Clause 1. — (Appointment and Functions of Registrar.)

Part of Orders of the Day — Restrictive Trade Practices Bill – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 11 April 1956.

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Photo of Hon. Lancelot Joynson-Hicks Hon. Lancelot Joynson-Hicks , Chichester 12:00, 11 April 1956

On all sides of the Committee there is considerable agreement that it would not be fair for Parliament, in initiating this new procedure, to become divorced from its responsibility by not having someone on the Government Treasury Bench responsible for answering for the Registrar. To that extent I agree with the hon. Lady the Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle). From that point I depart entirely from everything she has said. She has completely misconceived the object of the Registrar and the general approach of the Bill towards the registration of restrictive trade practices. I do not propose to pursue the line of argument which she put before the Committee.

I should like to pursue the line of argument advanced by my hon. Friend the Member for Middleton and Prestwich (Sir J. Barlow). He and I have views in exceedingly close accord, and, in fact, I will adopt and accept all his arguments save one. That one is that the Attorney-General is the proper Minister to have the responsibility of appointing the Registrar. There is not a great deal of practical difference between my hon. Friend's view and my own, because if my proposal, that the Lord Chancellor should be the Minister responsible for the appointment, is accepted, the Attorney-General, as his spokesman in this House, will still be responsible for answering Questions about it, should any Question be put down.

The important point, as was stressed by my hon. Friend, is that the Registrar himself must be not only independent, but must be seen to be and recognised by industry as a whole to be independent. If he is an appointee of the Attorney-General, I greatly fear that that recognition of his independence will not be apparent to industry as a whole. To take but one instance it is the Registrar who is required to instruct the Attorney-General's nominees about matters which appear before the Court, and to prepare and present the case before the Court.

If the appointee of the Attorney-General instructs the nominees of the Attorney-General, there is a considerable chance that the public will come to the conclusion that it is the Attorney-General himself who is doing what is being done. That is undesirable, and the Registrar would be placed in what would become the invidious position of being confused with the advocate who is to lay the matters before the Court. To take a simple example; every hon. Member is exceedingly anxious that there should be no question of an appearance on behalf of the Registrar being in the nature of a prosecution.

The duty of counsel is to lay facts before the Court fairly and squarely for all the parties who are represented. It is not his duty to take sides. But if—and I say only if—a nominee of the Attorney-General who was appearing as an advocate were to slide into the position of being a prosecutor, then inevitably the Registrar, if he was responsible to the Attorney-General would be tarred with the same brush. I see no reason why that risk should be run.

I therefore consider that it is essential that we should get the responsibility for the Registrar away from the Attorney-General if we are to do what I think is universally desired to preserve the Registrar's independence and the semblance of his independence as well. The Government themselves have recognised that need in the way in which they have drafted the Bill. They have inserted in the Bill the provision that the Registrar shall be appointed by Her Majesty, than which nothing could be more calculated to ensure the recognition of his independence.

However, we cannot do that, because, as I have said, this is an entirely new venture. Parliament is setting up not only a new procedure, but a new Court and a new approach towards the whole of the inquiry into this kind of business. Having set up the machinery, Parliament cannot possibly divorce itself from all responsibility. Accordingly, we must have available to the House a Minister who can accept responsibility to Parliament.

The question is, who is the appropriate Minister? I do not concur with my hon. Friend that it is the Attorney-General, for the reasons I have given. I certainly cannot agree with the hon. Lady that it is the President of the Board of Trade. That would inevitably be calculated to introduce the worst possible relations between industry and that Government Department. The third and last suggestion is the Lord Chancellor. That suggestion is contained in an Amendment which I hope to have the opportunity of moving later.

The Lord Chancellor may well be regarded as an unusual person for this purpose, but he already plays a very big part in the Bill. He is a desirable person to have the responsibility for this officer. The Lord Chancellor nominates the English judges to their appointments. He recommends to Her Majesty the other members who are to form the Court with the judges; he removes those other members; he appoints the officers and the servants of the Court; he determines the fees of the Court and he makes the rules of the Court.

He therefore already has a very substantial part indeed to play in the existing organisation. If the Registrar can also come under his wing, so to speak, he will not only have the dignity, which he ought to have, of being comparable to the judges of the Court who are appointed by the Lord Chancellor, but he will also gain benefit by that degree of independence which the Lord Chancellor always sheds upon all the appointments which he makes. For those reasons the Registrar should be and, in fact, must be responsible to the Lord Chancellor and therefore appointed by him.