I should not like to mar the harmony of this occasion by entering into any controversy with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede). I am to a certain extent in agreement and to a certain extent in disagreement with what he has said.

In the first instance, I should like to reinforce what has been said by other hon. Members about the great importance of not interfering with private Members' time and private Members' rights. I have had some pleasing and some not so pleasing experiences of Private Members' Bills through being responsible for one myself and through having had to deal with a number of complicated matters at short notice on a Friday. I should be the last person in the world to want to support any unnecessary interference with those rights.

I did not quite agree with the right hon. Gentleman when he said that he thought that we had to end with a desirable thing, or an undesirable thing—the horror comics Bill. I should have thought that it might have been said that a suitable Bill to end these proceedings just before a General Election would be the Slaughter of Animals Bill, because that might possibly have certain other applications in the course of the next few weeks. But there it is.

There are various matters which we would have liked to have proceeded with, and I am sure that we all agree with the right hon. Gentleman, and on this side of the House we are grateful to him for taking such a statesmanlike view and for not taking advantage of this opportunity to make political capital out of what he recognises to be a very proper, desirable and commendable Parliamentary procedure.

I did not understand him to have any violent objections to paragraph (b), and I think that in the circumstances it will be agreed that it is a quite sensible provision. With regard to paragraph (c), I find it a little difficult to follow what the right hon. Gentleman was concerned about, because he seemed to think that there might be some difficulty in putting down Amendments. But, after all, it would be simple for the right hon. Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Gaitskell) to put down an Amendment to Clause 1 of the proposed Finance Bill whereby Income Tax should be charged not at the standard rate of 8s. 6d. but at the standard rate of 9s. 6d. No doubt, he would have plenty of opportunity of raising the question.