Monopolies

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 24 February 1955.

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Photo of Mr George Darling Mr George Darling , Sheffield, Hillsborough 12:00, 24 February 1955

I do not want to go into that history. A fiction has grown up that the atheists, the Radicals, the Socialists, the Chartists, the first Communists and the Nonconformists and others who started the Co-operative movement were members of the Liberal Party. I assure the House that not all of them were.

I was very pleased, however, that the hon. Member for Huddersfield, West came out in favour of registration of trade agreements. Whether we agree or not with much that the President of the Board of Trade said about waiting for reports before taking action, here is something about which we do not need to wait at all. The question of registration has not been referred to the Monopolies Commission, and we shall not cut across the Commission if the Government go ahead with the proposal that all trade agreements should be registered. We should then see what the scope of these agreements are and how they operate. We should see the picture for the first time.

I was horrified when the hon. Member for Huddersfield, West made two suggestions almost in the same sentence. One was that representatives of the Monopolies Commission should attend the courts about which we have been complaining, and the other was the suggestion that we should have registration to find out how many courts there are. I think that the hon. Member would be shocked at the number. We do not know, because nobody has gone into the matter and there has not been a full investigation. It may be that the whole time not only of the members but also of the staff of the Commission would be taken up in attending these courts to see that there was fair play.