COMMONS AMENDMENT (Hansard, 22 July 1991)

§ The Lord Chancellor
My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 51. With this amendment I wish to take Amendments Nos. 102, 110, 111, 128 and 129. These amendments provide for the creation of a chief and other child support commissioners for Northern Ireland to mirror the arrangements for Great Britain. I commend the amendments to the House. I believe it is right that we should make a provision for Northern Ireland in respect of these appeals.

§ Lord Renton
My Lords, I am sure that all of your Lordships will agree about the substance of the amendments. I am glad to say that the amendments to the schedule, being amendments of previous legislation affecting Northern Ireland, like other amendments to the schedule which we have already dealt with, are done by textual method. But there is one paragraph in Amendment No. 128 which inserts a new paragraph 8 into Schedule 4 which is done by the non-textual method.
For the sake of the record, I point out that it reads: (a) for any reference to a Child Support Commissioner (however expressed) there were substituted a corresponding reference to a Child Support Commissioner for Northern Ireland". In the existing legislation presumably there are not many references to the child support commissioner. One would hope that the textual amendments would be made instead of just stating it in this way. Of course my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor has a responsibility with regard to statutes in force, which are much more easily and better compiled from the 532 point of view of the user if textual amendment is always made instead of there being non-textual references.
I hope that my noble and learned friend will be able to deal with that. It may be that expressing it in this way is an instruction to the editors of Statutes in Force that they shall do the textual amendment. But at any rate it is an important point that should be dealt with.

§ The Lord Chancellor
My Lords, so far as this is concerned what we are doing is adapting the provisions of Schedule 4 to the Bill to the fact that we are seeking to appoint distinct commissioners for Northern Ireland. Therefore, it is right that Schedule 4 of the Bill should be modified by this provision.
Perhaps I have to make an occasional deviation from the principle of textual amendment, which I support as a way of doing it, but this is a different point. This is modification of a schedule to the Bill so that in its application to Northern Ireland it will have this effect. Therefore the whole schedule would be printed. If we were printing only for Northern Ireland it might be thought right to put in the Northern Irish provisions, but the modification that we are making here is a modification of this Bill, not a modification of another enactment.

§ Lord Renton
My Lords, I thank my noble and learned friend for that explanation. If we had not been so rushed and had had some opportunity for refreshment I might not have made that point.

§ The Lord Chancellor
My Lords, it is a particular privilege and refreshment to me that I am able to enlighten the noble Lord as we go through the provisions. I am very grateful to him.