Commons Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 87:"Page 11, line 22, leave out subsection (1)." The noble Duke said: In moving Amendment No. 87, I shall speak also to Amendment No. 88, with which it is grouped. Amendment No. 87 is a probing amendment. Can the Minister assure us that there are no circumstances in which the department, office or agency involved might insist on seeing the original document? There are many who will not accept copy documents. Would the Inland Revenue or Customs and Excise, for example, be satisfied with copies? Amendment No. 88 would insert the word ““mistake”” after the words,"““either present in the original or arising only in the copy””," in Clause 20(2). The wording in this subsection is not entirely clear. An official copy in which there is a mistake gives no clue as to whether the mistake is in the copy or whether it has been copied. In the days when copies were made in fair hand by an amanuensis, a number of mistakes must have been introduced at the copying stage. The advent of photocopiers may well have reduced the number of errors, although I cannot say that it has reduced all errors. The other night I went to my club at a late hour and asked what room I was in. I was told that it was room 12. When it was looked into a little further, the room number was in fact supposed to be 42 but the photocopier had missed out part of the ““4””. I very nearly woke someone up rather unexpectedly in the middle of the night. Nowadays, much information is held on computer and its retrieval is not always guaranteed to supply an exact facsimile of the original. Will the Minister clarify the intended meaning? I beg to move.