Orders of the Day — Contributory Pensions Bill.

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am ar 15 Gorffennaf 1925.

Danfonwch hysbysiad imi am ddadleuon fel hyn

Photo of Mr Neville Chamberlain Mr Neville Chamberlain , Birmingham, Ladywood

Regulations are not Orders, if he will allow me to direct attention to his own Amendment, which deals, not with Regulations, but with Orders. There are only two places in the Bill where Orders can be made. One is in Clause 17, where already the procedure which the hon. Member desires to adopt is laid down, and the other is in this Clause, which we are now discussing, and there is also an Amendment which I have put down to Clause 40, in which again the Minister may make an Order, and although these provisions are not therein inserted, I am quite prepared to put them in in that case. Now let us take this particular Clause with which we are dealing. The hon. Member says that this power was first put into the National Insurance Act, 1911, and ho does not want to take that as a precedent, because the Minister who introduced it was, I understood him to mean, capable of driving a coach and four through anything. But the hon. Member has not gone far enough back in his researches. This Clause started, not in 1911, but in 1888, and it is not only in the Local Government Act, 1888, and the National Insurance Act, 1911, but it is also in the Unemployment Insurance Acts.

Is it really anything to which any hon. Member need take exception? It is obvious that, in bringing into operation a scheme of this vast magnitude, which requires the setting up of new machinery, there may be difficulties which cannot be foreseen, and all that this Clause does is to allow the Minister to make modifications in the machinery and in the statutory requirements and matters of that kind to enable him to get the Act to start. I may point out that, as it is an emergency provision, the hon. Member's proposal would stultify the whole purpose of the Clause, and would make it impossible to do the very thing which it purports to do. Therefore, I hope I have convinced him that really we have taken, or are prepared to take all the measures that are necessary to see that Orders of a general character which are made by the Minister shall go through the full procedure that he has in mind, except this particular one, because if that procedure were adopted in this case, it would make it impossible to carry out the purpose for which this Clause is designed.