The hon. Member for Sowerby's criticism of the Bill—and he came to the Bill after a long preliminary disposition of other topics—seemed mainly to concern its ancestry. It was on that point only that he seemed to criticise it. He did not like its ancestry, although he did not criticise the Measure itself. Nor did he criticise any of its Clauses, most of which he welcomed and many of which he thought should be strengthened.

We have not during the course of the debate had any discussion of some of what I hope the House will regard as the legal improvements in the machinery of the Bill. Clause 8(1), for example, has made what I hope hon. Members will regard as a slight improvement in respect of notices, orders or directions issued for the purposes of the Measure.

There are a number of Clauses where the rights of the citizen can be affected by the issue of a notice regarding an order or direction. Under the previous provisions no more was required than that it should be by ordinary post, but under Clause 8(1) it is now provided that such a notice, order or direction is deemed to have been served on the person only if it has been delivered personally or sent by registered post or recorded delivery service. If, however, it should happen that it can be proved that effective service has been made by ordinary post, and that the notice has been received, that will still be a sufficient service. The question of the service of a notice is a matter of some importance and I hope that the House will consider this to have been some improvement.

It is also worth noting that under Schedule 1 there is, first, no legal power to require the keeping of records and, again, a Government Department can no longer authorise any person to inspect or search any premises for the purposes of the Measure. It will be only on a warrant issued by a justice of the peace that a search can now be authorised. The powers contained in Schedule 1 are similar to those which were given to the Board of Trade by the Protection of Depositors Act, 1963, and are drawn only in relation to the obtaining of information for the purposes of the Bill.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Darwen (Mr. Fletcher-Cooke) objected to the omnium gatherum process used in the Bill. This is a problem. It was considered and it was a difficult choice. The alternative was to have a mass of small Bills, some of them dealing with very small points and some merely amending other legislation to a small degree. This might have caused a greater inconvenience to the practitioner and, certainly from the point of view of Parliament, would have taken a great deal more time, for we would have had to attach to each Bill some of the ancillary and procedural matters dealt with generally in this Bill. It is a question of choice and I hope that the House will consider that, on the whole, it was more convenient to deal with these matters in this way rather than to present a series of small Bills, each with ancillary provisions which would have been very similar to each other.

The principal topic of discussion has been jute and Dundee. The jute industry is relevant to the powers of the Bill, but the geographical conditions and intercommunications of Dundee are less relevant, although of great importance. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. G. M. Thomson) for the tribute he paid to the efforts the Government have been making to diversify industry in Dundee and I am sure that all hon. Members agree that this is an essential matter for the future of the people who live and work in Dundee.

The Government realise the importance of diversification for Dundee, along with the great importance of the jute industry to that city, as well as to its future. As has been said, a working party is investigating the problem. I am not in a position to give any assurances of the kind sought, concerning what the Government will do, but, speaking generally, it must be obvious that what is to happen to the jute industry and what decisions the Government will take about it will depend on the results of that working party, although it would be wrong, before its report has been received, to start to give any indications about what conclusions the Government might come to about the future of the jute industry.

Meantime, the Bill provides the powers to continue the present system of the protection of the Trade. They are available for the following five years and can be extended beyond that, if necessary. From that point of view the relevance of the Bill is that the present system of protection for the jute industry can be continued.

There are two alternative methods of protecting the industry. The first method is of State trading, which permits the jute controller to add a mark-up on imported jute goods to keep home-made goods on the market and, secondly, to provide protection by way of tariffs. We retain the State-trading method and, as I have said, we are seeing, by means of the working party, what is the best way of proceeding in future.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for South Angus (Sir J. Duncan) for his contribution and his questions about what is meant by vague phrases like "economic power of the State" and "publicly-owned industry" when those generalities are applied to the reality of an industry which is carrying on business and employing 1,700 people in specialised, localised conditions, in competition with many other products of a different nature.