HL Deb 02 July 1976 vol 372 c983

1.10 p.m.

Lord ORAM

My Lords, in view of representations which have been made to me this morning, I do not propose to move the Consumer Transactions Order or the Mail Order Transactions (Information) Order, both of which stand in my name on the Order Paper. I must sincerely apologise to any noble Lord who has come here specially for this business, but in the circumstances I feel that it would be better if this matter were left to another day.

Lord ELTON

My Lords, in so far as those representations emanated from myself and my noble friends we welcome the withdrawal of these orders for further consideration, and we wish to join in apologising to noble Lords who may be inconvenienced by the fact that we were not able to advance the representations in sufficient strength and in sufficient time to enable the noble Lord to give notice of his withdrawal.

Lord DRUMALBYN

My Lords, my noble friend on the Front Bench and I shared the view that we should like the two orders withdrawn, anyway after debate. As the noble Lord is now withdrawing them before debate he is saving the time of the House, and so we can easily forgive him for our being brought here today. We thank him for the apology he made, which we readily accept. We hope that when the representations have been considered as well as, possibly, other representations from other sources, we shall get rather better orders than those now laid before us.