STATUTES (MISCELLANEOUS AMENDMENTS) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

The Second Minister for Law (Prof. S. Jayakumar): Mr Speaker, Sir, I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

Sir, this is a very short Bill. It seeks to amend the various Acts which are referred to in the First Column of the Schedule. The intention is to provide for offences under those Acts to be compoundable where at the present time provision does not exist.

Summons cases for various offences which are not comparatively serious or technical offences take up a disproportionate amount of time and workload of the Subordinate Courts. These amounted, for example, to more than 137,000 cases in 1985 alone.

In some of these cases, the authorities have had no choice but to proceed by way of court proceedings, simply because the relevant legislation did not have provisions for composition. The amendments to the Acts mentioned in the Schedule will make these offences compoundable and therefore this would help to relieve the Subordinate Courts of some of these cases and permit them to be dealt with expeditiously by the authorities and will permit the Courts to deal with the more serious and important cases.

By this Bill offences under the various enactments which may be compounded will be prescribed by rules or regulations made under those Acts.

Mr Speaker, Sir, I beg to move.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time and committed to a Committee of the whole House.

The House immediately resolved itself into a Committee on the Bill. - [Prof. Jayakumar].

Bill considered in Committee; reported without amendment; read a Third time and passed.