Resale Prices Bill

Part of Orders of the Day — Resale Prices Bill – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 25 March 1964.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Mr Harold Lever Mr Harold Lever , Manchester Cheetham 12:00, 25 March 1964

He may be a total stranger, because he may have been getting the goods from somebody else. It is enough that he tells the manufacturer that he intends to sell the goods below price to put the supplier in great difficulty. Until the onus of proof is decisively shifted it means that every supplier who wants to refuse supplies to a cut-price trader must see his lawyer, because the dice would be loaded by statute hopelessly against him once the man who gets credit takes the elementary precaution of telling him that he is a price-cutter.

How can the Committee pass a Clause, not on the assurance that the Minister will look at it and put a mischief right, but in the knowledge that he will repeat the mischief and if we give him a little time he will tighten the Clause and make clear that this extraordinary monstrosity will continue?