Clause 4 - Statutory adoption pay
Employment Bill
5:15 pm
Mr Philip Hammond (Runnymede and Weybridge, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 164, in page 19, line 5, leave out first 'of'.
This is an important amendment. During my days working the health brief, I always found that I could help Ministers to find a place in a Bill for an amendment—an uncontroversial amendment—to which they could agree. I thought that I had found one in this Bill, and I have tabled a later amendment adding a comma, which is a necessary comma. Sadly, I have been advised that amendments that add punctuation are no longer selected. That was not the
case in the good, old days because I remember substantive debates with the then Minister of State, Department of Health—now the Minister for Police, Courts and Drugs—on the insertion of punctuation. The right hon. Gentleman had to concede that the Health Act 1999 was fairly short on punctuation and deficient in a number of other respects, and we were able to do something about that.
The definition in new section 171ZS simply has one ''of'' too many. Instead of stating that ''the Board'' means the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, it states that
'''the Board' means of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue''.
I therefore invite the Minister to score a first by accepting an Opposition amendment.