Emergency Laws (Repeal) Act 1959

4 Modification of emergency provisions with respect to transfer of ships.

(1) The Ships and Aircraft (Transfer Restriction) Act, 1939, shall expire at the expiration of the thirty-first day of December, nineteen hundred and sixty-four, except as respects things previously done or omitted to be done; and accordingly subsection (2) of section thirteen of that Act is hereby repealed.

(2) After the passing of this Act, the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation shall not withhold—

(a) his sanction under section one of the said Act of 1939 to any transfer or mortgage, or

(b) his approval under section two of that Act of the transfer of the (registry of any ship,

except where it appears to him expedient so to do in the interests of national defence, having regard in particular to any agreement or arrangement concluded in respect of defence matters, or any consultations held in respect of such matters, between Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom and the government of any country outside the United Kingdom.

(3) The said Minister may give his sanction under the said section one to any transfer or mortgage notwithstanding that the transfer or mortgage has already been effected, and thereupon that transfer or mortgage shall be deemed for the purposes of the said section one to have been effected under the sanction of that Minister:

Provided that the giving under this subsection of sanction to any mortgage or transfer shall not affect any penalty or forfeiture by virtue of the said Act of 1939 imposed in connection with that transfer or mortgage before the giving of that sanction.

(4) Any sanction or approval under the said Act of 1939 may be expressed to be, and if so expressed shall be, irrevocable, either unconditionally or subject to compliance with any terms or conditions attached thereto, for a specified period.

(5) For section five of the said Act of 1939 (which relates to offences by corporations) there shall be substituted the following section—

“5 Where an offence under this Act committed by a body corporate is proved to have been committed with the consent or connivance of, or to be attributable to any neglect on the part of, any director, manager, secretary or other similar officer of the body corporate or any person who was purporting to act in any such capacity, he, as well as the body corporate, shall be guilty of that offence and shall be liable to be proceeded against and punished

In this section, the expression ' director ', in relation to a body corporate established by or under any enactment for the purpose of carrying on under national ownership any industry or part of an industry or undertaking, being a body corporate whose affairs are managed by its members, means a member of that body corporate.”