called upon. Mr. Asquith to move the following Resolution of which notice had been given: "That, until the adjournment for the autumn holidays, Government business be not interrupted under the provisions of any Standing Order regulating the sittings of the House, and may be entered upon at any hour though, opposed; that, at the conclusion of Government business each day, Mr. Speaker do adjourn the House without Question put; and that no Motions be made to bring in Bills under Standing Order No. 11."

rising to a point of order, said: I have a Motion down on the Paper for 31st July which proposes to discuss the undesirableness of doing the very things which the Prime Minister now wishes to do. I consider that my Motion is the more important because of the unprecedented abuse which the Government have made of the closure procedure of the House this session. In the "Manual of Procedure," issued under the high authority of the Clerk at the Table, it is stated that—

"A Motion must not anticipate a matter already appointed for the consideration of the House, or a Motion of which notice has been already given and not withdrawn."

I imagine it will not be disputed that the Prime Minister's Motion, at any rate, anticipates the matter which I desire to discuss, and would respectfully submit that my Motion has been already appointed for the consideration of the House because it appeared on the Notice Paper on 23rd June. I moved it after eleven o'clock, it was objected to, and then on my request, you from the Chair fixed it for 31st July, I think that this part of my contention is covered by the ruling of Mr. Speaker Brand on 27th May, 1875, and there are other rulings also which seem to bear on the subject. Mr. Speaker Brand said—

"It is irregular to propose any Motion which anticipates discussion of a matter already appointed for consideration by the House."

I should also like to submit to you, in relation to the statement in the "Manual of Procedure," that the Prime Minister's Motion anticipates my Motion, which is one of which notice has been already given and not withdrawn. It seems to me that my Motion comes precisely under these terms, for I have given notice of the Motion, it deals with a matter the Prime Minister now wishes to deal with, and I have not withdrawn my Motion. I find that Mr. Speaker Denison on 13th July, 1871, said—

"The hon. Baronet the Member for Portsmouth (Sir James Elphinstone) is not in order in introducing on the present Motion questions which would arise upon a future Motion of which notice has been given."

I think the Prime Minister is bound to introduce on this Motion a subject which would properly arise on the Motion of which I have given notice, and under these circumstances I very respectfully submit to you that the Prime Minister's Motion to-day is not in order.

The hon. Member was kind enough to give me notice that he intended to raise this point, and I have gone as carefully into it as I can and looked through the precedents. I am clearly of opinion that one notice of Motion cannot act as a block on another notice of Motion. If so the whole business of the House would come to a standstill. Where there are two notices of Motion dealing with the same matter the fact that one stands for to-day, and the other stands for to-morrow does not prevent to-day's Motion coming on, and lam sure that the hon. Member will search the books and the records in vain to find a case of that kind. The hon. Member has called my attention to two cases in which my predecessors have laid down a rule. Dealing first with the one of 27th May, 1875, where, when a notice of Motion on the subject of strangers present at debate was brought forward, Mr. Speaker Brand said it was Ids duty to inform the House that by the rules of the House it was irregular to propose any Motion which anticipated discussion upon matters already appointed for the consideration, of the House. That I conceive to be, so far as it goes, a perfectly accurate statement of the rule against anticipation. In my opinion, the added phrases which appear in the "Manual" go really somewhat beyond the rule, as laid down from the Chair in former days. Then the hon. Member says that his Motion is in regard to a matter already appointed for the consideration of the House. There I do not agree with him. The hon. Member did not move his Motion. He rose in his place and was prepared to move it, and was going to move it, but, objection being taken, the Motion could not come on. If the hon. Member will refer to the Votes and Proceedings he will find no record whatever of the House having ever fixed the date for 31st July. The hon. Member fixed his own day. When he called out "31st July," I so informed the clerks at the Table, but if he looks at the Votes and Proceedings he will find that there is no record of his having moved the Motion, and, indeed, it could not have been put from the Chair because there was no seconder, and until a Motion is seconded, it cannot be put from the Chair. Therefore the House was never seized of it and the House has never appointed a particular day for its consideration. Therefore the Motion of the hon. Member does not come within the ruling of Mr. Speaker Brand of 27th May, 1875. With regard to the ruling of Mr. Speaker Denison of 13th July, 1871, Mr. Speaker Denison said—

"The hon. Baronet the Member for Portsmouth is not in order in introducing on the present Motion questions which would arise upon a future Motion of which notice has been given."

That was clearly not an identical matter. Of course, the rule is perfectly clear that on a Motion for the adjournment, either upon a matter of urgency, or for the holidays, a matter of which notice has been given, even although it has never come before the House and no day has been appointed by the House, a matter which it is proposed to raise at some future time for debate—cannot be discussed on a Motion for adjournment. That is a well-recognised rule which has been acted upon a great many times, and that is the case to which the hon. Member refers, for he will see that the case of 13th July, 1871, was a Motion for the adjournment of the House. That is very often the case. I will not say it is of daily or weekly occurrence, but it is of monthly occurrence in this House. I hope I have made this matter clear to the House. It is perfectly clear to myself that in the case of two competing Bills dealing with, the same subject — one cannot block the other; two competing Motions dealing with the same subject—one cannot block the other; but if discussion has been entered upon on one of those Motions and a day fixed by the House, that fact would act as a block against the second one being discussed.

I would like, Mr. Speaker, to ask one or two Questions, merely for the purpose of elucidating the ruling which you have been good enough to give to the House-I do not know whether your attention has been called to a ruling of Mr. Speaker Denison of 25th June, 1871, in which he says—

"There is a Rule of the House that when a matter has been expressly set down for consideration no hon. Member can anticipate it by raising a discussion on the subject."

That certainly would appear in its terms to cover the case raised by my hon. friend to-day. [MINISTERIAL cries of "No."] When a matter has been expressly set down, I submit to you, Sir, that is a reason why on Motions for adjournment under Standing Order 10 and on Motions for adjournment for holidays, no discussion has been allowed in respect of any matter in respect of which a Motion stands on the Paper of the House, and it does not matter whether any date has been fixed or whether the Motion merely stands for an early date. With regard to the question raised by my hon. friend as to 27th May, 1875, I would point out that there were then three Motions on the Paper, only one of which was moved by Lord Hartingdon, as he then was, and the other two were merely given notice of, but never entered upon. In the course of the discussion on the first Motion a difficulty arose, and it was adjourned until a particular day. Nothing was said about the other Motions, nor was the House seized of them. Nevertheless, Mr. Speaker Brand said the mere fact of the existence of these Motions precluded another hon. Member from moving a Motion dealing with the same subject. I merely desire to submit this point.

With regard to the first Question, I do not see that it is in any way inconsistent. The ruling there was that when a matter had been expressly set down for consideration no hon. Member could anticipate it by raising a discussion on that subject. I construe the words there in the same sense as they were construed by Mr. Speaker Brand. "A matter already appointed for consideration by the House" means by the House itself—not a Member merely naming a day. With regard to the Question arising on 27th May, 1875, there were three Motions of which Lord Hartington gave notice; and in his speech he said he proposed to deal with all three together. He made a speech covering the whole ground. It is perfectly true only one Motion was put from the Chair, and therefore it might very well be urged that the second Resolution, which had not been entered upon or discussed at all, could not operate as a block. But Mr. Speaker Brand was careful upon that occasion, I observe, to say that the three Motions, although separate, read together constituted the order of the day, and, if so, it is not for me to say my predecessor was wrong, as the facts were all before him; and I daresay he thought there was sufficient connection between the three Resolutions really to constitute them one Order.

in moving the Motion of which he had given notice in regard to the business of the House, said: The Motion which stands on the Paper in my name is one which we have for a long time been accustomed to have moved at this season of the year; but before the House is asked to assent to it it may reasonably require to be informed both as to the length of time over which it is meant the suspension of our ordinary rules should extend and what matters legislative or otherwise are intended to be brought within the scope of its operation. May I say by way of preface, speaking for myself, I am strongly opposed to the suspension of the eleven o'clock rule, except with the genera consent of the House, or in case of real necessity. I think the length of time which we spend, not only in this Chamber, but also in the discharge of the growingly heavy work which is assigned to Committees, is quite a sufficient tax upon the energies and the strength of even the most zealous Member amongst us. I think I may fairly claim that during the past session there have been as few extensions of our normal sittings as, perhaps, in any session in recent times. Therefore I should not propose this Motion now unless I thought it one for the general convenience of the House and a matter of necessity. Some weeks ago I expressed a hope that this part of the session—an autumn sitting being inevitable—might be brought to a close in July. I am sorry to say that that anticipation will not be precisely realised, but it will be realised as nearly as may be, because we propose to ask the House to adjourn on Saturday, 1st August. It follows, therefore, that there are now only three available weeks of Parliamentary time before the end of this stage of the session. In order to submit to the consideration of the House the manner in which the Government propose that the time of the House should be occupied, I may perhaps say one word by may of general survey of the position of public business. Whatever judgment may be passed as to the character and quality of the work done I think everyone will admit that this has been an extremely and exceptionally busy session. If we make allowance for the inevitable loss of time that occurred immediately before Easter, I think the amount of work done reflects the greatest credit upon the industry of all sections and parties in the House. We have passed already—I am speaking now of Government business alone, for the e have been very valuable private measures dealt with—we have already disposed of two Scottish Bills, the Prosecution of Offences Bill, two Public Health Bills, and, last night, the Old-Age Pensions Bill. The Children Bill, after a most exhaustive examination — and I do not think any Standing Committee has ever clone its work better—has now reached the Report stage. The Irish Universities Bill ism a similar position. The Scottish Education Bill in the course, of next week will also have passed through the Committee stage. The Port of London Bill is under the consideration of a Joint Committee of both Houses, and, though I am afraid we cannot anticipate that we shall finally dispose of it before the adjournment, I think it certainly will be passed during the autumn sitting. That shows a great deal of legislative work done by the House and a number of measures of first-class importance either disposed of or on the eve of passing to another place. The practical question now is, How are we to dispose of the three weeks that still remain before 1st August Let me, first of all, enumerate the Bills which must pass into law before that day. We must dispose of the financial business by getting the remainder of Supply, and then the Appropriation Bill and the Finance Bill, through the Committee and Third Reading. Next we hope to dispose finally, so far as this House is concerned, of the Irish Universities Bill. Then there is the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill which must necessarily be passed at this season of the year. There are the Fatal Accidents Bill, the Committee stage of the Patents and Designs Bill, the Housing of Working Classes (Ireland) Bill in the Report stage, which we hope to get through this afternoon; and there are two or three other small Bills it will be necessary to get through, the Registration Bill in reference to the alteration of date of the Revising Barristers Court and the Friendly Societies Bill included. There are other small Bills we hope to get through, and these supply the main reason for asking the House to suspend the rule. It is desirable that we should get them through, and I hope we shall do so with general consent. I do not ask for the suspension for the purpose of pressing controversial business; that, I think, would be an abuse of the privilege we are asking for. But it will be a great convenience if at this period of the session we are able to dispose of measures which meet with general assent or are of Departmental importance, and are not at the mercy of one or two Members who, for some reason, by their speeches, may prevent progress being made. There are three Bills, I may mention, as coming within the category it is desirable we should pass, the Tuberculosis Prevention (Ireland) Bill, the Post Office Savings Bank Bill, and the Telegraph (Construction) Bill. A number of small Bills, mainly relating to Ireland, such as the Seed Potatoes and Seed Oats Supply Bill, I hope the House will allow us to pass before we adjourn. This completes the legislative business to which we shall ask the attention of the House during the next three weeks concluding this period of the session. This is not the occasion to anticipate the business for the autumn session; but the House will observe that I have left open a reference to a particularly important addition to our legislative proposals in regard to the Licensing Bill. We propose before we adjourn on 1st August to submit a Procedure Resolution for the allocation of time for that Bill and to devote two days to the Committee stage. Further progress with that Bill and with other measures we leave over for the autumn session. I do not think the programme I have outlined makes an excessive demand on the time of the House for the next three weeks. It will involve one effective Saturday sitting—there will be a sitting on Saturday, 1st August—the Motion for adjournment being made the day before—when we will take the Appropriation Bill; but it involves one effective Saturday sitting—the last Saturday in July. Unless we have this, there will be great difficulty in getting the Third Reading of the Irish Universities Bill, which I am sure a large majority of the House—on this side certainly—will be glad to dispose of. I regret to propose Saturday sittings, but, with this exception, I do not think the programme I have sketched makes an excessive call on the time and patience of Members, and I hope with this explanation the House will assent to the Motion I now make. Motion made, and Question proposed, "That, until the adjournment for the autumn holidays, Government Business be not interrupted under the provisions of any Standing Order regulating the sittings of the House, and may be entered upon at any hour though opposed; that, at the conclusion of Government Business each day, Mr. Speaker do adjourn the House without Question put; and that no Motions be made to bring in Bills under Standing Order No. 11."—(Mr. Asquith.)

I am not disposed to quarrel with that part of the right hon. Gentleman's statement in which he has told us that the actual number of additional hours we are asked to sit before 1st August is not excessive. Toward the end of July, or, to speak more correctly, toward the last few weeks of the session, the House is accustomed to lengthen the hours it is usual to sit at other times; and, as the Prime Minister has given a distinct pledge that he means to take no controversial business, I do not think he has gone beyond demands which have been made by his predecessors so far as the actual strain on the time and attention of Members is concerned, during the few weeks before the adjournment. The right hon. Gentleman is well aware that the occasion when a Motion is made for the suspension of the eleven o'clock rule in July has for a long series of years afforded a fitting opportunity for comment upon the work and action of the Government. I do not mean to go in detail over this large and fruitful field, but there are one or two observations I must make. The first relates to the amount of legislative business the Government insists upon the House dealing with, and the results of their demand. It has been one of the customary and familiar taunts—so customary and familiar that it has rather lost its sting now—that anybody who protests from this side of the House against the overcrowding of the Government's legislative programme does so because he does not want any legislation at all. Well, there is a great deal of proposed legislation I think undesirable, but it is not with the general proposition what legislation we want that I now wish to deal, but with the manner in which legislation is conducted. I would ask the Government and the House generally whether they seriously think that the task imposed is one the House can carry out effectively It is perfectly natural that a new House of Commons, eager for legislation, should overrate the value of positive legislation and underrate the injury to Parliamentary methods by overcrowding the Order Paper. The protest I now venture to make I feel I could not have made with the same effect to an audience which would have been entirely unsympathetic in an earlier period of the life of this House; but I ask now, is it not evident to the most casual observer that if we attempt to deal with so many Bills as we are asked to deal with, those Bills are not all properly discussed and are not discussed by people who ought to discuss them The system of Grand Committees, immensely developed as it had been by the present Government, has many potentialities in it, and I by no means condemn it unreservedly; but it is liable to two great evils, the imposition of undue burdens on Members who serve on these Committees, preventing them from attending the more general discussions within these walls; the other is that a certain number of Members are excluded, practically excluded, though not by Standing Orders, from taking part in what is considered by many the most important stage in our discussion of large measures. I say nothing about the Leader of the Opposition, whose services may not be required or important on these Bills. I never attend the Committees—I have not time—but it is quite impossible that anybody holding the office of Prime Minister can take any part in guiding deliberations in Grand Committee. That is a great evil. I do not attend Grand Committees. It would be impossible for me to attend here if I did; the same disability applies to the Prime Minister; and, I am told, also applies to the Law Officers of the Crown. I do not say that they absent themselves from Grand Committees, but I do distinctly say that the o work the House has been accustomed to get from the Law Officers by way of advice and assistance on legal points cannot be given by those officers in Grand Committee, and either a great deal of work must be done without their assistance or the number of Law Officers must be increased o there is no other alternative. I doubt whether any of the older Members of the House or new Members who have been working at the conduct of legislation since the general election will think I am in the least overstating my case when I say that the amount of business sent to Grand Committees has had the double effect of overworking a large number of the most laborious and energetic Members of the House, and has excluded from an important stage—some would say the most important stage—in Parliamentary proceedings some Members of the House whose advice and assistance has always been given in Committee of the Whole House, and is not and cannot be given in Grand Committee. That is one result of overcrowding legislation, and the other is that we are working now practically under a permanent system of closure. I do not mean to go into that question now. The Prime Minister has informed us that he intends to move one of his habitual customary Closure Resolutions a few weeks hence in reference to the Licensing Bill, and then I shall revert to the history of the system and its effect on Parliamentary proceedings. But nobody, on whichever side of the House he may sit, can con-template the proceedings during the last few weeks on the Pensions Bill with entire satisfaction. Discussion in this House has enormous value in modifying and improving Bills, but it has been hampered, truncated, and in some cases wholly destroyed by the system which has now become not merely familiar, but almost universal in the hands of the present Administration. I will say no more on this theme now. I shall have to return to it again. ["Hear, hear."] I do not know who it was who ironically cheered my statement; but I am quite certain that the hon. Member, if he habitually attends the proceedings, will know' that every word I have said is absolutely justified. I do not say more on that point now, but I now come to another point which is strictly germane to the general conduct of business and one on which there will be no very convenient opportunity of saying anything to the House in the future—I mean the conduct of Supply. I may be permitted to remind old Members of the House and to inform new Members of one or two facts which they should bear in mind in considering this question. Our present Supply rule was brought forward by the late Government, and it introduced a profound, and, I am inclined to think, almost unqualified, reform into our procedure. I do not say it is unqualified—no change is unqualified—but I am quite sure it has few defects and has been of enormous advantage to the general work of the House. Before the Supply rule was introduced the amount of time that might be taken up by Supply was only limited by the powers of endurance of individuals Members of the House. Supply was accumulated in great blocks at the end of the session, when the less industrious Members had gone to more agreeable occupations. It was carried on night after night in the small hours, and, while there was an immense expenditure of time, of temper, and of health, there was really no adequate discussion of the matters brought before the House. The new rule did two things—it limited the number of days that could be devoted to the ordinary Supply of the year to a number between twenty and twenty-three, and it provided that those days should be distributed week by week through the whole course of the session. The result of this was that there was no topic on which it was proper to criticise the Government for the discussion of which an opportunity could not be found; and instead of the Government being able, at the cost of the time and health of Members, to get through all this bulk of matter at the end of August, they were obliged to stand face to face with the House of Commons, week by week, and to stand the shock of hostile criticism. So much for the Standing Order. But outside the actual terms of the Standing Order there was an understanding arrived at across the floor of the House by the then Government that the actual topic to be selected week by week for discussion in Supply was, broadly speaking, to be determined by the critics of the Government on either side, but in the main by the Opposition to the Government. That rule was most carefully maintained under the late Government. Every week there was a consultation between the Government and the Opposition Whips, not as to what Supply it would be convenient to the Government to put down, but what Supply it would be convenient to the Opposition to discuss. In other words, the Government, week by week, gave the Opposition an opportunity of selecting the topics most agreeable to the Opposition, and therefore, by natural inference, most disagreeable to the Government. That was the understanding, and as the Government and all those Members who have served in other Parliaments are well aware, that understanding was carried out in the letter. But I have seen with some alarm a desire on the part of the Government to evade this understanding. Perhaps that word conveys an implication I do not wish to make. I will say that the Government have shown a desire to escape from that understanding, the maintenance of which is, I am convinced, the only condition on which the Supply rule can be thoroughly and effectively worked. I understand that the reason in more than one case when we have asked for certain Votes to be put down and our suggestion has not been acted upon—I understand the reason in many cases has been that a new Minister had come into office and that he was not competent to deal with details which a Minister in charge of a Vote must have at his fingers' ends if he is to answer criticism properly. I quite agree that the Prime Minister has been in some difficulty in that regard. There have been a great many changes of office, and it is perfectly true that a Minister suddenly brought into a wholly new office neither can nor ought to be expected to make himself, within a few days, master of all the details of questions which the Opposition may legitimately discuss, or to know how to answer the innumerable points which may be raised by industrious criticism in Supply. I do not wish to press this point beyond what is fair to the Government, and if the right hon. Gentleman tells me, as I hope he will, that he entirely recognises the historic accuracy of the account I have given of the original arrangement, that he means to carry it out in the letter and in the spirit, and, further, that the only thing that stood in his way and prevented him from carrying it out has been the changes in the personnel of Ministers in charge of the different Votes, I shall say no more; but I shall expect that next session the old method will again, be put in force, and that the weekly criticism of the Government will be arranged on lines which will give proper opportunities to the Opposition. There is one other point connected with Supply which has nothing whatever to do with any arrangement under the Supply Rule, but it has to do with a practice which is now becoming habitual with the Government, namely, the habit of choosing the inferior limit of possible days for Supply rather than the superior limit. Under the Supply rule not more than twenty-three days can be given to Supply, and not less than twenty; but it rests with the Government of the day to say which limit shall be adopted. So far as I remember, there was only one session under the late Government in which they did not give the extra three days for Supply; but I believe that in two out of the three years of the present Government's existence the minimum number and not the maximum was given. I do not know what the justification of that is. The right hon. Gentleman cannot deny that there are a great many topics that still require discussion in Supply, and for the discussion of which an opportunity could be found if the Government would give twenty-three days to Supply instead of twenty. If twenty days only are to be allotted, we have only five days remaining, and within those five days must be discussed, or left un-discussed, the Home Office Vote, one of the most important Votes, as I think everybody will agree; the Education Vote, which not only involves a sum of nearly £14,000,000, but touches on subjects which create equal interest in every part of the House; the Board of Trade Vote, and the Local Government Board Vote, which, next to the Home Office Vote, probably touches most nearly the social life of the people. The Local Government Board Vote was not discussed at all last year. Is it going to be hitched in somewhere among the Votes of immense importance I have ventured to bring to the notice of the House Then there is the Post Office Vote, involving £18,000,000, and we have really not yet had any adequate discussion of the Colonial Office Vote or the Foreign Office Vote. It is true there was a discussion on the day before the Whitsuntide holidays on the Foreign Office Vote, but that discussion was not devoted to a general survey of the foreign policy of the Government, but was rigidly restricted to the one topic of His Majesty's visit to Russia. That was a separate discussion which might have been taken on the Motion for the Adjournment for the holidays or on a Motion for the Adjournment of the House, and it was only put down for discussion on the Foreign Office Vote for convenience. Thus the Foreign Office Vote has not really been touched, and certainly there are questions which ought to be raised upon it. With this limitation of time the exclusion of some topics is, I quite admit, an inevitable result of the Supply rule, even when the number of Supply days is limited to twenty-three. There must be topics every year which cannot be discussed; but when you limit the number of Supply days to twenty, then it is not open to the Government to say they have no more time. They have more time, and I think they ought to give it. If the right hon. Gentleman is going to ask the House to meet again in October, why can he not give up one of the days which are to be devoted to the Committee stage of the Licensing Bill? That does not endanger such prospects of life as the Licensing Bill may possess. The guillotine Resolution will presumably limit the amount of time we give to it, and whether that guillotine Resolution be moved at the end of July or on 12th October makes absolutely no difference to the prospects of the Bill in Committee and on the Report stage in this House. I remember asking a friend of mine why the Government were going to cut the discussion of the Licensing Bill in half. The answer given was that the Government thought it necessary to prove their sincerity to the country, and their sincerity could not be adequately proved unless they took some vigorous action before they went to the seaside. Surely it is quite vigorous action enough to pass a guillotine Resolution which says that the House is not to discuss the Bill in Committee stage for more than nineteen days, and with that mark of Napoleonic vigour, I should have thought the Government might really be content, and there would at all events be one more day for this much needed work of Supply. The House will see that, broadly speaking, my criticisms come to this. I do not complain of the actual strain of the work which the Government are going to throw upon us before 31st July. I do say, however, that, by curtailing our means of criticism and by overwhelming us with legislation which we are never allowed to deal with in detail, they are inflicting an injury, I hope not a permanent, but a serious injury, upon the efficiency and credit of the House.

Perhaps it will be convenient if I at once rise to make a short reply to the criticisms of the right hon. Gentleman. My omission to mention the date at which it is proposed that the House should resume was not accidental, but intentional, because I hoped we might get through this discussion without any allusion to so painful a topic. I may say that we propose that the House should meet on Monday, 12th October. [Cries of "Oh!"] Apparently I was not wrong in my anticipations as to the feelings which such a topic would excite. The right hon. Gentleman's first point was that the manner in which the system of Grand Committees is worked imposes an excessive strain on Members generally. In the next place, he said that it excludes from an important area of discussion Members who would be very glad and are well qualified to take part in such discussion. Of course there are evils and drawbacks as well as advantages in every change of procedure, but I am, I believe, expressing the general opinion of the House when I say that our new rule, that under normal conditions Bills should go to a Standing Committee instead of being discussed in Committee here, has worked advantageously. I do not say that it ought to be applied to Bills such as the Old-Age Pensions Bill, or the Licensing Bill, or to measures of a highly controversial kind. [An HON. MEMBER: The Coal Mines Bill.] I think that is a fair case; when once the principle is adopted it is a mere question of adjustment of detail. Take a case like that of the Children Bill. That Bill has 130 clauses, and there would be no possibility of its passing at all if the Committee Stage had to be taken in this House. The Scottish Education Bill is a very complicated and difficult measure. If we had to discuss it in Committee of the Whole House a large number of Members would take no part in the matter except to come in and vote on questions they do not understand, and we should abstract no insignificant fraction from the general legislative time of the House So long as the system of Grand Committees is not abused for the purpose of removing from the floor of the House measures which in their details as well as principle are highly controversial, I think there is a balance of gain rather than loss. The right hon. Gentleman complains of the use made of the guillotine. I said, and every one on this Bench said some years ago, stronger things than the right hon. Gentleman has said. I do not retract or repent what I have said. I have never regarded the guillotine as anything better than a necessary evil. It is impossible to discriminate by an order of the House between the relative degrees of importance and interest of different amendments, and the guillotine must exclude some important topics. I hope we may to some extent mitigate that by recasting the Report stage and securing on the Report stage that matters not adequately discussed in Committee should first receive attention. The guillotine is an evil, but it is a necessary evil, until you can get some machinery by which, with the general consent of the House, the amount of time to be allocated to the topics to be discussed on the consideration of Bills can be determined impartially instead of depending entirely on the Government majority of the day. I am afraid that is a counsel of perfection. The right hon. Gentleman knows the difficulties well. I do not say he invented the guillotine, but he perfected its workmanship and widened the sphere of its operations, and we are, after all, but lame and halting followers of the right hon. Gentleman. It does not matter which Party is in power; the guillotine will remain, I venture to predict, a permanent part of the machinery of this House, and its use will become more frequent unless some such arrangement as I have indicated is made. I pass to what the right hon. Gentleman said on the subject of Supply. I assure him that there has been no intention of escaping from the understanding which was come to when this rule was framed, that it is not for the Government, but for the critics of the Government, to determine what particular topics should be taken in Committee of Supply. The regular Opposition have clearly the first claim to be consulted. So long as the Patronage Secretary and I hold our present positions there will be no indisposition to consult the right hon. Gentleman in these matters. But there are other sections of the House to be considered also. There is the Irish Party, who have, by long, unbroken custom, been entitled to a voice as to when Irish Supply should be taken and as to what particular topics should be discussed. My colleagues from Scotland have an equal right in regard to Scottish Supply. On questions of general policy there are Members sitting in another quarter of the House who certainly would complain—and I think with reason—if their wishes were not taken into account. The Government has no interest whatever in themselves choosing topics in Supply, still less in choosing the topics in Supply in which their own friends are interested. My experience is that when you are in Committee of Supply it is the wounds of your friends that are most to be feared, and I am not sure that by this convenient convention, by which the Opposition are masters of the situation in the choice of topics, we do not escape more inconvenient situations than otherwise. As regards the number of days given to Supply, we are giving the minimum of twenty provided by the rule. So long as the requirements of the rule are satisfied, I do not think it is the function of the Opposition to determine the number of days. I think there we must consult the general wishes of the House. My belief is that the preponderance of opinion in the House is that Members will be more profitably occupied in the manner I have indicated than they would be if one, two, or three more days were given to Supply. Unfortunately it must happen with an Administration carrying on business under our rules of procedure that a large number of important topics must remain un-discussed in Supply every session. When this rule was first introduced it was on of our favourite topics on platforms to point out the enormous sums of money which, under the operation of the guillotine, were voted away on the last two nights without a word of criticism. As to the Licensing Bill, the right hon. Gentleman ingenuously suggests that we should start the Committee stage now and; postpone the guillotine Resolution till the autumn session.

No, no; the other way about.

Well, he has made both suggestions if I understand him rightly.

It is a small matter, but I should prefer two more days for Supply. If the right hon. Gentleman wants to give an earnest of sincerity to the country, I suggest I that he should move the guillotine Motion before the adjournment and take the whole of the Committee stage in the autumn.

I think he did make the other suggestion, but I do not press that. I merely wish to point out that if we began the first clause without the guillotine I am sure we should not get beyond the first line before the adjournment for the autumn recess. I think that I have endeavoured to answer the main points raised by the right hon. Gentleman, and I do not in the least complain of his raising them. It will appear from what has been said that if we are to adjourn, as I take it the House will wish to do, on 1st August, we must adopt this Motion and distribute the time that remains between now and the adjournment in the manner proposed. There is only one other point that I ought to have mentioned in my opening remarks, and which may strike the House as one of importance, and that is that we propose to adopt and star as our own two private Members' Bills, a course which I think the Government ought never to take save where the Bills are in an exceptional position. With regard to these Bills both are in an exceptional position. The first is the Housing of the Working Classes (Ireland) Bill, which is a very important measure which has been made the subject of an arrangement between the Chief Secretary, the Treasury, and the promoters of the Bill. It has to pass through the Report stage, and will not really take up any substantial part of the time still remaining. The other Bill is one in which the hon. Baronet the Member for the City of London is interested. I hope the House will not suspect anything in the nature of a corrupt bargain, although the circumstances seem to be suspicious. But in point of fact, even if the hon. Baronet were not, as he is, the father and sponsor of this Bill, I think that the Government would have felt bound to adopt it in view of its exceptional character. It is the Wild Birds Bill, a measure which is absolutely indispensable in the interests of humanity and in order to put an end to a most cruel practice. I am quite certain that it cannot occupy more than a very few minutes.

said he had no objection to what had fallen from the Prime Minister with regard to the two Bills of which the Government proposed to take charge, but in reference to the allocation of time he would point out that only two days had been allotted to Irish Estimates. Although it was the practice to consult hon. Members below the gangway, he ventured to say that it would be fair to consult also the Irish Unionist representatives, who were not an unimportant section of the House, and who felt that a third day should be given to the Chief Secretary's Vote, which this year apparently was to be included among those to which no time would be allotted.

said he wanted to protest as a private Member, not against the number of days given to Supply by the system established under the late Government some years ago, but against the practice which had arisen of using Supply as a means of attacking the Government. He thought that the House had lost a great deal of power and of influence in the country by not looking more carefully after expenditure. He hoped that some day or other they would get a better system than the present one of merely using Supply for attacking the Government and not for regulating the expenditure of the country.

asked when the right hon. Gentleman was going to give a day or even a few hours to discuss the Report of the Hop Committee, which he understood was already in the hands of Members. He brought this matter up now because there were special reasons for his doing so. The right hon. Gentleman during the debate on the Address had himself admitted the extreme urgency of the question, and therefore he was sure that he was justified in pressing this fact upon his attention, namely, that the autumn session would not commence until after the hop harvest was over. That was the time, the moment the hops were picked, for the hop-grower to decide whether he would grub any part of his plantations. If the Government were going to do anything at all for the industry it was of the utmost importance that the growers should be made aware of it before they made their arrangements for August and September. He did not think that he was making an unreasonable request. A very short time would be required for making a statement on the matter, which he was sure that the right hon. Gentleman would agree with him was one of importance. He thought that the discussion should take place before the adjournment instead of at the autumn sitting.

said he supported the Resolution with the exception of that part of it which provided for the adjournment of the House without Question put at the close of Government business. He looked upon that part of the Resolution as an infringement of the rights of private Members, because it deprived them of one of their opportunities of bringing before the House and country, questions of urgent public importance or questions affecting the interests of their constituents. Under the Resolution they would have no opportunity of calling attention to any matter of urgency on the adjournment of the House, and if anything important arose they would have no chance of putting a Question to the responsible Minister from the Friday to the Monday. In the meantime grave events might arise which might have the result, in his own constituency for example, of plunging them into very serious difficulties. Take the case of a strike: it was possible that the employers might desire to defeat the efforts of the men by seeking to obtain the assistance of the military. It might be urged that such a thing could not take place. But he knew that such things had taken place, and that they would take place again, and it was necessary to be prepared on all occasions when the interests of their constituents were at stake. But if the Resolution were passed as it stood, they would have no opportunity on the adjournment of the House of raising any question. In the City of Dublin at the present moment there was a big strike going on, and efforts were being made to bring in the military. He appealed to the Prime Minister to take notice of this question, because an attempt was being made to crush the trade unionists. He saw the Secretary for War in his place. The right hon. Gentleman had experience of the military in Belfast, and he would put to the right hon. Gentleman that they did not want to see the military in the streets of Dublin in the same way. [Cries of "Question."] When he was out of order Mr. Speaker would intervene. This was the only opportunity he had of raising this very serious matter which affected the well-being of the citizens of Dublin. He was sorry that the Members of that House were so anxious to allow their privileges to be taken away in matters of this kind. What necessity was there for that part of the Resolution which prevented a Question being put on the Motion for the adjournment? That opportunity was only used on occasions of emergency, or when a private Member felt that he had something to bring forward of importance to his constituents and to the country. If they allowed the Resolution to be passed as it stood the very contingency he was describing might arise in connection with their own con- stituencies. Therefore, he did not see why they should allow the Resolution to pass with these words in it. If the Prime Minister would consent to the deletion of these words he was sure that he would get support in nearly every quarter of the House. There was nothing to be gained by their retention, and in keeping them he held that they were doing that which was wrong. Private Members had very little opportunity of expressing their feelings, and day by day they found that their rights were being taken away from them. They ought, therefore, to be all the more jealous to guard them when occasion offered. In this Resolution they saw another instance of how they were being deprived of them. He knew the number of Bills which the House had to get through that day, and he did not want to put them to the trouble of a division, but he hoped the Prime Minister would take such steps in regard to the strike in Dublin that the Chief Secretary and the Minister for War would not allow the military to interfere in a trade dispute in that city, where the company which carried the mails were discharging the men simply because they belonged to trade unions. That was a matter about which he would have something to say when the Postmaster-General was in his place and opportunity offered. In the interests of his constituents and of private Members he thought that that was an occasion when notice should be taken of the question which he now submitted, and that the words to which he objected as an infringement of the rights of private Members should be deleted.

said the Opposition had always been reasonable. He thought the right hon. Gentleman would agree with him in that. The Government had not put down too much business for completion, with the one exception, of course, of the Licensing Bill. He did not know why that Bill should be taken now, in view of the autumn session. He was supported in his opinion by what the Chancellor of the Exchequer said in August, 1904, when the House was going to adjourn, and there was no autumn session. The Chancellor objected to the Licensing Bill of that day being taken and used these words:

"The right hon. Gentleman said this Bill must go through. Who were they who said it must? It was not the 'must' that arose out of any real need of the country; it was simply a political 'must.' "

The right hon. Gentleman was a true prophet then, and now that he was in power and was high priest he ought to remember his prophecy of days gone by, and should persuade the Prime Minister to hold over the Licensing Bill until the autumn session. He was glad that the Prime Minister had given the assurance not to press contentious measures after eleven o'clock, because he remembered an instance in which the right hon. Gentleman had said that legislation at a late hour of the night or an early hour in the morning was neither good for the laws that were made nor for the people who made them. He thanked the right hon. Gentleman for having been kinder to the House than he had anticipated.

said he wished to put before the House one consideration which had not been mentioned, but which appeared to have some importance. From that moment until the end of September Government business had precedence over all other business whatever. There remained of course certain rights to private Members notwithstanding the suspension of the orders, and the object of this Motion was to take away a good many, and some of the most important of these rights—for instance, the power of raising questions on the Motion for the adjournment and of bringing in Bills under Standing Order 11 and others. He agreed with all that had been said on that side that there might be good ground for a Motion of this kind, but as he understood the matter, such a Motion could only be justified upon the ground that it was necessary to take away private Member's rights in order to wind up the business of the session. But they had been told that this was not a Motion to enable the Government to wind up the business of the session. The House was merely adjourning on 1st August and meeting again in the autumn, and it appeared to him to be impossible for private Members to decide whether it was reasonable of the Government to ask them to give up their rights for the remaining three weeks unless the Government told them whether or not they intended also to take away all their rights during the autumn session as well. If they proposed to do that it was a very strong thing to ask them to submit from that moment right through until Christmas to the deprivation of their rights. If the right hon. Gentleman could assure them that he had not at any rate closed his mind to the possibility of some right being left to private Members throughout the autumn session it would increase the friendly reception the Motion had met with.

asked whether the list of Bills which the Government had starred was a final list or whether it was proposed to star any more measures later on. If not, he would like to ask the Government whether a system could not be devised whereby the waste of time caused by private controversial Bills going through the Standing Committees could be obviated, because it was rather absurd, when it was perfectly well known that a private Bill had no chance unless the Government took it up, that the time of Members should be wasted in attending Standing Committees, especially when at this period of the session they had to sit so late and had very important business to do. If something could be devised to obviate that waste of time it would be a great advantage to the House.

said that while he had no fault whatever to find with the general conduct of the business of the House by the Government of which he was a loyal supporter, he would like to utter one word of criticism regarding the method in which the Port of London Bill had been handled. It was brought into the House under the ten minutes rule, having, no doubt, received very careful consideration by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It dealt with enormously important interests connected with the Port of London, and involved the purchase by public money of the docks of this great port. It constituted a new authority, the position of which required very careful consideration, and, what to his mind was far more important than all this, it proposed to impose dues upon all goods imported into or exported from the port. In other words it established what amounted to an import duty plus an export duty on the trade of the Port of London. That Bill received exactly four hours discussion, and was then closured by the Government and referred to a Joint Committee. As one who was very deeply interested in the trade of the Port of London, and had had many years connection with it, it seemed to him that that discussion was so inadequate as almost to amount to no discussion at all. The Bill, he believed, would have the most careful and complete consideration by the Joint Committee, but he suggested that what would happen would be that when it came back on the Report stage those who desired to discuss it or to criticise the decisions of the Committee would be met with the argument that they were not as competent to deal with the matter as the special Committee which had heard all the evidence upon it, and eventually the result would be that the Bill which was of enormous importance to the Port of London and the adjacent territory would have been passed with practically no discussion at all.

asked whether the right hon. Gentleman had considered the very great amount of detail involved in the discussion of the Housing Bill and whether the Government seriously meant to proceed with it in the autumn session; if not, whether it was necessary to put the Committee to the great labour of going through with a Bill which involved tremendous discussion. Further he asked whether the right hon. Gentleman could not consider the possibility of making some arrangement by which the law officers should be available to give legal decisions on the Grand Committees. There had been several cases of Bills of a controversial character on which legal opinion had been wanting. It was obvious that a man could not be in two places at once, and a law officer could not always be available to any Committee. On the Access to Mountains Bill the other day they were left in a dilemma owing to the absence of any official definition of what a certain term would mean, and eventually the Committee, not altogether unwillingly, had to adjourn for luncheon till a law officer could be hunted up. When he came he was a Scottish law officer and under the Bill large questions of English law were involved, and he confessed his inability to give any opinion on the English law. He did not know what the Prime Minister's solution of the difficulty would be, but there was a very great disadvantage in having conflicting opinions by Gentlemen on opposite sides when there was no one to give a legal opinion on behalf of the Government.

asked whether the right hon. Gentleman could hold out any hope of the carrying of a small Bill which for two years he had been trying to get through the House, and which met with no real opposition—the Public Health Amendment Act, 1875 (Water Rights) Bill. The measure was in very great demand in country districts and the only opposition to it came from the Canal Association, who were afraid that their water supply might suffer. The promoters of the Bill had accepted the Amendments proposed by the Canal Companies. The Bill would have been through already, but for the fact that it had been blocked by the hon. Baronet the Member for the City of London, on retaliatory principles. The Government now had means of squaring the hon. Baronet. The villages which were waterless were at least as much in need of the good offices of the Government as the birds. The President of the Local Government Board at the beginning of the session gave notice that he was going to introduce a Bill dealing with the point. The local council with which he was connected were looking hopefully forward to it, and as this small instalment would help the villages and would bring them water twelve months sooner he hoped the Government would take it up.

said it was obvious that Bills which were now before or had passed through the Standing Committees, with the exception of the two which had been starred, could not pass during the present period of the session, but many of them were useful and non - controversial Bills, and he wished to put in a plea for giving them a chance to pass in the autumn so that the labours of the Committees need not be wholly thrown away. If their labours were to be thrown away he supported the view that they had better not waste their energies any further.

asked the Prime Minister whether the Children Bill was to be taken before the House rose on 1st August or at the beginning of the autumn sittings.

desired to support what had been said by the hon. Baronet the Member for East Northants and by his hon. friend the Member for Barkston Ash. He hoped the Government would carefully consider the Housing Bill before they asked a Committee to sit for days and days in regard to it. The principles of the Bill, he believed, found general acceptance in the House, but the details were exceedingly complicated and the drafting had not diminished the inherent difficulties of the question. He hoped the Government would arrange with one or more of their many legal supporters to be present on Standing Committees when the law officers could not be present and give assistance in that way to the Committee.

said, with regard to the Report of the Hop Industry Committee, that he gathered that it was a very elaborate and complicated document, and he was sure it would require a good deal of consideration before they could make any recommendation to the House. He could not hold out any hope of the Report being discussed before the adjournment. In reply to the point raised by the hon. Member for Norwood, this Motion did not relate to the autumn session at all. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman had better wait until the storm burst. With regard to the starring of private Bills, the Government had had such a painful experience in the past of the results of, he would not say improvidently starring such Bills, but of starring them without a very careful consideration both as to their subject-matter and as to the extent of the hostility they were likely to incur, that he thought both sides of the House would agree that the Government ought not to star a private Bill unless they were satisfied that there was practically a universal desire that it should be passed. Reference had been made to the possible waste of time by the discussion being continued in Grand Committee of private Member's Bills which there was no prospect, or, at any rate, no probability, of getting beyond that stage. He agreed that it would be most undesirable, indeed it would be farcical, for a Standing Committee to be wasting its time in the consideration of such a Bill, and, if there was such a possibility, he would take such steps as were in his power to prevent it. As regarded the Housing Bill, it was the hope and intention of the Government to get that Bill in the course of the autumn session. It was pre-eminently one of those Bills which a Standing Committee was thoroughly qualified to deal with, and he could not help hoping that sufficient progress would be made with it as to enable them to pass it into law. It was a new claim that on every Standing Committee there should be a law officer in constant attendance, but, being a lawyer himself, he was very much in sympathy with what he was glad to find was the general impression of the House, that legislation could not be conducted usefully in the absence of the lawyers. They had fortunately an ample reservoir of non-official legal talent, and he hoped they might be able to secure the valuable voluntary service of some of these Members in the future. At any rate, the suggestion of the noble Lord the Member for Marylebone would be considered. The Government proposed to take the Report Stage of the Children Bill at the beginning of the autumn sittings.

asked the Prime Minister to give favourable consideration to the Married Women's Property Bill, which now stood for Third Reading. It had passed through Committee without amendment, there was, he believed, no opposition to it, and it was desired by the Local Government Board.

said that if the hon. Member could bring him satisfactory assurances that the Bill was universally

said he could not support the Bill. He understood that the law up to the present time had been that if a man was killed in an accident his relatives could go to a jury and claim compensation from the people who had caused his death. If the jury awarded £400, that amount was paid to the relatives as representing the loss which had accrued to them. Under what was known as Lord Campbell's Act it was held that the relatives ought not to make a profit out of a man's death. It appeared that the Railway Passengers Assurance Company so long ago as 1864 or 1849 were exempted from the law in regard to participation which applied to other companies, and the two companies which the hon. Gentleman had mentioned came to Parliament last year and got a private Bill which gave them the same privilege as the Railway Passengers Assurance Company. Thereupon other companies came demanding equal rights, and, therefore, what the House was asked to-day to assent to was not a public demand, but to give particular insurance companies certain privileges in order to enable them to compete with their competitors. He did not see why the House should interfere with the ordinary law in order to grant advantages to certain companies. The proper course to take would be to cancel the powers given to the Railway Passengers Assurance, the Ocean, and the General Accident Companies. The majority of these accidents took place on the railway, but in ninety-nine cases out of 100 they were due to no fault of the railway company, and the railway companies did not wish to evade their responsibility. When railway companies accepted full responsibility for an accident, they ought to be treated justly, and the relatives of a passenger killed ought not to be allowed to make a profit out of his death. When a railway company were ready to pay to the relatives whatever loss had accrued, and if the relatives happened to have a sum of money coming to them from an insurance company, he saw no reason why that should not be taken into account in settling the amount which the railway companies paid. While the relatives should not be placed in a worse position, he failed to see why they should be allowed to make a profit out of the accident merely because certain insurance companies had succeeded in getting a private Bill smuggled through Parliament.

said he did not agree with the hon. Baronet the Member for the City of London in the remarks he had made about the Bill. The hon. Baronet rather put the cart before the horse, because the necessity for the Bill followed not upon two insurance companies getting a special clause last year, but upon the fact that there was a clause in the Railway Passengers Assurance Company's Act, and that a good many other insurance companies who were asking for a similar clause withdrew their applications on the promise of the Government that they would bring in a general Act dealing with this unjustifiable difference between the Railway Passengers Assurance Company and certain other insurance companies. Last year, a large insurance company asked him to look after their interests. They had a clause to this effect in the Bill they were promoting, but it was pointed out that it was not right to give them a preference while other insurance companies were left out, and they withdrew the clause. He did not know how it was that the Ocean Company and another got the clause which the Royal Insurance Company and others withdrew on the understanding that there was to be a general Act dealing with the question. He thought it perfectly clear that the railway company, in case of a fatal accident, ought not to benefit by the providence of an individual in insuring himself against the various accidents to which all were liable. The accident insurance business had grown since the passing of the Compensation Act, and it had become necessary for numerous trading interests in the country to go in for insurance. None of them would consider such a proposition as that when £1,000 was awarded for an accident on a railway a certain amount should be deducted from the damages because the person was insured. He was pleased that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade had taken up the matter with a view of doing equal justice to all parties, and on behalf of the large insurance companies he thanked the hon. Gentleman very much for the action he had taken.

said that in awarding damages in cases where non-fatal injuries had been sustained the Courts had proceeded on an entirely different principle from that which was applied in cases of fatal accident. In a case of death it had always been held by the Courts that compensation for the actual loss sustained was what should be awarded. Take, for example, the case of a child who met with a fatal accident. The child had been earning nothing and contributing nothing to the upkeep of the family with which it was connected. This was a Bill to benefit insurance companies, and he thought the House should not pass it. There were a great many cases of accidents which occurred otherwhere than on a railway, and every lawyer knew that although the person who caused the accident was legally if not morally to blame, the injured person wanted to get as large a sum as possible.

said that they ought to be told whether or not the particular rights which certain insurance companies had got now should be taken away from them or whether these rights should be given to all insurance companies. He ventured to say that no real case has been made on behalf of the Bill, although he supposed it would be impossible to divide against it on a Friday afternoon. The hon. Gentleman had said that a man should get the benefits of his providence; but he would point out that the benefits of a man's providence were not to be reaped unless it took the form of insurance in some particular insurance company. If his providence took the form of buying a house or investing in Government securities, the man was not to have the benefit of it at all, according to the Bill. The Bill was simply a measure to give a privilege to a particular form of saving, viz., investing in insurance companies.

said that the present state of the law was perfectly anomalous whatever might have been the intention of the framers of Lord Campbell's Act. It was quite true that some insurance companies under the existing law were in a better position than others in the market for insurance policies. As to this point, it would not be expedient to repeal their private Acts, and therefore the better, and indeed the only course open to them, was to redress the inequality thus existing by putting the other insurance companies on the same footing as the favoured ones. But the main ground upon which the Government recommended this measure was the public one they thought it was unfair to make from the compensation which ought to be given to the representatives of a person injured through the negligence of another where the man died from the injuries, a deduction which would not be made if the man was only injured and survived. That was the old rule of law under which a man's right of action for injuries died with his death. The whole basis of compensation was negligence. If a person was very seriously injured by being knocked down by a motor omnibus he could get the damages in full without deduction: but if he happened to die and was insured, his representatives could only obtain the balance of the compensation, although negligence had been proved, after deducting the insurance money which accrued through his own providence. It was not mainly from the point of view of the insurance companies that the Government asked for the Second Reading of this Bill, although he thought it was right to redress the inequalities existing owing to the Acts of Parliament obtained by three special companies; but upon the general grounds that persons guilty of negligence ought not to have the right to deduct from the compensation the sum received under the insurance policy by the representatives of a person whose death was caused by the injuries which resulted from the negligence.

ruled that if the Amendment went beyond Section 92 of the 1907 Act it was out of order.

drew attention to the fact that forty Members were not present.

Oh, let us get on with the work.

said that the Amendment was of a far reaching character and went beyond the scope of the Bill.

said he would not press his Amendment.

hoped that the Government would give some explanation, first of all, as to why it was necessary to add so soon to the Patents and Designs Bill; and secondly, as to the certain clause in the old Bill which required amendment.

said that the Question of the hon. Member was a very reasonable one. The Bill was introduced merely to make good a draftsman's mistake in the Act passed last year consolidating; the Patents Acts—a mistake so easy to make that it was very hard to attach any great degree of culpability to anybody. The result of that mistake was to deprive litigants of a right of appeal in cases where the patentee was alleged not to be the first inventor, where the inventions was alleged not to be new, where there was allged to be no subject matter for a patent, and in a whole group of important cases of that character as to which the Government never intended to restrict the right of appeal. All that this Bill now did was to explain that the Consolidation Act of 1907, Section 92, was not to have that undesirable effect.

said that the object of this Bill, the Second Reading of which he now moved, was to meet the ravages of a disease which had broken out in Ireland and had almost put an end to the industry of bee-keeping in that country to which attention had been given by a large number of small cottars and farmers. In County Down alone there were 1,500 bee-keepers. The disease was very infectious, and was spreading everywhere. County councils, district councils, and the Council of Agriculture had all united in asking for legislation to deal with it. The only way of dealing with it was to destroy the hives of diseased bees, and the Bill provided for the notification of disease, for the right of the Agricultural Department to declare that an area was infected, for the destruction of the bees, and for compensation to be given to the bee keepers. The compensation would not be provided out of public funds in the ordinary sense, but out of the rates and the funds supplied by the Department for agricultural education. The compensation was limited to one-half of the value of the bees. Inasmuch as the whole public bodies in Ireland were agreed as to the necessity of the Bill, he hoped the House would give it a Second Reading.

said that the Scottish Members strongly desired to help Ireland in this matter, and hoped that the Bill would be passed.

said that under Clause 5, sub- section (3) the local authorities were apparently to have the power of the destruction of property, and to decide whether they were to pay or not. That was to say, they were to be judges in their own cause. That was a curious position. Then, in the next subsection there was another extraordinary provision. He did not remember any similar case where, property being taken and destroyed, compensation to half the value of the property destroyed was to be paid only if the authority had the money to do it with. If they had not the money they need not pay. That was a most extraordinary proceeding. He maintained that the clause was very incompletely drawn, and the hon. Gentleman would do well to have it altered. Further, he asked if there was any reason why the Bill should not be extended to England, Scotland, and Wales. Were there no diseased bees in these countries? If there were, why should they not have the benefit of this legislation?

asked whether the hon. Gentleman would give the House an undertaking that when the Bill went into Committee upstairs, the Government would pay some attention to the subject of compensation. The hon. Gentleman was aware that in destroying cattle on account of tuberculosis or pigs on account of swine fever, compensation was paid to the amount of half the price of the animal, but in this case, because the men were humble beekeepers, whose livelihood depended upon the industry, the compensation was to be left open. Clause 5 ought certainly to be amended and the hon. Gentleman should consider the hard cases which must necessarily arise in the case of the poor man who tried to make his living out of bee-keeping and whose skeps were destroyed, perhaps, through the spite of a neighbour who gave inaccurate information. As a bee-keeper himself he took very great interest in this subject. In County Down a great deal of money was made out of bee-keeping, and while he quite approved of the Bill he could not understand why the hon. Gentleman, when introducing measures of this kind, should leave such wide powers in the hands of the authorities. Not only could they seize infected skeps, but they were to have the power of saying whether the compensation should be a few shillings or nothing at all. He submitted there was something wrong in the drafting of the Bill; that the Government had not considered what was the real meaning of Clause 5 which was really the bulk of the Bill. They were aware that the hon. Gentleman with his multifarious duties might not have had time to consider the full effect of this clause, and he suggested that after the legal advisers had considered it, some alterations might be made in it in Committee on the lines he had indicated.

asked whether the hon. Gentleman would give an undertaking that in Committee he would consider some Amendments to this particular clause.

said he would ask that the Bill should be committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

said that this Bill was largely founded on the Act passed for Scotland last session. There was no law enabling the fisheries authority in Ireland either to licence or to prohibit the erection of whaling stations. Last year there was an intention to erect such a station on the Donegal coast, and this caused great alarm among the fishing population, leading almost to violent measures. The Department sent down expert advisers who held an inquiry, and upon evidence and report, a bye-law was issued prohibiting the erection subject to approval by the Privy Council. The evidence seemed to show that the fishing population were wrong in thinking that the setting up of the station would destroy the herring fishery, but in view of the strong feeling amongst the people he asked for this licensing and prohibiting power. It would be unwise to set up a station where the fishing industry was strong, but there were plenty of places on the coast where, without objection, a station might be erected with benefit to those promoting it and advantage to labour in the vicinity. The Bill gave the Department discretion in the matter.

remarked on the difference in tone between the hon. Gentleman and the Secretary for Scotland in promoting the Scottish Bill. He hoped when the Bill went into Committee the penalties might to some extent be revised. As the Bill stood at the present moment a man could be fined £100 for any breach of the obligations of the Act. Under the Act it would be a breach of the obligations in publishing the statutory advertisements to advertise with only four days interval instead of six as laid down in the Bill, and £100 fine for that would be simply absurd. He hoped the hon. Gentleman would not include all offences under these penalties in Clause 6, except the major offence for which a penalty of £500 could be imposed. There should be classification. A few days ago on the subject of trawling the Secretary for Foreign Affairs justified holding his hand by saying that we could not admit the right of any State to legislate in matters affecting our territorial waters and would take offence at legislation on matters outside their territorial waters. But under Clause 3 of the present Bill the power was taken to punish any person employed by a British subject who did certain things within twenty miles of the Irish coast. He did not refer to that in connection with whale fishing, but merely because it seemed to break in upon the declaration of the Foreign Secretary. He did not object to it on any technical ground connected with whale fishing but because it involved the question of foreign relations. He did not think it would constitute a grievance to any foreign Powers, but it might afford, precedent for a foreign Power to take action, possibly of a serious character. He rejoiced at the tone of the hon. Member, and recognised from his remarks that he and his technical advisers were far more closely acquainted with the natural history of these mammals than the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for Scotland. There was no question about it. The Bill passed last year for Scotland was based upon the entirely erroneous theory that this one great occupant of the sea could injure the livelihood of the more humble denizens of the waters. The best authorities now thought that, so far from the whale being naturally hostile to the mackerel, the contrary was the case, and that mackerel were more inclined to follow in the tracks of whales than to avoid them. The foundation for the Scottish Bill of last year had absolutely broken down, because since its passing the whole fishing industry of Scotland, both line and net fishing, so far from being destroyed, had enjoyed a record year. While he voted against the Bill of last year he did not intend to oppose this Bill, because the speech of the Vice-President of the Board of Agriculture of Ireland showed that he was fully familiar with the complicated problems involved in this question.

said he would not offer any opposition to this Bill, although it was quite true that the Scottish Act on which this was based had not given the satisfaction that was expected of it. He would not attempt to dispute either with the right hon. Gentleman or the noble Lord as to the natural history of these denizens of the sea, but he doubted whether anybody had any exact knowledge of the benefit or otherwise of the presence of the whale. All that was certain was that we could not interfere with the economy of nature without producing disastrous results. That was one reason why he welcomed this Bill. If whaling were to be allowed without regulations it might happen that the destruction of the whale would lead to the disappearance and the extinction of the herring. The whale might even be said to be of assistance to the herring fishery because in his pursuit of the herring he was liable to drive them into shallow water where they might be captured.

thought there was one part of the Bill which required some elucidation. He wished to know, whether the Vice-President was in favour of this industry or whether he wished to restrict it or extinguish it, and why the licences had been arranged as they had been. An owner could employ three steamers on payment of £200 for a licence; for two steamers a licence costing £150 was required. But if he could only employ one steamer, instead of paying £66 13s. 4d., which was the charge for one steamer where three were employed, he had to pay £100. He asked this Question because the poor owner was apparently penalised in engaging in a growing industry which might be found to be generally advantageous to the country.

wished to know, before the Bill was read a second time, whether the Government could state if any effort had been made to establish whale stations in Ireland in recent years, and whether the Bill was necessary merely to prohibit the industry being carried on except under the stringent regulations laid down. The House, he thought, ought to be in possession of that fact, and to be told how many instances had come to the knowledge of anybody of foreigners wishing to start. He wished to know what would be the effect of the overlapping of this Bill and the Scottish Whale Fisheries Act. It might be found that in the North of Ireland the twenty-mile limit of this Bill would overlap by half a mile or so the forty-mile limit of the Scottish Act, and he wished to know whether there would be a separate Board or a joint Board to carry out the provisions of the Bill and to see that no illegality took place under it. What power would they have at their back to see that these stringent regulations were carried out? Another question which should be inquired into was the expense. He hoped a great deal of expense would not attach to the Bill, because it was not likely to do so much good as most Bills had done for Ireland. It was certainly possible protect the industry, and those who prosecuted the herring fishing in Ireland were certainly desirous of having the fisheries further protected. Und the Bill a certain amount of the expense would fall upon these people Hon. and right hon. Gentleman knew scouted the idea, but certain parts of Ireland would derive no benefit whatever from the Bill, and therefore it appeared to him that the burden of the cost would fall rather unequally upon the different parts of Ireland. He hope the hon. Gentleman would look into this and thought it would save time if the hon. Gentleman could offer a few introductory remarks so that the Bill might b further explained. Personally he did no oppose the Bill, but he would like to see some points cleared up.

said that a present the Department of Agriculture had no proper means of patrolling over 2,000 miles of coast round Ireland and he asked what explanation the Vice-President of the Department would be able to give as to the propel patrolling that was to be done if the Bill became law. It was a point of great interest.

entirely agreed with the point made by the last speaker. This was not the first time the need for a reinforcement of the patrolling provision had been brought to the notice of the Vice-President.

said that that afternoon there was Irish business in hand, and he found an Orangeman, or an ex-Orangeman, on the front bench opposite, from whom he once heard a very hot Orange speech in Glasgow. Everyone was agreed that the Bill would do something to promote industry in Ireland, and if they saw the Orangeman of one mind with the others, he thought they should be backed up. In this Bill they had some attempt at the guiding of a national industry by science and a recognition of how one nation could not stand upon its own people but must always have regard to its neighbours. Ireland must not forget Scotland or England. If Scotland had forgotten England it would not have occupied the position it now held. The must remember they were all part of the great comity of nations, and, he hoped of the great comity of man.

said the hon. and gallant Member for East Down had asked if there was any necessity for the Bill, and if there had been an; applications for it. There had been an application from Donegal, and very a great alarm had been created all along that coast. If there had been nothing else than that he would have asked the House to pass this Bill, but there was another station which had applied for it Inniskea on the West Coast. He though the whole pith of the Bill was that the Department should have discretion either to grant or to refuse licences for this industry. The point was raised by the hon. and gallant Member as to the enforcement of this law, and he agreed that that was a difficulty. He had over and over again stated that the resources of the Department of Agriculture consisted of a single cruiser to police the whole coast of Ireland, but that was a reason for getting additional money to deal with the matter, not for rejecting this Bill. The new cruiser would not be able to do all the work necessary, and he would do what he could with the Treasury. The fact that the Bill would add to the work of the small fleet they had was no reason why the Bill should not be passed. He had been asked whether he intended by the Bill to develop or restrict this industry. He proposed simply to issue licences for conducting the industry where it could be conducted without danger the ordinary fishing. Experts were quite clear that this industry was not inimical to the ordinary fishing industry, but in dealing with the population along the coast he thought it was a reasonable thing to trust the Department and to enable them to exercise their discretion in the matter. As regards the question of overlapping, he thought that might be dealt with in Committee, and he would in the meantime consult with the expert advisers of the Department, and if any change was necessary on that ground it could be made in Committee. As to the licences, they proposed to charge high licences for a large fleet and small licences for a small fleet.

asked if he might make a suggestion arising out of practical experience of the Scottish Bill? He thought they should consider whether it would not be as well to make the offence of landing a whale within the prohibited period an offence under the Bill, and that might do away to a considerable extent with the difficulty of enforcement.

said he proposed to move that the Bill be recommitted. Yesterday they had presented to them a new edition of the Treasury clauses of the Bill, and he thought that that was ample reason why the Bill, with the principle of which he was in entire accord, should be recommitted. In their first sitting in Committee there was no representative of the Treasury present, although the financial clauses of the Bill were by far the most important. They were asked by the Chairman to defer their consideration of the financial clauses, and in spite of protests they dealt with the other clauses. At their subsequent meeting, they had a Treasury representative present, and they then had entirely new financial clauses presented to them, which were dealt with with very little explanation. The Bill went through in that shape, and now they found on the Paper the entirely new clauses submitted by the Treasury. That was quite without precedent, for this was the third edition of the clauses. While in the original Bill the clauses provided for the reception in aid of this most pressing work in Ireland of some- thing like £50,000 per annum, the Treasury now proposed a sum of something like £4,500 per annum, notwithstanding the fact that the local authorities who were dealing with the problem even to a limited extent were annually losing £16,000. He confessed, as one who wished to see rehousing proceeded with rapidly in Ireland, that with the miserably inadequate financial proposals of the Treasury the Bill if passed would only have the effect of preventing a really proper and adequate measure being placed on the Statute - book for a great many years to come. He treated this matter as entirely outside politics. He earnestly desired to see an adequate Bill passed by the House, but it was absolutely impossible for this Bill to be anything but a dead letter if it became law.

seconded. It seemed to him, as an ordinary private Member, that the Bill was full of complicated clauses. Only yesterday a new sheet of Amendments by the Attorney-General and the Treasury was put into their hands, and no one had had time to understand their meaning. The new clause to be moved appeared to treat with the funds of other people in a light and airy manner. It seemed to go into the funds of the Lord Chancellor in the Supreme Court of Ireland, of the Accountant General, and of the Local Government Board. Surely that was a matter for the Committee and not for the whole House to discuss. He thought something should be done for the better housing of the working classes in Ireland, but that was all the more reason why they should take care, in promoting legislation with that object, that they had these details thoroughly thrashed out in Committee.

said he took it for granted that the Government would not listen to the proposal, and he was sure the House would not consider it for a single moment. The intentions of the mover and seconder of the Amendment seemed to be different. If he properly understood the hon. Gentleman who moved it, he was hostile to the Bill. The seconder of the Amendment, however, only seconded it because apparently he was of opinion that, if carried, the motion would not jeopardise the Bill. Every hon. Member knew very well, however, that if the Amendment was carried it would jeopardise the Bill; it would mean the destruction of the Bill. There was only one point he would like to press upon the notice of hon. Members. The argument in favour of the Amendment was that there appeared on the Paper entirely new proposals by the Government of a complicated nature, but that was an entire misrepresentation of the fact. The Bill when it was introduced contained financial proposals under three heads. Two of these sets of financial proposals were objected to by the Treasury, and they were given up by the promoters of the Bill. They were given up reluctantly, but in order to get the Bill through. The third financial proposal which was in the Bill was fully discussed during the whole of one Friday, and it ended in the Second Reading being passed without a single dissentient voice. That remaining financial proposal was the proposal now in the Bill. It was discussed in the Committee, it was agreed to by the Treasury, and a clause was put into the Bill in Committee to carry that agreement out. Since then the Treasury had round that there were technical difficulties in the wording of the clause, and they proposed to give them now words. There was nothing in the new clause that was really new; it was simply to give effect to the proposal discussed in. the Committee and on the Second Reading, and therefore there was no earthly reason for recommitting the Bill. The Bill would effect a valuable consolidation of the law in Ireland and a valuable cheapening of procedure, and would establish for the first time a housing fund for aiding local authorities in carrying out housing schemes.

said they regarded the Bill as most valuable and were most anxious that it should be passed into law. They were not at all agreed with the view of the hon. Gentleman that the passing of this Bill would in any way bar subsequent legislation. The housing of the working classes in Ireland was a matter which certainly deserved more consideration than almost any other subject. If the Bill was recommitted, it would certainly imperil its passage. There were so many other Bills and such a lot of work upstairs that to recommit it would certainly imperil its passage. The objects of the new clause and the new Amendments were not controversial at all. Most of them were merely drafting Amendments, and a good many of them were matters which all parties would agree were for the improvement of the Bill. They were all agreed on the objects they had at heart, and the only difference they might have was as to slight details of the machinery for carrying out those objects, which were to devote the funds which the Treasury had placed at their disposal for the necessary purpose of improving the housing of the working classes in Ireland.

intimated that he would withdraw his Motion.

in moving a new clause (Application of dormant portion of Irish Suitors' Fund to purposes of Housing Acts) said that the hon. Member for Waterford had dealt accurately and very fully with the reasons which had compelled him to place these fresh words on the Paper. In the discussion upstairs upon the financial proposals, it was found, after discussion, that the guarantee of the Consolidated Fund which stood behind the sum of £100,000 had not extended to the sum of £80,000 cash which was to be part and parcel of the sums transferred from the Dormant Suitors' Fund for the purposes of this Bill, and accordingly the Lord Chancellor told them that he was unable to part with that money until the guarantee on which he gave his consent had been put in proper form. When that matter became plain, it was necessary not only to clear up that particular point, but also to consolidate Clauses 4 and 5 into the present clause in order to get rid of any ambiguity of language and to simplify the provisions of the Bill. He, therefore, moved the words standing in his name. It might, perhaps, be convenient to point out that by these new words, the Local Government Board was substituted for the Commissioners of Public Works as the authority which would dispose of the funds. Under the Bill as introduced by the hon. Gentleman opposite, the fund could be more conveniently dealt with by the Commissioners of Public Works, but, as the matter now stood, the more convenient authority would be the Local Government Board in Ireland, who would be the sole executive authority to deal with the whole of the Bill. He therefore proposed to make the change in the manner indicated in the clause. New clause—

"(1) The Bank of Ireland shall, out of the fund of suitors in the Supreme Court, upon the order of the Lord Chancellor, pay to the Local Government Board, for the purposes of the Housing of the Working Classes Acts, the sum of eighty thousand pounds. (2) The Accountant-General of the Supreme Court of Judicature in Ireland shall, on the order of the Lord Chancellor, out of the new Two and a half Per Centum Consolidated Stock forming portion of the fund of suitors in the Supreme Court and standing to the credit' of the general ledger account kept, by him for dormant balances, and the unclaimed order and residue account, Land Judge's Court, transfer to the Local Government Board, for the purposes of the Housing of the Working Classes Acts, stock to the nominal value of one hundred thousand pounds. (3) The Local Government Board shall, on such transfer as aforesaid being made, forthwith sell such stock so transferred and invest the proceeds thereof, together with the said sum of eighty thousand pounds, in any securities in which trustees are authorised by the Irish Land Act, 1903, to invest trust moneys, and the annual income of such investments shall be applied in the manner directed by this Act. (4) If it happens that the moneys or securities standing to the credit of the account of the suitors in the Supreme Court are at any time reduced to a sum not sufficient to meet the demands upon them or cither of them, then the Treasury, so as to afford a complete indemnity to the suitors for any loss which they might sustain by reason of the passing of this Act, shall advance out of the Consolidated Fund or the growing produce thereof such sum as they may think necessary, not exceeding in the whole the sum of eighty thousand pounds and the amount which would be realised at the date of such demands as aforesaid by the sale of the securities transferred in pursuance of this section, together with the dividends that would have accrued thereon if such securities had not been so transferred "—(Mr. Charles Hobhouse.)

Brought up, and read the first and second time."

seconded. He could not conceive what right the Attorney-General had to put the words in at all. They had, he understood, handed over a particular sum under a guarantee; and if the Treasury desired to guarantee any more money, he thought they ought, to do so in a straightforward manner. He failed to see why the words were put in, and he thought his hon. friend's arguments were good.

said the hon. Member who had moved the Amendment was under an entire, misapprehension if he thought there was anything new in the words which he proposed should be left out. The original proposal was to take a certain sum of money from the dormant portion of the Suitors' Fund in Ireland. That covered various sums in various Courts: the Court of Mr. Justice Barton, the Court of the Master of the Rolls, and the Land Judge's Court; and the object of the words to which the hon. Member had taken exception was to make it clear what funds were being touched. With regard to the statement of the hon. Member that the Judges ought to have been consulted, he thought he would not be breaking any confidence if he said they had been consulted.

This is the first we have heard of it.

said the Judges considered so much of the fund under their control as they thought would never be called upon should be released, and had stipulated that in the improbable event of any of those monies being called upon the Treasury should, as in many other cases, guarantee their repayment. A similar clause occurred in the Act which enabled the Courts of Justice in the Strand to be built, and a similar guarantee was given in 1894, when £15,000 wan taken to build a new Law Library in Dublin. The only reason for the new clause was that the guarantee which was in the original Bill, and which everybody agreed should be in the Bill, had been accidentally omitted. He hoped the hon. Gentleman would not persist in his Amendment. He had expressed himself in favour of the Bill.

said that perhaps he might in half a dozen words explain away the difficulty of the hon. Member. The words he proposed to leave out did not import anything new, cither in form or substance, into the Bill, as approved by the Treasury. As a matter of fact, the unclaimed order and residue ac- count of the Land Judge's Court was part of those dormant funds which were to supply both the Consols and cash for the purposes of the Acts; and it would be impossible to allot that cash which was to be the working balance unless they were to take part of the unclaimed order and residue account. If the hon. Gentleman were to succeed in getting the words struck out of the clause, he would only defeat the object, of which he professed to be an ardent supporter. With regard to the liability of the suitors under the residue account, their claims were in no way prejudiced by the Bill, because they, like other people interested in the Dormant Suitors' Fund, were completely protected by the guarantee of the Consolidated Fund. He therefore hoped the House would not accept the Amendment.

said that the words which it was proposed to leave out related to part of the £100,000 mentioned in the hon. Gentleman's proposal. There were two sums, one of £80,000 which was to come out of the Suitors' Fund, and another of £100,000 which was to come from, amongst other sources, the unclaimed order and residue account. The fourth subsection provided an indemnity in respect of the £80,000, but did it provide an indemnity in respect of the other sum?

said that was precisely why the fresh words had been introduced in the clause, which had been very carefully drafted and was in entire agreement with the wishes of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland. It was to make it perfectly manifest to the House that there was the double guarantee.

said that having obtained information previously lacking, he begged leave to withdraw the Amendment.

said the Government had a new clause standing in his name, and he would explain very briefly what it was. It was really in substitution of Clause 5, providing for the distribution of the fund the Treasury placed at the disposal of the Irish authorities for the purposes of the Act. There was a little difficulty about the distribution owing to the uncertainty of the amount, and they had been obliged to alter the original proposals in the Bill, because it was found that a great portion of the funds which it was thought would be available would not be available. It provided for the payment of 25 per cent, of the annuity in each case. It was quite clear that could not be carried out, and another clause was inserted rather rapidly in Committee providing for the distribution of the money residue amongst the different local bodies in proportion to the amount of money due by them in respect of advances and also in respect of money spent by them for the purposes of the Act. Any local body which chose to spend money for the purposes of the Act would get a grant out of the funds exactly in proportion to the amount it spent. He need not trouble to read through the whole of the clause, but they might take it from him that it carried out that intention. New Clause:—

"(1) The investments directed by Section 4 of this Act shall form and in this Act are referred to as 'the Irish Housing Fund.' (2) For the purpose of allocating and paying the annual income of the Irish Housing Fund the Local Government Board shall, in every local financial year, ascertain the amount which, as at the beginning of that year, each local authority is liable to pay in the course of that year for interest and sinking fund in respect of moneys borrowed by the authority after the passing of this Act for the purposes of the Housing of the Working Classes Acts (in this section referred to as 'the annual housing charge') and shall allocate and pay the said income received during that year to and amongst the local authorities in manner following, that is to say, to each local authority liable in respect of an annual housing charge as aforesaid a sum that will bear the same proportion to the annual housing charge of that authority as the total amount of the said income so received as aforesaid will bear to the total amount of the annual housing charges of all local authorities in Ireland, provided that the sum so payable to any local authority shall not exceed the amount of the annual housing charge of the authority. (3) Any income of the Irish Housing Fund received prior to the first day of April, nineteen hundred and nine, shall, for the purposes of this section, be treated as income received during the local financial year, which begins on that day. (4) Any sum payable to a local authority under this section shall be applied in or towards payment of the annual housing charge of the local authority, (5) So much of the annual income of the Irish Housing Fund as is not distributed under the foregoing provisions of this section shall be added to the principal of the said fund and invested accordingly."—(Mr. Cherry.)

said he thought it necessary to make a slight Amendment in this clause which was intended to make a distribution amongst the local authorities in proportion to the money they advanced. The clause as it stood contemplated only one system of repayment, namely, the annuity system. But there was another system of repayment which had been very often adopted in the past, and might be adopted in the future, namely, payment by instalments, the interest calculated on the money due becoming less and less according as the instalments were paid, and the interest being paid on the reduced sum. If any authority chose to pay in that way instead of by annuity, it could not get any advantage from this fund as the clause stood. As an Amendment he proposed to leave out the words "for interest and sinking fund" in order to insert a few lines further on after the word "Acts," the words "and repayable either by annuity or by instalment." The clause would then read: "As at the beginning of that year, each local authority is liable to pay in the course of that year in respect of moneys borrowed by the authorities after the passing of this Act for the purposes of the Housing of the Working Classes Acts and repayable either by annuity or by instalments," and so on. The intention of that was that there should be absolute fairplay among local authorities. If authorities in Ireland chose to repay by annuity then this clause was perfect; he believed that it would suit its purpose; but if any local authority chose the other system of repayment by instalments, then this clause, as it stood, would deprive them of the benefit of this Housing Fund.

seconded the Amendment.

said he had no objection to the Amendment, though he preferred his own drafting; but if the hon. Gentleman wished to have the alteration, though the effect was the same, he did not refuse it.

The Amendment standing in the name of the hon. Member for Dublin County cannot be moved on the Report stage, as it proposes to increase the rates.

said he did not propose to submit the Amendment, but if the Government assured him that it was doubtful whether the rates could be increased or not as the clause now stood, he would ask them to make the Amendment in the House of Lords.

moved a new clause dealing with the rates of interest on loans.' The clause was copied from the Bill of the present session, moved by the President of the Local Government Board to deal with the housing of the working classes in England. It provided that the current rate authorised for loans out of the Local Loans Fund should be the rate whatever the time might be for which the loan was required. That was the substance of the clause. He had followed the exact words of the clause in the Bill of the President of the Local Government Board, and he did not think that he need argue the matter at all.

seconded. New clause—

"Where a loan is made by the Public Works Commissioners to a local authority for any purposes of the Housing of the Working Classes (Ireland) Acts as defined by this Act: (a) The loan shall be made at the minimum rate of interest for the time being allowed for loans out of the Local Loans Fund; and (b) as between loans for different periods the longer duration of the loan shall not be taken as a reason for Axing a higher rate of interest.'"—(Mr. Clancy.)

Brought up and read the first time.

said he was disposed to accept the clause, though he had one or two drafting Amendments to propose.

The clause has not been read a second time yet.

said he was sorry to hear that the hon. Gentleman was going to accept the Amendment, because he thought that there was a great deal of difference between advancing a loan for two or three years and a loan for seventy or eighty years. It was not a sound financial argument that because a person was charged 3 per cent. for a loan for six months therefore he should be charged 3 per cent. for eighty years. That was the extraordinary proposal which the hon. Gentleman put before them. The hon. Member said that the same proposal was in the Bill brought in by the President of the Local Government Board, but that did not alter the case, because the right hon. Gentleman was not an absolute authority. He would not dream of taking his opinion on a financial question. He certainly thought it was a wrong clause, and he hoped his hon. friends from Ireland would divide against it. It was a very unfortunate precedent to introduce that the rate of interest on a loan for six months should be the same as on a loan for eighty years.

hoped the hon. Baronet would not persist in his objection to the clause. It was one of the recommendations of the Select Committee which inquired into the subject some time ago. Hon. Gentlemen from Ireland above the gangway would agree that the most important point of all in connection with housing in Ireland was that they should, if possible, be able to get the money at a reduced rate of interest. At present the cost to the local authorities was prohibitive, and unless it was reduced the Bill would be of very little use. He regarded this as one of the most important proposals in the Bill. He gave Gentlemen above the gangway full credit for trying to promote housing in Ireland, and as this was a portion of the proposal of the President of the Local Government Board in his Bill, and as it was accepted by the Government, he sincerely trusted the hon. Baronet would waive his objection and let them be unanimous on this as they had been on every point in connection with the Bill.

said he did not pretend to a sound knowledge of finance and he did not offer any opinion of his own against that of the hon. Baronet, but he agreed with the hon. Gentleman that in connection with this matter of getting money for the housing of the working classes the most essential thing was to try to get it on as reasonable terms as it could be got from the Treasury, and if the Treasury was willing to concede it at the lowest rate he did not think anyone in the House ought to object. He asked his hon. friend to withdraw his objection.

said the Amendment might raise the question whether the loans were to be made on eleemosynary terms or not. If they were, the practice ought to be extended to the whole of the United Kingdom. Before they could make up their minds whether this was really the proposal of the clause, perhaps the hon. Gentlemen who represented the Treasury could tell them how the Public Works Commissioners secured that their practice as regarded the minimum rate for loans secured the Treasury against loss. Part of that question would he whether loans for very long periods, such as eighty years, should be treated on different terms, as regarded interest, from loans for shorter periods. It might well be that for that purpose the Public Works Commissioners might have different scales of rates applying to two kinds of loans. The House was entitled to some explanation on that point.

said the purpose of the new clause was to bring the practice in relation to loans into line with that which, if the Housing and Town Planning Bill passed, would be the rule in regard to great Britain. The practice of the Treasury had undoubtedly been in the past to differentiate between loans for longer and shorter periods. The proposal here was to bring them into line so as to make the rate of interest pay able for the loan the same whether for a short or a long period. As a matter of fact the arrangement had been come to between the Treasury and the Local Government Board that the period for which the loan upon the identical rate of interest should run should not exceed, save in the case of the purchase of land, sixty years. That would secure the Treasury against any possible loss.

said he had listened with interest to the hon. Gentleman's explanation. The Government was making a most valuable concession, and he congratulated the hon. Member in charge of the Bill. It would be of the greatest value to them all over the country to have a minimum rate and a maximum period for repayment.

in moving to omit "shall" and insert "may" in line 11, said the Bill as it stood would compel the Board of Works to lend money to local authorities without the exercise of any discretion, at all if the consent of the Local Government Board had once been given to the local authority. They did not in any way want to fetter the exercise and use of this gift, but they thought there ought to be reserved to the Board of Works discretion after hearing the case and before advancing the money. In Ireland the Board of Works had to find the money which the Local Government Board had sanctioned. They had in the clause which had just been accepted made a very considerable concession to local authorities by reducing the payment of interest, and that threw still greater responsibility upon those who had to find the money, and it was to safeguard the Board of Works in this new departure that he proposed to give them a discretion.

said he did not know whether it was any use to appeal to the hon. Gentleman to allow the clause to remain as it stood. What they intended was that the recommendation of the Local Government Board should be final. They would investigate every point before sanctioning the scheme, and the first point inquired into was the financial question—namely, what were the rates, the position of the local authority as to debt, and what was the period for which the loan ought to be made. If the Amendment was made the Treasury might stop in and refuse to pay after the Local Government Board had made its recommendation, and the whole scheme might fall to the ground.

pointed out that the Local Government Board was a Government Department, and that a local inquiry must be held with sworn evidence as to the necessity for the loan. Surely the Local Government Board inspector would not approve the loan unless the local authority was financially sound and badly wanted the money to build houses. It might happen under the Amendment that after all the expense of the inquiry and after the scheme was approved, the Board of Works would veto the report of the Local Government Board inspector and refuse to advance the money. If that occurred it would simply mean that the Act would become a failure, because the local authority would not promote a second inquiry after having had the first and then failed to get the grant. He strongly supported the view of his hon. friend. It was an extraordinary position that one Government Department should step in and override the decision of another. He hoped the hon. Gentleman would leave the words as they stood in the Bill.

said a case in point had occurred within the past six weeks. A loan was applied for by a local authority to the Local Government Board which, after holding an inquiry, sanctioned the loan. The Board of Works presumably held another inquiry on their own and refused to advance the loan. That was what they wanted to put a stop to.

said he was afraid he must adhere to the alteration which he had proposed, but as long as he was connected with the post which he now held, no unfair advantage should be taken of the change which he desired to make in the Bill. After all, there was another source open, in Ireland as in England, to the local authorities, and that was the ordinary money market. The difference in practice as he understood in England and in Ireland was that in England, as a rule, the local authority could go into the market and raise the money they wanted. In Ireland he understood the practice was different as a rule, and the local authority went to the Board of Works to raise the money. He did not think they could possibly in a Bill of this sort entirely revolutionise the practice which had obtained, whether for good or for evil, in Ireland for a long time, and while he sympathised with the difficulties which hon. Gentlemen below the gangway saw in the restriction which he proposed to make, he was afraid he could not at present withdraw the Amendment.

seconded.

hoped the Government would not agree to the Amendment. The effect of the subsection was simply to suspend repayment of the principal until the houses were built and became a paying concern. He could imagine the objection being made to this if the interest upon the money were in any jeopardy, but the interest would continue to be paid from the very moment the money was borrowed. It was only an infinitesimal part of the principal that would not begin to be repaid until two years had passed—the time estimated for the building and letting of the houses. It was a most reasonable thing not to ask the local authorities, provided they paid interest in the meantime, to repay any of the principal until they had got rents from the houses.

said he did not understand on what grounds the hon. Member for North Londonderry objected. He could understand the Treasury objecting because repayment of the principal was postponed, but they had agreed to the clause, and speaking as an Irishman he was delighted to get any small advantage he could. The local authority borrowing would be able under the clause to defer payment of the principal sum for a little time, and he did not see why an Irishman should throw away that advantage.

seconded. He thought this was a very essential Amendment. The day before yesterday he asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what the loss had been to the Irish Land Commissioners, who had lent money for Irish purposes, and he was referred to a certain Return published last session. From that Return he found that since 1881 no less a sum than £9,500,000 had been written off as bad debts.

What has been written off in this country?

said that that did not make it any better, and he was not aware that there had been a single penny written off in that way in this country. But two wrongs did not make a right, and it was a fact that since 1881 £9,500,000 had been written off as bad debts. He did not think that municipalities should have unlimited power to borrow even at low rates. This was a most important Amendment, and one which everybody who had any regard for economy ought to support. This was not entirely an Irish question, because most of the money came from England.

said that this Amendment was intended to limit the power of borrowing. There were cases in Ireland where the housing of the poor was in such a bad condition that it was highly desirable that this Act should be put into force at once, and there were many small Irish towns where the restriction proposed would not be advisable. He agreed that it was desirable that money should not be lent in an extravagant way to local bodies in Ireland, but he thought the Local Government Board and the Board of Works might safely be entrusted to sec to the matter. The authorities were extremely careful to see that advances were not made beyond the powers sanctioned by law. In the interests of the Bill he appealed to the hon. Member to withdraw his Amendment.

said he was sorry, but he could not withdraw his Amendment.