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 Mr Derek Walker-Smith Mr Derek Walker-Smith , Hertfordshire East 12:00, 11 April 1956

This illustrates the inconvenience of taking the argument out of its logical sequence in response to the interventions of hon. Members opposite.

What the Clause does is, first, to place upon the Registrar a statutory duty to initiate or take proceedings before the Court in respect of the agreements of which the particulars are filed in the register. His duty in that regard is governed at any particular time by any direction he may receive from the Board of Trade as to the order of those proceedings. There is nothing sinister about the desire of the Board of Trade to have power to give directions. It is obviously necessary and useful that, more particularly in the early stages of these proceedings, there should be that power.

To take the most obvious instance, it would obviously be desirable in the early stages of this jurisdiction to have machinery to secure that an appropriate representative selection of cases reached the courts first, with the object of dealing first with the matters of prime public importance and also of seeking to establish a helpful corpus of case law. That is the primary reason for the power to give directions as to orders. If the second Amendment were carried—I hope that it will not be pressed, but if it were carried and that power were omitted it would no longer be open to the Board of Trade to give those directions and so establish that useful course of proceedings.

7.30 p.m.

It is, of course, true that even if that power were not vested in the Board of Trade it might, in theory, be possible for the Registrar himself to arrange his list—if I may use that term—on that same principle, but I think the Committee will readily apprehend and agree that, certainly in the early stages of this matter, the Board of Trade is more likely to have the knowledge to enable it to do this by these directions than will the Registrar in the early phase of his conduct of his important duties. That is why the power of direction is there but, subject to that, in principle, all registered agreements will, in due course, come for judicial examination on the initiative of the Registrar.