Clause 1. — (Avoidance of Conditions for Maintaining Resale Prices.)

Part of Orders of the Day — Resale Prices Bill – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 24 March 1964.

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Photo of Mr John Mendelson Mr John Mendelson , Penistone 12:00, 24 March 1964

I should like to urge you, Sir William, to reconsider the earlier suggestion of my right hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay) to report Progress. I do so on grounds not yet advanced.

The Bill has been received with hostility to principle as well as detail and there are many hon. Members who agree with the general principle although feeling that it does not go far enough and does not start at the right end and who decided not to oppose it on Second Reading but to try seriously to improve it in Committee. Since that decision was taken by hon. Members on both sides of the Committee, a number of private conferences have taken place. At the last moment, those hon. Members of whom I have spoken have been placed in an impossible position in that they have not had time to consider their attitude vis à vis the new situation. It would be impossible for the Committee to live up to its reputation as the main instrument used by the House of Commons when acting as a legislative workshop and it would not be in the interests of good government to go on with this debate.