No, but that is very limited. In other words, he would be interfering only to protect finance. As it happens, he, the Minister for Finance, will look after that position if the Minister for Industry and Commerce wants to make regulations and they are liable to interfere with the collection of revenue.
The Minister has quoted regulations of a minor type made under the E.S.B. Acts but that is a very small matter. Look at the main Act, the Act which established the E.S.B. It is a very bulky Act and most of the things which it wanted done were put in the sections and paragraphs of it. The main things arising under that Act were all dealt with in specialised paragraphs and, strangely enough, that Act did not require much amendment in all the years that have passed. The E.S.B. Acts have, however, been amended to increase the amount of money put at the disposal of the E.S.B. for its operations, but as far as ordinary control in matters referring to the E.S.B. is concerned, it is contained in the main Act. There have been minor alterations here and there, but what does the Minister propose to do in this instance by Order?
He proposes to provide for the regulation and control of hire-purchase, sale upon credit and the letting of goods of any class or description and then, as if that were not enough, the rest of the section reads:
Without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing ... an order under this section may provide for—
(a) the form of agreement for the hire-purchase, sale upon credit or letting of goods,
(b) the minimum deposit to be paid by a buyer or hirer,
(c) the maximum period of payment, and the amount and frequency of instalments or rentals,
(d) the information to be given in any visual advertisement or visual announcement published or made in any form or manner whatsoever relating to goods for sale by way of hire-purchase or credit-sale agreement regarding the terms upon which the goods will be sold.
and now the Minister wants to include with that, as set out in his amendment:
the inclusion in any such advertisement or announcement of a statement of the price at which the goods will be sold for cash.
Is that not the whole Act? It is not a mere detail. That is everything that is to be done by Order and I suggest that is a departure from what we have become accustomed to and is not necessary. The principal Act is the Act of 1946. It contained the main matters that were of a hire-purchase type and that Act has lasted without amendment for 13 years up to this date. The Minister, of course, may answer me that it had to be amended on one occasion when increasing hire-purchase became an important matter in the balance of payments situation developing in the country, but what happened then was that the Minister for Industry and Commerce was able to come into this House with an Order made under the Supplies and Services Act which rectified the matter without any delay. That machinery is still at the disposal of the Minister.
I agree with Deputy Moloney's point of view that one can sympathise with the Minister. In fact, we would be ready to hear him if he makes any point in regard to urgency but he has this machinery, the Supplies and Services legislation, and can make Orders under it. As I say, it was possible to make Orders under it with regard to the time of payments for hire-purchase transactions. I do not know if Deputy Moloney wonders whether there is any way out without this way of legislating on an important topic. One way is a Bill which includes everything and I suppose nine-tenths of the legislation we pass does not require anything to be done by regulation or by Order because it itself contains whatever proposals it is intended to give effect to.
We have got used to two types of regulations and Orders. One is the type set out in Section 4, namely, that an Order made may be laid before the House and it is open to annulment, but it is open to annulment only if a resolution is passed by either House within a prescribed period, that is, 21 days in which the House has sat. Of course, if an Order is made on the verge of a summer adjournment, it lies there over that period, having full effect all the time, and can then be brought to a conclusion only within 21 succeeding days of the House resuming its session.
Secondly, we have the type of Order which Deputy Cosgrave's amendment refers to, the Order which must be affirmatively passed. The Minister gives notice of his intentions and then comes into the House and, as far as speed is concerned, he has control of the speed with which an affirmative Order may come before the House, but the difficulty is with regard to an Order he may want to make on the verge of a long break, and that is the difficulty we have to meet.
At the moment—the Minister will agree, I think—he has machinery at his disposal—the Supplies and Services Act machinery. He may say that that may go one of these days, that it should have gone long ago. It is still there but it may go. Very good; let us think of the future. There is a type of legislation that we know. I think we had an example quite recently of what is called Imposition of Duties confirmation. Under that, duties may be imposed and they take effect but they must be confirmed inside a certain period, but while that period is running, the order is of validity and has full effect. I have never seen that particular type of approach brought into an order or regulation but there is no reason why it could not be done. If the Minister thinks there may be some difficulty about an Order which has to wait and if he wants to get something done at once, a way out could be found in this—imposing on the Minister the necessity of bringing his order before the House and having it confirmed, but putting in it that it is valid over a certain period but must be confirmed within a certain time. That would certainly meet any difficulty that I have ever experienced in the way of hire-purchase regulations.
I want to put another view to the Minister. Hire-purchase has become an element in State finance—all this matter about expansion and the development of credit and the restriction of credit. When one blocks up one channel, say, through bank credit or through, say, exactions of a Government type, those who want to get money on easy terms will find some other way out. A way that was found during the past five or six years was through extension of hire-purchase. There is no doubt that that did have an impact on the country when it was thought necessary to restrict borrowing for hire-purchase—and hire-purchase is only another form of borrowing— but it was found easy to restrict that; there was no difficulty whatever. That had to be done quite urgently and it was done and done effectively and urgently. I do not see why that should not prevail for the future.
The Minister will have to have a look at this again. Again, as Deputy Moloney said, it may be possible to say: Let him have an Order which will take effect immediately and take effect until it is annulled, if it is to deal with certain important points. But, what does the Minister want to do by Order?—Everything. Read again his phrases. He "may by order provide for the regulation and control of the hire-purchase, sale upon credit and letting of goods or of any class or description of goods." That is everything. Then he pinpoints the details by saying in a later paragraph, including the words "Without prejudice", "What I want to be able to do by order is the following;" and then he sets out the important matter of hire-purchase.
I think the Minister must give a better explanation. Was the 1946 Act found to be in any way deficient? Did it require an amendment oftener than once? Was the machinery for meeting an emergency found to be effective? Is there any chance that in a critical situation that machinery will cease to be effective or is it likely to be abandoned and, if so, is there no other method of achieving the Minister's object and with which the House would sympathise? Is there no other way of achieving it except by giving himself full power to do everything by Order and having that Order left as we know the way these Orders always go? You get them on the back of an Order Paper. They are supposed to be published and put on the Table of the House. In the main, nobody bothers about them and the time passes until the time for annulling the Order is gone.
I suggest that the Minister either weakens the objectives of Section 6 and segregates those that are important and then let us consider whether we would permit him to have those done by an Order which is effective until annulled and then let him segregate another lot and say: "These are of great importance. They do impact upon the whole business of hire-purchase and they are not small details that ought to be regulated by Order of a specialised type. These are the important things." Let us then start off with something in the Bill and say that any amendment that is to be done by Order shall be done by Order that requires the consent of Parliament.
What is Parliament for if not to deal with that sort of thing? If a question is raised about Parliament not being in session and about urgency arising, we can meet that point of view. I would not mind even giving the Minister full control of Orders, say, where it was necessary in order to meet a balance of payments difficulty, if it arose, and where some interference with hire-purchase was sought by those who promulgated the Order in order to restrain so as to better a balance of payments situation.
I do think that we are getting very definitely into the position so much canvassed in England at the moment which they have stopped over there. It led to the promulgation of a book by a celebrated judge, called The New Despotism, where he showed the effect, and the deteriorating effect, he thought, of proceeding in a certain way and where he said that control has been taken from the parliamentary representatives and handed over to Departments. Then you got a further book, a much more cogent piece of work, called Law and Orders. The clear distinction was made as between law, which is what Parliament is supposed to fashion, and Orders which every Department wants because they make for administrative ease.