Clause1. — (Avoidance of Conditions for Maintaining Resale Prices.)

Part of Resale Prices Bill – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 23 March 1964.

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Photo of Mr Reginald Paget Mr Reginald Paget , Northampton 12:00, 23 March 1964

I said that this was a doctrinaire Bill. The right hon. Gentleman committed himself to a doctrine which he said did not admit of compromise, but he has had to bring forward Amendments the purpose of which is to pretend that a compromise has been made. What have these Amendments done to save the situation of people who were being injured by the Bill? I will quote from the hon. and gallant Member for Buckingham (Sir F. Markham), who became a great hero in his constituency and who had the headlines in the Press on three days for the gallantry of his actions. He said, At the last election, many of us throughout the land could give pledges to some of our most earnest workers and keenest questioners that the Tory Party would not interfere with resale price maintenance. We could do that on the authority not only of the Lloyd Jacob Report but of speeches in the House of Commons by men of the distinction of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith) and my right hon. Friend who is now Minister of Defence. Those were pledges given by hon. Members opposite. They were not that the Board of Trade might have some influence on the order in which agreements which they were pledged to preserve, but which are now declared to be illegal, might be considered for re-legalising. That was not the complaint that was being made.

The hon. Gentleman went on to say: This Bill strikes at the little man. It eases him out because, as the Secretary of State has said, the little man somehow or other is redundant in the Secretary of State's pattern of what the future should be."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 10th March, 1964; Vol. 691, c. 354–6.] Those are the pledges that the rebels have made in their constituencies. Those are the pledges they have made to their chambers of trade. Are they now to tell us, "Oh, we've got a compromise, an honourable arrangement"—let them call it what they will—"with the Secretary of State that saves the position"?

If that is so, will they tell us what is the fundamental change in this Bill that has altered the position of these people whom these rebels are pledged to stand by? These Amendments are not changes in substance. There is a sort of papal dispensation for the perjury of the rebels who, having pledged themselves to the interests of their constituents, now want to escape from their undertakings.

I have one very fundamental objection to this whole type of procedure. I believe profoundly in the independence of the law in our constitution. There is nothing worse than to bring judges into political decisions—not only because I think that they are not very good at political decisions but because it undermines their authority, their independence, the sanctity, if I may so term it, of their position when they are dealing with questions that really are their business. For Governments, whenever they are in difficulty, whether it be because of a scandal or whatever the cause, to try to escape from their difficulties by calling in aid the reputation of a judge is to degrade the judge and the judicial system.

Here, we are passing to the judges decisions of a purely political nature so that the Government can escape responsibility for them. It is the business of the right hon. Gentleman, as Secretary of State in charge of that Department, to decide where the public interest lies. The question of where the public interest lies is essentially a political question, it is one for which Government should take responsibility and for which Government should answer in this House.

5.45 p.m.

The matters set out in Clause 5(2) are purely political questions, not questions of facts. They are estimates of what may happen in the future; estimates of whether …the quality of the goods…would be substantially reduced to the detriment of the public… or …the number of establishments in which the goods are sold by retail would be substantially reduced… or whether services provided would cease or be reduced or whether the …the resulting detriment would outweigh any detriment to the public as consumers… These are all matters of political speculation. They are not justiciable issues. The are not matters for which judges, are trained or qualified to decide.

By making them matters for judicial decision we degrade the really judicial decisions which judges are required to make in court and whose impartiality and validity in making these decisions become part of our Constitution. I must protest, as I have done on other occasions with other Bills, against the involvement of the judiciary in purely political questions.

An Amendment in my name has not been selected, and I mention it only because in it I referred to registration. The registration that I wished to provide was registration with the Board of Trade. I wanted the Board of Trade itself to take the decision whether a particular agreement was or was not in conformity with the public interest. I also wanted to provide that there could be a reference to an inquiry held by an inspector of the Ministry for decision by the Minister. If we are to deal with this mattes by registration, let it be done in a meaningful way by the Minister who should be responsible.

The present Amendment provides that registration shall be with the registrar of a court but, unlike the case in every other court, the registrar is to be outside the control of the judges of the court. Instead of having the judges in charge of their own court, with the registrar their servant, we are making the registrar independent and, in fact, in control of the judges. That seems to me to put judges in a quite intolerable position.

Where, over and above that, one proceeds to it produce Government into the judicial process by saying that it shall be a Minister who shall decide the order in which these references are heard, picking and choosing from among the litigants in order to place them in a politically desirable order, that seems to me to be an involvement of political decision hi judicial process which is totally contrary to our customs. I shall be horrified if judges of the High Court are prepared to accept such an assignment.

This is a doctrinaire interference with an established and customary method of distribution, done not case by case, by picking out instances where a particular agreement may be against the public interest, but by a broad general condemnation. My view is that mankind has suffered much from doctrinaires and the worst of all doctrinaires have been the free trade ones. They depopulated Scotland. 'They created the Black Country. They made appalling difficulties for India. These were not bad men. They were sincere men who believed passionately in an idea which they were prepared to impose in face of all experience, and who had heard of everything save the great exhortation of Oliver Cromwell: I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken. I pass that advice on to the Secretary of State who is going to cause great suffering for a doctrine without any established evidence that it will do anybody the east good.