§ [No. 15]
§ After Clause 18, insert the following new clause:
§ Recovery of expenses incurred by authority exercising default powers under orders made by virtue of Plant Health Act 1967.
".It is hereby declared that an order made or having effect under the Plant Health Act 1967 may contain provisions for requiring a person to pay to a competent authority or local authority for the purposes of that Act the cost to the authority of doing anything which that person has, in breach of a requirement imposed on him by or under the order, failed to do."
EARL FERRERSMy Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 15, and if I may I would speak to Amendment No. 28 as well. This simple new 851 clause makes no new provisions. Its purpose is to remove a doubt which was cast on a power in the Plant Health Act 1967 by the Select Committee on Statutory Instruments in another place. The clause serves to make it clear that Orders under this Act may empower local authorities to recover costs which they may incur in taking default action. Successive Ministers have believed the powers to be in the Act, but this is a consolidation of legislation going back nearly a century and its regulation-making powers are not so precisely expressed as in more modern legislation. This has left room for doubt which should be cleared up by this Amendment.
§ Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment.—(Earl Ferrers.)