Part of Orders of the Day — Industrial Organisation Bill – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 25 July 1947.
Mr Oliver Lyttelton
, Aldershot
12:00,
25 July 1947
Again, I thank the President of the Board of Trade.For having made us easy on this point. That was not so easy to do as it appears at first sight. The difficulty about protecting trade secrets was that if there was unlimited power by industrialists to say that any process was secret they would find it in their power to prevent the operation of necessary parts of this Bill acting. At the same time, it must be recognised that there are processes, perhaps not covered by patents or by what the Americans call "know-how," which it would be very embarrassing for a manufacturer to have to disclose even to a development council especially when that council, in the nature of things must have Independent members on it from other industries. Therefore, my suggestion was that if we left it in the ultimate power of the Minister to decide whether the information regarding a secret process was to be asked for, then we would get as near satisfying the apprehensions that we have on this side of the House as is possible. I think this carries out that undertaking which was given during the Committee stage and we welcome it for that reason.
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