Clause 26 - Determination without a hearing
Employment Bill
6:45 pm
Mr Philip Hammond (Runnymede and Weybridge, Conservative)
The Minister says that he has been in this Room, but as he will have observed today, one picks up all sorts of useful expressions when stuck in this Room for a day or two.
What the Minister said was interesting. It is a pity that he did not put it in the explanatory notes, which on clause 36 clearly state:
''It is intended that the circumstances in which a case may be determined in this way would be where both parties have given their consent, by signing a form waiving their rights to an oral public hearing, following independent advice.''
The Minister has conveyed a new piece of information by telling us that there is another set of circumstances. I am not suggesting that that is the thin end of the wedge and that it could lead to the abolition of all tribunals, but the Minister must recognise the logic that the proposal gives the Government total discretion. If the Minister has slightly broadened the finely defined scope of the circumstances that will be defined in regulations, my amendment will have achieved its aim.
I am glad that I tabled the amendment because, without it, I would not have discovered that the Minister intended to address the point raised by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West about the situation in which the applicant or the respondent has, in the phrase that will become synonymous with the Bill, ''done a runner''.
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 26 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Further consideration adjourned.—[Mr. Pearson.]
Adjourned accordingly at three minutes to Seven o'clock till Thursday 13 December at half-past Nine o'clock.