Lords' Amendments
Wednesday's long proceedings in the Commons on the Lords' Amendments to the Transport Bill, and Lord Llewellin's interest- ing speech in the Lords on Thursday on the Third Reading of the Town and Country Planning Bill, have naturally focused attention on the work of the Lords as a revising Chamber. In the case of these two Bills the Lords were in a peculiar position, because they were in a sense supplementing discussion in the Commons twice curtailed by the operation of the guillotine both in Committee and Report Stages. Most people would also say that these circumstances impose a peculiar duty on the Lords to give to these Bills an especially close scrutiny. The result of their so doing was to incorporate in the Bills a large number of amendments, some agreed to—or even moved—by the Government, but others carried in tl e teeth of their opposition. On the Transport Bill ten of the amend- ments considered by the Commons were the result of Government defeats in the Lords, while four Government defeats in the Lords on the Town and Country Planning Bill will have to be considered in the Commons before the rising of Parliament. Of course, it would be too much to expect a Government majority in the Commons to accept all the amendments imposed on a Government minority in the Lords, and Wednesday's debate on the Transport Bill showed a Government determination in the main to stand on their original proposals. But a scrutiny of the points on which the Government were defeated in both Bills in the House of Lords shows, at any rate, that they were points of substance and principle, and, in the case of some of them, such as the relationship between the Minister and the Transport Comdiission, points of principle of general importance in nationalised industry. Apart from these controversial issues, how- ever, the majority of the amendments made in the Lords—and there were no fewer than 233 down for discussion on the Transport Bill in the Commons on Wednesday—commanded the assent of the Government, as being improvements in the Bills. This being so, it seems that the Lords can afford to hold their heads high even in the face of such attacks as Mr. Bevan's at Morpeth, and can claim the right to be considered as an industrious and useful revising Chamber.
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