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Question

Volume 218: debated on Thursday 30 April 1874

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asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether he is prepared to alter the order issued by the Home Office respecting the appointment of police as inspectors of nuisances, so that in future the sanitary authority may, if they think fit, appoint police to perform these duties?

, in reply, said, he presumed this Question had been put to him in consequence of the action the Government had thought fit to take in regard to the duties of the police in Scotland. It was not the intention of the Government to make any alteration in the existing order with regard to the employment of police in sanitary matters in England. There was a clear distinction between the cases of England and Scotland. In the first place, the police in England were tinder the authority of the Home Office; but so far as sanitary matters were concerned they would be under the direction of the Local Government Board. In the second place, there was in Scotland a universal feeling that the police should be employed as Inspectors of Nuisances; whereas in England public opinion ran for the most part in a contrary direction.