Part of Orders of the Day — Civic Restaurants Bill – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 31 March 1947.
Mr Charles Williams
, Torquay
12:00,
31 March 1947
This is a very curious Amendment. There is, first, the rather interesting provision that the Minister can say that he disagrees with the county council, which is the senior authority, and allow the district authority to act. As far as I understand the Amendment, that is the system that would apply to Scotland, although I do not think it applies to England. Scotland may accept it—that is their concern—but it is not a good thing to interfere in a general way with a senior authority, and to take away its powers and give them to a junior authority. To do that means that there will be piecemeal orders and rules in which sometimes it is a question of the county council and sometimes the junior authority, and that position is fundamentally wrong. One or other of the authorities, alone, should have the power to administer this Measure.
I am astonished by the fact that under this Amendment it is proposed to take away the powers in this respect of the Secretary of State to administer Scotland. I notice that the representatives of the Ministry of Food are present in full force, and that the Secretary of State for Scotland, who is at least as able a fighter as the Minister of Food in many ways, has been driven out of the field. I can only say that if I represented a Scottish Division, which I do not—for the very simple reason that I am much happier where I am—I should certainly oppose this Amendment tooth and nail, since under it the Secretary of State for Scotland loses power, and the Minister of Food gains power. I always imagined that Scotland was very anxious to keep its own administration as far as possible. This Amendment is another illustration of the way in which things are being concentrated quite needlessly in Whitehall, and power is being given to Whitehall which is completely unnecessary. I cannot conceive that anyone in London can really judge, between two Scottish authorities, which of the two is administering things in the right sense for a Scottish district. This Amendment shows how utterly the Ministry of Food are out of touch with the affairs of the country, and I regret that this sort of thing should be tried on Scotsmen.
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