(1)The Commission may hold such inquiries as it considers necessary or desirable for the discharge of any of its functions; and if the Ministers are satisfied that, for the purposes of any inquiry on the part of the Commission into a particular matter, it is necessary so to do, the Ministers may by order, specifying the matter to be inquired into, direct that in respect of any meeting of the Commission held for the purpose of inquiring into that matter, being a meeting at which not less than three members of the Commission are present, the [11 & 12 Geo. 5. c. 7.] Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act, 1921, shall apply to the Commission as if it were a tribunal established in accordance with that Act and as if that Act had been applied to the Commission in the manner prescribed :
Provided that the said Act shall in its application to the Commission have effect as if for paragraph (a) of section two of the Act there were substituted the following paragraph :—
“(a)may refuse to allow the public or any portion of the public to be present at the proceedings of the Commission, if and so far as it is, in the opinion of the Commission, necessary so to do for reasons connected with the subject-matter of the inquiry or the nature of the evidence to be given;”.
(2)Any order under this section shall, as soon as may be after it is made, be laid before Parliament, and, if either House of Parliament, within the next twenty-eight days on which that House has sat after the order is laid before it, resolves that the order be annulled, it shall thereupon become void, without prejudice, however, to anything previously done thereunder or to the making of a new order.