Mr Percy Grieve: It is with great diffidence and a spirit of humility that I rise to make my maiden speech in the House and to intervene in this important debate. May I express my gratitude to you, Mr. Speaker, for giving me the opportunity of so doing, and may I crave the indulgence which the House ever gives to a speaker addressing it for the first time. I have the honour to represent the constituency of...
Mr Percy Grieve: I respectfully urge the House not to allow the hands of the Committee to be fettered in the way advocated by my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page). To eliminate Clauses 8 to 11 would be to murder Part II of the Bill, which is not designed, if I may quote words used by my hon. Friend— inadvertently, I am sure—for the benefit of the City of London, but designed to enable...
Mr Percy Grieve: It would be quite irrelevant to the citing of these examples for me to tell my hon. Friend whether that is so or not.
Mr Percy Grieve: No, it is quite irrelevant to the examples which I am citing. At this stage, and at the time of these happenings, the local authority had no power to go to the people responsible such as is sought in the Bill under discussion. Turning to the sort of dangers and evils which Clause 9 is designed to redress, they fall under three main headings: first—I have already alluded to this—in the...
Mr Percy Grieve: If my hon. Friend will give me a moment, I will finish what I am saying and then I will give way. Then there are those resulting from the demolition of existing buildings, especially where there is a penalty clause in the contract with the contractors so that they are hurrying for all they are worth to finish quickly. Finally, there is the damage caused by the collapse of cranes,...
Mr Percy Grieve: I have confined my researches in this matter, which have been extremely short, to this country. I have not ventured to the United States. I cannot help my hon. Friend. I should like to give examples of the three categories which I have cited. In Farringdon Street, in November, 1963, scaffolding which was being dismantled collapsed into the street. Half the street and one footway had to be...
Mr Percy Grieve: Does the Minister not think that, while the penalties which may be imposed upon offenders are quite adequate, what is urgently needed is greater education of public opinion so that in proper cases juries are more disposed to convict?
Mr Percy Grieve: I support the Amendment and endorse entirely what has been said by my hon. Friend the Member for Bebington (Mr. Howe). Those who are in practice in the legal profession now and who remain in practice will have a very special function to perform on the Commission. They will bring to the Commission the knowledge of their friends in practice of the lacunae in the law and the room in ticular...
Mr Percy Grieve: I should like to support my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir J. Hobson), particularly upon Amendment No. 2, and to ask the Minister seriously to consider whether subsection (4) should not be dropped altogether from the Bill. I put my objection to it on the solid constitutional ground that, in my view, it does make considerable inroads into our ancient...
Mr Percy Grieve: I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for giving way. Is not the whole issue here dependent upon the fact that in this matter Burmah Oil has a right vested in it by the decision of the House of Lords where it succeeded in a claim at law and, therefore, this legislation would take that right away from the company? All that remains in that litigation is for that right to be...
Mr Percy Grieve: On a point of order. Is this anything to do with the matter under discussion, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, namely, the Lords Amendment?
Mr Percy Grieve: Hear, hear.
Mr Percy Grieve: When someone gives his money away is it his or the State's? The view of hon. Members opposite seems to be that if one gives money away it is the State's money.
Mr Percy Grieve: If I rise at this late hour to add a few words after the able, cogent and persuasive arguments which have been heard from my right hon. and hon. Friends, it is not because I wish to detain the Committee, and certainly not my hon. Friends on this side of the Committee who, I know, are anxious to express their opinions on the Amendment in the Division Lobby as soon as possible. I wish to...
Mr Percy Grieve: Are not shareholders proprietors of a company and is not the market the best judge of whether a company is so go-ahead that it requires money? Would not the best way to advance efficiency in industry be to make the obtaining of capital dependent on the machinery of the market?
Mr Percy Grieve: I support my right hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale (Mr. Barber) in his moving of the Amendment. Having heard my hon. Friend the Member for Wan-stead and Woodford (Mr. Patrick Jenkin) deal so cogently with the economic aspects of the reasons for the Amendment, I found my objections to the Clause on justice and equity. The Clause is avowedly designed to penalise distributed...
Mr Percy Grieve: Since the hon. Gentleman addressed his observations through the Chair to me, I must say I do not resile from the word "penalised" for one moment. What is it if one puts a heavier taxation on distributed profits which go to the shareholders? What is that if it is not penalising?
Mr Percy Grieve: Would my right hon. Friend be so good as to say whether he considers a life sentence any deterrent to a man already serving thirty years should he choose to use firearms to effect an escape? Would he say what is to take its place if the death penalty goes?
Mr Percy Grieve: Can the Solicitor-General say why in those circumstances it is necessary to have the word "revoking" in subsection (2,a)? Surely power to suspend or amend would be quite sufficient.
Mr Percy Grieve: I hope that I shall not delay the passage of this very important matter too long if I take up again the point that I made when I intervened in the speech of the Solicitor-General in the debate on Second Reading. I refer to the inclusion of the power to revoke any provisions of the 1961 Constitution which is. contained in subsection (2,a) of Clause 2 of the Bill. I am bound to say that I do...