I move—

The necessity for the amendments proposed in this Bill arises in the first place from the development works which may possibly be tackled in the territory of South West Africa, and in the second place from inquiries for the supply of power by Escom which have already been received from some of South Africa’s neighbouring states. These aspects are dealt with in Clauses 1 and 2, while Clauses 3 and 4 merely provide for the substitution of the words “Republic” and “State President” for the words “Union” and “Governor-General”.

In so far as the provision of electric power to and in South West Africa is concerned, it is envisaged that considerable quantities will be required for the development of that territory. It is therefore logical that Escom, which is the greatest generator and distributor of electricity in the Republic, can advantageously be used to supply power in a neighbouring territory like S.W.A., rather than for us to establish another organization of this nature at great expense especially to provide for the needs of South West Africa. In order, however, to enable Escom to fulfil this function, it is necessary to amend the Electricity Act, in view of the fact that the functions of the Commission are strictly limited to the Republic in terms of the existing Act.

It will be noted in this regard that the Bill in the proposed Section 4bis (1) (a) (i), as contained in Clause 2, provides that Escom, through any of its undertakings in the Republic, may sell electricity to the I.D.C. on the borders between the Republic and South West Africa, while, in regard to the generation and distribution of electric power in South West Africa itself, and also the purchase of power from a neighbouring state in order to make it available in S.WA. or the Republic, it will act as the agent of the I.D.C. in terms of the proposed Section 4bis (1) (b).

I may explain here that this provision has been worded in this way because all Escom’s works or undertakings in the Republic have been financed from loans raised locally and overseas, and in respect of which Escom’s immovable assets were pledged as security. For this reason it is essential that the financing of the generation and distribution of power in South West Africa should be kept quite separate from that in the Republic. Nor is it correct that loans incurred for works in the Republic, and which are secured by Escom’s assets in the Republic, should partially be utilized for the purposes of serving South West Africa.

In so far as the supply of power by Escom on the borders of the Republic to any of our other neighbouring states is concerned, as is provided in Section 4bis (1) (a) (ii), as I have already stated, inquiries have been received from one or two of South Africa’s neighbouring states. But once again the problem exists that Escom is not allowed to sell electricity beyond the borders of South Africa. Therefore, before the Commission can initiate any negotiations in this regard, it is essential for it to obtain the necessary legal authorization for such provision of electricity. In this regard it should be noted that Escom will be able to undertake only the supply of power on the borders between the Republic and the neighbouring state which asks for it, and that the neighbouring state concerned must itself see to the further distribution of that power. I must further point out that it is provided in the proposed Section 4bis (2) (b) that electricity will be supplied to a neighbouring state at a price to be arranged between Escom and that neighbouring state, with the approval of the Minister of Economic Affairs. The reason for this provision is that although Escom must supply electric power in the Republic at cost price, from the very nature of the matter it cannot be expected to do so in territories beyond the borders of South Africa.

In connection with the role which the I.D.C. will play in the supply of electricity through Escom, as its agent, I may inform the House that I shall within the near future introduce a Bill to amend the Industrial Development Act, 1944. This Bill is still in the process of being drafted, and I therefore do not want to anticipate its provisions now.

Finally, I wish to express the hope that hon. members will agree that these proposed amendments will undoubtedly, directly or indirectly, redound to the benefit of the country’s industries, and that they will make a great contribution towards the development of South West Africa, to which the Republic bears a great responsibility.

Mr. Speaker, we on this side of the House support this Bill. It is quite obvious that it will probably help us to maintain friendly relations with the Protectorates when they become independent. This applies to the Transkei too. It would be a great pity if the Commission did not have this power when such an occasion arose. We have certain reservations about the arrangements with Escom but they will be dealt with by another speaker on this side. But we support the Bill itself.

I should like to ask the hon. the Minister a few questions. The first is whether he considers that the Industrial Development Corporation is the right authority to be used for buying bulk electric power from Escom and redistributing it through South West Africa? I think the time has come where the operations of the I.D.C. want a little closer examination than has been given them in the past. The I.D.C. seems to be becoming a greater colossus every year by the additional powers granted to it and the additional undertakings passed on to it, so much so that in many of its aspects it is already interfering with private enterprise. Here we have another situation where the bulk electric power for South West Africa is taken out of the hands of the Electricity Supply Commission and given to the octopus Industrial Development Corporation. I should like to ask the Minister whether he thinks that that is the correct and best manner in which electricity should be handled.

The second question is this. The hon. the Minister has told us that he proposes to introduce a Bill to amend the Industrial Development Corporation Act. Is the position not at the moment that the I.D.C. cannot operate in South West Africa? Are its operations not limited to the boundaries of the Republic? In the Act that set up the I.D.C. and in any subsequent amendments—as far as I can see, but I stand to be corrected—there is no provision for the I.D.C. to operate outside the borders of the Republic. Perhaps the Minister could enlighten us on that point.

In reply to the first question of the hon. member for Parktown (Mr. Emdin) I want to say that we believe the Industrial Development Corporation could be the best medium for the industrial development of South West Africa. If the hon. member reads the Bill correctly he will see that Escom can be appointed as the agent of the I.D.C. It does not mean that the I.D.C. is going to do the distribution. The I.D.C. can use Escom as its agent to distribute electricity.

In reply to the second question: As the law stands at the moment the I.D.C. is not empowered to operate in countries outside South Africa unless it is directly in the interests of South Africa. We interpret it this way that should the I.D.C. start an industry in South West Africa, an industry which bought, say, all its raw material from South Africa, that would be in compliance with the Act. But this is not quite clear; there are various interpretations and that is why we are going to introduce a Bill into Parliament to make this position quite clear, namely, the circumstances under which the I.D.C. can operate in other territories. That was the Bill I was referring to.

I move—

I do not think it is necessary for me to explain this Bill in great detail, because it is the third time that the second reading of this Bill has been discussed in Parliament. Two years ago I made a second-reading speech in connection with the same Bill. That was towards the end of the session, and at the request of hon. members of the Opposition that the Bill might possibly affect certain interests and that it was necessary that we should not set to work over-hastily, I agreed to let it stand over until last year. During the recess of 1962-3 I felt that we could eliminate debates in Parliament and that it would perhaps serve a very useful purpose if I moved in 1963 to refer the Bill to a select committee after the second-reading speech I would then make. That is what happened last year. The select committee thoroughly investigated all the clauses and aspects of the Bill; they called for evidence and heard evidence, orally and otherwise, and the views of all interested parties were put before them. The select committee made a thorough study of the Bill and proposed certain amendments. I want to take this opportunity to thank hon. members who served on that select committee for the work they did and for the way in which they performed their task.

Practically all the amendments proposed in the select committee have been embodied in the new Bill now before us. In regard to one or two principles contained in the Bill, there were certain members of the select committee who raised objections, and the members of the select committee were not unanimous in regard to these few provisions, and in so far as that is concerned recommendations were made by way of a majority vote. The most important point of difference was in regard to Clause 24 of the old Bill. That clause made it impossible to obtain registration or plant breeders’ rights for imported, or shall I say foreign, plants, whether bred vegetatively or from seed, if those plants in the opinion of the Department were not useful plants or served no useful purpose. For that reason, ornamental plants as such, for example, were definitely excluded in the old Bill.

The South African Nurserymen’s Association were strongly in favour of the retention of that clause as it stood, but they were divided in respect of the discriminatory factor in that clause. The minority vote on the select committee, as also the minority of the representatives of the growers themselves, felt that this clause should be retained, but unconditionally—that there should be no discrimination. My departmental head, inter alia, also gave evidence before the select committee, and he made it very clear that the object of this Bill was in the first instance basic—not only to protect the plant breeders in our country, but also to give them the benefit of the breeding of new varieties done in our country. That was regarded as being of great value for the development of horticulture and agriculture in our country. Up to the present it was really the Department of Agriculture, as it was originally, and later the Department of Agricultural Technical Services, which were mainly responsible for the breeding of new lines, whether vegetatively or from seed. I need only mention the big change which was brought about in regard to the cultivation of wheat in our country, the new types and new varieties which are more rust-resistant and more adaptable to the various areas of the country. Those were all varieties bred by the Department of Agricultural Technical Services at its various experimental and research stations. Not a single one of those varieties was bred by a private plant breeder. I am thinking of our fruit varieties, both for the Western Cape, for the winter rainfall area, and for the Midlands or the Transvaal, the summer rainfall areas. As a result of years of devoted service and research and with great tenacity of purpose they bred adapted varieties of fruit, so that the best results could be achieved. With the exception perhaps of one or two varieties, they were all the result of breeding undertaken by the Department. But we simply do not have the resources available to place the full and sole responsibility for the development of our agricultural and horticultural plants on the Department of Agricultural Technical Services.

In other parts of the world it is found that plant breeders and individual seed-breeders play a much more important role and make much greater contributions to the development of new varieties of plants, whether they be decorative plants or useful production plants. In this country we also find that gradually there are many plant breeders who are particularly interested and who also want to play a role in it, and who have already started doing so. It is now felt, however, that no real protection exists which can serve to encourage them. Therefore this Bill mainly aims at giving the right to plant breeders (and that of course includes the Department) to register plant breeders’ rights in regard to new plants and new varieties in our country, which will be to their advantage if they can obtain such rights. For a certain period royalties will be paid to them in respect of such plants, and that will of course depend on the value of such plants to the country in general. I think that is a particularly sound principle. On going through the minutes of the select committee and the various documents made available to it, and during interviews with interested parties in the industry, I have come to the conclusion that practically no one will he opposed to this principle. Everybody is in favour of it and feels that the time has arrived for us to give greater encouragement also to the individual plant breeders in the country who want to devote themselves in this way to the development of our agricultural and horticultural industries.

Personally, I feel that a case may perhaps be made out in connection with Clause 24 in the old Bill and that it may be said: Why do you now want to discriminate between plants?

Surely your policy is one of discrimination.

That hon. member would very much like to drag politics even into this matter. But perhaps it is a good thing to discriminate under certain circumstances. And it is not only we who sit here who discriminate. Just think of how the general public in our country discriminates in respect of their attitude towards the Government and their attitude towards the Opposition. Surely one cannot expect the public to adopt the same attitude towards both sides.

Order! Is the hon. the Minister now discussing the Bill?

Sir, you were quite correct in putting that question to me, because I think I am now deviating from the subject. But in this Bill we have now completely abandoned the discriminatory factor, and we decided to omit Clause 24 completely, and not to discriminate, and not to grant certain rights in respect of certain useful plants only while not granting rights in respect of plants which we do not regard as being useful plants, because we have existing legislation which we can and will use to take all the necessary precautions in regard to the import of plants or new varieties from other countries which have either been bred vegetatively or from seed.

We have therefore decided to incorporate in this new legislation practically all the recommendations of the select committee, except for this one which was adopted by a majority vote and also another one in respect of which the select committee was also not unanimous and which was also adopted by a majority vote, namely the one which provides for the appeal which is allowed when registration is refused. My Department and I have decided to retain this in the Bill practically as it stood before, because we want to keep the costs of appeal as low as possible. But nevertheless we felt that the recommendation of the select committee that the chairman of that appeal board should be a lawyer was a very useful suggestion, and consequently we accepted it.

The argument may be advanced that we will lose much by passing this legislation because perhaps we will not be able to obtain good new varieties from overseas which may perhaps be very useful in our country. The fact is, however, that there is not much substance in that argument. Take, for example, our good varieties, such as the yellow canning peach, of which last year we were able to announce four new varieties bred in South Africa by departmental breeders, by our Fruit Research Institute at Bien Donne. That was the result of a breeding programme with which they had been busy for between 15 and 17 years, and eventually these results were achieved. We are now convinced that we have a fruit which will undoubtedly retain its character and which will make a contribution to the whole of the fruit and canning industries; it will prolong the canning season, and instead of that season lasting three weeks, as was the case in the past, it will now be extended to almost two months or longer. The economic value of this cannot be measured in terms of money.

Now we have been accustomed to exchanging things with other Western countries. Let me say that in the scientific sphere our experience is that the Western nations, even communist Russia, are quite agreeable to the mutual exchange of scientific information, and as regards agricultural and horticultural plants new lines are constantly being exchanged between one country and another in order to see whether they can adapt themselves and whether they will serve one’s purposes. That is the general practice. Until last year the position was that 80 new plants were patented in South Africa, of which only seven originated in South Africa; the rest came from abroad. Only six plants were patented which were not decorative plants; the rest were chiefly roses. Apart from that, almost 90 per cent of the decorative plants patented in South Africa came from two countries, America and France. Experience has taught us that plants which adapt themselves and do well here do not necessarily adapt themselves to different climatic conditions, even though they are apparently comparable to our conditions here in South Africa. I am thinking, for example, of parts of America like California, where the climate is very similar to ours. Perhaps fortunately for us, our yellow peaches do not thrive there at all. When planted there they become something quite different and have not the same qualities. Consequently they have in America not yet succeeded in breeding a competitive canning peach of equal quality. I just mention that as an example.

The fact that in this Bill we do not provide for the registration of plant breeders’ rights in regard to plants bred abroad does not in the least mean that we cannot import those plants into our country. It is not all the countries of the world which have such patent rights, or where plant patenting is practised, and where, if one allows them to patent and to register here, they must grant reciprocal treatment to us. There are many countries in the world which do not have anything of the kind. There is nothing in this Bill which prevents any plant breeder in South Africa from importing the mother lines. That can be done by a foreign company, and then, with the permission of the Department, if it complies with our demands, in order to keep diseases out of the country (infection, etc.), such a new variety can be crossbred here and it will be possible to obtain plant breeders’ rights because it was cultivated in South Africa. I therefore feel that this Bill should really enjoy the support of both sides of the House. Much time has been devoted to it and it deserves the support of both sides of the House. I also believe that it will be welcomed as a forward step in the right direction, not only in South Africa, but I want to express the hope that the provisions of this Bill will have the effect of encouraging our private seed and plant breeders in South Africa, because they will be able to derive more profit from their work. I think it will be a greater encouragement to them to develop plants which adapt themselves to our conditions. It will make a contribution to what I regard as the basis on which the whole of our agricultural economy and our development in South Africa rests, namely the breeding of plant material which will result in greater yields per morgen—and here I want to mention the example of our hybrid maize and certain other grain varieties—plants which are more resistant to disease and plagues, so that we will be able economically to produce more than we are producing even to-day. I therefore hope that this measure will enjoy the support of the whole House.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. the Minister has expressed the hope that this measure will receive the support of this side of the House. I should like to say immediately that the official Opposition will support the second reading of this Bill. We hope that it will be possible in the Committee Stage to persuade the Minister to agree to certain amendments which we believe will improve the Bill.

This whole question of plant rights is a very vexed one, and as the hon. the Minister said, there is no wide international agreement, and it appears that the countries are following two broad lines. The one is to use the patent laws and to allow plants to be patented in the same way as industrial patents, and the other is to provide for plant breeders’ rights. The difficulty of the whole subject is shown very clearly by the fact that a British commission which sat for a considerable period and prepared a very well-considered report did not lead to British legislation in terms of that report. The recommendation of that commission was that plant breeders’ rights should be registered separately and not as patents, but the British Government did not see fit to follow that recommendation. As the Minister knows, different leading countries in the world have taken different lines. I can only express the hope that common sense will in the end lead to the adoption of a common basis of dealing with these matters, but we agree that South Africa cannot possibly stand still and wait until such time as such agreement is arrived at.

This measure is one of a highly technical nature. It has received very careful consideration. It was before a select committee last year for a considerable time. I should like to say to the chairman of that select committee that we who represented this side of the House appreciated the patience with which he dealt with the matter and the time we were allowed to seek to achieve an agreed measure, which unfortunately proved not to be possible. But nevertheless I believe it was a splendid example of how legislation of this kind should be handled, because the aim of this side of the House, as well as that side, obviously must be to get the best possible legislation put on our Statute Book. I hope that when we come to the Committee Stage the Minister will find himself able to accept some of the proposals which will come from this side of the House with that end in view.

The measure as it stood originally, I believe, constituted a breach of our international agreements. That matter has been gone into very fully. The present measure is unquestionably a considerable improvement on the one which appeared before the House last year. There is no doubt whatever, we believe, that for the registration of these rights you should have persons who are properly qualified. We believe that there should be limitations placed on the group from which those persons will come, and we will move appropriately at the appropriate time. This measure, we hope, will prove to be a step forward. Let me say at once that we do not believe that it is a final piece of legislation. We believe that it will have to be watched very carefully. We fully appreciate that it is essential to prevent as far as possible the infection of our soil by the introduction of plants from overseas, and it is therefore necessary that there should be a period of quarantine. But I hope that in principle the Minister will agree with us that it is important that there should be an international exchange and that South Africa should do everything she possibly can to make it easy for us to get the best and most up-to-date plants available, while at the same time taking adequate steps to ensure that our soil is not infested in the process. I believe that most of the points on which there is a difference of opinion will be mentioned by other hon. members on this side, and I hope that when we come to the Committee Stage it will be possible to have a full debate on those points. But we support the second reading. We are very anxious to be helpful in putting a thoroughly good measure on the Statute Book and we hope we will have the Minister’s cooperation in that regard.

As chairman of the select committee I should like to express our thanks to the members of that committee for the pleasant spirit which prevailed there and for the hearty co-operation that existed there. We did not always view matters in the same light; there were differences of opinion but the spirit throughout was a pleasant one and I think the members enjoyed serving on that committee. We tried to allow every member who wished to put forward an idea ample time to do so, and that applies also to all those who wished to give evidence. We spent quite a considerable amount of time, but it was very pleasant to co-operate with the committee.

A full opportunity was given to the interests most closely concerned with this matter, the plant breeders, to state their views. As you know, Sir, a committee was first of all appointed under the chairmanship of Dr. Anderson, who did the preliminary investigations and took the evidence of interested parties. As a result of that report, a provisional Bill was drawn up which was submitted to the House and referred to a select committee. The members of the S.A. Nurserymen’s Association, who testified before the select committee on behalf of their association, also expressed their thanks for the way in which this legislation had been drawn up and for the opportunity given to them to express their views. As you know, Mr. Speaker, the Plant Patents Act was placed on the Statute Book in 1952. That Act has been in operation all these years up to the present time and plant breeders, where they have cultivated new plants, have been able to make use of that Act to register those plants and to place them under protection and to receive additional compensation. But that Act did not entirely comply with the requirements of the members of the Nurserymen’s Association and of nurserymen in general, and it was felt that something better should be substituted for it. That is clear from the evidence given before the committee. The secretary of the association, Mr. Basson, said—

The outcome of those deliberations was that they asked that a new Act should be drawn up to replace the Plant Patents Act. It was for that reason that the Anderson Committee was appointed which then submitted this legislation. He goes on to say—

The representatives of the S.A. Nurserymen’s Association also expressed their thanks to the Department of Agricultural Technical Services for the opportunity given to them to state their views, to give evidence and to submit proposals with a view to improving the law. Many of their proposals were accepted by the committee and those proposals are incorporated in this legislation. I just want to quote what the chairman of the delegation said to the committee—

That is a compliment in the first place to the department and its officials who were concerned with the drafting of this Bill. For the rest the representatives of the S.A. Nurserymen’s Association really had no objection to the proposed legislation. In connection with Clause 18 they simply stated that they wanted information with regard to the conditions which the registrar would impose as far as compensation was concerned when grating a licence. It was possible to satisfy them on that point without the necessity of amending the Bill. In connection with Clause 22 they merely asked for information also with regard to the appeal body. The committee decided to bring about a change, and that change is incorporated in the amended Bill.

The object of this Bill, as has already been stated, is in the first place to encourage our own breeders to concentrate on the breeding of new varieties which are suited to South African conditions and which can yield a better and higher production than the existing varieties. By making provision for plant breeders’ rights we are giving protection to such a breeder, and once his rights have been registered he will be in a position to receive a royalty and better compensation for the work done by him in connection with the breeding of such a plant. Reference should also be made here to the very valuable services which are being rendered by the Department itself as far as the breeding of new varieties is concerned. The Minister has already referred to it, but I feel that some reference should also be made here to the particularly fine services which are being rendered by officials of the Department. When one thinks of the new fruit varieties which have been cultivated here—peaches such as Oom Sarel, Professor Neethling and Professor Black—one realizes how valuable these new varieties are to fruit growers, particularly in the Boland, and particularly to the people who grow fruit for canning purposes. But the department does not always have enough officials to cope with all that work and that is why it is essential to give additional assistance and to inspan private initiative also to make their contribution. There are approximately 900 nurserymen in this country but the number of people who really breed plants is very small. There are probably only three or four who are really interested in the breeding of plants. What we want to encourage is the breeding of new plants, and that is what this Bill seeks to do. It is, of course, a slow process. It probably takes from six to ten years to breed new stable varieties from seed plants. In the case of fruit trees it probably takes from 15 to 20 years. It is a lengthy process and people need encouragement to undertake that intensive work.

As a member of the select committee I am rather sorry that Clause 24, as it was originally drafted, was not retained. The committee in general felt that that clause should remain. Other members felt that it should be amended. I just want to refer to the evidence which was given before the Select Committee, orally and by way of memoranda and also in the form of telegrams and letters. Of the 15 persons who gave evidence, nine expressed themselves in favour of the retention of Clause 24 as it stands. Two said it should be deleted; four of the others said that it should be retained but that it should be amended to make provision for plants for human and animal feeding, for industrial plants and plants for medical purposes, as well as ornamental plants. Those who gave evidence against its retention laid a good deal of emphasis on the question of disease-free or virus-free varieties and the adaptability of plants. I just want to say that that argument is not really relevant to the question of the retention or deletion of Clause 24. This measure does not prevent the importation of plants. In other words, the question of disease-free plants can always still be dealt with under the existing legislation. Under the existing Act plants can be tested in terms of the quarantine regulations and the country safeguarded against disease-carrying plants. As far as the question of adaptability is concerned, we have the same position. Plants can still be imported even if this Bill is not placed on the Statute Book at all, and the adaptability of plants can also be tested without placing new legislation on the Statute Book. We feel, however, that the position may arise that a person abroad—there are just a few countries which have plant patent rights (America and France)—may breed a plant, an industrial plant, which may be of very great economic value to us and that he may register a plant patent right in his own country and then refuse to allow that plant to be imported into this country unless we give him protection here. There is that possibility, if we had retained Clause 24, then we could have made provision for cases of that kind.

Then there is the question of compensation. We are a comparatively small country. A person who breeds a new variety of fruit or a new plant here which is of great value is unable to make very much out of it, but if he can register patent rights overseas where millions of those plants can be sold in a year it may net him a huge income. It is in the interests of our people therefore to be able to obtain patent rights abroad. We concede that business people are not so fond of this Bill. If they can get a plant which is really good they will buy it, even though there is no protection in the country of origin. Such cases may possibly arise. But the Bill as it stands here is generally acceptable to the people who are most closely concerned with it, the nurserymen, and we want to express the hope that this legislation will help to encourage people to breed plants in the interests of our agricultural industry.

I think we are in agreement with the hon. member for Nelspruit (Mr. Faurie), the chairman of the select committee who has just sat down, in that we agree that Clause 24 should not have been omitted from this third Bill which is now before the House. I would say that this third Bill which is now introduced after it has been to a select committee is an improved Bill, but we could not reach complete agreement in the select committee on the amendments that we on this side of the House should introduce. These amendments will be dealt with fully in the Committee Stage and I hope that the hon. the Minister will consider them very seriously and include them in the Bill to improve the Bill.

In the Minister’s second-reading speech last year when he introduced this Bill he said that he had already tried to get into touch with and to consult numerous interested parties like the K.W.V. and the Deciduous Fruit Board, and more particularly the S.A. Institute of Patent Agents and the South African nurserymen. It is particularly the nurserymen who wish to see the retention of Clause 24. They would have liked to have seen it extended, and in their evidence before the Select Committee they wish to see this clause retained in the Bill. The Minister admitted last year that certain rights which certain people had under previous legislation, like the Patents Act of 1942, may be affected by this Bill, and therefore he sent it to the select committee in order that evidence might be heard and a new Bill presented to the House. I feel that this 1964 Bill now before us contains numerous amendments and additions which have been put forward by the Department, and others were presented by the chairman of the select committee. One or two small amendments were accepted from hon. members on this side of the House, but I regret to say that the two main points of criticism put forward by this side have not been incorporated in this Bill. The first is the extension of the provisions of the Bill to include new plants originating outside the Republic. Regarding these plants, it has been stated that legislation for plant breeders’ rights inside the Republic, while excluding plants bred outside the Republic, is contrary to present international law. The aim of this Bill should be to preserve international reciprocity with countries with patent rights or plant breeders’ rights. It was strongly felt by members of the Select Committee on this side that the legislation should follow those lines and that the principle should be extended to include new plants originating outside the Republic. We on this side advocated this principle of reciprocity, but that was rejected by hon. members opposite, in spite of the fact that South Africa is a participant in the Paris International Convention on Patents and is obliged to exercise reciprocity, as pointed out in a memorandum submitted in 1961 by the Secretary for Agriculture. I refer to the memorandum in regard to this proposed legislation. The Paris Convention, of which South Africa is a member, provides that co-signatories, of whom there are 59, will not discriminate against member countries but will afford their citizens equal rights and privileges in so far as industrial as well as plant patents are concerned. It says in the report that the Department is strongly opposed to this requirement since it allows any member of the Convention to patent plants in South Africa, even though provision for patenting plants does not exist in such a country itself. It was realized at once that in these circumstances the proposed enactment would not be in the interests of South Africa, but such an advanced stage had been reached that the Department could do nothing in the matter. Surely it is obvious from this evidence given by the Department itself that the unilateral withdrawal of reciprocity by South Africa might mean a breach of international agreements, and all this, of course, has been known to the Department and to the Minister and yet it has not found a place in this Bill. I would like to draw the Minister’s attention again to the serious consequences which might follow any breach of the Paris Convention, and the risk attaching to a unilateral breach of the convention by South Africa, which is especially unwise in the light of the present-day international animosity against South Africa. It would amount to a move to open up possibilities for discrimination against South Africa. I would draw the Minister’s attention to this, and I feel it is important for the Minister to consider whether he can alter the relevant clause at a later stage. I may add that the S.A. Institute of Patent Agents through its president foresees this danger, and in a telegram they have warned that if Clause 6 as it stands now continues to find a place in this Bill without amendment it will make the adherence to the International Convention on Plant Breeders’ Rights impossible for South Africa. I know that it is considered—we have had several reports on it—that we should not be infringing international law, but there are certain bodies, including the S.A. Institute of Patent Agents, who feel that we might be doing this. I should like to draw the Minister’s attention to this and ask him to investigate it, and if necessary, to consider amending the Bill.

I feel also that as far as this Bill is concerned there is a second point, in regard to Clause 3. Members on both sides are very much concerned with the manner in which this new Bill will be applied in practice. I know that the Department has experts available who can be consulted on technical matters, but it is a matter of vital importance that the Registrar, who will exercise the powers and carry out the functions assigned to him by this Bill, should be a man with a legal training. This is not included in the Bill as it stands. Such a man should have the training required for his post, and he can only have such training if he is a qualified lawyer or patent agent. I am sure the Minister realizes that the Registrar will have to make decisions in regard to contentious claims submitted to him and which were formerly adjudicated by the Registrar of Patents under the Patents Act of 1952. His decisions will have to do justice to the people concerned, including the plant breeders. He must be able to exercise all the powers granted to him by this Bill and he should not merely be an intermediary between the public and the departmental expert. The Bill already provides that any aggrieved person can appeal against the Registrar’s decision to the hon. the Minister, who in turn will refer such an appeal to an appeal board consisting of three members presided over by a person appointed by the Minister on account of his knowledge of law. Therefore the Minister admits in this clause that the final decision should be given by a person versed in law, and such a person’s training and knowledge will only be available on appeal, as appeals involve a great deal of delay and expenditure. While an appeal body is necessary, delays and extra costs should be reduced to the minimum by providing that the officer, the Registrar, who will administer the Bill, should be either a trained lawyer or a trained patents agent. I ask the Minister to give this his most serious consideration, because the whole success of this new Bill depends on the calibre of the men who administer the plant breeders’ rights. I feel that certain adjustments must be made to the Bill as it now stands, and we hope that the Minister in the Committee Stage will accept some of our amendments. The Bill itself, we hope will be an improvement. We hope that the decision not to incorporate these principles in the Patents Act of 1952 but rather to introduce a new Bill will, prove to be of benefit to South Africa.

I heartily welcome and support this Bill. Since listening to the hon. member for Johannesburg (North) (Mrs. Weiss) who has just sat down, I have became more convinced than ever that she and possibly the Opposition as such would like to consider Bills of this nature only from the point of view of lawyers. Even Bills such as this one which deals with the interests of the farmers are often considered from the legal point of view by hon. members of the Opposition while we on this side, and I specifically, wish to consider this Bill from the point of view of the interests of the farmers of South Africa. That is why I want to accept the Bill wholeheartedly as we have it before us, with the exception of the old Clause 24 to which so much objection has been taken.

In order to form an opinion in regard to this whole question of plant breeders’ rights, it may perhaps be necessary for us to bear in mind the principles that are fundamental to the whole doctrine of genetics. Before the Austrian monk, Mendel, developed his theories on genetics—and it is a strange thing that it was a monk who expressed himself in regard to the doctrine of genetics, I always thought they were people who were not hereditary—before he developed his theories on heredity, new plant varieties came into being mostly by chance. For example, an observant farmer once noticed that one branch of a particular fruit tree showed certain deviations. About 40 years ago a certain Mr. Page from Fransch Hoek noticed that one branch in an orchard of Inkoos peach trees bore fruit every year which ripened 14 days before the other peaches in the same orchard ripened. He then propagated that one branch by budding, that is to say, vegetative propagation, and in this way a new variety, Early Dawn peaches came into being. This only happened because a particular farmer and plant breeder was observant.

It is a fact in the plant world that by means of vegetative propagation one makes sure that the offspring are true to type, are similar to the parent plant, while this is not the case when one plants the seeds of those plants. We have quite a few examples of these chance new breeds that have come into being as a result of freaks of nature. I have already mentioned Early Dawn peaches. We also have Red Hanepoot, Red Groendruif, Myburgh-nartjies and so forth. I have already said that these varieties came into being as a result of freaks of nature. I do not mean that the hon. member opposite is also a freak of nature But these new breeds came into being as a result of freaks of nature.

A further source of new varieties was chance crossings. Some kinds of fruit are self-fertilizing; in other words, the pollen of a particular type of fruit fertilizes the pistil of that fruit and then forms fruit the seed of which is also in more or less true to the parent plant. Other kinds again need cross-pollination to become fertilized. Strangely enough, even in the case of self-fertilizing varieties, there may be minor deviations on the part of the offspring. For example, we have found that the famous Kakamas variety which caused quite a revolution in the fruit canning industry in South Africa, came into being from the Transvaal yellow clingstone peach, because the pips of those Transvaal clingstone peaches floated down in the Vaal River and were washed up on the agricultural small-holdings at Kakamas and Keimoes. They germinated there and started to grow and then all that was needed was for an enterprising expert plant-breeder, Professor Reinecke, to discover the good qualities of that type of peach. With the assistance of people throughout the country he collected plant material, amongst others, the material of this Kakamas tree which became the mother tree of the many famous Kakamas peaches that are well-known throughout the world to-day. In this way we were given the famous brothers, or perhaps the slightly less famous brothers, of the Kakamas peach—the Keimoes, the Maluti and the Tokane. All of them were merely progeny of the Transvaal yellow clingstone peach and it was quite by chance that we came upon these new varieties. The same thing happened with the famous Boland peach which also came into being simply through the planting of the pips of other parent trees. These are all examples of chance new varieties that have been discovered by observant people.

When one has to deal with cross-pollination the field is wide open for the plant breeders because new kinds of plants can be bred by means of cross-pollination. If, for example, one plants the seeds of a cross-pollinated guava and one obtains 50 saplings from that one guava, one may easily find that one has 50 different varieties. All that one does then is simply to select the best of them and there you are: You have a few new varieties.

Cross-pollination is to-day the most valuable means that the plant breeder has to breed new plants. In the case of plants that are dependent upon cross-pollination the matter is reasonably simple. All that one does is to introduce the ripe seed from the stamens of the one variety into the ripe, receptive pistil of the other variety. Out of the mixture of widely differing progeny one then selects the most promising and in this way one has a few new varieties.

In the case of self-fertilizing plants the process is slightly more involved. Before the pollen is ripe enough to fertilize its own pistil one has to remove all the stamens and close the flowers so that no chance fertilization can take place. When the pistil is right for fertilizing, one places the desired stamen upon it. This is a strictly controlled breeding method which has been used by scientists for the past 50 or 60 years—since the time that the monk Mendel developed his theories on genetics. But, as the hon. the Minister pointed out, it is a very gradual process. It can easily take from 15 to 20 years in the case of fruit, as the hon. member there also pointed out, in order to breed a new variety by this means and then to test it out thoroughly before it can be made available to the fruit farmer. But I want to point out that this is the only way in which to make new varieties available to our fruit industry, varieties that have been adapted to our South African conditions.

As far as the old Section 24 to which so much objection has been taken is concerned, in my opinion the days of the importing of promising new varieties are past because it is recognized generally in the fruit World to-day that one cannot breed a universally good type; one breeds a new good type for a very limited set of circumstances. For example, various kinds of grapes are cultivated at the viticultural research station of Würtzburg on the Main River in Germany that are only intended for the Main Valley. Another research station breeds various types of grapes only for the Rhine Valley and a third one for the Moselle Valley. In this way every plant breeder breeds plants, trees and shrubs for a limited set of circumstances only. A universally good plant no longer exists and that is why it is not necessary for us to import universally good types for distribution amongst our fruit farmers. The reason for this is firstly that climatic differences reduce a very good type of plant that has been very successful in one part of the world to a hopeless failure in other parts of the world. The secret of the wonderful Kakamas family is precisely that it is so well adjusted to our warm, sunny climate. On the other hand, an overseas canning peach, the so-called Tuscan clingstone peach which is such a great success in California is a complete failure in this country. Why? For the simple reason that it has not been adjusted to our climatic conditions. The same thing holds good for such well-known overseas varieties as Duke of York peaches, Burbank plums and so forth. Mr. Speaker, I would like here to tell you a little story about the famous Burbank plums. That well-known Californian fruit breeder, Luther Burbank, bred a large variety of different kinds of fruit and when eventually he bred this wonder plum, he gave it his own name. About 40 years ago the fruit farmers of this country also imported this wonder plum and I would like to ask whether there is one hon. member here to-day who has ever heard of a Burbank plum? It disappeared completely because that wonder plum of Luther Burbank was a complete failure here in South Africa. I think that this holds good for most of the so-called universally good varieties that are cultivated in various parts of the world. No wonder too, that the leading fruit-producing countries in the world to-day are breeding intensively for their various climatic regions only. I want this afternoon to pay tribute to our Departments of Agriculture and particularly to the one man who has performed absolute miracles in this sphere. I am referring to Mr. Lourens Steyn of the Western Province Fruit Research Station, a man who has bred a large variety of new kinds of fruit-trees and has made them available to us, plants that are fully adjusted to our South African conditions. For example, he bred two new types of strawberries—Klara-dyn and Festival—that are better than anything in the world to-day. There was a very famous strawberry in Germany, the Sonyana, of which the breeder was very proud. It was imported into South Africa and was a complete failure here. But these varieties, Klara-dyn and Festival, were bred at Bien Donne, Groot Drakenstein, and these strawberries are considered on the Covent Garden Market in London, to-day to be amongst the best in the world. Furthermore, from the hands of that same research worker we have had Culem-borg, Swellengrebel and Van Riebeeck dessert peaches that are absolutely outstanding. I would go so far as to say that a man who has not yet eaten a Van Riebeeck peach has not yet tasted a delicious peach. They have been bred by this particular fruit breeder connected with the fruit research station at Stellenbosch. He also successfully bred the following canning varieties: Oom Sarel, Professor Black, Professor Neethling, Professor Malherbe and Walgant. These are all some of the very best peaches that the canning industry has ever had. I have only mentioned the types that have already been released and made available to the farmers, but there is still a whole series of peach, plum, apple, pear and apricot varieties that have already been bred but which have not yet been tested before being released. I want to go so far as to say that the fruit farmers of South Africa will one day erect a monument to this research worker, this fruit breeder who has done such a surprising amount to cultivate adaptable varieties, not wonder varieties that will perform miracles throughout the whole world, but varieties that are performing miracles in South Africa, varieties that are so adjusted to our climatic conditions that they can be produced profitably because their production per unit is high and because their quality is superb.

I come now to the second reason why I feel that the old Section 24 should fall away and why we do not need it in this legislation, and that is the question of plant diseases and insect pests. In this we are dealing with what is actually the greatest danger.

Order! The hon. member should rather discuss the details of the clause during the Committee Stage.

With all respect, Mr. Speaker, that clause is not in the Bill. The reason why we must be so careful to cultivate our own varieties here is because certain varieties are more susceptible to plant diseases than others are. One finds immune varieties, less immune varieties and susceptible varieties and because we still have to deal with a number of varieties that are not immune to plant diseases, we use a large variety of poisons to combat those diseases. Doctor Douw G. Steyn, the well-known toxicologist, stated only the other week that the South African fruit farmer uses far more poisonous substances per unit of production than any other fruit-producing country in the world. This is the case because we have to deal with a number of varieties that are not immune to disease. It is so necessary for us to breed and make available plant varieties that are immune to disease and insect pests. That is precisely what our research workers are doing and I want this afternoon to say a very big thank you to the hon. the Minister for the wonderful work that his research stations are doing in this connection.

It may be argued that our division of Plant Control and Quarantine should ensure that these diseases are not imported into the country together with new varieties, but that is not as simple as it sounds. Climatic conditions may, for example, cause certain varieties which are not susceptible to certain diseases overseas, to be susceptible to specific diseases in South Africa. I want to mention a few examples. In California there is a particular apple, Beverley Hills, which is immune to “fire blight”—this is a virus disease. But three years after some of those Beverley Hills apple trees had been imported into this country and planted at our quarantine station at Rose-bank, it was discovered that this variety was susceptible to that virus disease in South Africa. The same thing happened with a few kinds of grapes that were imported by the Department in 1952—Calmeria and Cardinal. These two varieties which had proved particularly promising in California were imported into South Africa and planted under glass at Bien Donne. When it appeared after two years that they were apparently immune to virus diseases and other diseases, they were given to five selected registered plant breeders in the Paarl-Wellington-Fransch Hoek area to be tested out of doors. Only after they had been planted on the lands did it appear that they were susceptible to a particular virus disease. They were not susceptible to those virus diseases in California nor were they apparently susceptible to those virus diseases when in quarantine, but as soon as they were planted outdoors and were exposed to our sunny climatic conditions, that virus infection struck them. That is why it is not so simple for our quarantine stations to ensure that quarantine measures are applied and that those diseases are not imported. Our country is today simply riddled with plant diseases that have been imported with new varieties of plants and that is why it is so necessary for this legislation to be placed on the Statute Book in order to enable us to cultivate our own disease-resisting varieties and to stop the spread of those diseases from other countries to South Africa.

Mr. Speaker, when we are dealing with machinery it is very easy to apply the provisions of the Patents Act because a machine will not develop a fault in South Africa that it has not had in America. But a live plant reacts very differently and that is why we need a law that is different to the Patents Act—this Plant Breeders’ Rights Bill—to protect our plant breeders and to protect our farmers in South Africa. I want to appeal to hon. members of the Opposition not to insist upon the insertion of the old Section 24.

I think, after having heard the hon. member for Paarl (Mr. W. C. Malan), one realizes why it was so instructive and pleasant to serve on the Select Committee. Our representatives on the Select Committee tended to look at this matter from the legal angle, and there are undoubtedly most interesting facts to learn from the farming world—as we have heard here to-day from the hon. member for Paarl and as we heard from him on the Select Committee as well. We appreciate that very much. But in other respects too, as one can imagine having listened to the speech of the hon. member for Paarl, not to mention the speech of the hon. member for Nelspruit (Mr. Faurie), the select committee did throw quite a lot of light on the Bill. Many of the suggestions and amendments put forward by the Select Committee have been accepted and incorporated in the Bill. I think the Select Committee did also gain an appreciation—I think it was an eye-opener—of the size of the problem that one was tackling, and of the size of the subject that one was dealing with here. It is not surprising, therefore, that while improvements have been effected, quite a few important differences between the two sides could not be resolved on the Select Committee.

Sir, we certainly greatly welcome the encouragement that this Bill affords to farmers and breeders to invest capital and to take time and trouble to develop new varieties and breeds of one kind and another, and for that reason we strongly support that aspect of this measure. I think, therefore, we can fairly say that although our representatives on this Select Committee viewed this matter from the legal angle also, we saw it very much from the farmers’ point of view. Where the Patents Act only gave protection where plants were propagated vegetatively, this measure gives protection and encouragement where the plants are propagated in other ways, for example by bulbs or seeds.

Indeed it is our concern that the greatest possible impetus should be given to improve methods, seeds and plants, that leads us to our first difference with the other side. In other words, we believe that it should be freely open to our farming population to obtain what is best from overseas. That is what we do in the animal kingdom and in other fields, and we believe that this measure will limit that right and perhaps reduce it to a certain extent. If we had fears in that regard they were increased by what the hon. members for Nelspruit and Paarl said: Because, in discussing the old Section 24, they both indicated that they foresaw dangers in introducing new varieties from overseas. For example, the hon. member for Paarl spoke of the sicknesses which were introduced by plants coming from overseas. I think the suggestion was, that, if we keep them out, we will be doing ourselves and our own agriculture a good service. Sir, I believe that they are mistaken. First of all, the very fact that he could quote to us so many cases of fruit types and other types of plants which had been imported and tried out here, shows, I think, how eagerly our farmers do in fact seek to improve their crops and their seeds. And I have little doubt that against these failures which he could mention we can set off many successes. Where he speaks of sicknesses, I have the fullest confidence in the Department that they will be able to devise quarantine methods which are quite able to cope with any sicknesses which may occur. Indeed I am told that plants are kept in quarantine for very long periods for that very purpose.

As I say, the speech of the hon. member for Nelspruit, too, indicated that he felt that because of the omission of Section 24 there would be some barrier on the importation of plants. We, on the other hand, feel that the limitations in Clause 6 of this Bill to offer protection to plants which originate outside the Republic will likewise have a limiting effect on the importation of valuable varieties. We say that for this reason: Whereas at the present time an American, for example, with a fine variety can patent it, can bring it here, and can gain by his discovery because it sells well here. That may well be threatened if overseas people cannot get protection for their new varieties, and consequently those varieties. I believe, will not become available here as much as one would like. Indeed the hon. the Minister in his speech referred to the fact that 80 new plants had been patented under the Patents Act which had come from outside South Africa and only eight from inside South Africa. We would gladly see those figures reversed; we would be very glad to see a very large number patented here. Bearing in mind our relatively small population and the great population outside one must expect more discoveries to be made outside. One would be loathe to see those new discoveries not introduced here because of a side-effect of this Bill.

So I join with what the hon. member for Johannesburg (North) said, that we believe Clause 6 will not only have the effect of keeping out plants and fruit types that can be of value to us, but that it does indeed amount to a breach of our obligations under the Paris Convention. If it is true that it is a breach of those obligations it could very well be that there will be a chain reaction against us. We are very keen to see that possibility eliminated. It was for that reason that the hon. member for Germiston (District) (Mr. Tucker) foreshadowed our attempt to get this important amendment accepted when he indicated that he wanted all the best sources available, including sources from overseas, for our farmers.

The other point that I should like to touch on concerns the question of the right of appeal to the courts. This was a matter which we raised in the Select Committee and did our best in that friendly body to get accepted, but failed. We hope that it may yet prove acceptable and I should like to give some instances to this House shortly. It is agreed on both sides that very valuable rights are given or withheld under this Bill, and indeed that very valuable rights of other people are affected by what is given or withheld under this Bill. Where this occurs under the Patents Act there is this right of recourse to the courts. It is said that this question is so technical that the courts will not understand it. But I ask hon. members: Is this more technical than a normal patent involving the most complicated machinery, chemicals and all other kind of matters with which the courts deal most successfully daily? Admittedly a special procedure is devised whereby they have the benefit of expert evidence and the advantage of expert assessors; but that could be made available in this case. Consequently you will have this right, which can be of the greatest importance, being watched over by the courts. Nobody in my experience goes more readily to court for a decision than do our farming community, and in no section of our community is there greater confidence in our courts than in that community. I do not believe that they have been deterred by the costs in the past. If indeed the matter is a puny matter, counsel and they themselves will not resort to the court but settle it out of court or in some other way. So I do hope that here too, the hon. the Minister will see his way clear to bringing this Bill into line with the Patents Act.

Various plant rights which at present are protected under the Patents Act are now to be protected under the Plant Breeders’ Act. It is represented, and I think very fairly, that it is a more convenient method of giving this protection. There is no suggestion that the plants that have hitherto enjoyed the protection of the Patents Act were not perfectly well dealt with by the courts. It is not suggested that this resort to the courts has proved too costly in the case of plants where it has not in other cases.

This side of the House has raised these few questions and indicated that they were giving us considerable difficulty, the question of limiting the right of protection to plants with their origin in the Republic and, secondly, the absence in this Bill of the right of recourse to the courts. Accordingly we shall move, in the Committee Stage, for an instruction hoping thereby to place the hon. the Minister in a position to remedy those two matters which could be said to be blemishes so that we can have a Bill which gives the encouragement that is wanted and indeed gives greater encouragement; and provides the best possible forum to decide any difficulties that may arise.

Before I say what I want to say about the Bill, I just want to put a small matter right. I just want to tell the hon. member for Paarl (Mr. W. C. Malan) that the Kakamas peach is really a Free State yellow peach. That peach was cultivated along the Orange River and it eventually reached Kakamas.

Order! That is irrelevant.

Sir, we have probably come to the end of the debate. It has been explained in detail how important it is that we should have new plants either by means of breeding or selection. We are living at a time when there is keen competition in the world. We are also living at a time when the economy of every branch of our farming industry has to be considered. The hon. member for Paarl has already, in a very able manner, told us what it had cost to produce these new varieties either by means of selection or breeding.

I also want to point out that it is not only necessary for us to have a good canning peach in the canning industry but we should also have varieties that will prolong the canning period. The canning factories use manual labour and if that period is short it simply means that their production costs are so much higher. That was why they tried in the past, and they succeeded in it, to produce varieties by means of selection and breeding which did not ripen at the same time. The canning period has consequently been considerably extended. I shall not enlarge any further on this aspect. I think we are all aware of the fact that we should produce new plants and new varieties.

I want to return to this point whether the encouragement to the breeders and the growers should lie in this that they should patent their new plants under the Patents Act or under this new Plant Breeders’ Rights Act. I must really congratulate the hon. the Minister and his Department on once again having taken the lead in the world by placing an Act on the Statute Book which is the only one of its kind. Various speakers have told us that you cannot patent a plant. When you design a cold drink top which has characteristics which no cold drink top has in the world and you patent that and you sell it anywhere, even in the North Pole, it will retain all its characteristics. In other words, you patent it and you can consequently tell the world that you have a top that will always retain its characteristics. But, as the hon. member for Paarl, has explained clearly, you cannot do that in the case of a plant. The South African nation has really been exploited in the past in respect of plants that were imported into the country. People who were anxious to improve their gardens or nurseries were really deceived. They paid exorbitant prices for those plants without getting the value for their money. The simple reason is that a plant is not a machine; it is not something dead; it is something that breathes, that eats and that is influenced by climatic conditions. That is why I want to congratulate the Minister and his Department which was responsible for the drafting of this Bill on once again having shown the world that we at the southern tip of Africa know what must be done and what ought to be done. I predict that England who tried to pass similar legislation, as the hon. member for Germiston (District) has already told us, will come to South Africa and ask us to let them have our Act so that they can see how to draft theirs. That is why I am proud to know that we in South Africa need not be ashamed of ourselves but that we can give the lead in the world. I support the Bill wholeheartedly. I believe the breeders and the growers will rejoice about this Bill.

I just want to deal briefly with the remark made by the hon. member for Pinelands (Mr. Thompson) namely that they would have liked to see this Bill cast in the same mould at the Patents Act and that when anybody wanted to appeal he could appeal to the courts. As you know, Mr. Speaker, we farmers do not like the courts. We fight shy of the courts; what must we do there? Our place is with the Department of Agriculture and with the Minister of Agriculture. The constitution of that board has now been changed in such a way that somebody with legal knowledge will be the chairman; an official of the Department will be the second member and somebody who is an expert, somebody who knows the commodity concerned, will be the third member. I really believe that the dissatisfied breeder will receive fair and just treatment at the hands of that appeal board.

Once again my hearty congratulations to the Minister. I conclude by saying that we on this side of the House fully support the Bill.

The hon. member for Bethlehem (Mr. Knobel) who has just sat down said more or less what appears in the report of the Select Committee. As a member of the farming group on this side of the House I just want to say that I feel this is a Bill which we can support wholeheartedly. When we think of the development that is taking place in South Africa to-day in the field of gardening, agriculture and so forth, and we think of the total income of our agricultural industry, we realize that this is the most important section of our agricultural industry. So much so that an official of the Department of Agricultural Economy and Marketing said recently that there would in all probability be an explosion in the fruit-growing industry in the Western Cape Province in the years to come. So much is already being done in regard to the fruit-growing industry, it is already contributing so much to the total income of our agricultural industry, that you can definitely not ignore it. In other words, just as the breeder assisted to improve our animal stock, as he assisted to improve our cattle and sheep industry in this country, so I also believe that by means of selection and wise breeding and a dedicated desire to improve our plants and trees it is essential for us to place this legislation on the Statute Book to-day.

Before dealing with the Bill I just want to say that I found it strange that the hon. member for Paarl (Mr. W. C. Malan) should tell us to-day that he personally thinks it is no longer necessary to import new varieties into South Africa. The thought immediately occurred to me whether, when Jan van Riebeeck landed here, the vineyards in the Paarl and Stellenbosch valleys were already there? Were the orange groves of Citrusdal already there? Was the lowveld in the Eastern Transvaal already as developed as it is to-day? Is all the progress we have made in South Africa in our fruit and plant industry not due to the assistance we got from overseas? If the hon. member is no longer in favour of our benefiting by it when they produce good varieties overseas, why does he not apply the same principle to the hon. member for Cradock (Mr. G. F. H. Bekker) who may want to import a pedigree Friesland bull from overseas? Does the hon. member not know that we have a type of wheat called “sokkie” (sock). Does the hon. member not know how it got that name? Does he not know that a professor from the University of Stellenbosch brought a few grains of that variety into the country by hiding them in his sock? Is the progress we have made in our wheatgrowing industry not precisely due to the fact that we had the support of the world outside? If we can benefit by varieties produced overseas why should we not gain by the experience of those people? We do not accept those varieties as such. They are brought to South Africa, they are adapted and new varieties are bred, varieties which have been adapted to conditions in South Africa. With the passage of time we accept those varieties as our own and they make an important contribution to our agricultural industry. The hon. member is a fruitgrower but he must apply the same principle in the fruit-growing industry which the stock farmers apply to-day and that is to try to get the best of what is bred by people overseas.

You can accept, Sir, that all breeders of plants and trees are to a certain extent also growers, but you cannot accept that all growers of trees, shrubs and plants are breeders as well. Those people are now given the encouragement in this legislation to do the necessary research and to do the necessary experiments in order to breed improved plants and shrubs and trees. I think everyone in this House must approve of it that those people are given the right to exercise their rights and to register their products. That is why we do not differ from hon. members opposite as far as the principle of the Bill is concerned. We want to assist so that the breeders of fruit, of vegetables and varieties of wheat will in particular produce a product that will be of still further benefit to our agricultural industry in future.

I know it is a fact that many fruit farmers order thousands of shrubs, trees etc. every year. But how many of them have the assurance that the advertisements and propaganda which precede the sale of such a variety will in due course pay dividends? In other words, that it will produce the fruit it is predicted to produce, because there is no yardstick that you can apply as there is, for instance, in the case of the cattle of the hon. member for Cradock where he can say a cow delivers three or six gallon per day. That is not the case when it comes to the fruit farmer. You must have some kind of control, however, so as to be sure that the product you are going to put into the soil will indeed produce what it is predicted to produce. Because there is no registration to-day, because those people do not have certain rights, the farmer must to-day depend on the breeder who conducts the most effective advertising campaign. If these people can be registered as breeders so that you know that the grower is using the product of the breeder the farmer will, to a great extent, have the assurance that the product he buys will very nearly produce the ideal product he is aiming at. In other words, he will be assured that there will always be an improvement; it will not be necessary for him merely to depend on the advertisements of the breeder or grower on the packets or in the newspapers.

Protect him.

As a result of this legislation the farmer will to a great extent be protected. He will be protected because he will know that the tree or variety of grain or whatever he buys from a certain grower comes from a good breeder and that it has already been experimented with for a long time and that it will produce the desired product. That is how it will protect the farmer indirectly.

I want to raise two matters which, I think, will affect the stock farmers of South Africa in particular. The one is the question of lucerne. We know that lucerne is still the most important stock feed in this country to-day. We also know that they are doing research work at Grootfontein. We know they are experimenting with various varieties, varieties that will be eminently suited to dryland conditions. The lucerne seed we know is very well suited to land under irrigation; it produces excellent results; there are no complaints in that regard. But I think a great deal can still be done for those parts of the country where they go in for extensive farming to produce a variety of lucerne in South Africa that can be cultivated in drought conditions, in dryland conditions. If we can do that, Mr. Speaker, I believe we shall be making a great contribution to the promotion of our stock breeding industry and we shall also be doing a great deal, not only to increase the carrying capacity of our soil, but also to protect ourselves against the drought conditions which we experience regularly from time to time. That is why I welcome this Bill for one reason in particular, namely, that it will encourage our people, not only the department which is already doing its work, to produce varieties of lucerne which can be grown, not only where the land is irrigated, but also in the drought stricken areas and in dryland conditions.

I also believe that we should be able to grow a type of prickly pear in this country which is not only thornless, we already have that type, but which can be grown in all those parts of South Africa where they go in for extensive farming. That will greatly assist our stockfarming industry. I feel that there is much room for research in this respect. Because this Bill will protect the rights of the plant breeders, I think more research will be done in due course and that the necessary encouragement will be there in the two respects I have mentioned, research that will greatly benefit the stockfarming industry and the Karoo farmer in the country.

We are pleased that this Bill has been so well received as far as the general principle is concerned. The Select Committee also found, after a very thorough investigation had been instituted by the Department, that it enjoyed the general support of the breeders and of those concerned. There are a few points, however, on which the Opposition and this side of the House obviously still differ. I refer to the point raised a moment ago by the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (West) (Mr. Streicher), namely, research in respect of lucerne. Suppose a young farmer or anybody else is encouraged, as this legislation will encourage him, to show enterprise and he ultimately succeeds in producing such a lucerne seed; but before he is successful somebody comes from overseas and registers such a seed in this country. What is the position of that person then? You see, Mr. Speaker, that is where we always differ from the Opposition. We are anxious to encourage our own people and when they produce results we want to give them preference and the benefit of their enterprising spirit. That was also the aspect on which we differed in the Select Committee. Did we or did we not have to make the mistake of not allowing any plants to be imported? The question is whether those plants can be registered under this legislation. Let me again give the example which we have already had, namely, that of roses. Roses have been imported in great quantities and registered under the Patents Act. Those flowers were exhibited at shows, they made a wonderful impression on people and they were then sent into the veld. The result was that it became evident that they simply could not stand up to our climatic conditions and diseases. The public suffered severe losses in consequence. In other words, we are now taking steps, in the first place, to give our own people the benefit of their enterprising spirit and to breed plants which can be grown here on the same basis as we did in the case of our factories, for example. We protect our own factories, our own people, until they are strong enough. The same principle is applied in this Bill, namely, to stimulate the enterprising spirit of our own people to try to breed new plants and then to let them enjoy the benefit, for a certain period, of their discoveries. As far as this point is concerned, we differ in principle from the Opposition, particularly after what the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (West) and the hon. member for Pinelands (Mr. Thompson) have said.

Let me just refer to one other point which was raised in connection with the Paris Convention. The Select Committee went thoroughly into the matter and they obtained legal opinion as to whether this legislation would have any adverse affect on the Paris Convention. The reply was short and to the point—

That answers the whole problem raised by the hon. member for Johannesburg (North.)

I just want to refer to one other point and that is the legal position. We know our people and as far as the registration of plant breeders’ rights is concerned and the legal procedure to be followed—the time factor and the costs involved—those are such that it is clear that our people will not avail themselves of that right in the circumstances. That is why you want to make it as easy as possible and the procedure as simple as possible. Hence the steps we are now taking. It is correct, as the hon. member has said, that this is complicated legislation but that does not mean that the courts cannot give judgment on such matter. Where we are dealing with the development and breeding of new plants you want people present who are experts when a decision is made because it is a complicated process. That is why we shall need people with a personal knowledge of this type of undertaking. That is why it is stated in this way.

We are grateful that the second reading of this Bill, at least, has been accepted in this spirit.

I shall be brief but I just want to express my appreciation to both sides of the House for the support this Bill has received in general. No objections to the principle have been raised. It is true that two small points have been raised, in regard to which we on this side of the House are not in full agreement with hon. members opposite but those points can be dealt with more effectively in the Committee Stage. I want to convey to hon. members my personal gratitude for the constructive and instructive manner in which they have taken part in this debate.

I wish to move an amendment for the purpose of clarifying the intention of this Bill. The amendment is as follows—

We on this side of the House cannot believe that it is the Government’s intention to interfere with the wages and salaries of our workers and salaried people through the machinery of price control. Therefore, when we come to put the machinery for price control permanently on our Statute Book, we should examine the mischief of the proposed law very carefully indeed. The original measure flowing from our War Measures had a specific object which is not the object of this Bill. The object originally was to control prices when they tended to rise rapidly and get out of hand as a result of scarcities created by the situation of war. But to-day we do not face a situation where there are artificial scarcities caused by the fact that production is diverted to other purposes than the production of consumer goods. The position we have to-day is that there is a danger of prices rising in South Africa because of inflation. We had one speech after the other from the other side, including the hon. Minister’s referring to the fact that in their opinion (and I think quite rightly) South Africa has entered a period of expansion. For that reason there is a tendency for the creeping inflation that we have known for many years to move a little bit faster. Every one that spoke on the other side indicated that for that reason they were keen to have our price control machinery permanently established in the statute law of our country. They do not realize that price control by itself cannot control an inflationary situation. If you control the price of a commodity against the fact that the cost of production of that commodity is rising and has risen, you come to a stage after wards where price control has to give way and allow increases, as is happening under the present price control regulations. If price control does not give way, you find that people find it unprofitable to produce the commodity in question and production of it ceases; or dealings in that commodity are translated to the black market—a vicious situation which I am quite sure nobody wishes to see in South Africa.

One way in which price control could be used to restrict a rise in the cost of production would be that the price control machinery were used to force wages down. I admit at once—I would not like the argument to come from the other side—that wages are fixed by other legislative means, by our Industrial Conciliation Act, and by our Wage Act, but the fact is that in an inflationary period such as we are experiencing at the moment, most wages are well above those determined under the Wage Act or those agreed upon under our machinery for collective bargaining. When I was in Johannesburg last, I found for instance that in the building industry most wages were 20 to 25 per cent above those agreed upon under the industrial agreement. In such circumstances other machinery can be used to reduce wages to a lower level than would be normal when your consider the rule of supply and demand in that industry. So we on this side of the House would ask the hon. Minister please to consider accepting this amendment of ours. This is one of the things that we were very keen to thrash out in a select committee, but that is not possible now. So I do hope that the hon. Minister will give this his favourable consideration, because I do want to remove any suspicion, I want to remove any doubts about this matter; we do not want to create the impression that we want to embody in our statute something which can militate against the workers and the salaried people of South Africa. And I want to warn the hon. Minister that if he leaves this as it is, pressure will come upon him and his Department and upon the Government to restrict increases in wages. It has been the experience in other countries, especially older countries in the world, that when there is an attempt to control inflation and rising prices, the attempts to control are resisted by commerce and by industry on the grounds that they are under pressure to increase wages, and if wages are increased these increases have to be passed onto the consumer. So they say to the authorities: The only way that you can help us to restrain prices is to control wages and salaries and in that way a real danger arises that price control may be enlisted by interested parties, or that attempts may be made to enlist price control, in order to control wages and salaries. I am sure the Government will consider this amendment in the spirit in which it is moved, namely to remove doubts, and—now that we are making this a permanent part of our law—to clarify the intention of the authorities completely so that there can be no misunderstanding. I shall be shocked if this amendment is refused. I also hope that the hon. Minister will not cause me and other people who are sincere in their approach in this matter to have suspicions about the intentions of the Government.

A similar argument applies in the case of professional services. There are other people here who are better qualified to speak on this, but our professions are already, through their own organizations, honourable organizations subject to control. I think for example of the medical profession, a profession whose charges very often hurt a man of average means when he has illness in his family; the fact is that the cost of the practitioner’s services is, according to the Snyman Commission, only about 20 per cent of the total cost of medical services. If we find that those services are too high, the answer is not to approach the matter through the price controller, but to approach them through social measures by assisting the ordinary family man to meet those medical costs. That is why we keep on pleading for schemes of medical aid in South Africa.

There is one point on both these aspects of my amendment that I want to deal with quickly. It may be argued that it is not the intention of this Bill to include services in the sense of employer-employee relationship at all, that they have not been included in the years that we have had these regulations. But the only definition of “service” in the Bill is a definition which includes something which is an addition to the normal meaning of “service”. That means that in accordance with our rules of interpretation we must accept that the word “service” as used in this Bill has the meaning which normal usage ascribes to it. I have taken the trouble to go through various dictionaries I have got the concise “Oxford Dictionary” here, because it is the easiest one to handle they are all in accordance on this point and I find that one of the primary definitions of “service”, certainly the only definition that can be applied to “service” as it is used in this Bill, is the following: “What an employee or subordinate is bound to,” and then “work done or doing of work on behalf of an employer by an employee”. So quite obviously, Sir, in the normal use of the English language and the normal use of the Afrikaans language “service” means exactly what we want to exclude from this Bill. I hope sincerely, in the interest of clarity, to avoid confusion and to avoid possible future abuse of this Bill when it becomes law, that the Minister will seriously consider accepting this amendment.

I want to say immediately that I agree with the hon. member that this measure is not intended to control inflation. You cannot control inflation with a measure such as this. Inflation has to be controlled by other means. But you can control some of the effects of inflation by a measure of this kind, and of course your measure is designed to control rising prices even in times when there is no inflation. I also agree with the hon. member that it is not the intention of this Bill to give us the power to control wages and salaries, nor professional services. That has never been the case and it is not the intention now that this Bill should control the fees of doctors and attorneys, etc. Just to show that that is not the intention, I am quite prepared to accept the amendment of the hon. member in spirit, but I have not yet had the opportunity to put it to the legal advisers, and there is some question of course in regard to who is “a professional person” under the law. So I am prepared to consider the amendment in the spirit in which it had been put in the Other Place. In the meantime I will then put it to the legal advisers and then introduce an amendment in the Other Place.

Thank you.

Clause 8 gives the controller the right to do three things: (1) To demand that the person selling goods whose prices have been fixed at a maximum, shall give the buyer an invoice; (2) that he shall retain that invoice for a specific period; and (3) that the buyer himself shall retain the invoice which he has received.

Mr. Speaker, in the light of the fact that business operations to-day differ considerably from what they were 20 years ago when the original war measures were introduced, it is possible that this clause may give rise to some real difficulties. Let us assume for example that the price is fixed of a simple commodity like coffee if the seller is required to give an invoice and retain it, and the buyer is required to keep that invoice, it will be an impossible situation. Many of the stores do not give invoices to-day. Invoices in the cash business is a thing of the past; the mechanization in modern commerce is such that most things are done by machines. I do not know how this is going to be implemented. The hon. Minister may tell us that the purpose of this particular clause is on a much narrower front and that it will only be applicable to large contracts or sales of commodities which run into a large amount of money, but it also may be that the controller to make certain that price control is being adhered to, might find it necessary to utilize the provisions of this section, and frankly I cannot see how it can be implemented under the modern methods of business as we know them to-day. We would like to hear from the hon. Minister just what is intended by this particular clause on the wider front and how it will be applied.

The intention merely is to make price control more effective. It says: “The controller may,” and “when the controller regards it as advisable, in certain circumstances he can require the buyer also to retain an invoice”. It is only to make the control more effective. This clause has worked in the past and it has never been difficult to implement. The hon. member should go back to the regulations that were passed and he will find that the same thing appears in these regulations and we have never experienced any difficulties. So I do not see why they should be unworkable in future.

I want to ask the hon. Minister to consider the position of a particular commodity in the category of foodstuffs, let us say tea, being in short supply, the price of this particular commodity then being raised without the knowledge of the price controller at a certain stage, but with the full knowledge of members of the public who buy it every day, say through the supermarkets or the chain stores. The point which the hon. member for Parktown made would then be relevant in this way—that when you buy goods in a supermarket, especially in the self-service stores, you enter at a turnstile (I do not know whether the hon. Minister is aware of the procedure) and having selected your goods at random as it were, from thousands of different items which are on display, and then having included in that selection, say, a pound of tea, you then leave at another turnstile where by mechanical means the total is worked out on a slip of paper which is handed to you, without any reference whatsoever to any one of these commodities that you have purchased—maybe 30 articles. You pay the full amount, and then you exit. I say that since this type of outlet is responsible, certainly in the foodstuffs business, for a very large proportion of the entire turnover in a particular commodity throughout the country, the fact that these regulations worked in the past does not mean that he can possibly expect an invoice to be issued for a specific item in respect of which the price controller has reason to suspect there is overcharging, whilst he has no clue at all as to what is being charged. I doubt whether he will get the co-operation of the public to the extent that the person concerned, knowing that he has entered a supermarket, knowing that no invoice is available to him, will say that he is not going to buy that one item there at all; that for that one item, he would go to another store in order to obtain the required invoice, and thus be able to prove an overcharge. Would the hon. Minister kindly explain how in terms of the modern and mechanized methods of accounting for a purchase, especially in the field of the supermarket, the chain store and the self-service store, which are mushrooming all over the country it is anticipated that this particular provision in regard to the issuing of an invoice, the retention of a copy by the seller and the purchaser, can possibly be applied?

I want to ask the hon. member who has just sat down whether he wants this clause deleted?

I am not saying that.

Why is he arguing against it then? If he has an alternative one to suggest, we can consider it, Sir, but he does not suggest an alternative; he is just opposed to the clause. What he is really doing is to ask that a certain section of the people should not be subject to this price control, namely, those people who run self-service shops, because, as he says, it will make their position impossible. But when prices are fixed everybody must observe that price fixation. This clause has been drafted in such a way as to make price fixation effective. The hon. the Minister has just said that, but I do not think it has registered with the hon. member for Hospital (Mr. Gorshel). If the hon. member has anything to suggest how price control can be made effective, also in the case of self-service shops, we shall be pleased to hear it. I know of no better method than to get one person to write down what he charged the other for an article and that the other person should have proof of what he paid for it. Those, in the long run, Sir, are the two sheet anchors of any purchase contract and that is what is laid down here. The fact that it will cause a little difficulty to those who sell articles which are subject to price control, is just unfortunate. When there is price control everybody is subject to it, and by virtue of what fact should these self-service shops not be subject to it? By virtue of what fact can they plead that it will be impossible for them to observe the law in this way? I should like to know that from the hon. member for Hospital. No virtue attaches to them which makes them different from ordinary people.

The last speaker really must be living in the ages when there were “smouse” going round selling various things. The self-service store to-day is something that means so much in modern life, but the hon. member does not seem to have any idea of the position. The fact remains that invoices are not made up by the buyer, and the net result of that has been greater convenience for the public and a reduction in the cost of handling those goods, which in turn means a reduction in the price to the consumer. We asked for this Bill to go before a select committee. This is one of the reasons. You cannot interfere with modern methods that have been brought into being to bring down prices and increase efficiency. Does the convenience of the public mean nothing to the hon. member for Standerton? Does the reduction of costs mean nothing to the hon. member? I can well understand with that at the back of his mind, why the hon. member voted against our suggestion that the Bill should go to a select committee.

Until the hon. member for Standerton spoke I could perhaps have looked at this clause as something that the hon. Minister needed to protect the situation. But after listening to the hon. member for Standerton, what we were afraid of has now become very definite and clear. He has now told this House very simply that in so far as the chain stores and the self-service stores are concerned, they must just fall in line. I accept that. They are in business and if there is a law then everybody must obey the law. But what about the buyer? What the hon. member for Standerton is saying in this House is that if the price controller in terms of this particular clause says that a seller must give an invoice and the purchaser must keep an invoice, every single purchaser has got to keep his invoice for a time to be determined by the price controller. It simply means this that we as the buyers of products in this country, if necessity arises for serious price control under circumstances none of us can foresee at the moment, are going to have to demand an invoice for everything we buy, are going to have to keep that invoice for a specific period, and when we are asked for an invoice by an inspector, we have to produce that invoice. Nobody knows when an inspector is going to ask for an invoice. It is a farcical situation that in modern trading where people are buying more and more for cash, a person can be required not only (a) to give an invoice, but (b) a purchaser to keep an invoice. The situation has been highlighted very clearly by the hon. member for Standerton. I would have been prepared to say no more about it after the explanation given by the hon. Minister, but after the hon. member for Standerton has spoken, and I must bear in mind that the hon. member for Standerton is one of the economists on the Government side, the thing has been put in the right perspective. We now know what to expect and if it should be necessary to implement this clause, every buyer of a commodity in this country is going to be faced with the situation that he will have to be a storer of invoices and somebody who will be able to advise the price controller or his officials what he has paid for a particular product. I submit that it is a completely untenable situation.

The hon. member for Standerton (Dr. Coertze) addressed two questions to me. I am not offended by the fact that, as usual, he poured his sarcasm on what I had said. In effect he tells me that I must do something that he should have done in the first place, which is to come forward with a measure which is workable. After all the hon. Minister has the “benefit” (I used that word in quotation marks) of having that hon. member on his side, and as usual he has been too clever by half. Surely it is not for me to tell you how to make that unworkable piece of legislation workable. This legislation did not come from this side of the House. This side of the House argued, as it did yesterday at the second reading, that there are regulations, that they can be used in certain ways, but that if they are enshrined in our statute, a completely different situation arises. The hon. member for Musgrave (Mr. Hourquebie) went out of his way yesterday to point that out. Now the hon. member for Standerton asks whether I am against this clause, and then he goes on to say “Yes, the hon. member is against this clause”. He knows very well that I did not say a word to the effect that I am against the clause. Both the hon. member for Parktown and I have merely pointed out that since these original war measures were drafted at a time when a totally different set of circumstances prevailed, for example in the distributive trade, if you are going to put them into a law now as a permanent measure, you must take cognizance of the changes that have taken place since the war. The war, as we are often told, happened a long time ago, and you had plenty of time to come up with something workable. Now I want to tell you how this would work: The price controller in terms of his powers may by notice in the Gazette, publish a regulation concerning, for instance, tea that in future anybody who sells a packet of tea, any quantity, must issue an invoice, and the person who buys it must receive an invoice, and a record must be kept. I say again that in the case of the vast majority of sales effected, in the larger centres certainly, in these commodities, in the case of the overwhelming proportion of the turnover done, in the case of tea and other popular or necessary foodstuff, the turnover is done through channels which no longer have the facility and do not require the facility of issuing invoices, and therefore it becomes impossible for the customer to receive one or the seller to keep one, and for the price controller to keep track of the majority of sales of that particular commodity. Therefore we say that this provision is not practicable, and we ask with great deference that the Minister should give us an idea of how he is going to control the increase in prices in those very common and everyday commodities that are sold in such circumstances that it is not feasible to expect an invoice or to give an invoice. It is not for us to give the answer. The answer must surely come from the hon. the Minister.

I really do not know why the hon. members for Hospital (Mr. Gorshel) and Parktown (Mr. Emdin) are trying to make a mountain out of a moleheap. I think they simply want to talk but they are simply talking nonsense. Surely the price controller will not ask anybody to produce an invoice for an article unless he suspects that there is something wrong in that business and that they are over-charging the public. In that case people will be asked to ask for an invoice when they buy anything to show what they were charged for the article. In any case when that trader orders his supplies he gets an invoice. It does not go through a machine; only his sales to the public go through a machine.

The sales to the public are recorded on a strip of paper which shows what the various items cost.

But it does not show which article was purchased.

Although it does not, if you have that strip of paper and you have the invoice on which the price appears, you have proof as to what the person had paid. When the public knows that the price of tea is 80c per lb. and somebody sells it at 100c they will soon lodge a complaint and somebody will be appointed to investigate the position in that shop. You are not asking the public here to do the impossible. It will simply not be done. Nobody wants to increase the cost of living when you can keep it low. Everybody wants to supply goods to the public as cheaply as possible and it is only in exceptional cases, in cases where a shopkeeper is circumventing the law, that steps will be taken to demand an invoice and to see that the matter is put right. Sir, these chain stores and supermarkets did not come into existence yesterday. We have had them for a long time and there has always been price control; it exists to-day and this clause operates to-day. How many people have found it impossible to carry out the provisions of this clause in practice? Nobody. This clause is applied every day but only where a trader is exploiting the public. I consequently really do not know why hon. members are making such a hullabaloo about it.

I should like to support the two hon. members who raised this matter, and to voice my protest against the hon. member who criticized them. This clause can place a completely unwarranted burden on the public. Will the hon. the Minister perhaps consider doing something about it in the Other Place? There is no justification in requiring members of the public to keep the invoices of the things they purchase. One of the difficulties is the immense mass of papers which gather, particularly in the case of business men. I do not think there is any necessity for insisting on the buyer keeping his invoice. What is essential is that in a properly bound invoice book the supplier must keep a copy of any invoice he issues. If there is any purpose in it, it can be achieved by that simple means without inconveniencing the public.

The hon. member for Germiston (District) (Mr. Tucker) made a remark which I honestly did not think a lawyer like him should have made. He advocated firstly that invoices should only be retained by the suppliers and that they should be kept in a permanent book. That is in complete conflict with what his colleague said. We now have modem machinery and one can no longer use those permanent invoice books because it would be impracticable to do so. [Interjection.] But one no longer works with those invoices. Modem invoices are run through a machine and they are also numbered. The hon. member may know a lot about the law but he knows very little about business methods.

The other two hon. members apparently adopted the attitude that we only have cash sales in South Africa and that there are no credit sales; and that if there are credit sales, invoices are not kept. That is their attitude because they say that no invoices are kept. Most of the business done to-day is done on credit and because it is done on credit, invoices have to be made out. How can one sell on credit if one does not keep a proper record of what has been sold? That argument of the Opposition falls away completely. Secondly, if one sells for cash one must keep records. I would be a little suspicious of those two hon. members if they conducted a business and did not keep invoices. After all, an auditor wants to see what the cash sales have been and that is why proof in the form of invoices is required. It must be proved that the total sales for the day are correct. I am afraid that if I have to audit their work they will be in trouble because they will have to produce that proof. In other words, this proof is already there. No additional burden will be placed upon the public. I should like to put this question to the hon. member for Germiston (District) in regard to the legal aspect of the matter. He said that only the seller should keep invoices and not the buyer. The whole idea of the law is that if the seller has demanded a price that is too high, he can be prosecuted. I should like to know how one would be able to prosecute because one would have to ask the seller what he sold and if he has proof of his sales, and the buyer, who would have to be a witness in the case, would then have no proof. Of course I respect the objections of those hon. members because they have to say something; they cannot allow the Bill to go through without saying something; but I do expect them to say something practical and not to use arguments that have no value at all.

I am surprised at the point of view adopted by the last speaker. A man of his standing ought to know that the argument advanced by this side in regard to new methods of selling for cash means that there are a tremendous number of cash sales for which there is no actual invoice. He may be right when he says that most sales are on credit, but there are still millions of small transactions for cash. This Clause 8 says that any person selling any goods or rendering any service should issue an invoice containing the particulars. Now the definition of the word “invoice” is a list of goods shipped or sent with prices and charges. At self-service stores you never get a list of goods. So if the Minister wants this control to work, the provisions of the Bill must be workable.

I should like to move—

I do so because if the Coloured people do not keep the little invoice that the controller says they must keep, they can be fined R1,000.

Or two years’ imprisonment.

Yes, they have a choice.

Yes, they have a fine choice. How can you expect thousands of Coloured people—and I am not reflecting upon them—to keep the little invoice for a service that may have been rendered in repairing their little transistor radio set? Seriously, we are making a farce of the liberty of the individual by this type of legislation. I can say frankly that when I get invoices for goods I purchase I throw them away. Now it means that I have to clutter up my house or my office with a lot of invoices that I have to keep for the most minor repair or service. Surely the fact that there is an obligation on the man who renders the service to keep a record of it should suffice, but to expect the public to keep a special file or folder for these little invoices is farcical. Not only that, but the penalty is too severe. I think it is sufficient if the man who renders the service keeps the records.

This debate is starting to border on the ridiculous.

You started it.

I say this because, as the hon. member for Pretoria (Central) (Mr. van den Heever) said, hon. members opposite are making a mountain out of a molehill and the reason why they are doing so is because the hon. members for Hospital (Mr. Gorshel) and Parktown (Mr. Emdin) argue on the premise that this side of the House, when it has a discretion in regard to doing something, will always do the wrong thing. And so, when the price controller is given a certain authority he will demand the impossible and he will do the wrong thing and he will saddle the public with all sorts of burdens. But is that being fair? This provision is already part of our legislation under the existing regulation. I think nothing of hon. members’ objections to this clause but I do take great exception to the premises on which they argue. The hon. member for Boland (Mr. Barnett) echoed their sentiments and mentioned all kinds of examples.

But what will happen in practice? There may be some dealer or other who is trying to rob the public. This is something that the hon. the Minister cannot permit. It must be stopped immediately. The objection that hon. members have raised in regard to the effect of this provision on certain shops—that they have a system that will make it impossible for them to follow the provisions of this Bill—is merely a veil behind which they try to hide in order to accuse the Government of doing the wrong thing. There is not the slightest reason for this suspicion. If it were true the price controller, who has always been in existence, would be guilty of malpractices and this fact would often be raised in this House. But that has not been done because nothing wrong has been done. They are only too anxious to blame the hon. the Minister for anything that goes wrong but they have not yet done so under the present regulations. But they have come along here in a sanctimonious way and have raised the matter because they want to give expression to the obsession they have that this Government will always do the wrong thing.

The last speaker has not helped matters at all. It is no use coming along with an air of injured innocence and trying to throw out this red herring that it is the ideas behind the criticism of this side that he is concerned with. The fact is that we are concerned with what is contained in the Bill before us. The hon. member is again clean off the beam, so much so that he should only let his mind traverse the debate on the previous clause where the amendment suggested by the hon. member for Yeoville was dealt with by the hon. the Minister in the light of the facts as presented by the hon. member and in the light of what is before us at present; and the hon. the Minister said he did not intend using the provisions of this Bill in the manner suggested by the hon. member for Yeoville in which they could be used. The Minister was prepared to give the matter consideration in Another Place, and the hon. member for Standerton must view it from the same angle. It is not a case of whether there have been such cases in the past, or whether members on this side have the idea that these powers would be abused. We are concerned with the written word in what is becoming a permanent part of our legislation, and that is the point.

I want to come back to this clause. When one starts thinking in terms of the practical realities of the situation, I want to put to the Minister the case of so many of our Native trading stores. What is to be their position if they are called upon to implement the instructions which may be given in terms of subsection (c), in regard to these invoices? In a case which came to my personal knowledge, where a sales analysis was carried out, it was shown that in one particular trading store between 800 and 1,600 transactions a day were for less than the value of 5c. Who were the purchasers? Little piccanins who came to buy sweets for 1c or a biscuit. What will the position be if invoices have to be issued for such sales? How can that class of purchaser keep invoices? Cannot you imagine a little piccanin wrapping a sweet up in the very invoice he is supposed to keep? What do they know about this sub-section? I suggest that this is completely impracticable. I know that price controllers in the past in so far as Native trading stores are concerned have felt that that was one aspect of our economic life which had to be watched. I am not saying anything about that. I am not here either to defend the traders or to say anything against them. If I had anything to say, I would defend them because they have difficulties enough as it is. But I do say that this clause will be completely unworkable.

I think hon. members opposite should accept the fact that the application of the provisions of this clause will take place in such a way as to make them workable, and that the price controller will not apply these provisions in such a way as to make them unworkable. In other words, that he will only apply them as has been the case in the past—in a workable manner; otherwise he will be frustrating his own aims. But to remove this clause would make his task very difficult. It would nullify certain of the powers that he has to apply price control which can so easily be avoided. The hon. member for Parktown (Mr. Emdin) has said that price control is applied during times of shortages. But shortages may occur again in respect of certain articles and then we want to have the means of apply price control effectively. Let us imagine that the price controller wants proof that some offence or other is being committed in regard to a certain article. He wants that proof not only from the buyer but also from the seller. This Bill makes provision for the imposition of a ban not only on the sale but also on the purchase of articles at certain prices. Clause 4 (b) provides for “fixing a maximum price at which any person may purchase goods from any other person”. If we look at the end of Clause 18, which we will come to later, we will find that it states: “Any person who purchases or offers to purchase.” It is not only the seller but also the buyer who sometimes commits an offence. It may be that an article is in short supply and that the buyer is willing to buy it at a higher price than that laid down.

The other point that was made was in regard to bazaars and self-service stores. It is not of application to them because in the first place the articles in the self-service stores are all marked. The price controller can walk into any of those bazaars or self-service stores and see what the prices are that are being asked for the various goods. In a later clause, in Clause 15, the power is given to the controller “to grant an exemption from any of the provisions of the Act”. So, as far as these bazaars and self-service stores are concerned, they can always be excluded from any of the provisions of this Bill simply because they are mechanized and because they do not issue invoices in the normal sense of the word. I really think that hon. members are exaggerating this matter and I hope that they will withdraw their objection.

I should like to refer the Minister to Clause 12 (1) (b), where I think the wording can be improved, because I do not think the intention of the Bill is as set out in the paragraph. It says the controller can demand from a person under certain circumstances any balance sheet or business account in the possession or custody or under the control of that person. Now that is a very wide provision, because although the price controller may require the accounts and balance sheets from a particular person relating to a particular business or transaction, he has the power here to demand every balance sheet or business account in the custody of that person, and that person may have in his possession balance sheets which have no relation at all to the matter which the controller is investigating. Therefore I would like to move, and I hope the Minister will accept this amendment—

In this case I am also quite prepared to meet the hon. gentleman. But I have certain difficulties in this case. I can see the case which he has made out for the amendment and I am prepared to accept it but my difficulty is this: How is the controller to know which balance sheets are of interest? According to this amendment he has to demand all those balance sheets which relate to the goods and services, but he does not actually know what or where these balance sheets are. However, I am quite prepared to accept this amendment on the same conditions as the first one and to put it to the legal advisers to consider and then to move the necessary amendment in the Other Place.

A little earlier the hon. the Minister referred to certain penal provisions which applied to a purchaser. Clause 18 (b) provides that if any person purchases or offers to purchase any goods from any other person at a price in excess of the maximum price at which he may under this Act purchase such goods from such other person, he is liable to certain penalties. I Would like to move an amendment here in the following terms—

Sir, many price awards may be gazetted and published under certain circumstances, but there will be many cases where the buyer will not know of these particular awards, and quite innocently he will go in and either purchase or offer to purchase a commodity at a price in excess of the controlled price. The hon. member for South Coast (Mr. D. E. Mitchell) dealt a little earlier with the position of the Native traders. There you have a typical example. I do not think it is the intention of the Bill to penalize somebody who has no knowledge of a particular matter. I know that once a certain provision has been published in the Gazette it is supposed to be within your knowledge, but this is so wide and it will apply to so many people that I hope the hon. the Minister will see his way clear to accept that a penalty should only be imposed where somebody knowingly breaks the law.

I would like to ask the Minister whether he will give an assurance that this particular sub-section (b) will not be used by the traps who have been employed in the past by the Price Controller. I want to say that I have had occasion during my legal practice in years gone by to defend very many people who were the innocent victims of traps. In many instances these traps would wait for the principal to leave the premises before they would go in. We have just passed a clause under which the principal will be liable for the acts of his servant in a shop. I want to feel that this Act will not be used in the way in which it was used many years ago, and that is to get convictions under any circumstances by the constant trapping of people.

Is that what your Government did?

I am not interested who did it. I have a lot of knowledge of this because I have defended a great many people. In many cases these traps entered a shop and almost begged the people to sell to them. I would just like the hon. the Minister to give us the assurance that there will be a minimum of trapping in giving effect to this sub-section.

I cannot speak on behalf of the police or the Attorney’s General or the law courts. I can only tell the hon. member that it is not the intention under this Bill to trap innocent people. I hope that will give him the assurance he requires. With regard to the amendment of the hon. member over there, I am prepared to consider it in the same way as the other two amendments. I cannot say as yet what the implications are going to be in respect of other clauses, but I am prepared to consider it and if necessary to introduce an amendment in the Other Place.

I move—

Sir, we are getting near the end of this Bill, and I do not think anybody can be in any doubt any longer that we are dealing here with a measure which is complicated, which may affect many interests in the country and which can leave an impression abroad that emergency conditions have now become a state of permanency in South Africa. I think it is also common cause that this legislation is based on a war measure which is now more than 20 years old. That war measure, as hon. members will remember, was framed to deal with a situation which arose during a world conflagration, when very many commodities in this country were in short supply and when emergency conditions were changing so rapidly that this ad hoc method was the only method of dealing with the situation. But all that, of course, has changed, and it should be possible to modify and to keep up to date a control measure of this kind so as to suit the conditions as they prevail to-day. The most serious part of the whole matter, it seems to me, is that we leave the impression abroad that emergency conditions have now become a permanency and I think we should make it perfectly clear to ourselves and to everybody else that this type of legislation is looked upon as legislation which will come up for review periodically before Parliament. It was in view of all these conditions that this side of the House wanted this Bill to go to a Select Committee so that this could be thrashed out and dealt with. This is the last chance we have to amend the Bill in such a way that there can be no misunderstanding. This is an attempt therefore to frame this legislation in such a way that weaknesses and vagueness and uncertainties in the legislation can come up for review before Parliament. That is the only appropriate way. If the hon. the Minister will accept this amendment, it will not prevent the Government from implementing the legislation and giving effect to its objects, as they see fit from time to time, but he will ensure that the legislation will come up for review periodically. I think the periods allowed are reasonable, and this amendment follows the pattern which has been adopted in this House on previous occasions where it has been felt that it is necessary to review legislation. I hope therefore that the hon. the Minister will accept this amendment as well.

I think I have been very amenable in this debate. I have already considered and dealt with three of the four amendments in a very sympathetic way. I fear that I shall not be able to accept this last one. I shall not be able to accept it because I really do not see any reason why this legislation should have to be introduced into this House again next year. I see no reason why we should have to have the same debate next year and the year thereafter. I can give hon. members the assurance that they will be able to raise this matter each year under my Vote. They will be able to criticize the administration of this legislation each year if they have grounds for criticism. Just as they had the opportunity in the past to do so, so they will have that opportunity in the future. We are now entering a new era in which we will be able to operate in terms of an Act instead of a regulation. And so let us test this measure. I can give hon. members the assurance that I do not like control. It is not a pleasant thing to have to apply control. I can assure hon. members that I will be one of the first people to come to this House and move amendments if we find that certain clauses are not operating properly. I do not believe that this legislation will ever become redundant in the distant future or in the near future, but I can give hon. members the assurance that if it does appear that this legislation is no longer necessary, I shall not insist that it remain on the Statute Book. If it appears that certain of the clauses are not operating properly I shall be one of the first to bring this fact to the attention of hon. members. I can also give hon. members the assurance that this measure will be applied with the greatest circumspection and I do not believe that hon. members opposite will have any real reason for complaint in regard to its application. I am sorry, but I cannot accept the amendment.

I hope that the hon. the Minister will reconsider his attitude. I suggest to the hon. the Minister that in these circumstances this amendment is a very reasonable one, the circumstances being the fact that in introducing this Bill the hon. the Minister said that it had always been and still is the policy of his Government to remove price control and import control measures as soon as possible. That has certainly always been the attitude of this side of the House. Our attitude has been that measures of this kind should be regarded as temporary in our economy. That being the case, I suggest to the hon. the Minister that we are putting a very reasonable request to him in asking that this Bill which is now becoming part of the permanent legislation of the country should be put on the Statute Book in such a way that we on this side of the House will be able to debate the question as to whether or not price control legislation is still necessary. Sir, that opportunity does not exist where the method suggested by the hon. the Minister is followed namely to criticize his administration when his Vote comes up for discussion. In those circumstances we on this side of the House are limited entirely to criticism of his administration. We are not in a position to advance arguments to show that in our view the state of affairs warranting price control legislation no longer exists. Sir, one of the arguments used by the hon. the Minister for his refusal to accept this amendment was that we would have this same debate over again every few years. I would point out to the hon. the Minister firstly that that is not the position, because as has been pointed out in the second reading debate, we were not dealing with price control on its merits. We did not suggest that the war measures under which price control can be brought into operation should be abolished. In this debate we were not debating whether or not price control was necessary. We accepted the fact that under present circumstances it was necessary, but we suggested that it should remain in terms of a temporary law. What we will be in a position to do if the amendment is accepted, is to advance arguments to show that in our view price control legislation is no longer necessary. The second reason is that circumstances may change between now and that time. It may no longer in fact be necessary to have price control legislation. Sir, the hon. the Minister said that he would be the first to come to this House, if he felt that price control was no longer necessary, with legislation either to abolish it altogether or to amend it. I accept that, but I suggest to the Minister that the Opposition ought also to have the right to advance arguments to this House to show that price control is no longer necessary, and we cannot do that unless …

You can move a private motion.

I accept that a private motion can be moved, but the hon. members opposite will, I am sure, be the first to concede that very few private motions come up for discussion during the Session, and it may be quite impossible to move a private motion dealing with this particular matter during that particular Session.

Your party moves a private motion every week, and that is a matter that you can arrange with your Whip.

Sir, whether or not there is a right to move a private motion does not affect the principle which is involved here, and that principle in my view—and I submit it sincerely to the hon. the Minister—is that the Opposition should have an opportunity in the case of a measure of this sort, which even the hon. the Minister agrees is one which should be regarded as temporary in the sense that it should be done away with as soon as possible—in those circumstances the Opposition should also periodically have the opportunity of advancing arguments to show that it is in fact no longer necessary. I would ask the hon. the Minister therefore to reconsider his attitude, and if he is not prepared to do it at this stage I would ask him to consider the proposed amendment between now and the time this measure comes before the Other Place.

Proposed new Clause put and Committee divided: