COMMONS AMENDMENTS (Hansard, 19 May 1970)

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR

My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in then-Amendment No. 1 and, if no noble Lord objects, No. 2 also. I only wish that I could move that "this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 1 to 67". Unfortunately, that cannot be done because I have a responsibility, as anyone in charge of a Bill has, to explain to all Members of this House what the Amendments are which the other place have made; since any Member of this House is entitled to object to any of those Amendments. I suppose also that those who read the Report of the proceedings of this House are entitled, when a Bill comes back from the other place to this House, to see from what is said in this House what 992 Amendments have been made in the other place. I shall be as short as I can. Unfortunately it is my duty to explain each of these Amendments, and I shall not be surprised if by the end there is hardly anybody left in the Chamber.

The first six Amendments relate to the organisation of the Supreme Court, and the point of the first two Amendments is this. Your Lordships may remember that the heads of the Queen's Bench Division, the Court of Appeal, the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division have special titles. This has never applied to the Chancery Division, probably because the Lord Chancellor is, at least nominally, the President of that Division. We used to call him the "Senior Judge". I explained when the Bill was before the House the difficulties to which that gave rise and, accordingly, it was decided to resurrect the old and respectable title of "Vice-Chancellor" for the judge who controls the administration of that Division. In the other place, it was pointed out by the Opposition that an Order in Council can be made reducing or increasing the number of Divisions of the High Court and the distribution of puisne judges between them, provided that this was originally on a report or recommendation of the Council of Judges and now on the recommendation of the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Chief Justice, the Master of the Rolls and the President of the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division. It was pointed out that the Vice-Chancellor should be added, and the Government agreed. The rate at which such Orders in Council are made is at present running at one every 100 years; so it is not an enormously important point, but the Opposition were technically right in proposing this Amendment.