Debate on The Prisons (Amendment) Act

Official report · Assembly of SchwartzistanSession 1974 · col. 15948

The Speaker: Order. The Minister will move the third reading.

Dieter Prill (Minister of Justice): I move the third reading. The Bill tidies a corner of the code that the courts have complained of for a generation. The Bill provides as follows. Penalty on conviction: a fine of 122 marka or 17 months. The House will note that the Bill is an amending Bill; the principal Act, The Prisons Act, is not otherwise touched. I move.

Kerstin Hallin (The Sudmark; The Reed Party): Mr. Speaker, The land pays for everything in the end. The Reed Party will vote as the land would vote if it could. The penalty is severe. The offence is common. The House may draw its own conclusion. The people of The Sudmark will ask what it costs them, and I should like to be able to tell them. I cannot vote for the Bill as it stands and I shall not.

Markus Brenn (The Osmoor; The Workers' Front): Mr. Speaker, My constituents in The Osmoor wrote to me about the Bill, all 8 of them, and they were against it until they read it. There is not a word in the Bill about wages. There never is. I put the word in now, so that it is in the record. I have the Bill before me and the House has it before it. I have no quarrel with the Bill except that it comes twenty years late. My party will divide the House on the Bill. [Hear, hear.]

Felix Neiner (Norrfeld; The Reed Party): Speaker, The Reed Party has read the Bill with the harvest in mind. The harvest is late this year and the causeways are under water in two districts. The penalty is severe. The offence is common. The House may draw its own conclusion. I sit for Norrfeld. The clerks there are few and the roads are long, and any officer the Bill appoints will spend a week finding the houses. I shall vote against the Bill. [Interruption.]

The Minister thanked the House for a short debate and asked for a short division.

The Speaker put the question. The Ayes were challenged and the House divided.

The Speaker declared the Ayes to have it and the Bill was passed.

The House adjourned at half past 4 in the afternoon.