Part of Orders of the Day — Factories Bill. – in the House of Commons am ar 16 Mehefin 1937.
I think a certain amount of misconception underlies some of the arguments used in support of the Amendment. I would like the House to know that there is no question in this Clause of determining which officer of the district council or local authority is to perform certain duties relating to inspection. It is not that at all. The purpose of the Clause, or of the Sub-section to which this Amendment is proposed, is to transfer to a named officer of the local authorities certain powers which, under the amending scheme of factory legislation, are specifically conferred on the inspector. The powers in question, if one looks back from Clause 8 to previous Clauses, are powers of a special character. They are four in number—the power to approve certain methods of cleaning under Clause 1 (c), the power to require whitewashing in certain small factories in the proviso of Clause 1, the power to require mechanical ventilation under Clause 2, and the power to require the posting of notices in a workroom, under Clause 2. Those are the powers with which this particular Amendment is alone concerned, and the effect, as the Bill as drawn, is to say that these particular administrative actions which, in the case of an ordinary factory depend upon the discretion of a factory inspector, shall be exercised in the case of the factory which is under the control of the district council by the medical officer of health. Therefore, it is not a question of assigning to one officer or another the general duty of inspecting sanitary conveniences and that sort of thing, but of transferring from the factory inspector to the medical officer of health four specific administrative powers.