HL Deb 15 November 1976 vol 377 cc990-2

8 Clause 4, page 3, line 38, leave out "in draft" and insert "and publish in accordance with the provisions of Schedule (Public Inquiries (Notices and Procedures)) to this Act,".

The Commons disagreed to this Amendment for the following Reason:

9 Because provision for a public inquiry procedure is unnecessary, the Deputy Speaker having cast his vote to retain the Bill in the form in which it left the Commons.

Lord ORAM

My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth not insist on their Amendment No. 8, to which the Commons have disagreed for the Reason numbered 9, and if I am in order I would move similarly in relation to Amendment No. 10 for the Reason numbered 12; Amendment No. 11 for the Reason numbered 12, and speak to those together.

My Lords, I believe that the House should not insist on these Amendments. In previous debates there has been some confusion about what the public inquiry procedure would achieve. The old Dock Labour Scheme specified to which work and to which premises the obligations and requirements of the Scheme would apply. The new Scheme is concerned only with specifying the obligations and requirements. Under this Bill the question of where the Scheme can be applied is to be determined, first, by the decision of what is a definite dock area and, second, by the procedures under Clauses 6, 7, 8 and 9 for determining in those areas whether or not classifiable work should be classified as dock work.

Under the 1946 Act employers and unions could put forward their own local scheme to apply to a port, and when introduced in 1946 it was thought that the Government would normally not interfere in such matters. In practice it has always been the Government which put forward the proposals for a scheme. We hope therefore that the House will recognise that there are important distinctions between what was envisaged under the 1946 Act and what is envisaged under the Bill. We are not opposed to public inquiries—indeed, there is a Government Amendment which indicates that—but we believe that the public inquiry is unnecessary in these particular circumstances.

Moved, That this House doth not insist on the said Amendment to which the Commons have disagreed for the Reason numbered 9.—(Lord Oram.)

The Earl of GOWRIE

My Lords, the last thing I would wish to do is to irritate the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, by rehearsing once more our debates of earlier stages about public inquiries. I would only say that when the noble Lord, Lord Oram, told us that the Commons disagreed with our Amendment he might also have pointed out that they so disagreed by the casting vote of the Speaker. I enjoyed listening to the noble Lord telling us that the Government do not, in principle, object to public inquiries. That is a somewhat different line from that taken by the Front Bench opposite at earlier stages of the Bill, but, as he pointed out, they have now accepted the principle in regard to the important question of the powers of extension of the Secretary of State, and with that we on these Benches, at any rate, are, for the moment, content.

On Question, Motion agreed to.