Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am ar 25 Gorffennaf 1922.
With great respect, my hon. Friend must allow me to answer the point I was dealing with. This rests entirely on the sale of a station. If the hon. Gentleman will take the trouble to look at Section 12, paragraph (b), he will find it says that the authority shall not supply electricity
in any part of the area of supply of a power company for which the company are therein authorised to supply electricity without the consent of the company except to the precious owner of a generating station"—
these are the material words—
which has been transferred to the joint electricity authority.
The whole basis of chit Clause, and of Clause 15, and of the new Clause, is that the authority has voluntarily sold its station to the joint electricity authority, and having done that, I pat again to the hon. Gentleman the question: Does he suggest for a moment there is any local authority in the land which would sell its generating station to a joint electricity authority if thereby its district was to be cut off from being supplied from that station? The matter really only needs to be stated for it to be realised that the hon. Member's fears are groundless. Under these circumstances what is happening? The Municipal Corporations Association have approved of these words. My new Clause, which is designed to alleviate any fears they might entertain on the subject, provides that the Commissioners may, when they are marking out their area of supply exclude altogether from the area of supply the power company of the district which is served by a generating station which has been transferred to the
joint electricity authority, and they may do it on such terms and conditions as they think right, their action being subject to Parliamentary control. Under these circumstances, what becomes of the idea that this is intended to give some extraordinary right to the power company, and that we ought not to consider the interests of the people who have invested many millions—I think the hon. Member put the amount at £30,000,000—in these undertakings. What becomes of the idea that we ought to say to these people, "Your statutory rights upon which you have invited subscriptions of public money are nothing and are to be ignored." If that is the hon. Member's view I doubt if he will find any other hon. Member of the House to support him in that view.