Clause 32 - Meaning of ''permit scheme''
Traffic Management Bill
4:45 pm
Mr Tony McNulty (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Transport; Harrow East, Labour)
Far be it for me, as hon. Members have probably discerned today, to jump to the defence of lawyers or the gobbledegook that we sometimes have to deal with. However, the subsection makes sense if it is read properly, so I shall jump to the lawyers' defence and resist amendment No. 185. The commas do it all, so the subsection can be read as,
''In this section ''specified'' means specified . . . in a permit scheme'',
or,
''In this section ''specified'' means . . . a description specified in a permit scheme.''
That makes perfect sense to me. Perhaps I am turning into a lawyer because I have sat on too many Committees. The alternative would be to have to say, ''specified in a permit scheme'' again and again whenever parts 1 and 2 said ''specified''. It is clumsy, I grant you. At best, I cheerfully accept that it is middle English, or Germanic grammar rather than English grammar, but it makes sense once one reads the whole subsection.