympathise with what is behind the Amendment, it is too restrictive to confine it to health and safety. Although we have not reached the next four Amendments, I think that they also tend to narrow down what we are trying to do. So I am glad that the Minister does not feel able to accept this Amendment, and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, will be able to withdraw it.
LORD AUCKLAND: I am grateful for what the noble Lord, Lord Brown, has said. The last thing we want to be is unreasonably restrictive about Clause 9. What was in my mind was that subsection (1) is difficult to understand and does not meet the substance of the Bill. Our Amendment pinpoints what are surely the two most important spheres in which to give protection from misleading advertisements, health and safety. But we are not necessarily committed to these two aspects only. I am sure that there is need for thought on all sides on this matter, and at this stage I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
7.32 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN LORD DRUMALBYN moved, in subsection (1), to leave out "or refer to". The noble Lord said: If it is permissible to speak on the group of Amendments Nos. 17 to 20 and No. 23, their purpose is to elicit from the Government the circumstances in which the Board of Trade think it appropriate for instructions to be given in advertisements. Once again we are in some difficulty because we do not know what is meant by "advertisement", and this is different from Clause 8. It is not uncommon for goods to be marked with instructions, such as "Store in a dry place", "Keep out of reach of children", and "Do not wash", but often the tags do not contain instructions and merely refer to where the instructions can be found.
It seems to me that advertisements are singularly inappropriate vehicles for instructions. I do not know whether "Consult your doctor" is an instruction. Surely it is a piece of advice. And I do not know whether "How to join the Armed Forces" in a Service advertisement, or the address to write to for information, are instructions. I cannot believe that orders would be made for the insertion of such instructions in advertisements. It seems such a remote contingency that it hardly seems worth an order. It would be sufficient to have a requirement to refer to instructions, which is what this group of Amendments seeks to do. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 31, leave out ("or refer to").(Lord Drumalbyn.)
LORD MITCHISON: I wonder whether the noble Lord has noticed that "advertisement" is widely used in the Bill. If he looks at Clause 37, he will find that it includes a catalogue, a circular and a price list, and I should have thought that there would certainly be cases where information could and should be put in one of these.
LORD DRUMALBYN: The noble Lord said "information", but information is not in question in this group of Amendments. It deals with instructions.
LORD MITCHISON: I quite agree with the noble Lord. I used the wrong word. I do not think that there is much difference in the case of fireworks, for
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example, for which there may be special legislation. I do not know. It is not the thing one carries in one's head. I see the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, nodding his head and I accept it from him.
LORD AUCKLAND: I am almost certain that that is the case.
LORD MITCHISON: Fireworks and other toys can be dangerous, and I should have thought that information should be given in catalogues, price lists and instructions on how to deal with the dangers. I think that instructions might be appropriate in what one narrowly and, may I add, commonly calls advertisements, but not, I think, in the context, of this Bill.
LORD BROWN: These Amendments would mean that, as regards instructions, the Board of Trade could require only a reference to instructions relating to the goods to be given in an advertisement, and not the instructions themselves. I cannot see that it would achieve anything except make the proposed power less effective in some circumstances.
I doubt whether we shall have another Bill dealing with this aspect of consumer protection for a long time—I am beginning to hope that we will not. Even though we are dealing to a large extent with examples which are hypothetical at this stage, in future years the need may arise, because of changes in society, to deal with these matters and powers would not be available. I will give some examples of hypothetical cases. It might be a good thing for advertisements for fireworks to say, "Do not hold in the hand when lit." It would be still dangerous to put that on the fireworks themselves, because they are used in the dark and the instruction would not be seen.
LORD STRABOLGI: Surely the place to exhibit that instruction is where the fireworks are bought. If it is put in advertisements, it is forgotten by the time people go to buy the fireworks.
LORD BROWN: That may well be. It may be desirable to put it on the box and on the fireworks, but that does not obviate the advisability of putting it in the advertisement in addition, to make more certain. Although on the previous clause we were not dealing with dangerous things, in this clause we are. It may

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be highly desirable. On a large range of goods it may become necessary to put into advertisements instructions about what to do to avoid something being dangerous to life and limb. We do not want to exclude the possibility of putting instructions of that sort into advertisements. However, we will use these powers only when it is in the interests of the public to do so. We in the Board of Trade do not want continually to be writing out orders for things of this sort to go into advertisements, but we do want the power to protect the public in this way if it becomes necessary, and we think we should be given it in this Bill, Therefore, I should be glad if the noble Lord would agree to withdraw the Amendment.
LORD DRUMALBYN: Having been at the Board of Trade, I am well aware that there are occasions on which one is pressed to do something and one has to say, with the greatest regret, that there is not the power to do it, although it is something very desirable. We do not want to withhold any powers that will be used, and in view of what the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, said, this could well be an occasion for giving the power to have an order of this kind in relation, for example, to a mail order catalogue, or something of that kind. Having, I think, exposed the limitations to which we should expect the powers to be used, I can safely ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES: Amendments Nos. 21 and 22 are pre-emptive as regards Nos. 23 and 24. If, therefore, either of the first two is agreed to, I shall not be able to call either of the others.
LORD DRUMALBYN: Would my noble friend Lord Auckland agree to discuss Amendment No. 22 at the same time as No. 21?
LORD AUCKLAND: Certainly.
7.44 p.m.
LORD AUCKLAND LORD AUCKLAND moved to leave out subsection (2). The noble Lord said: This Amendment confers on the Board of Trade powers which, desirable as they may be in theory, would, I should have thought in practice be virtually impossible to carry out. Paragraph 758 of the Molony Committee's Report is very clear
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on the subject of advertisements. The power given by subsection (2) of this clause, as I read it, enables the Board of Trade to instruct any advertiser, whether on television or radio, in a newspaper or journal, to specify what they say is to be specified. This could lead to tremendous difficulties. The average television commercial lasts for about five seconds. Are we to have compulsory powers to include regulations as to safety and so on, or anything that the Board of Trade lay down? It would make the advertisement over-long, and would be confusing to the consumer.
LORD STRABOLGI: I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, but may I suggest that we deal with television advertisements on Amendment No. 25? This is a particular problem, and an important one.
LORD AUCKLAND: Yes. I was quoting this only as an example: I was not going to deal exclusively with that particular aspect. What is quite evident, as I have said, is that nowadays products are very fast moving. We have all kinds of manufacturers developing new products, with new materials in them, and it will be difficult for any Government Department to keep up with these new products and to confer with every manufacturer or sales manager as to what these products are. Therefore, although I am rather inclined to leave it to the Amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, I feel that subsection (2) needs a good deal of re-thinking. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 39, leave out subsection (2).— (Lord Auckland.)
LORD DRUMALBYN LORD DRUMALBYN had given Notice of an Amendment to leave out subsection (2), and to insert instead:
"(2) Any information or reference to instructions under any order under the preceding subsection shall be given in such form and manner as to be clearly legible or audible."
The noble Lord said: Perhaps I may discuss this Amendment with that of Lord Auckland. The purpose of my Amendment is simply to say that any information or reference shall be given in such form and manner as to be "clearly Legible or audible". I imagine that this is very much what the Order would say.

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I well remember that when we were discussing the Hire-Purchase Bill at the end of 1963, when the Government of the day were under strong pressure to lay down detailed rules as to how the "cooling-off" period, for example, should be provided for in hire-purchase agreements, this was resisted, and a fairly general wording appeared in the Act instead. I should expect that the Board of Trade would not be too finnicky about this, and I should like an assurance from the noble Lord that it is not intended to prescribe in great detail the size, or, as my noble friend Lord Redesdale said, the actual type set, or anything like that.
I am not sure that my Amendment is not defective, in any case, because I think it is necessary to give the Board of Trade the power to make different provision for different circumstances, otherwise it might make things difficult for them. The purpose of putting down the Amendment was rather to get from the Board of Trade an assurance that they would not go into great detail in the requirements, but would specify their requirements as to form and manner broadly and in a way appropriate to the circumstances.
LORD STRABOLGI: I should like to support everything that the noble Lords, Lord Drumalbyn and Lord Auckland, have said. Arising out of what Lord Drumalbyn has said about the way these instructions will be carried out, I think it is most important that we should have an assurance from the Board of Trade about how they intend to impose them, and also that they will do so only after clear and full consultation. In fact, I have an Amendment down later on to deal with this particular point.
I am very concerned about this. I have seen some of the Food Labelling Regulations, which are at present in draft form and were drawn up without any consultation. They really are incredible. One contains a sentence which is 204 words long, and is almost incomprehensible. Discovering its meaning was described by some friends of mine as rather like breaking down a code after several hours of work. What they found it meant was something like this
"The height of the smallest letter shall not be less than one-quarter of the height of the largest letter; the height of the largest letter, other than an initial letter in such name, shall
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not be more than twice the height of the smallest letter in any word in any such name; the height of the letters in any word describing a minor ingredient shall not be such as to give undue prominence to such minor ingredient",
—and so it goes on. I hope the Board of Trade are not considering something of this kind, because it will make the work of advertisers absolutely impossible if the Board are to impose requirements like this.
Furthermore, I hope we shall have an assurance that these regulations will be written in simple and legible English so that they can be understood. Manufacturers and advertisers have not time to deal with this sort of thing as if it were a weekend "brain-teaser". It is no exaggeration to say that this particular schedule which I have in my hand is exactly like a puzzle of this kind. This wording in subsection (2) of the clause looks very innocuous, very harmless. I am sure that the Board of Trade, for whom we have the greatest admiration, have every intention of carrying it out with consultation and so on, but we should like full information from the Government on exactly what this subsection implies.
LORD REDESDALE: I am afraid that I was somewhat carried away on the previous Amendments. But I should like, if I may, to weary your Lordships for a moment longer about the question of the form. When, as the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, has said, how this information should be given is specified in such detail, it defeats its own object; and, instead of what we all hope, that the information would be clear, it would be just the reverse.
To come to this question of labelling, the face specified was gill sans, which is an old-fashioned face. I am sorry to weary your Lordships, but I want to show how silly this idea is. The eye travels along the top of the letters when reading, and a serif face assists the reading of this; and that is why most newspapers use a serif face. This is doing the opposite, and making it less legible. Therefore, I submit that if the form is specified it could defeat the object of this clause. If anything is to be said, it should be that the point should be clearly stated. Then it could

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be left to some sensible person to determine whether or not it had been clearly stated.
LORD MITCHISON: The noble Lord may be cautious in any assurances he may give. This is, after all, the power the Board of Trade badly want, and it will have to be exercised in very different circumstances. It may be rather hard to give the assurance that is apparently required. Moreover, I think it is the wrong way to do it. This is an optional power; you need not do it if you do not want to and do not think fit. And it is to be done by an Order, which will be subject to annulment. I should have thought it was very much better, if you find that what is being provided is unreasonable or inappropriate, to rely on the power of annulment under the Order.
One of your Lordships may say to me, "Yes, but ought this House to have any power of annulment under an Order?" We have it at the moment; let us take matters as they stand. But if we were to go further we should perhaps go into the question of whether it was right to take an assurance in this House, instead of a power of annulment which might be exercised in either House; and for the moment I would rather leave it at that. There it is. You have the choice, I suppose: either to take assurances, where there will be a rather variegated future in this not desperately important matter, or to rely on power to be put into the Bill, presumably for the sort of reason to annul this type of Order and other types of Order under the Bill.
LORD HAWKE: I am not sure whether I am reading the Bill correctly, and the noble Lord who has just sat down is a very eminent lawyer. But I cannot find anything in the clause to suggest that the type of Order he was talking about, which is a Parliamentary Order, subject to the Affirmative or Negative Resolution procedure, is the kind of order intended under this provision. I read "order" here as meaning an order to the firm to go about the advertisement in a certain way. And such an order would not be subject to Parliamentary control at all.
LORD MITCHISON: I think that if the noble Lord looks at subsection (1) of
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Clause 35 he will find the relevant matter.
LORD HAWKE: That brings me to another point. Be that as it may, this will entail a section or department of the Board of Trade considering what goods should have any extra information supplied in advertisements about them; and it will require another section of the Board of Trade to read all the advertisements to see whether they have failed to comply with the order. In fact, this is again a case of a very considerable num-per of persons being added to the Civil Service in order to do something which is not really necessary.
7.55 p.m.
LORD LEATHERLAND: I want to intervene just to deal with the perhaps subsidiary aspect of this matter posed by the noble Lord opposite. He seemed to champion serif types as distinct from sans serif types. He suggested that the serif types were probably clearer to read than the sans. It may be that I have written more newspaper banner headlines than any other noble Lord in this House, and I think it is a matter of established fact that in recent years the trend in the world of daily newspapers has been in the direction of sans. I think there is much greater clarity in the use of sans types. Otherwise, why would some of the most popular daily newspapers adopt them when they have to cater for a perhaps not highly erudite public, but a public who want to be able to see easily what they want to read? I think the trend to-day is all in the direction of sans, and those who favour serifs are back, not in the days of Caxton but in the days of the last century.
LORD REDESDALE: May I reply to the noble Lord? In fact a considerable amount of research has been done on this subject which it appears he has not read, but serif lower case is far easier to read than "caps"—
LORD LEATHERLAND: Yes.
LORD REDESDALE:—and it has been proved that serif face is also more legible. This has been done by research, and I could let the noble Lord have details of this information if he wishes.
LORD LEATHERLAND: I agree. Lower case is much more legible than

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"caps", and I am delighted to see that not only are newspaper chief subeditors converted to that point of view, but the signwriters and designers of the Ministry of Transport in their new road signs are converted to it. I agree completely. But if it is a fight between sans and serifs, put me on the side of sans.
LORD STRABOLGI: I do not want to get into typographical argument with my noble friend Lord Leatherland, as I know he knows so much more about the subject than I do. But, if I may say so with respect to the noble Lord, the whole point I was trying to put over was that the Ministry were going to insist that all food labelling throughout the country was in Gill Sans. This has nothing to do with the merit of Gill Sans, but I am sure the noble Lord will agree that it is highly undesirable that all food labelling should be done in the same type. That was the almost incredible suggestion that was being put forward. Fortunately, it has been "killed", as a result of strong protests from the food manufacturers.
The other point I was trying to make is that impositions of this kind, which are drawn up in back rooms with slide-rules, make it virtually impossible for designers to do their work properly. And one must remember that we are up against Continental competitors who are not fettered in this way. Indeed, I thought that an article recently in the Advertisers' Weekly of November 17 put it very well. It said:
"So astounding is their ignorance of the design factors involved in this proposed legislation that at one time they were considering imposing the laughable edict that all labels should be printed in Gill Sans. Can't you see the German, Japanese, Italian designers rolling over with grateful laughter as they launch their splendid packs on an increasingly design conscious world market."
The point I was trying to make is that I hope the Board of Trade are not intending to impose requirements of this kind on our designers—some of the finest designers in the world—who are working in the advertising industry, and that they will consult with those designers in order to see what can be done so that they do not stultify what is absolutely essential work, and work on which our economic stability depends.
LORD BROWN: I think I had better get in on this debate before we build up any more of these ghastly nightmares. The noble Lord, Lord Hawke, sees Board of Trade officers hunting for subjects on which to impose their Orders. Let me assure the noble Lord that as a Minister at the Board of Trade I have found it sometimes takes a great deal of effort on my part to get officers to apply themselves to drafting an Order in circumstances where I feel it to be highly appropriate. There is indeed a reluctance to use the legislation which is to hand until it is absolutely necessary to do so. The noble Lord, Lord Auckland, has pictured the difficulty of the Board of Trade keeping up with the change of products and of designs which emerge from industry. This postulates the theory that the Board of Trade will insist on every new product being the subject of an Order which describes them in newspaper advertisements. This is far from being the case.
We have had an extremely interesting debate about Gill Sans type, but this relates to other products under a different Order, and does not have much to do with this legislation. It is an example, which frightens me, of the possibility of that happening to somebody who has an interest in exports, but I think these fears are unfounded. We seek means of dealing with intolerable situations if they arise. We shall only use these powers where they can be shown to be absolutely essential in the interests of consumers, and only after consultation with those interests likely to be substantially affected. Moreover, as the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, has said, ultimate control rests with Parliament, before whom all Orders must be laid. I do not think that just requiring the information to be clearly legible, or audible, would inevitably and always be sufficient to ensure that it got across to the consumer. I do not want to go into the argument as to why that is so unless it is necessary, but with these assurances I hope your Lordships are satisfied to a sufficient extent to withdraw your support for these Amendments.
LORD SOMERS: I wonder whether the noble Lord could make one thing clear? This section is dealing with advertisements for the products. Does the label on the actual product itself constitute an

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advertisement for the purposes of this section?
LORD BROWN: I think I am right in saying quite decisively that it is a label and not an advertisement.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am sorry to impose this on the noble Lord, but I think it would be helpful to many people who think that my Amendment should be carried, at least so far as it goes—whether other words are added or not—and who think that it would be sufficient to require that the information should be given in such form or manner as for it to be clearly legible or audible. I think he owes it to the Committee to give some explanation as to why that would not be adequate.
LORD MITCHISON: With respect to my noble friend, and before he replies, does not the question of whether a label is an advertisement depend on what is on the label?
LORD BROWN: Somewhere in my papers I have a note on the subject. It arises under another Amendment with regard to wrappers around goods which are sold, but I think I am correct in saying that I am advised that even the wrappers are not-advertisements. I shall certainly look into this matter, and if I find anything to the contrary I will advise the Committee.
With regard to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, if one leaves it at what is legible or audible, one has the whole question of interpretation of what is meant by these words left in the hands of somebody who is possibly very anxious to see that they are inaudible or illegible, and one then gets into the process of definition. If one says to somebody who is anxious not to put information in, "It must be legible" and leaves it at that, has one any guarantee that in fact it will be legible? I think it must be left to the powers of the Board of Trade to specify the form in order to get round situations which may arise where you are dealing with people who wish to deceive.
LORD AIREDALE: I think there is a precedent for this being done. I seem to remember that in recent hire-purchase legislation an Amendment was moved from the Liberal Benches by the noble and learned Lord, Lord McNair, to make it appear specifically in the Act that cer
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tain documents which had to be supplied to prospective hire purchasers had to be printed in wording which was clearly legible. I forget the exact wording of the particular section of the Act, but I remember the occasion very well.
LORD DRUMALBYN: This is the matter that I referred to earlier. I wonder whether the noble Lord would be good enough to look this up, because as the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, will remember, the noble and learned Lord, Lord McNair, moved his Amendment, the Board of Trade took it away and redrafted it entirely, and the redrafted Amendment was acceptable to your Lordships. It might be worth while having a look at that section in the Hire-Purchase Act 1964.
LORD BROWN: I will certainly give an assurance that we will look at that section, and if there is something in it that will get over our difficulty we will take advantage of it. In the meantime, I shall be glad if the noble Lord can see fit to withdraw his Amendment.
LORD AUCKLAND: It is obvious that we have a lot of material to digest, and we shall have to read very carefully what the Minister has said in his replies to the various points which have been made. For the time being, at any rate, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
8.8 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I can move this Amendment quite shortly because I think the noble Lord has already said that the word "publishes" is intended to include the words, "or causes to be published". If that is so, I can withdraw this Amendment. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 44, at end insert ("or causes to be published").—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
LORD BROWN: I think I agree with the noble Lord. In this Bill the phrase "to publish" has the ordinary natural meaning, "to make generally known". The newspaper proprietor, television company or other medium owner in whose medium the advertisement appears publishes it, although in some circumstances he could have a defence under Clause 24. The advertiser himself also publishes it. He is usually the manufacturer or distributor to whose goods

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the advertisement relates. The word is used in a similar sense in Clause 35(3)(a) which refers to the Board of Trade publishing a notice. The advertising agency may sometimes, but not always, publish an advertisement. It would depend on the facts in a particular case. There are many cases in Statute Law where it is used in the same sense—for instance, in the Food and Drugs Act. I hope that comment satisfies the noble Lord.
LORD DRUMALBYN: The point here, quite obviously, is that in many cases the advertising agent actually publishes; the agent is in fact the principal and he places the advertisement and is responsible for payment. But the person who causes it to be published is the advertiser who has commissioned the advertising agent to do this on his behalf and pays him to do so; he has to pay for the advertisement ultimately. This is why the words proposed to be in-is why the words were proposed to be inserted. I understood the noble Lord to say earlier that the word "publishes" includes "causes to be published". If that is so, I do not need to pursue the Amendment.
LORD BROWN: That is so.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am much obliged. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
LORD STRABOLGI LORD STRABOLGI moved to add to the clause:
"( ) An order made under this section shall not relate to any advertisement transmitted on television or radio or exhibited on a cinematograph screen."
The noble Lord said: This Amendment seeks to exclude from the provisions of this clause a particular sector of advertising: by that I mean advertising on television, radio and on the cinema screen. This if, of course, a new form of advertising, particularly that transmitted on television, and I have put down this Amendment because I hope to convince your Lordships that it is virtually impossible to relate to this particular sector orders that might relate to Press and other advertising. In hoping that the Government will look with favour on this Amendment, I am rather encouraged by some words used by my
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noble friend Lord Brown on the Second Reading of this Bill, when he said:
"What might reasonably be satisfactory in a large advertisement in a newspaper might be wholly unacceptable in a brief television flash."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, col. 669, 14/11/67.]
With those words I wholly agree, and indeed the Molony Committee came to the same conclusion in paragraph 758 where they recommended that information of this kind should not be required to be given in television advertisements.
I think it must be recognised that advertisements of this kind do not, for the most part, give very much information about the product. What they do is to show the product in use in a particular setting. This might be a romantic or an exciting outdoor scene or a domestic interior with the family. Your Lordships are no doubt familiar with this type of advertising. There is also the humorous cartoon treatment. I would submit that to give extraneous information would give considerably undue weight and emphasis, out of all proportion to the intention. For that reason, I think it is going to be absolutely impossible to include additional information in this kind of advertising. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, would agree with me that anybody who Its worked on producing television commercials will know that in a 15-second commercial every word has to be weighed up—every single word—to ensure that it is the right one for its intention. The script is timed with a stop-watch, and if you have only a certain number of words, how are you suddenly going to be able to include another half-dozen or dozen words which give a completely different provenance to the intention of the commercial?
I have included radio because while we have not got commercial radio in England, Wales and Scotland, there is commercial radio, legal commercial radio, in the Isle of Man, run by Radio Manx, and very popular and successful it is. I imagine that after this Bill becomes law the Government will, with the advice and co-operation of the Manx Government, wish to extend the provisions of this clause to commercial radio, and I have included it for that reason. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 46, at end insert the said subsection.—(Lord Strabolgi.)
LORD PARGITER: I hope that my noble friend will not accept an Amendment of this kind in this form. There is no doubt that the most powerful form of advertising to-day is television advertising, and to tie the Board of Trade's hands so that in no circumstances can they interfere in that type of advertising would put them in an impossible position. I accept what my noble friend has said about the difficulties in short advertisements—flashes and so on—of dealing with words; but to say the Board of Trade shall not intervene would seem an impossible situation. One would hope and expect the Board of Trade to act with circumspection; it is not a matter of going out and seeking trouble. But it seems to me that, with these powerful mediums, it is important the Board of Trade should have some reserve power to deal with advertising of that kind.
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD: I also should like to speak against the Amendment and in support of what the noble Lord opposite has just said. Of course, there would need to be wisdom, discretion and understanding when dealing with the particular type of advertisement which goes on to television or radio, or on the cinema screen. But that it should be excluded from this particular part of the Bill seems to me to be quite wrong. As the noble Lord said, it is the most powerful form of advertising to-day, and the most valuable from the point of view of the advertisers, I believe. It is most important that whatever form of advertising is used it should fit into this Bill in a way in which it is under the same sort of scrutiny as any other advertising. I think it would be grossly unfair to leave it out altogether. From the consumer's point of view I would have said it was infinitely more persuasive and influential than the ordinary advertisement seen on hoardings or in the newspapers. I hope the Government will not accept the Amendment.
LORD LEATHERLAND: I should like to add my voice to those of my noble friend Lord Pargiter and the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood. I think this would be unfairly penalising newspapers. I have no direct interest in newspapers, although I have spent a great part of my life in them; but I know that the newspapers are suffering very
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considerably from the results of television advertising. At least £80 million a year is going into television advertising which would normally have gone into newspapers. Newpapers, as we know, are suffering; there is one newspaper after another disappearing from the scene, not only in London but in the Provinces. I think it is in the best interests of our democratic system of government that a free Press independently able to express its views should continue to exist in Britain, yet to-day its life is being sapped away day by day by the lure of television advertising.
If we are to establish a certain standard for advertising surely it must apply to television as well as to newspapers. It is very attractive to argue that in a 15-second flash you have not the opportunity to give all the explanatory details that you would give in a half-page advertisement in a newspaper. But there are quite a number of things in the television advertisements that could very well be cut out in order to provide the few seconds for this necessary information. What about the cat food "with thiamin"? Cut out the "with thiamin". which is a lot of "hooey" anyway, and let us have the facts required by the law here.
I do not object in the slightest to advertising being made more honest than it is to-day. A lot of this television advertising is not honest; it is putting a quick idea into people's heads and prompting them to draw a certain conclusion, without a single word of argument in support of that conclusion. Yet in newspaper advertisements one has to give that logical argument in order to make the point. As I say, there is no fair competition between television advertising, on the one hand, and newspaper advertising, on the other, if two laws are to be applied to this piece of legislation. It would be one law for the television and one law for the poor newspapers. I stand for the newspapers and I ask that they receive fair play.
8.21 p.m.
VISCOUNT ADDISON: I hope that the Government will not accept the Amendment. I cannot say that I fully agree with my noble friend Lord Leatherland, because it seems to me that a good many

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newspapers have at least a fairly considerable stake in television. I stand subject to correction on that, but I think I am right. The other point I should like to make on this particular issue is that I have seen more misleading advertisements on television than in any other form of advertising. If we come to think about it, there is no such thing as "whiter". This is a word which we have been educated to use over the last several years. A thing is either white or it is not white; it cannot be whiter. I feel that there should be some control of television advertising, quite apart from the operation of this section of the Bill. For this reason I hope that the Government will not support my noble friend Lord Strabolgi, with whom I nearly always agree. I am sorry that on this occasion I cannot do so.
LORD BROWN: I have listened carefully to the arguments advanced by my noble friend Lord Strabolgi, but I cannot see that they provide justification for excluding television, cinema and radio advertising. I do not propose to go over all the reasons that I have already given in dealing with another Amendment about the Board of Trade being expected to use these powers sensibly. Indeed, these orders would be subject to Parliamentary control. I think that the case has not been made out for excluding these extraordinarily powerful instruments of advertising and propaganda from the powers of the Board of Trade to make these orders, and I would ask your Lordships to reject the Amendment.
LORD REDESDALE: Before the noble Lord sits down may I remind him that all the way through his argument he seems to suggest that this is some terribly bogey that we are raising and it would never really happen. I should like to remind him that this has happened under the Act concerned with food labelling and an order has been published specifying these things. The noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, has been somewhat savagely attacked, I feel, all round, and I must just rise to his support in this way, over the difficulty of including all the information that might be required. I appreciate that if an order is written in a rather more reasonable way than the order in the Act concerned with food
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labelling, then it would be acceptable; but there are considerable problems about including information on short television flashes.
LORD BROWN: I wonder whether the frightening example quoted by my noble friend Lord Stabolgi, was the subject of consultation with the trade and is, in fact, the subject of an order to be laid before Parliament. If neither of these conditions applies then the example is not a good parallel to the powers in this Bill.
LORD STRABOLGI: I should like to thank my noble friend for his reply, and to thank all other noble Lords who have taken part in this short debate, especially the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, for his support. Before I withdraw the Amendment may I just say, in reply to my noble friend Lord Brown, that the question of the food labelling referred to again by the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, is an actual case. A draft order is coming before Parliament, and it refers to food labelling. The noble Lord and I used that as the type of example of the sort of thing that happens in regard to another measure, the Food and Drugs Act, where seemingly innocuous clauses were passed, with the result that regulations of the kind I have described are made.
LORD BROWN: May I ask my noble friend whether this order has yet gone through Parliament?
LORD STRABOLGI: No; it has not yet gone through. It was drafted without consultations; but eventually there were some rather belated consultations. I believe that it has now been considerably improved and is going through, eventually.
Now a word about television, radio and cinema commercials. As I say, this was merely a probing Amendment. I should like to say in reply to the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, that I did not wish to put this sector in a particularly privileged position. I fully concede that if certain information is to be given in advertising it should, in theory and in common justice, be included in this sector as well. The point I tried to put over was that it is virtually impossible to do so.
I agree fully with the noble Baroness, and I think with my noble friends behind

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me, when they stress the tremendous impact that this particular form of advertising has. It is for that reason, and because of this impact, that any extraneous information that is included in it will also have a tremendous impact, an impact out of all due proportion to what is intended and what is fair to the advertiser. Having said that, however, I realise that it is probably difficult to make an exception of this particular kind of advertising. I merely wanted to put the point over for the Record, and I hope that the Government will be most careful before they seek to include information of this particular kind. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
8.27 p.m.
LORD AUCKLAND: The purpose of this Amendment is to exclude from the provisions advertisements which put only the manufacturer's name and/or the brand name of goods. After all, these goods have been fully tested, and the mere fact that they have a brand name, and an approved brand name, should put them in a quite different category from goods in the experimental stage. For those reasons, I ask the Government to give consideration to this Amendment which I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
"( ) An order made under this section shall not relate to any advertisement which refers only to the name or names of any goods, the name and address of the person supplying or offering to supply those goods, or any combination thereof, with or without an illustration, or contains not more than one statement or slogan with or without any such reference."—(Lord Auckland.)
LORD STRABOLGI: I should like to support this Amendment, because it is the same kind of problem as we dealt with in the previous Amendment. I will not add any more to the strong case that the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, has made for advertisements of this kind. I hope that in his reply my noble friend will tell us how the Government propose to include extraneous information in advertisements of this kind which are limited only to the name or names of the goods and the supplier.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I hope that the noble Lord opposite will at least accept one Amendment in the course of
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to-day. I should think that this may be one that he can easily accept. It is quite patent that it would be utterly impossible to have an order in regard to goods of this description. That being so, he may as well exclude them from the Bill.
LORD PARGITER: The words in the Amendment
"contains not more than one statement"
can mean anything. It could be half a page in an advertisement. It is still one statement. I should like to be quite clear about what is intended by the words, "one statement".
LORD HAWKE: Before the noble Lord accepts the Amendment, can he tell us what it means? I cannot quite understand it.
LORD BROWN: I am not about to accept the Amendment. I think the responsibility for explaining the meaning of words which appear in an Amendment falls upon its proposer. I was waiting for the noble Lord to explain what he means by it.
LORD DRUMALBYN: In the context it is perfectly clear what is meant. We all know that in drafting Amendments of this kind the layman is at some disadvantage and this, I am afraid, was the best that I could do. But I did not intend by "one statement" a rambling statement which would cover half a page. I meant a statement or slogan. A statement would normally have a subject, a verb, and possibly even an object, where-as a slogan might not even have that.
LORD AIREDALE: An example of this sort of thing that comes to mind—and I hesitate to name a particular product, because I do not want to advertise—is the mythical product in the columns of Beachcomber called "Snibbo". One sees on railway stations and even in newspapers a single word in huge letters such as "Snibbo". It does not say it is a good product, a bad product or an indifferent product—it does not tell you what it is. It simply reminds you of the existence of a product which you have heard about. That sort of advertisement ought to be allowed to stand by itself without the Board of Trade being allowed to come along and say that in an advertisement of that kind you have to include a lot of subsidiary matter, because that

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would destroy the whole object of the exercise.
LORD HAWKE: Is the noble Lord quite sure "Snibbo" is the product? It refers also to the name and address of the manufacturers. If it says "Snibbo Smith & Sons" at the top, one does not usually show that sort of thing. What puzzles me is what form of advertisement this Amendment could apply to.
LORD LEATHERLAND: At first view I felt inclined to accept this Amendment where we have a simple statement like "Oxo gives man appeal"—whatever that may be. But when I went on to see that we should have an illustration and a slogan, I began to wonder whether that would make for honesty in advertising. What would be permissible in this case is the kind of advertisement which gives a picture of a brawny, Tarzan-like man saying, "You too can have a body like mine"; or a picture of a similarly proportioned young lady saying, "You too can have a bust like mine." Yet we are not really in our hearts convinced about the honesty of the claims made by the advertiser. So if this Amendment had been couched in terms which did not include an illustration but which might have included a slogan, it would have been acceptable. But that illustration gives great opportunity to a person who wishes to put across a slick advertisement which is not 100 per cent. in accordance with the truth.
LORD ILFORD: I should have thought that the advertisement which consists of one statement only which is best known to some of your Lordships is that "Guinness is good for you".
LORD DRUMALBYN: I had hoped that this Amendment was so clear as to what it was driving at that it was not necessary for me to spell it out. But obviously one is thinking of the so-called "give-away" stuff, like pencils and ashtrays and all the rest of it; then one has neon-lit advertisements, on which it would be absurd to require any information. Then one comes to an area which is a little more controversial, though not much more and that is the poster advertising which conveys a message by means of an illustration, coupled generally with a slogan and the name of the advertiser.
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These are the things I was aiming at. The Board of Trade would certainly not want to require information to be given in those circumstances. That being so, there is no possible reason why they should not accept an Amendment on these lines, even though they cannot accept this particular one.
LORD BROWN: It is not that we are in dispute in principle in the slightest here. It is that our anxieties are different. The anxieties of those who have proposed and supported this Amendment are on the basis that the Board of Trade might attempt to do something very stupid indeed. The anxieties of the Government are that by accepting this Amendment they might unwittingly—and we know that there are many ingenious people in our country—open up a loophole through which some of the effects of Clause 9 might be horribly undone. I do not want to be ungracious about this; it is getting late and this is the time to be tolerant. I will have a look at this matter. I want, however, to stress that the Government agree that there are cases where it would be wholly inappropriate, or even impracticable, to require information to be given, such as with a flashing sign in Piccadilly Circus. Of course, as to the idea of conveying information as in some of the examples given here tonight, it would be crazy to imagine that one could do it; but it is the way in which people would use the new-found liberty given them by some of these Amendments that must be explored. If the Amendment is withdrawn, I will have the matter looked at in this way.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am most grateful to the noble Lord. I certainly do not want to press it further. I was extremely relieved to hear that the Board of Trade were taking the same kind of view as they have always done on this kind of matter, and that they were even taking a view on what other Departments were about to do and possibly bringing a bit more sense into what they were proposing to do. Having received that undertaking from the noble Lord, I have great pleasure in withdrawing the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 9 agreed to.
Clause 10:
Provisions supplementary to Sections 8 and 9
10.—
(2) Where any requirements with respect to any goods are for the time being imposed by such an order and the Board of Trade are satisfied, on the representation of persons appearing to the Board to have a substantial interest in the matter, that greater hardship would be caused to such persons if the requirements continued to apply than is justified by the interest of persons to whom such goods are supplied, the power of the Board to relax or discontinue the requirements by a further order may be exercised without the consultation and notice required by section 35(3) of this Act.
LORD AIREDALE LORD AIREDALE moved to leave out subsection (2). The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No. 27, I should say that if Her Majesty's Government felt disposed to accept Amendment No. 28 standing in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Ilford, that would please me equally well, and I should then be only too willing to withdraw, or even not to move, Amendment No. 27. The purpose of No. 27 is as follows. It is an Amendment to Clause 10 which contains supplementary provisions. The subsection which I seek to amend is subsection (2), which refers at the end to Clause 35(3). Perhaps your Lordships would look briefly at that subsection, which says that the Board of Trade before making marking orders and the like shall consult with appropriate representative organisations and interests. But then when one turns to the subsection which I am now seeking to delete, subsection (2) of Clause 10, one finds that it says that if aggrieved persons come forward—I paraphrase here—and seek to persuade the Board of Trade that greater hardship than would be justified would be placed upon them by the order which the Board of Trade will have made after consultation, if the Board of Trade is satisfied about the complaint of the aggrieved person the Board shall have power to amend or abolish the order without the consultation and notice required by Clause 35(3).
So we get the situation that, after consultation with everybody who is interested, the Board of Trade make a marking order; then some aggrieved person, who may be a resourceful rascal, comes forward and puts up a story to
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the Board of Trade about the great hardship which is being caused to him—which may, of course, be totally untrue, bat he manages to hoodwink the Board of Trade—and the Board are given power specifically to undo the order without any further consultation with the people whom they had to consult before they made it. I am not suggesting that the Board of Trade are easily hoodwinked—I am sure they are not. But I am also sure that some resourceful rascal might succeed in hoodwinking them on some occasion, and the interested organisations who will have been denied their second consultation will become the aggrieved persons, because they may very well say in such a case, "If only there had been further consultation with us we could have shot that rascal's cock-and-bull story to pieces." It seems only appropriate, if the Board of Trade are to be told, "You have made a mistake in making this order and you ought to unmake it", that they should not have power to unmake it without, at least, having further consultation with the people whom they had to consult before they made the order in the first place. That is the purpose of the Amendment which I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 6, line 15, leave out subsection (2).— (Lord Airedale.)
LORD BROWN: I wonder whether I might start by pointing out that the subsection does not prevent the Board from consulting interested organisations. They might well wish to do so if time permitted. We have included this subsection because there may be cases where the Board would want urgently to relax or discontinue an order. For instance, circumstances may suddenly change, with the result that the existing requirements cause disproportionate hardship to a manufacturer or trader. New processes may be used which make compliance with the marking order impossible or unduly costly. For example, a prescribed method of marking electric light bulbs used for surgical purposes, which was appropriate to the type in use when the order was made, might, if a new method of manufacturing such bulbs were introduced, become

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quite inappropriate. If we did not have this subsection there would be a long delay—because consultation often takes a long time—while the Board went through the process of consultation and notice required by Clause 35(3), which would not really be necessary in the circumstances.
Everybody might be aching for the Board to get on with it to match the new circumstances, and we should be saying to them, "We are bound to go through the whole process because the law says so." Then they would say, "The law is an ass." I would point out that this subsection would not relieve the Board of Trade of the obligation in Clause 35(1) to lay before Parliament the order which relaxed or discontinued the existing requirements, when it would be subject to the Negative Resolution procedure. In the light of those explanations, which are easily overlooked when this matter is looked at from the negative aspect of somebody trying "to do other people down"—and I quite agree that cases such as the noble Lord has instanced could well arise—I would ask the noble Lord to rely on the Board of Trade to be watchful over such people and to use consultation if they are suspicious. But I want the Board of Trade to have the power to act quickly when technological change and matters of that kind make it urgently necessary—and those cases do arise.
LORD DRUMALBYN: Should I be right in interpreting the intention of the Board of Trade in this matter to be that they will in all cases carry out such consultation as is feasible in the circumstances, but that they do not want to be challenged on the vires of an order in circumstances such as apply in this case, if they have omitted to consult somebody whom they previously recognised as having an interest in the matter?
LORD BROWN: I should not like to commit the Board of Trade to consult when it was feasible: that would imply that whenever time permitted they should do so. Time might permit, but sometimes it might obviously be nonsense to do so. The circumstances of technological change sometimes make it quite clear that the order is completely inappropriate. So
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where there is doubt about interests affected, and that sort of thing, and it is feasible in terms of time to consult, I can confidently give the assurance that the Board of Trade will consult. It is only where it is obviously nonsense to consult, or not feasible to do so, that these powers will be used.
LORD AIREDALE: I am much obliged to the Minister for having so clearly put the other side of the argument, which of course I entirely appreciate. He is probably making rather heavy weather of the dreadful paraphernalia of consultation and of how lone it takes. I should have thought that when everybody was quite happy and agreed about a course of action, consultation need take hardly any time at all, and that even consultation on the telephone would be satisfactory in an appropriate case. However that may be, I think it was worth while to raise this matter. The noble Lord, Lord Ilford, is much more experienced than I in matters of this kind, and since his following Amendment has very much the same purpose I do not propose to do other than ask leave to withdraw mine, unless the noble Lord, Lord Ilford, is going to advise me not to do so. I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
8.47 p.m.
LORD ILFORD LORD ILFORD moved, in subsection (2), to leave out from "supplied" to the end of the subsection, and to insert:
"the Board may relax or discontinue the requirements by a further order after the consultation and notice required by section 35(3) of this Act".
The noble Lord said: The substance of this Amendment is substantially the same as that of the one moved by the noble Lord, Lord Airedale. The difference between us is that I put rather more emphasis on the consultation aspect than he does. He put great emphasis on the wider aspect of the Board of Trade's being able to relax or discontinue orders on the representations of an aggrieved person. I do not propose to say anything about that; the noble Lord has already put the point.
The answer of the noble Lord, Lord Brown, was that what the Board of Trade really want is the power to withdraw or relax or discontinue an order, upon

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the representations of a person who claims that he is experiencing special hardship. My Amendment leaves that in the Bill. That part of the clause will still be there. My Amendment would take out of the clause only the part that excuses consultation in that sort of case. It seems anomalous that if consultation is required before an order is made—as it is—no consultation is needed when the order is relaxed or discontinued. The persons interested might be just as much damaged by the order's being relaxed or discontinued, as by its being made. I should have thought it was necessary, if elaborate consultation was needed before an order was made, that similar consultation, or some consultation, should take place before it was withdrawn or relaxed.
I do not know that I can carry the matter much further. I listened with particular interest to the noble Lord, Lord Brown, and if he can suggest any way by which the consultation could be excused, in those cases where there is no time for consultation, then I shall be very glad to accept it. I do not think that consultation takes very long—after all, it is consultation with people in trade organisations; with local authorities who are also weights and measures authorities. Consultation with the executive body which will be responsible for carrying out the provisions of this Bill when it becomes an Act seems to me to be very desirable before an order is relaxed or discontinued. I hope the noble Lord will be able to suggest some way in which consultation can be reserved in those cases where urgency is not a factor in the situation. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 6, line 21, leave out from ("supplied") to end of line 24 and insert the said new words.—(Lord Ilford.)
LORD PARGITER: I should like to support what the noble Lord, Lord Ilford, has said. An association to which I belong, the County Councils Association, are very much concerned about this. They are obviously a body to be consulted with regard to many of the procedures under the Bill, and they take rather a dim view of the suggestion that they are consulted with regard to the making of an order but not with regard to its discontinuance. In certain circumstances, of course, I can accept what my noble friend has said, that there will be a degree of urgency
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about it. But one would assume that if an order is to be made there will also be a degree of urgency about making the order as well as about discontinuing it. This cuts both ways, whichever way one looks at it. I cannot conceive that there will be many cases where the matter is so urgent that there cannot be consultation. With regard to the revocation order, I am not quite sure about the extent to which this requires Parliamentary approval, but if it does require Parliamentary approval it seems to me that if a Minister is able to say that the appropriate bodies have been consulted, and have agreed to the discontinuance of the order, this will probably save time and the order will go through more quickly than it otherwise would.
LORD BROWN: The noble Lord, Lord Ilford, made the point that if consultation was necessary on the introduction of an order he felt that clearly it ought to be necessary on its relaxation or discontinuance. With great respect, I would rather put this the other way round. If, indeed, there has been extensive consultation with the persons concerned during the introduction of the order, then the Board of Trade will know a great deal more about the subject than if that consultation had not taken place; and if they are approached, possibly shortly afterwards, about some relaxation which has become necessary as a result of not perceiving some circumstance at the time of making the order, or some change, then it would appear (a) that this may sometimes be required to be made with great speed, and (b) that further consultation in these circumstances, when it has taken place so recently, would not be required. It is circumstances of this kind in which it is desired by the Government that the Board of Trade should retain their right not to consult.
As I have said, there is nothing in the order which prevents them from consulting; and one has to remember, in addition, that consultation may take a long time. I suppose that on occasions it can be done with some speed, although that has not been my experience. But, again, these relaxations have to go before Parliament, and that sometimes takes time. I think the view has been taken that it is dangerous to give the Board of Trade this power of non-consultation.

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I can only assure noble Lords that it is required to meet types of emergencies which do arise. It would be unwise, in the light of the circumstances I have described, to deprive them of this power, and I sincerely hope that the Amendment will be withdrawn.
LORD ILFORD: May I ask the noble Lord whether he is able to devise a form of words which would give effect to what he has just said?
LORD BROWN: With respect to the noble Lord, the Bill does that. I think the words the noble Lord used were, "Would it not be possible to devise clauses in this Bill which, while main-
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taining consultation in the normality of cases, would permit of non-consultation in situations of emergency? "This is precisely what the Bill does, and that is the intention of the Board of Trade in operating these clauses.
LORD ILFORD: I have no wish to press the noble Lord on this, and in the circumstances I ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 10 agreed to.
House resumed.
House adjourned at four minutes before nine o'clock.