I think it very unfortunate that the Estimates have not been distributed. We are asked to vote this Vote on Account in respect of Estimates of which we yet know nothing. I have been obliged to get the Estimates of last year in order to obtain some notion of what it is we are going to vote. Let the House recognise that the proposing of this Vote on Account is really an acceptance of all the Estimates to which it refers, because it is a Vote on Account of many items, in over a hundred different Departments, and by passing the Vote on Account we do in effect give authority to all the Votes for these Departments. Under the circumstances we ought to have those Votes before us. I merely remark in passing that I think this a very unfortunate state of affairs. I hope that in future this House will not be asked to pass Votes on Account unless we have all these Estimates before us. I do not wish to debate the question at any length. I only wish to ask a question. It is with respect to an item on Vote 3 for the Treasury and Subordinate Departments. The Vote on Account for that is £22,500 out of a total Estimate of £106,000. We have not got that Estimate before us. I do not know whether the-Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Hobhouse) can explain why it is not here. If it were here I could go through it and perhaps make out the answer to the question which I want to ask. But in its absence I was driven back to last year's Estimate to see in respect of what it is we are asked to vote. On page 90 of the Vote of last year there appears under the heading of Treasury and Subordinate Departments the Committee of Imperial Defence. I have put down a question in respect of that for Monday, but perhaps the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Hobhouse) can answer it now. The total Vote for that is for secretary, assistant secretary and confidential clerk, £2,750. What about the other members of the Imperial Defence Committee? Do they not figure on this Vote to any extent at all? Do they get no salaries? How are they appointed and who are they? The Committee play a very important part in the administration of the Empire and in the settle- ment of strategy and perhaps even of the two-Power and the three-Power standard. If the right hon. Gentleman can give me an answer it will perhaps save me from further investigation in this matter, and save me from pressing the question put down for Monday. In two words, I want to know in respect of what it is we are voting this particular item, in respect of this particular matter of Imperial defence? What does the Vote amount to? Is any portion of it for the members of the Committee of Imperial Defence themselves, or is it solely and wholly in regard to the secretary, the assistant secretary, and the confidential clerk? I perhaps might have avoided asking this question had I had the Estimates before me; but it is in consequence of what I cannot help thinking a deplorable irregularity by reason of which we have not the Estimates before us in respect of this Vote of Credit that I ask this question now.

My hon. Friend is in error in describing this as a Vote of Credit. It is not a Vote of Credit.

I beg pardon —a Vote on Account.

These Votes are discussed by the Rules of the House on one of the allotted days. I may remind my hon. Friend that a Vote of Credit is generally taken when there is International disturbance in the air which is likely to affect us with foreign Powers. I am happy to say that is not the case on the present occasion. My hon. Friend will allow me to correct his description of the Vote.

Quite right.

My hon. Friend asks me unexpectedly—I make no complaint—a question with regard to the personnel of the Committee of Imperial Defence. The House is well aware that the Committee of Imperial Defence is essentially a Committee which is presided over and controlled by the Prime Minister for the time being. The members of the Committee— if my recollection is accurate—are entitled to a secretary and the necessary typewriting staff.

The staff has been described as permanent, but there is no permanent member of the Committee.

As my right hon. Friend says, there is no permanent member of the Committee save the secretary and his typewriting staff. The Committee is the Prime Minister's Committee, which meets from time to time as occasion arises or the subject under discussion requires. Two of the Committee are members of the Cabinet for the time being, and there are added certain high officers of the Army and Navy, whose advice and assistance are required on particular subjects. My hon. Friend may rest assured that apart from the salaries which as members of the Cabinet or high officers of the Army or Navy they receive for their services, the only permanent expense in connection with the Committee is that for the secretary and the typewriting and clerical staff, besides, of course, such necessary expenses, as for locomotion and inquiry, which such an important body as that must necessitate. Those are the charges which are to be found in this share of the amount appropriated for the service of the Committee, and I hope that explanation will reassure my hon. Friend.

There are no salaries to the members of the Committee as such?

No; certainly not. I say quite definitely that members of the Committee who are also members of the Government or high officers of the Army and Navy receive payment for their services as such, but they receive no payment as members of the Imperial Defence Committee. I hope that will satisfy my hon. Friend.

Can the right hon. Gentleman explain why the Estimates are not before the Committee?

The right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Austen Chamberlain), to whom I can appeal in a matter of this sort, will remember that tooth parties have constantly circulated Votes on Account in this House without the Estimates. Only in the last Session of the last Parliament the Vote on Account for Education, which covered all the Estimates for the year, was circulated, at the request of the House, long before the Estimates were brought forward. Although I agree that it is convenient, wherever possible, that the Estimates should be forthcoming before the Vote on Account is taken, yet there is not anything unusual or unprecedented in taking the Vote on Account before the General Estimates for the year are available.

I rise to call attention to a matter of vital importance to thousands of people in Ireland. It has reference to the administration of the Old Age Pensions Act, and it affects thousands of people who are in that miserable condition which was so feelingly referred to by the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he introduced the Old Age Pensions Bill. I find, according to Whitaker, that 20,000 people in Ireland have been deprived of the pension on grounds of age, 8,000 on grounds of estimates of maintenance made by pension officers. It is certainly a very serious matter where altogether some 35,000 people in Ireland over seventy years of age, owing to the administration, are deprived of the pension. The administration of the Act in Ireland has caused the greatest disappointment. Matters were working smoothly under the pension committees, but when it was seen that a large number of pensions were being granted, hon. Members in this House representing English constituencies, and speakers on every platform, made most extraordinary charges in regard to the pensions granted in Ireland. They came to the conclusion that Ireland was getting far more than its share, and the pension committees in Ireland were charged with every species of corruption, deception, and fraud. I was chairman of a committee, and I have had opportunities of attending several pension committees in Ireland, and I must certainly declare that a more unfounded charge never was made against any bodies of honourable gentlemen. I can most certainly say that in every case the pension committees have given the closest investigation and the closest consideration to the cases brought before them, and I can challenge any hon. Members of this House or any person outside the House to give me a single instance in which the committees in Ireland have attempted by deception or other means to get a pension for any poor person in Ireland. After this clamour action was taken, by whom we cannot ascertain. When we ask the Chief Secretary a question on old age pensions, he refers us to the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, who tells us the Local Government Board in Ireland are responsible. Next moment we are told that it is the Customs and Excise authorities who are responsible, or the Chief Secretary, in his turn, will transfer the responsibility to the Local Government Board. Really, be- tween all these authorities, we do not know where we are. I am very glad of this opportunity to get a clear answer to the different questions we desire to put. As a result of the clamour there has been a revision of the pensions which have been granted. According to the decision in the Pawley case the Local Government Board have no power to interfere where cases have already been decided except where really new facts are introduced. I know of several cases in which no new facts have been introduced and where the pension officers have granted the pensions, but new officers were sent into the district to deal with those cases, and the result of that, according to the answer given by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, is that some 10,000 people in Ireland have been deprived of their pensions. We consider this very unfair, that it is not in keeping with the Old Age Pensions Act, and we want a clear answer as to what instructions were given to the pension officers who have taken action in the matter—whether it is the Local Government Board in Ireland, the Customs authorities, or the Treasury. I asked the Secretary of the Treasury to supply this House with the instructions given to the pension officers in Ireland. His answer was that those are confidential documents, and consequently could not be given to the Members of the House, but some of them have come to light. I am especially anxious to get from the Secretary to the Treasury the instructions which were given to the pension officers in Ireland as to estimating the cost of maintenance of those poor old people who are living with their married sons and married daughters. He said that they acted on those private instructions which were given, but the right hon. Gentleman, the Member for the Forest of Dean, kindly supplied me with an answer to a question which was given yesterday by the Secretary of the Treasury, and which I think is thoroughly typical of the manner in which the administration of the Old Age Pensions Act has been carried on in Ireland. That reply says:—

"The action of the pension officers in Ireland in adopting a rough-and-ready method of assessment of the profits derived from small agricultural holdings in certain cases, was covered by general instructions from the Commissioners of Inland Revenue under No. 34 of the Old Age Pensions Regulations. l908."

Will the hon. Gentleman give me the date of that?

It was printed and circulated yesterday morning.

It is an extraordinary thing to say, that this Act passed for the benefit of the aged people should be carried out by the pension officers adopting a rough-and-ready method of estimating the assessment. I think that is a complete illustration of the way in which the Act has been administered in Ireland. We have not only ten thousand people deprived of pensions, but in many cases in which the pensions have been reduced, on the pensioner or applicant the Local Government Board have refused to give any pension whatever. I would like to know where are the instructions, and who is in power. The Committee has no power. The pension officer recommends. I have the particulars of a case in which a pension of five shillings per week was reduced to three shillings. The pensioner appealed to the Local Government Board, who refused to grant any pension whatever. Who has any authority is what we want to know. Another extraordinary fact is as to maintenance. An old person is living with a son or daughter, and for this living an estimate is made by which the old persons are deprived of any assistance whatever. With regard to poor relief in Ireland, we have had cases over and over again in which the medical officer certified that the parties were receiving medical treatment because of illness to which they were subject, and not poor relief, but notwithstanding that in every case which came before my Committee the Local Government Board refused to recognise the Medical Officer's certificate, and refused to give any pension whatever. We have had some most extraordinary cases in which absence from the country has come in. There is one case of a child born in America and kept there until it was four months old. It was then brought to Ireland, and though this poor man now is seventy-three years of age and has lived in Ireland for seventy-two years and eight months, he is deprived of a pension, despite the fact that his father and mother were both Irish, and because, as a baby, he spent four months in America he is not to be recognised under the Pensions Act. Then we have most outrageous cases in which the Local Government Board sanctioned pensions to old people and where they have received pensions for months, the pension officers have gone into the merits of those cases again and reduced the pensions, while the Local Government Board refused to sanction the reduced pension, and those poor people are actually asked to refund the amount which had been paid to them, and sanctioned previously by the pension committee and the Local Government Board. I know of a case in my own country, in the City of Cashel, where a poor man had been receiving a pension for months and was then deprived of it. The pension officer went to that man and told him if he did not pay the amount that had been already paid to him in pensions, proceedings would be taken against him, and the only few pounds that man had in the world were refunded to the pension officer. I really think that is simply monstrous. Where is the power under the Act to compel a poor man or poor woman who has been in receipt of a pension sanctioned by the Local Government Board, to turn round and to mulct those people by demanding the refund.

So many of those cases arose in Ireland that they caused the greatest discontent amongst the Old Age Pension Committee. So great was the discontent that a move was made in Ireland to have Old Age Pension Committees retire in a body. They felt as honourable men that they could not allow themselves to be ignored, to be snubbed, and to be insulted by the pension officers, the Local Government. Board, the Treasury, or whoever is accountable. I have never been able to find out after many questions, nor have my hon. Friends, who is responsible. Instead of retiring it was suggested that a meeting should be held of representatives of the different Old Age Pension Committees in Ireland, and consequently a meeting of representatives of the four Provinces of Ireland was held in Dublin last December. I had the honour of being appointed chairman of that body, and in order to get all the information possible, and to assist the All-Ireland Committee, I undertook to receive all communications from the different parts of Ireland as to complaints of administration of the Act. I must say I undertook a very troublesome job, because I received communications from all parts-of the most extraordinary character. This All-Ireland Committee decided to appoint a deputation to wait on the Chief Secretary to discuss matters with him. It was considered perfectly useless to go to the Local Government Board as they were administering the Act, but there was the hope that we might get some redress from the Chief Secretary. The General Election came on and it was very hard to find the Chief Secretary during that time, so that we were unable to hare the pleasure of an interview with the right hon. Gentleman. Then a meeting of the General Council of the County Councils was held and that body appointed a sub-committee to deal with this question and to co-operate with the All-Ireland Pension Committee, and they appointed a deputation to wait upon the Local Government Board.

In these circumstances, when I speak as chairman of the All-Ireland Pension Committee, and as a member of the General Council of County Councils, my representative character must be recognised. The Committee discussed the different points of dispute between the pension committees and the Local Government Board, and they requested the Board, as these people had in their belief been illegally deprived of their pensions, to have the points in dispute immediately decided in the High Court. As the General Council of County Councils and the pension committees have no money at their disposal, it was considered that the Treasury ought to bear the legal costs involved, and to this the Local Government Board were agreeable. When I came over here as representing these bodies, I saw the Chief Secretary, who had to see the Secretary to the Treasury, and I saw the Secretary to the Treasury, who had to see the Chief Secretary, but I could get no satisfactory answer. Eventually the Secretary to the Treasury told me that no communication had come before him. My information was that the Local Government Board of Ireland had communicated with the Treasury. It is time that strong action should be taken in the matter, and a definite result arrived at. I have had a case before me in which the Local Government Board came to an extraordinary decision. A pension was given to an old man; the pension officer appealed against it, but it was decided that the appeal was too late. So the man got his pension. The pension officer then went into the matter again, raised some new points, and the pension was disallowed, the pensioner this time being said to be too late in his appeal. The matter was again gone into; the committee decided that the man was entitled to 5s. a week; the pension officer recommended 3s.; the Local Government Board sanctioned the 3s., but for eight months they did the man out of the 3s. to which he was entitled. The pension committees are completely ignored; they have no power to do anything whatever. See- ing that the Census Returns in. Ireland are not what they are in England, one would have thought that when the committees, with their local knowledge, could produce circumstantial evidence as to the age of an applicant, it would be, accepted; but instead of that, the committees are completely overruled.

The question of maintenance is another matter that requires to be dealt with. In many cases the father or mother makes over the farm to a son or daughter, but the pension officer suggests that the transfer is bogus, and that it is made only for the purpose of qualifying for a pension. In reply to a question the Attorney-General stated that in his experience all these transactions were perfectly bonâ fide; but they are being used by pension officers as a means of depriving old people of their pensions. Such applicants are also being disqualified because, in making over the farm, they have arranged that if they go away from the farm to live they should be entitled to an allowance of £5 or £10 a year; but all the time they live on the farm they are not entitled to any money. What have the pension officers done? They have actually added this allowance to the cost of maintenance, and by that means disqualified thousands of old people. These small farmers in Ireland live on very scanty food. When the old mother lives on the farm she attends to the children, looks after the house, and so on. Surely she ought to be entitled to some allowance for that; but it is not taken into consideration. I know the circumstances in which these people live. They seldom have butter for breakfast, they never have it for supper; they may have a little bacon and potatoes, occasionally; and yet this is estimated by the pension officers generally at 12s. a week, and in other cases at 15s. People of the best artisan class can live in London for 15s. a week; they will have bacon and eggs for breakfast, roast beef or roast mutton for dinner, and butter for tea. In Ireland they have none of these luxuries, and yet their maintenance is estimated at the same rate as in London. In Lancashire people of the same class can live on 12s. a week.

But while the pension officers consider 12s. a week a reasonable allowance for the maintenance of an old man or woman of seventy or eighty years of age, they allow for a son or daughter from twenty-one to thirty years of age working on the farm only 4s. a week. It is very hard to have patience in dealing with this subject. Over and over again the pension committees have applied to the Local Government Board for their reasons for refusing pensions, but they have been unable to obtain them. They have asked for the return of papers in order to revise them, but the Board have stated that under some regulation or other they have been sent to the pension officer, and the pension officer when applied to says he has sent them to the Local Government Board. Consequently, amid all this confusion of sending from one to another, it is impossible to get any satisfactory answer.

Our trouble in dealing with this matter is to ascertain who is really responsible. We have been pegging at the Local Government Board since this revision took place. We have been at the Irish Office and at the Treasury. We have got no satisfaction whatever. One of the arguments used against us over and over again is that we are getting more than we are entitled to. I hold here a report of the proceedings of a deputation that, in January last, waited upon the Local Government Board. It was stated there by a gentleman who deserves honourable mention in connection with the working of the Act and the great time he has devoted to getting the necessary details, and who is a member of the Wexford County Council—and I hope that the English Press which have been making such savage attacks on the pension committees in Ireland will give publicity to this—referring to the outcry in England against the alleged disproportion and excess of Irish claims:—

"The‥‥and the Census Returns of 1841 the first available, gave the population of England and Wales as over 1.5,000,000, and that of Ireland as over 8,000,000. On that basis, Ireland would be entitled to a proportion of about one-third of the pensions, as against two-thirds for England and Wales.

"According to 'Whitaker's Almanac,' the number of old age pensioners in England and Wales is 393,700, and in Ireland 183,500. Consequently not only did Ireland not exceed her due proportion, but had actually received some 15,000 pensions less than her share."

I think that is a very important matter for the consideration of the Members of this House. I would like to give one or two cases, which I can vouch for, typical of the disapproval of the pension committees in Ireland, and the action of the Local Government Board and the pension officers. As to the question of age. Here is a case which Father Clancy, of county Clare, gives. James Kileil, of Kilkin, was not in the 1841 or 1851 Census, and he had no baptismal certificate, but his age was testified to by a man who had known him for fifty years. The Local Government Board decided against him. After that decision Father Clancy got a certificate from the Hon. Mrs. MacDonell, aunt of the present Lord Inchiquin, that applicant was a coachman fifty-four years to her late husband, Colonel MacDonell, Newhall, Ennis. Surely he was sixteen years old I when he first became a coachman. That shows the injustice of the first decision, and of the determination of the Local Government Board to ignore all collateral testimony as to age apart from a baptismal certificate.

We are reminded of the Census by the Local Government Board, and I have a case in my own district—C. Hanly. The Census gave him as sixty-nine years of age, and his baptismal certificate as seventy-one. In another case a man in my Constituency was allowed 5s. a week by the pension committee on the testimony of his parish priest, who had known the applicant for sixty years. It was appealed against, and the Local Government Board refused to give him the pension.

Let me come to the county of Meath. I have received from the secretary of the county council the result of their inquiry as to the Census. They say: "We find Charles McGrath returned in the 1841 Census as one year, returned in the 1851 Census as ten years old. We find R. Kelly returned in the 1841 Census as two years old, and in the 1851 Census as ten years old." Really when you have a Census in Ireland taken in such a peculiar fashion, I think it is only fair and reasonable that, at any rate, local circumstances should be taken into consideration, that there should be some means devised by which this matter should not be left in the hands of the pension officers, and that you should have an independent inquiry held in conjunction with the committee.

I have here a letter from the county of Roscommon Pension Committee. It relates to an extraordinary case. John Casey was, on 20th December, 1908, on the report of the pension officer, granted a pension of 5s. per week by the sub-committee. On 27th April, 1909, the pension officer raised the question as to whether the pensioner was entitled, on the ground of age, to receive the pension. He produced a copy of an entry in the Census Returns of 1851 which showed that the pensioner was not seventy years of age. The sub-committee had taken the copy of a Census Return from the parish priest, which showed the pensioner to be seventy-three years of age. But this was ignored by the Local Government Board who refused their sanction to the pension.

Here is the case—which I referred to a moment ago—of an old man living in the county of Clare. He says that he wishes to let me know that in November, 1908, he was allowed 3s. by the pension officer. He went before the county committee, and they allowed him 5s. The pension officer appealed against that decision, and the applicant also appealed, but he was told that he was too late, and his pension was disallowed. At the next sub-committee meeting he applied again, and the pension officer recommended that the 3s. should be replaced. The Local Government Board sanctioned this, but they kept the poor man for eight months out of his pension by this procedure.

As to the question of maintenance, here is an extract from a letter relating to Charles McGrath, of Mayasta, county Clare. He and his wife had got the pension for some months. They had given up their place, valued at £24 5s., to the man who married their niece. For themselves they only retained the grass of a cow, about a quarter of an acre of a haggard, and a room in the dwelling-house. They had £100 in cash, but had to support themselves, not having made any provision in the marriage settlement for their support. Their case was overhauled by a new pension officer, who valued their means at £26 each. The pension committee decided that the pension was to continue at 5s. a week to each. The pension officer appealed to the Local Government Board, who decided that their means were equal to £31 10s. each. Is that not outrageous? Now the action of the pension committee in rehearing the case was illegal, the subsequent proceedings were illegal, and these people are simply being robbed in that case. First an outrageously high valuation is fixed on the means of living of these poor people, and then the injustice is inflicted of depriving them of the pension in defiance of the Pawley case. I have several cases dealing with similar instances, but I will only give one more, and that is a case of which I have personal knowledge. It is the case of a woman named Hester Grogan, living with her nephew at Bansha, county Tipperary. Her father died about forty years ago, and gave the farm over to his son. The son got married and had a family. He and his wife died, and the aunt reared the children. She lived in the house, but she was only there on suffrance, as no provision had been made for her. The eldest son got married and has four children, and in addition has two brothers and two sisters living with him. The old aunt, seventy-three years of age, applied for a pension. The pension officer recommended 3s. She appealed to the Local Government Board, with the result she was refused a pension altogether. On my advice she again applied to the pension committee. I was thoroughly conversant with all the circumstances of the case; we passed a strong resolution and presented the strongest case we possibly could to the Local Government Board, but notwithstanding that, and the fact that this woman is a pauper, her claim was refused. A man named Patrick Doherty, Ballyhurst, county Tipperary, was allowed by his nephews to live with them; they had a very poor place, yet the pension officer estimated the cost of his maintenance at £26 a year. He told the pension officer he had £80, and the officer calculated that at the rate of 4 per cent, and added £3 12s. to his estimated cost of maintenance, bringing the whole up to £29 12s., and deprived the man of a pension.

I come now to the case of value put upon the produce of a farm. These things are estimated by the pension officers, many of whom come over from England and come out of towns and cities. Many of them would not know a sheep from a goat, yet they are asked to make an estimate of the cost of produce, but they refuse generally to take into consideration the cost of the labour of sons upon the farm, or the daughter, and indeed in no case will they make any allowance for the labour of the daughter, though in the case of the son they occasionally allow 4s. a week.

1.0 P.M

The next case to which I would wish to refer is that of a man named Pat Casey, Strokestown, county Roscommon. He has five acres of poor land, for which he pays £5 a year rent; the Poor Law valuation is £6 15s. Two acres of the land are arable, and the rest is bog. He has a family of eight, yet he was refused a pension on the ground that the cost of his maintenance was over £26 a year. I could multiply this case by the dozen. Then there are the cases and the reduction of pensions. Here is the case of a man named William Hogan. In a marriage settlement he assigned his place to his son. The pension officer estimated that this man was only entitled to 3s., on the ground that he obtains an equivalent of 10s. a week from his son. These estimates are put on quite unjustly, and these poor people are defrauded of the full pension. A Mrs. Synnot, of Waterford, was threatened recently that unless she paid back £6 15s. unknown consequences would fall upon her. There was a case in Enniscorthy, county Wexford, where a husband and wife were awarded old age pensions. The husband was subsequently struck off, and 2s. a week was deducted from the wife's money to reimburse the Treasury for what the old man had been paid. Numerous cases have come under my notice where appeals to the Local Government Board against the decision of the pension officer in granting a lesser sum than 5s. have resulted in pensioners being deprived of the pension altogether. In one case a man had been kicked by a horse and had to go to hospital. Medical certificates were sent to the Local Government Board to that effect, but they were ignored, and the man was disqualified. In another case a man had to go to hospital owing to injuries received by a severe fall from a tree. Three medical certificates were sent in, but they were ignored. Another case was that of an old man suffering from a severe attack of heart disease. The doctor certified he was not a fit case for hospital, and that his only chance was to live in the open air. When all these cases are taken into consideration, I think it will be admitted that we are perfectly justified in complaining in Ireland, and something should be done to prevent the abuses which are practised. Over and over again we have directed the attention of the Local Government Board to the facts. I am thoroughly convinced that the Local Government Board are in some way hampered by somebody whom we cannot find out. The great hardship in these cases is that, having given these poor people 5s. a week for months, and brought some comfort into their lives, they are then unjustly struck off and sent back to poverty and misery. It is an outrageous hardship. I would like to ask the Secretary to the Treasury what are the powers of these pension committees? Have they power to grant a pension to any person. Up to the present time those committees have not been allowed to exercise any power whatever, and they have been completely ignored. Pension officers are not allowed to attend our meetings or supply us with any information. They do not return to us the papers upon which we have grounded our case, and they deny us every opportunity of going into the facts. I wish to deal with this question moderately and reasonably, because we value this Act in Ireland very much, and we consider old age pensions are the greatest blessing which has been conferred upon Ireland for a long time. It is because we appreciate this Act in Ireland that the pension committees have, to the best of their ability, tried to prevent anything in the shape of giving pensions to persons who are not entitled to receive them. I am in a position to challenge any person in England or Ireland to produce one single instance in which a pension committee in Ireland has descended to anything in the shape of deception in the administration of the Act. The Act is too valuable a thing for Irishmen to do anything of that kind.

My impression is that the Treasury gave way to a sort of panic, and by its action through the Local Government Board it has completely disheartened the administration of the Act. Whether the Treasury or the Customs or Excise authorities are responsible for this I should very much like to know. I have reason to believe that in many cases the Local Government Board in Ireland are powerless. Between the Treasury and the Customs authorities some system seems to have been adopted by which they use every possible effort to defeat the successful and just working of the Act in Ireland. As for assessing the cost of maintenance, I hope this question will not be left in the hands of the pension officers, because the majority of them know nothing of the cost of maintenance in Ireland. We ask that a competent person shall be appointed to make a fair estimate of the cost of maintenance of the poor people in Ireland, and they should arrive at a decision after consultation with the local pension committees. We ask that an independent person should be appointed to consult with the local committees and go into all questions of dispute as to age and other matters. We ask that all questions in dispute should be settled at once in the Law Courts, and that the Treasury should bear the entire expense. I have been in communication with the Secretary to the Treasury and the Chief Secretary for Ireland recently upon this matter. I have had a letter from the Chief Secretary in which he states that the Vice-President of the Local Government Board was coming over to this country and he would consider the matter with him. I asked the right hon. Gentleman to receive a deputation consisting of the hon. and learned Member for Waterford, myself, and others, and he replied that as the Vice-President was coming over he would consult that official and let me know the result, and then he would decide whether it was necessary to receive the deputation I suggested. I know the Vice-President of the Local Government Board has been over, but I have heard nothing further from the right hon. Gentleman.

I think the powers of the pension committees should be more clearly defined. Up to the present they have been completely ignored, and as honourable men I am afraid they will decline to act if they are going to be treated as mere automatons. In cases where pensions have been stopped I think it is only just that the full amount of arrears should be paid. I would like to know where the Treasury obtained the right to demand from these poor people the refunding of money paid to them as pensions. Those pensions have been sanctioned by the Local Government Board, and the pension officer and I would like to know where power is given to interfere. It is also necessary that we should know exactly what is the value of a medical certificate. These poor people distinctly come under the Act, and notwithstanding that Act you refuse to recognise them. The Irish people are really grateful for this Act, and they certainly do appreciate the generous action of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I am sorry the right hon. Gentleman is not present, otherwise I should have appealed to him on this point. When this measure was introduced the right hon. Gentleman expressed in a most kindly manner his feeling as to the benefits which would accrue under this Act, and he pictured what it would mean to take the old people in advanced years from poverty and misery into comparative luxury, in a sense. Had the right hon. Gentleman been present I would have appealed to him to step into the breach in this case and endeavour to stop the jerrymandering which has been going on so long by the Treasury. I ask with true honesty and true sincerity the Government to give to the poor people who have been deprived of their old age pensions that justice which humanity and decency demands for them.

I wish to draw attention to some of the gross irregularities of the system under which old age pensions are administered in Ireland. There is a growing conviction amongst the people—and this conviction has been clearly expressed by county councils and parish councils and the members of the pension committees and sub-committees that a large number of the people in Ireland over the age of seventy are being fraudulently treated and deprived of pensions to which they are justly entitled. The Old Age Pensions Act contemplated that a pension should be given to every person over seventy years of age.

Of course, one can understand the action of the Treasury in the matter. Whether it is the Chancellor of the Exchequer or the Secretary to the Treasury who is responsible for making the estimate as to the amount that would be required for the payment of the pensions, a gross miscalculation was made in the case of Ireland, and a public clamour was raised in this country by newspapers of both shades of politics that Ireland was being too liberally treated. I have no doubt there is no fraudulent intention on the part of the right hon. Gentlemen opposite or of any Department of the Government, but the fact is just the same to those poor people in Ireland who have been deprived of their pensions. You can quite understand that those who have built up their hopes of having an old age of comparative peace and comfort and now find that this hope is defeated by the action of responsible officials of the Government regard this largely in the nature of a fraud. It is evident that, when the Treasury officials made their calculations they were under the impression that the proportion in Ireland who should get pensions was something like one-eighth of the number of pensions to be paid in England. This calculation was based on the population of England. Scotland and Ireland according to the Census of 1901. In that year the population of England was over 32,000,000, whilst the population of Ireland was 4,000,000.

The crucial period, however, on which the calculation ought to have been based is seventy years ago, and. taking the figures at that time, you find that the population in England was a little over 15,000,000, in Scotland a little over 2,000,000, and in Ireland 8,000,000. Taking, therefore, the true test in the two countries, Ireland, instead of an eighth, should, roughly speaking, receive about half the pensions paid in England. I obtained an answer from the Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Hobhouse) as to the pensions paid in England, Scotland, and Ireland respectively at the present time, and the numbers are: England, 405,755; Scotland, 76,000; Wales, 26,000; and Ireland, 183,971, or considerably less than one-third of the total number of persons in receipt of pensions. This answer was given by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury on 14th March, and Appears in the OFFICIAL REPORT of the Parliamentary Debates for that date. I submit this shows conclusively that at the present time, tested by the Census of 1841, Ireland is not getting by a long way that proportion of the total paid in pensions which the people of the country are entitled to in respect of population. I asked the Chief Secretary recently whether, in view of the defects in the working of the Act, and the irregularities which are being brought to light every day by questions asked by Members from Ireland, he would not consider the desirability of appointing a Commission to investigate the working of the Old Age Pensions Act in Ireland, and he refused. We have asked, as my hon. Friend has said, for information as to the regulations under which the Old Age Pensions Act is being administered, and it is a kind of game of hunt the slipper. The Financial Secretary to the Treasury cannot give us the information, and says it is a matter for the Board of Customs and Excise, which, of course, is the Treasury, and indeed the most important part of the Treasury; and in this matter the Local Government Board is also a part of the Treasury. No one in Ireland has any confidence whatever in the fair or honest administration of the Old Age Pensions Act, just because there are such innumerable glaring cases as those quoted by my hon. Friend.

In two main respects Ireland is being unfairly treated. It has been repeatedly admitted from the Treasury Bench that the Census of 1841 has been found from time to time, in hundreds of cases in different parts of Ireland, to be unreliable. Surely it is not the intention of the Old Age Pensions Act that simply because a person's age is not entered in the Census of 1841 through no fault of his own, or that of his parents, the Census at that time being taken by police officials, that he should be deprived of his pension. It is evident that it was the intention of the Legislature that the ages of applicants should be determined by the best evidence obtainable. The Local Government Board took a very sensible course when the Act first came into operation. They said that where there was no evidence provided by a baptismal register—and there was no such thing as a proper Government register until long after 1841—such evidence as was available would be taken, and it was recommended that the pension officer of each district should take all the assistance he could get from clergymen and others. When, however, it was found that there was such a large number of persons entitled to old age pensions in Ireland, secret instructions were evidently issued, either by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Lloyd-George), the Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr. Birrell), or by the Local Government Board, that in every case where there was no documentary evidence of age the applicant should be deprived of his old age pension unless, on looking up the Census Returns of 1841, an entry was found relative to him. That is entirely beyond the contemplation of the Act.

The administration of the Act by the Local Government Board as a final court of appeal is very unsatisfactory, and it seems to me a great misfortune that so much power, practically the power of a court of law, is given to the Local Government Board in Ireland, whatever that body is, in reference to final decisions on questions under the Old Age Pensions Act. Looking to the terms of the Act, we see that the central pensions authority may act through such committee, person, or persons appointed by them as they think fit. One would like to know, in reference to the working of this Act: What is the Irish Local Government at the present time? Is it the Chief Secretary? Who are associated with the Chief Secretary? Is the whole work of administration under the Act left to a junior clerk or office boy in the office of the Local Government Board in Ireland? The people of Ireland have no confidence in the action or discrimination of the Irish Local Government Board, or in the judicial character of the decisions given by them. I have not the slightest doubt that when this Act was passing through the House of Commons the provision giving this arbitrary and absolute power to the Local Government Board would never have been passed, but would have been protested against from all quarters of the House, had it not been for the fact that everybody believed that great discretion would be given to the local pension committees and to the central pension committee. You have in the local pension committee something of the elements of a judicial tribunal. You have a body of men taken pretty much as a jury is taken, appointed locally and having no interest in the Treasury on the one hand, or in the parties making application on the other. Above that committee you have a higher revising committee. It was thought, and I believe rightly thought, that so far as the greater part of the United Kingdom was concerned the decisions of the sub-committees and the central pension committees would be given full effect to by the Local Government Board. I am in a position to point out to the House that so far as England and Scotland are concerned that is the case. The decisions of the pension committees deliberately come to in respect of age and means are given effect to. Yesterday I asked for information in regard to the number of cases in which pensions once given had been taken away by the Local Government Board in Scotland. The answer I got from the Lord Advocate for Scotland was:—

"The total number of cases since the passing of the Act in which the Local Government Board for Scotland has taken away pensions is forty-four."

I know from other than Parliamentary sources that in England the number relative to the population is about the same. Yesterday I asked the President of the Local Government Board if he would state the number of cases in England and Wales in which pensions which had been granted and for some time paid had been withdrawn by his Board since the passing of the Old Age Pensions Act. The President of the Local Government Board said:—

"I regret it is not practicable to give the figures desired.''

I think the House is entitled to such a figure as that, and that it is the duty of the President of the Local Government Board to supply any Member of this House on such a public matter with this information. Why is it impracticable? Is not the Local Government Board, an expensive Department of the State, provided with an official at its head who is getting £5,000 a year and a very expensive set of clerks, for whom we pay through the general taxation of the country? I know and assert—I challenge contradiction on this point —that the proportion of pensions withdrawn by the Local Government Board in England is not greater than the proportion in Scotland, and I again call attention to the fact that the number in Scotland is only forty-four. I asked the same question with regard to Ireland, and the Chief Secretary answered:—

"The number of cases in Ireland in which pensions that were granted and for some time paid were subsequently withdrawn by the Local Government Board on questions raised in respect of age was 4,588, up to February 26th last. The cases in which pensions were withdrawn on other grounds have not been separately tabulated, and in order to obtain this information an examination of the many thousands of cases in which questions have been raised would be necessary, and time does not permit of this being done."

I think the Chief Secretary is not in a position to contradict me if I make the assertion, as I do with confidence, that the total number of cases in which pensions have been withdrawn, not only in respect of age, but also in respect of appeals on questions of means, is about 10,000.

Eight thousand.

Is it not a scandal that such a state of things should arise? If 8,000 people who are not entitled to them have for some time been getting pensions, that is unfair to the Treasury, and I submit that it is not only unfair, but cruel to the people, if, after they get the pensions, they are taken away again. Nothing, to my mind, could be more cruel to an old person expecting the benefit than to give; the pension for three or four months, as the result of his application to a quasi-judicial tribunal, and then to have some person coming from the Treasury, or the Board of Customs and Excise, or the Local Government Board, and making inquiries which are by no means public—making them in a kind of Star Chamber fashion— and then to deprive him of his pension. With regard to the whole question of means, I think that matter has been fairly dealt with by the hon. Member who has just sat down. The question of the ascertainment of means might be pretty much on a parallel in Scotland and in Ireland, because the economic circumstances of the-people applying for pensions in the crofting districts of Scotland are practically on all fours with the economic conditions of the people living in the agricultural slums of the congested districts of the West and South of Ireland. We find, however, that the same set of officials, pension officers, are sent from Somerset House or from the Treasury to Scotland with instructions different from those they get hi Ireland. In Ireland instructions are given as to the value to be placed upon the produce of a cow to the farmer or cottar, and the amount which is treated as the economic value of the holdings is different in Scotland from what it is in Ireland. My information is that at the commencement of the operation of the Act a decision was come to that the sum of £4 was a fair estimate of the value to be placed on the earning capacity of a cow or on the economic value of a cow to its owner, but in the course of the working of the Act and after this false clamour was raised by British newspapers, fresh instructions were given to the pension officers—and it is a fact on which I challenge contradiction—that, instead of taking £4 as the earning capacity of a cow in Ireland, its value was to be taken to be £6 or £7. I do not think there is anything corresponding in the amount of produce which would justify such an increase.

In view of the fact that difficulties have arisen in the working of this Act, I submit "that the proper and reasonable thing for the Treasury or the Irish Local Government Board to do would be to appoint a Commission from the House of Commons to take evidence on oath from those concerned in the working of the Act. The Financial Secretary to the Treasury will not give the instructions he issues or which the Board of Customs and Excise issue and send out to the different districts of Ireland for the important work of acting in defence of the Treasury more than in the administration of the Act. I think, seeing that such iregularities even in the withdrawal of pensions have taken place, that such an inquiry is called for and justified. If such an inquiry is made, I have not the slightest doubt that the result will be to bring about greater ease in the working of the Act, and to restore the confidence of the people of Ireland that it is not the intention of the Government or the Treasury to deprive them of the pensions to which they are entitled. While the people of Ireland are in the position of seeing the decisions of the local and county pension committees habitually disregarded by the Local Government Board, there can be no confidence in the working of the Act. I should like to say a word in reference to one class of case which is very prevalent in Ireland, and which causes the very gravest dissatisfaction, and that is one where the applicant for a pension has his application considered by the pension committee, and they come to the conclusion that his means are such that he is entitled to the maximum pension, but the pension officer on the other hand arrives at a different conclusion. He does not hold that the man is entitled to no pension, but that he is entitled to a modified one. You have over and over again cases of that kind. The pension committee decides upon a pension of 4s. or 5s., but the pension officer recommends one of 2s. or 3s. The matter is then referred to the Local Government Board, and I submit that the matter for the determination of this tribunal—bad and imperfect as it is, and I think it is as bad and imperfect as it can well be—has nothing, whatever to do with any other question than whether the pension should be 2s., 3s., 4s. or 5s. But what do you find? The Local Government Board systematically when they get a case of that kind submitted to them do not decide the matter which is submitted to their decision, but take away the pension altogether. That was so in the case of William Pawley, which on appeal was decided by the court of King's Bench recently. In their decision the Court say that the Local Government Board were wrong in deciding that no pension should be given, where a recommendation for a pension was made by the pension committee and a recommendation for a smaller one by the officer of that committee. I think the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary said in this House that that case decided nothing except the particular case of the applicant.

No. I considered it did not cover very many cases.

I submit that it does cover very many cases; it covers thousands of cases, as I can show, in which the officer differs from the pension committee, not as to whether any pension should be given, but as to the amount of the pension. I say that this decision is wide enough in its terms, and especially the judgment of Lord Justice Cherry, at one time a respected colleague of the Chief Secretary, covers all these cases of this kind. In giving his judgment he says:—

"In this sense I think that the finding of the committee upon the facts before it cannot at any time be set aside by any Court, or ignored by any Government official. The pension must be paid at the rate awarded until the determination of a question, properly raised under Section 7, which either alters the rate of the pension or may put an end altogether to the right to receive it. In the present ease the question was raised not by the pension officer but by the pensioner. It related only to an increase in the amount of the pension and the claim for an increase was based not upon any alteration in the pensioner's means or even upon any fresh evidence as to the amount of his means at the time the pension was granted, but upon an allegation that the pension committee had erred in calculating the yearly value of those means."

Does not that throw a great light on the working of the Act by the Local Government Board, of which the Chief Secretary is supposed to be a member, although he must be a very inactive member, considering all the other duties of his office and considering that there are 8,000 or 10,000 appeals which would have to be submitted to him, and which deserve individual consideration? In these cases no fresh evidence is submitted, and the Local Government Board have taken advantage of having the case before them to absolutely cut people off from the pension. The action of the Local Government Board in that respect is as injudicial as it is scandalous. They ignore the evidence before the committee, and, acting upon no evidence derived from the fact that this person's name is not found in the Census Return of 1841 or 1851, they cut the man off from a pension. I claim that they repeatedly have done that, and this is a policy for which the Local Government Board and the Chief Secretary are responsible for their action in a great many cases like this. They do not even give the poor, unfortunate people the opportunity of knowing or having a statement of the grounds on which the decision is based. Under the whole circumstances of the working of the Act and its unfairness, I submit again that the time has arrived when a Committee with powers of investigation should be appointed. I have no doubt that this suggestion will be met by the Chief Secretary or the Secretary to the Treasury saying that the ordinary courts of justice exist for the settlement of claims of this kind. I find that this poor person, Pawley, who was in the first place found to be entitled to a pension, was not given the expenses of this costly appeal; but a person who had occupied high office under the Government, and who had drawn a comfortable salary while in the occupation of that position on the Treasury Bench or in the Army or Civil Service would no doubt be in a position if his pension were challenged to fight the matter in a court of law, but to invite a person in circumstances of poverty to go to the courts and get the question decided is a cruel mockery in view of the costs of litigation. The costs of litigation are nothing to right hon. Gentlemen sitting on the Treasury Bench, but they are utterly impossible to a starving peasant in the West of Ireland or the old people in a town who are applicants for a pension. I therefore maintain that a case has been made out for a full inquiry, and that the maladministration of the Act and the way which it has been worked justify such an inquiry, and until such an inquiry is held and has reported its conclusions to this House I am satisfied that the people of Ireland will have no confidence in the honesty and straightforwardness of the administration of the Old Age Pensions Act in Ireland.

So far from disagreeing with the two hon. Members who have addressed the House, I quite recognise the difficulty that they find if they desire to seek information from my colleague the Chief Secretary for Ireland and from myself of knowing to whom the particular question should be addressed. I sympathise with them in that difficulty, but it does not follow that because there is this division of responsibility in this House that the administration of the Act has been badly or remissly carried out, or that the benefits which have been conferred by the Act upon the pensioners in Ireland have not been great, and, indeed, surprisingly satisfactory. There has been, I think, an allegation by both hon. Gentlemen who have addressed the House that the pension committees have far too little authority, and they are apt to find their views overridden by the pension officers. Of course, that is not the case. The duties of the pension officers and pension committees are quite separate, and in no way overlap, and their responsibilities are to different authorities. The duty of the pension officer is, first of all, to investigate and report the facts to the committee and inform them whether the claimant for the pension fulfils certain statutory requirements, and whether he is free from certain statutory disqualifications, and I only to recommend to the pension committee the amount of pension which ought to be awarded. When he has done that his duty ceases. The pension committee, on the other hand, is, in the words of the Act, the final authority for the purpose of deciding what the amount of the pension should be, and whether or not any pension should be granted. In that matter they are perfectly free to accept the recommendations of the pension officer or to reject them. If they and the pension officer are in agreement as to the facts of the case and the amount of pension to be granted, the whole matter is closed, but if the pension officer is dissatisfied with the decision of the pension committee, or if the claimant is dissatisfied with the award, they both have a right of appeal to the Local Government Board, and I think hon. Gentlemen who address this House from Ireland on this subject often forget that the appeal is made against the decision of the committee on account of the smallness of the pension awarded, I do not say as frequently, but still very frequently, and it is not only appeals by the pension officer against the decision of the committee which come before the Local Government Board. It has been stated by both hon. Gentlemen who have addressed the House that there has been a considerable amount of hardship inflicted upon pensioners who have already received their pensions, by appeals instituted by the pension officers. I do not suppose either of them pretends that if the pension officer is aware of facts which disentitle the claimant to a pension, he should not bring those facts to the notice of the pension authority. That may be taken as common ground between us.

It is disputed. New facts.

No, it is not a new fact. It may be either a new fact or a fact which was unknown to the pension committee or the pension officer, although it existed at the time.

It may be a mere negative fact, such as the absence of the name from the Census Return.

I do not think that is so at all. In the view which I have stated I am supported by the Attorney-General and by the Chief Secretary, who is himself a lawyer of no mean repute.

In the case of maintenance where no alteration in the circumstances whatever has occurred, how can you justify a revision of the case and a reduction of the pension from 5s. to 2s.?

I am afraid I cannot accept that view, nor do my colleagues, who are more immediately concerned with the general administration of Ireland, and they are, from a legal standpoint, better fitted than I am to consider the evidence and pronounce their opinion upon it. I am only dealing with that part of the matter which concerns the Treasury in the administration of the Act by the pension officers. A great deal has been made of the fact that a much too free use of the Censuses of 1841 and 1851 has been made in arriving at the evidence upon which these pensions are claimed. The hon. Gentleman (Mr. Scanlan) complained that I was unduly unwilling to give information as to the instructions issued to pension officers in this matter. It is quite true that I am unwilling, because I should be departing from precedent were I to communicate the confidential instructions given to our officers. I am perfectly willing to state what were the general instructions given in the matter. In September, 1908, instructions were issued to the pension officers that in all claims for pensions they were to refer to Censuses of 1841 and 1851, unless they were supported by documentary evidence. It is quite clear, in view of the advice given by hon. Members from Ireland to the Irish people, that if these instructions had been rigidly adhered to there must have been a great congestion in the grant of pensions. There was an enormous number of claims put forward—some hundreds of thousands— there was a comparatively short time in which to work these claims off, and it was clearly to the advantage of the pensioners themselves that there should have been some relaxation of the strictness of these considerations, and accordingly in November, 1908, that relaxation was permitted, and in further and new instructions, which were clearly intended to be of a purely temporary character, the pension officers were told that this reference to the Census Returns might be dispensed with in those cases where the parish clergy were prepared to give a certificate that they had satisfied themselves that the claimants were over seventy years of age, and if the pension officer was himself also primâ facie satisfied that the claimant appeared to be of the age of seventy, the necessity for referring to the Censuses was dispensed with. I do not suppose any hon. Member will for a moment say that was not a proper temporary provision to make. I am quite certain no hon. Gentleman from Ireland ought to complain of the Treasury acting in this manner. I lay great stress on the fact that this was a temporary provision.

It was clearly not a proper provision under the ordinary circumstances of granting pensions, and, accordingly, as soon as we cleared off the great block of pensions arising at the beginning of 1909, these temporary provisions were cancelled, and ever since that the pension officers have been working under the instructions of September, 1908, and they are so working to this day.

But in consequence of the temporary provisions of November, 1908, it was clear that an unusual state of things had arisen. A great number of pensions had been granted which could be, and were subsequently, substantiated by the Censuses. There was also a considerable number of cases of pensions granted where the grantees were untraceable in the Censuses; and, thirdly, there were those cases which, when they were traced, were found not to be qualified for a pension, and clearly each of these three classes of pensions required and received second treatment. Those whose claims were substantiated naturally got their pension. With regard to those who were untraceable, the attitude taken up was this. The pension officer reported the fact to the pension committee, and said, according to the interpretation of the law, no pension ought to be granted. If the pension committee accepted that view, of course nothing further was or needed to be done; but if the pension committee took the view that in a case of that kind a pension ought to be granted, and the pension officer himself thought the appearance of the claimant such that he really was entitled to a pension, although his name could not be traced in the Census, then he acquiesced with the pension committee, and the matter rested there, and the man got his pension. If, on the other hand, the claimant's appearance led the pension officer to doubt the fact that he was really seventy years of age, an appeal was taken in the ordinary course to the Local Government Board, and their decision settled the question.

Then there remained the question of those pensioners who are called "certificated pensioners." Some of them, undoubtedly, were properly and duly qualified; but in a great number of cases—one would do the same thing oneself in the circumstances—the inclination was to help people to get pensions for old friends, who were perhaps on the border line of seventy, but whose ages might be on one side or the other.

I would like to know if the right hon. Gentleman is to be understood as making the insinuation that clergymen in Ireland, irrespective of the merits of the case, recommended people for pensions just because they wanted to treat them as old friends?

I should have thought that no one who listened to what I said would have thought that I made any such insinuation. I said that they acted as I myself would have acted, namely, in cases where there was doubt they gave the reasonable benefit of the doubt to the claimant. I think the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Scanlan) himself would have taken that course. I do not blame the clergymen in Ireland, or any one else, in that matter; but it was quite clear, in the circumstances, that a review of those cases was necessary. What happened? No question—I use the word question in the technical sense—was raised in the case of those persons the Censuses showed to be two years of age in 1841 or twelve years of age in 1851, and showed to be one year in 1841 or eleven years in 1851. I lay stress on the "and" in consequence of circumstances I propose to allude to later on. The allowances which were made by these considerations enabled an enormous number of persons to be accepted as qualified for pensions to whom, perhaps, some objection might be taken and sustained. Therefore, in this class of persons very great consideration is shown to would-be pensioners and successful claimants in Ireland to whose claims objection might have been made and sustained.

I want to say a word about the Censuses of 1841 and 1851. Both of these were made under special Acts. The Commissioners and enumerators appointed under these Acts were paid persons. It has often been suggested in this House that a policeman and a local publican sat down together, and while talking over their refreshments agreed what was to be the ages of the various persons included in the Census. That is not the information I have received, and I have made some very careful inquiries on this point. These are not the circumstances connected with the enumeration of the people in these two Censuses. The Commissioners were very careful in their choice of enumerators; the Press and the public generally had been induced to take an active and intelligent interest in the enumeration of the people of Ireland. The enumerators themselves were bound under very heavy penalties to make no false returns, and any person who made false or misleading statements in the Census returns were liable to prosecution. There was, therefore, every inducement for the enumerator to make accurate statements as to age and number of family, and there was no inducement to give anything but true and accurate information. But there was this circumstance in connection with both of those Censuses. There is no doubt that an examination of the Censuses will show that persons making returns were very apt to round off the ages. Persons of twenty-eight might be returned as thirty, and persons of forty-seven or forty-eight might be returned as fifty. That is clearly traceable in the case of the older persons whose ages are recorded in the Censuses. But when you come down to children of one, two and three, both in the Census of 1841 and that of 1851, the ages are accurately and carefully given, though not in months or years. A child of eleven months was returned as one year old.

May I ask how the ages of the children so returned in 1841 were returned in 1851?

That is precisely the point I am coming to. The moment you come to children of seven or eight years of age the same tendency to round off occurs, so that while in the Census of 1841 the age of a child of one, two, three or four is accurately given, the age of the same child is apt to appear in the Census of 1851 as ton, twelve or fourteen years of age, so that though in the Census of 1851 the ages of children of one, two, three and four are accurately recorded, there is a tendency again to round off the ages of older children. It is the remembrance of these facts which induce the pension officers to lay great stress upon, and to give great advantage to claims by persons whose ages can be traced in 1841 and 1851. Where the Census of 1851 shows that a person is ineligible to claim a pension, and the same person is shown in the Census of 1841 as eligible, they gave that person the preference shown by the 1841 Census. These are very important facts in dealing with these questions to which justice has not been done by hon. Gentlemen opposite.

Now I come to the question of the calculation of means. It has been suggested that pension officers have unfairly and unduly over-estimated the means of would-be pensioners. No general instructions have been issued to pensions officers in regard to the calculation of means. What has happened has been this: Each officer has acted as far as possible upon his own discretion. He has been told that in all difficult and uncertain cases he must make reference to the Board and upon the decisions in these individual cases as they came up, there has been built up a course of action which has begun to guide the views of pension officers in calculating the means of applicants for pensions. Even at this moment this general line of conduct is not universally followed. Pension officers still act, and as I think properly act, upon their own judgment and discretion. But they are guided, and again I think naturally and properly guided, by the general decisions which have taken place over the whole of Ireland in a great number of cases.

Then a further attack has been made on the mode of assessing what are called farmers' profits. Reference has been made to the reports of the Controller and Auditor-General of this year. At the outset before the Act came into operation, while preparations were being actually made for its operation, it is quite true that fanners' profits were assessed by a rough-and-ready means of taking three times the value of the rent. But before the Act itself has actually come into operation, and therefore before these calculations could become operative, that system, which was obviously unfair to everybody concerned, as it overestimated in some cases and underestimated in others, had been done away with. In November, I think, of 1908, a new system was introduced, by which the actual incomings and outgoings of the individual farmer were inquired into by the pension committee, and the calculation was made upon that. But this again was not found to be a satisfactory system. Farmers in Ireland are for the most part very small holders. They do not keep accounts, and there is no possible way of arriving actually at the total income and outgoings; and clearly that system had to be abandoned. So finally, in April, 1909, a new system was introduced, which obtains at the present moment, by which calculations were made upon the acreage of the land and the value of the crops upon each portion of the land. These were all referred to what I believe is known as Purdon's Almanack, which I understand is accepted by all agriculturists in Ireland as giving a very fair calculation of the profits and values of crops grown there. And it is upon these tables that calculations at the present day as to farmers' profits are made. There is a reference made in this Controller and Auditor-General's Report in which he says that a rough and ready method was set up of assessing the profits at three times the rent or four times the annuity payable under the Land Purchase Act, and he goes on to say that the same method still obtains. So it does in certain isolated cases. But these isolated cases have only lately been brought to the knowledge of the Board of Customs and Excise, and pension officers are under instructions in no case any longer to adopt that method, but that they are to proceed on the lines which I have just indicated to the Committee.

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware, when he says that profits are estimated from Purdon's Almanack, that pension officers make the estimate of profit, but make no allowance whatever for the cost of feeding stuffs needed for the feeding of calves, pigs, and fowls? That is how it is done. I am aware of hundreds of cases in which the estimate of the profits is made, but there is no estimate of the expenditure.

I am informed that not only is not that the case, but that allowance is made for these expenses and also for the cost of cultivation. I would further remind the hon. Gentleman that even supposing that that is not so, the pension committee is not bound to accept the calculations of the pension officers and that they can make their own estimate. After all, they are local people, acquainted with the local circumstances of the case and the local value of the crops, and they can make their own estimates as to the exactness, or otherwise, of these calculations put before them.

In every case we got an expert valuation made, which was completely ignored by the pension officers and the Local Government Board, so that there is no use in having this sort of nonsense thrown down our throats.

It is not nonsense.

It is pure, unadulterated nonsense in the administration of the Act in Ireland. I know what I am speaking about.

These cases are not as the hon. Gentleman in his heat represents.

I know it.

As I have pointed out to the Committee, and as is well known, calculations based upon those tables in Purdon's Almanack are accepted generally by the agricultural community as a basis of the calculations of the value of crops. There is only one other point with which I wish to deal. There has been a statement made, I think by the hon. Member for North Sligo (Mr. Scanlan), that the administration of this Act had resulted in grave injustice to Ireland. At the time of the Census of 1901 there was no idea of the Pensions Act in the air, and there was no reason why persons should either understate or overstate their age, and at that time there were 152,000 persons who, if they had been living today, would all of them have been qualified, on their own admissions, for an old age pension.

By age alone

By Census evidence of age alone.

By their own statement of their own age.

In the Census, of course.

It is a little curious, notwithstanding that return of their own ages, which was made less than nine years ago, that there should be no fewer than 183,000 persons today drawing pensions, or 30,000 more than the number who would have been entitled upon their own statement nine years ago to such pensions. I do not wish to press that fact for more than it is worth, but at all events it shows that the result of the administration of the Act has been to put in possession of pensions of a very satisfactory character a great number of people in Ireland to whom, I believe, this Act has brought great happiness and great contentment. The hon. Member also dealt with the question of an appeal against the decision of the courts in Ireland in reference to the Pawley case. There were two other cases. It was represented that the persons interested in this case were poor persons, unable to carry their case beyond the court of first instance. I think the hon. Member for Tipperary said he was unable to get an answer from the Chief Secretary or from the Secretary to the Treasury on this matter. The consideration of these cases takes a certain amount of time; the pros and cons have to be con- sidered, and it is not always easy to give an answer on the same day, or even within a week of the time when the question is originally put. My right hon. Friend and I have been in conference together on this matter, and I have told him that the Treasury is perfectly willing in the Synnott case, in which judgment was in favour of the Treasury, and which is a more important cases than the Pawley, covering a larger number of instances, to pay all the costs of an appeal from that judgment, and I hope that this concession by the Treasury will prove acceptable. After all, our desire is to arrive only at what is a fair, proper, and right decision of all the points involved in the matter, which is of great importance both to the Treasury and to the pensioners in Ireland. In agreeing to bear all the costs of the appeal we will make it perfectly possible for these poor people to carry their views to a higher tribunal than is at present possible for them, and I think that will be a satisfactory course to adopt.

I desire to assure the House that neither I nor any other of my colleagues desire to approach this question in a spirit of carping criticism. We do not deny that the Act itself is wise, just, and beneficient, and that it has done a great deal for poor people, who have attained the age of seventy years and upwards in Ireland. I wish to draw the attention of the House to the fact that in the administration of the Act a great deal of hardship is inflicted on these poor people. My hon. Friend the Member for Tipperary, in his able and exhaustive statement, and speaking from full knowledge of the way in which the Act works all over Ireland, drew attention to the fact that no fewer than 10,000 old people, who ought to be in receipt of pensions from the country, have been deprived of them. And there is the feeling all over Ireland that the Act is not being administered fairly; and there is also the impression that the harshness with which it is being administered is largely owing to the clamour that was raised in this country by unthinking and ill-informed people, who took into account the estimate that had been made that £700,000 would be sufficient to cover the cost of working the Act in Ireland. They were surprised, appalled as it were, at the fact that it required more than £2,000,000 to satisfy the old age pensioners in that country. It has already been pointed out in this House that this clamour, this outcry against the administration of the Act in Ireland, was based upon an utter misapprehension, the conditions being entirely dinerent in that country from what they are here. In Ireland we are dealing with old people who at the time they were children lived in a country where the population was about eight or nine millions, while in this country the population was about fifteen millions, so that from an easy calculation it will be found that there ought to be something like about half as many old people in Ireland as in this country. But there is one aspect of the question which I think has not been referred to, and that is what might be called the local conditions, and the character of the population. It is well known to anyone who is acquainted with the state of affairs in Ireland that, owing to the operation of laws enacted by this House, and powers given to certain people called landlords, that tens of thousands of acres of the best land were swept bare of people, and that the great mass of the poorer people in the country were driven on to the hillsides and into the bogs to try and eke out a living. That state of things prevails to a very large extent at the present time. Within a very short distance of the chief town in my own Constituency w have ranches of thousands of acres in extent, and, naturally enough, the population there being infinitesimal, will not compare with the population in the crowded districts in the very poorest parts of the country.

The poor conditions in which people in Ireland are forced to live are such that the children of the Irish race when they go abroad are so impressed by the terrible conditions under which those they leave behind have to live that they send back to their native land what are regarded, under the circumstances, as huge sums of money every year. Not long ago I was reading the report of an address delivered by a well-known Irishman in America to a society made up of commercial men, in which he pointed to the fact that from the United States £10,000,000 is sent to Ireland annually. I have heard it stated by one hon. Member in this House that £4,000,000 per annum is sent from the United States to Ireland from one source alone. Those of us who are acquainted with the circumstances know that the Irish abroad send small sums of money which, in the aggregate, amount to a very large sum. What we hold is that the old people in Ireland should not be a drag upon their children, who have to meet the keen competition of the world and make their way, but that the people who live and work in the old country ought to be provided for in their old age. So much with regard to the general question. A reference has been made to the farmers committees. That is a question which has been under consideration in my Constituency, and I have had communications from some pension committees composed of practical farmers, who live in the neighbourhood, and who from their boyhood have been living by agriculture. When they make an estimate as to the profits upon farming it is something like an outrage for some official, with no training and no experience in such matters, to coolly take an almanack or something of that sort in his hand, and say, "These estimates are made by local people, and they are entirely wrong. I shall make my calculations from figures from another source." What the members of the pension committees in various parts of Ireland complain of is that their representations are set aside as if they were of no value.

I hope that the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary will succeed in impressing upon the Treasury the facts of the case, and have such instructions sent to their subordinates in Ireland as will lead them to deal with this great question in a manner which will give satisfaction to the people. Many Acts of Parliament have been passed in this House with regard to Ireland. Some of them have had a very damaging effect. Some of them were intended for the purpose of taking away the properties and, in some cases, the lives of the people of Ireland, and some of them were well intended, but they worked disastrously because of the way in which they were administered. As far as this particular Act is concerned, it has come upon the people of Ireland in such a way as to do more good from the Imperial point of view than anything that has been done in the six or seven hundred years that have elapsed since the Anglo-Norman connection with Ireland commenced. Beneficent as the Land Acts have undoubtedly been, they were passed after a fierce fight between the people and the authorities, after blood was spilled, men sent into penal servitude and suffered various terms of imprisonment, and many men practically ruined. Those Acts were in many cases cut up in another place in such a way as to deprive our people of the benefit which were intended to be conferred by this House. As far as the Old Age Pensions Act is concerned, it is freely admitted upon all sides, by all manner of people in Ireland, that it has been given, so to speak, freely, without any pressure being brought to bear upon this House, and it has been received in a spirit of gratitude. The Act is regarded in Ireland as imperfect. It has failed for those receiving medical relief or outdoor relief. There are many cases of that kind, but the people are willing to wait until better times come for an amendment of the Act. In the matter of the administration of the Act, I would ask any hon. or right hon. Gentleman on the other side of the House is it worth while to spoil a great Act of this kind lest by any chance some poor old beaten-down creature who happened to be a year or two or three years under the period of the Act should manage to get a pension. I thoroughly endorse what has been said by the hon. Member for Tipperary that the pension committees in Ireland are fully alive to the situation. They have no desire whatever to impose upon the Treasury. They want to work the Act fairly and honourably, and I do believe that the Treasury would be well advised to instruct their subordinates to meet the pension committees, and have this great and beneficent Act worked in a way that will give comfort to many people who are now deprived of its utility.

I am quite sure that no one, not even the Government, will find any fault with the tone and temper of the speech of the hon. Member who has just spoken. I do not rise to traverse his arguments or to pursue the same line of argument. In his general statement. I suppose, there would be complete unanimity in all sections of the House. Take the Act for what it is, with all its merits and all its imperfections, we, all of us, would desire that those who, by the terms of the Act, are entitled to a pension, should obtain it with the least trouble, and with the smallest amount of disagreeable inquisition into their means that is compatible with administration of the Act. We must take the Act as it stands. We must not, under cover of the Act conferring pensions on certain people, pay the pensions to people who do not fulfil the conditions, for that is, not merely a breach of the law, but it is, in fact, an illegitimate drain upon the resources which alone are available for the general purposes of the State, and, amongst others, for any pos sible extension of the Act to a wider circle of beneficiaries. I do not propose to follow the hon. Members' case, because I frankly admit I have no special knowledge of the case which they are raising in regard to the administration of the Act in Ireland, and because it seems to me, also, that this House of Commons is not a tribunal which can investigate or form any valuable opinion upon individual cases such as I have heard named before the House by some of the hon. Gentlemen from Ireland who have spoken. But perhaps it is a better House from that point of view than it would be if there were more Members present, and as there is such a sparse attendance. We cannot try individual cases in this House. You cannot really get the whole of the circumstances before you and the House is not the form of tribunal which could form a judgment upon it. I do not wish, therefore, to follow the speeches from the Irish Benches.

I rise to ask the Government a question on a matter which arises directly upon this Debate, and is of some importance for the future. It is evident that the Census Returns have acquired a new importance. Hitherto they have afforded statistical information valuable for many scientific and sociological purposes; but, apart from the natural reluctance of some people to confess their age because it might interfere with their prospects of employment or on other grounds, there has been no possible reason, as far as I know, for anyone deliberately to falsify the returns; and on the whole probably, for the purpose for which they have been used, the returns were sufficiently accurate. But now that the Census is being used as material though not conclusive evidence—

We do not rely on the Census. In Ireland the registration of births did not come into operation until 1864, and that is why we are thrown back so much on the Census all over the country. We should not rely on the returns of the next Census; we should go to Somerset House and find the registration of birth.

If the registers of births date back long enough for the next Census to be immaterial for this purpose, my question falls to the ground.

They do in England, but not in Ireland.

Then the next Census is still material for pension purposes in Ireland. The Government will find itself in a rather invidious and awkward position if they have accepted a great mass of unsifted evidence as to age in the Census Returns, and then, having tabulated those returns, they reject the evidence when it is a question of paying pensions.

We have never rejected the Census in Ireland. Where the Census shows that a person is seventy without any question he receives a pension.

Does the Government propose to proceed on that basis with the Census of 1911? Assuming that we are all anxious to get at the truth and to pay every pension that is due, but not to accept claims that are bad—I will not say fraudulent, as sometimes they are merely mistaken—it becomes a matter of some importance how the next Census is carried out. As the Secretary to the Treasury said just now, when the last Census was made there was no prospect of old age pensions being dependent upon the answers then given. Now, unless we have reached the point at which the register of births dates back seventy years, the Census Return is very serious evidence, and, according to the Chief Secretary, has hitherto been accepted as conclusive evidence. Are you going to accept it as conclusive evidence in future? I do not think you can unless, you test the returns at the time they are made with much more care than you have hitherto done. I do not press the Government for an immediate answer, but I draw attention to the matter because it becomes a very material point. You cannot in future accept the Census Returns as conclusive evidence as to age; if you do you will put a premium on false returns.

That is rather an interesting question. With regard to young children, there is really no fear of people entering a child wrongly in the hope that in sixty-five or seventy years hence that child will get 5s. The register of births is, of course, much better, but as regards young children a house-to-house visitation is very good evidence. But when you get to the more dangerous ages there is uncertainty, and I do not think that the Census, however conducted, would always be good primâ facie evidence.

I entirely agree. I do not think there is any danger as to children being entered wrongly in the hope of their getting a pension sixty-five years instead of sixty-eight years hence. When you have a satisfactory system of registration of births the Census will become immaterial for this purpose. It is only in regard to people who are already oldish, if not actually old, that it is important. Hitherto there has been a tendency for the Census to show a smaller proportion of old people than would have been expected from an examination of the previous Census. That is to say, ten years having elapsed between one Census and another, you are surprised to find that a great number of people have not aged ten years in the interval. Now, if you are to rely on the Census, the tendency must be the other way, and instead of people growing five years older in ten years, according to the returns, they will grow fifteen years older.

You must trace them in the earlier Census.

You have to check them. I think it is worth while checking the returns at a very early point, because that would be far less invidious than to do so later, and then, having recorded the returns, to dispute them when a pension became payable. If you do that you will create or give colour to the idea that you are disputing your own figures, because they involve you in a greater payment than you wish to make, and that it is merely because you have to put your hands into your pocket that you dispute the evidence. I do not put this forward in any party spirit. It is quite as likely to inure to the benefit of other Governments than the present. But in the interests of the Government themselves, and in order to carry public opinion with them in these matters, now that there is a special reason for having the information correct, and a special inducement to some people to give it incorrectly, a little more trouble should be taken than hitherto to see that the information is accurate.

I should like to acknowledge the concession made by the Financial Secretary in announcing that the Treasury were prepared to pay the costs of the appeal to the Courts. That will be valuable as far as it goes, though I understand that it does not cover all the field, and that it will be necessary for other points also to be brought up for review.

So that we cannot regard that as closed. But I should like to acknowledge the concession made. That some 8,000 or 10,000 pensions have been taken away in Ireland up to 31st December last may appear to some people to give colour to the suggestions which have been made of fraudulent dealings in the case of Irish pensions. We all remember in the early part of last year the great outcry that arose when it became evident that the number of pensions granted in Ireland was greatly in excess of those which might have been expected on the basis of the then population of Ireland. People altogether forget that the true basis of comparison was not the population of to-day, but the population of seventy years ago, when these people were born. The point is exceedingly well brought out in a reply which the right hon. Gentleman the Financial Secretary to the Treasury gave to the hon. Gentleman the Member for West Meath the other day. From this it appears that if you go back to 1839, when pensioners, whether in Great Britain or Ireland, were born, and if you compare the population then with the number of pensions in each country now, you will find that, so far from Ireland having a greater proportion of pensioners to the population of that day than Great Britain, she actually has less. While, of course, the population of Great Britain has practically doubled in the seventy years, that of Ireland has gone to half—from 8,000,000 to 4,000,000. If you take the percentage of pensioners living in Ireland today with the population in Ireland when these people were born, and you take the similar pensioners of Great Britain and compare them with the population then living in Great Britain, you will find that, so far from Ireland having too many pensioners on that basis, she has fewer.

I pass from that, for there, are matters of much more importance to be dealt with. But we certainly do not stand here—and I have just heard something like a suggestion of that in Debate—to justify fraud, nor do we stand here to say that in no circumstances whatever may a pension ever be revised. It must be perfectly clear that if, for example, it should happen that the means of a pensioner should be very greatly increased after the granting of the pension, that it would be absurd to suggest that that pension should never afterwards be taken away. I saw a case the other day in the newspapers in which a widow, who had been in receipt of poor relief, came into the fortune of something like £20,000. No one would contend in a case like that that a revision was not necessary. But fraud and change of circumstance are accountable for a microscopical proportion of the total number of these 8,000 or 10,000 cases. By far the larger proportion of these cases are those of old people, who, as the Financial Secretary to the Treasury has described, are on the border line, and in the absence of registration of births and of parish registers going back many years, themselves are in ignorance, and have no actual knowledge of their own age. Now those people, in December or January of A year ago, came before the local committee, and offered such evidence as they could, and the local committee seeing them face to face, knowing their families and their circumstances, became satisfied that they were entitled to pensions, and the pension officer in these cases agreed. In some cases the pension was issued with the concurrence of the pension officer, and continued to be paid from January until, perhaps, October or November. Then suddenly a question was raised, and the pension was taken away. In some cases the pension, by some process which I cannot understand, was subsequently restored, and again a second question was raised, and it was again taken away. I have known several cases of that sort.

On age?

Yes.

dissented.

How that change came about I think is very clear. The Secretary to the Treasury made reference in his speech to regulations which were sent out by the Board of Inland Revenue. He did not quote from these documents, and though I hold them in my hand I shall not do so either. But there are one or two material points which the hon. Gentleman did not refer to which yet, I think, should be known. In the circular of 1st November, to which he referred, and which authorised pension officers, in considering the evidence of age, to accept the certificate of the parish priest, there is nothing whatever—I am quite willing to read it if necessary—of a temporary nature. The right hon. Gentleman said the arrangement was obviously, and evidently, of a temporary nature. I can find nothing in the circular to suggest that it was to be regarded otherwise than a matter of regular procedure; and it did not as a matter of fact pass out of being in the natural way, as the hon. Gentleman seems to suggest. What really happened was that, by a later circular of 3rd February of last year, new instructions were sent to pension officers, and they were told that where claimants could not give the proper particulars, the pension officer was directed to state to the court that "no evidence of age had been produced, and that the claim could not properly be allowed." That seems to me to dispose of the suggestion that this was only intended as a temporary provision, having merely to fulfil its use, and then to pass, in the course of nature, out of existence.

I should like to refer to one or two other matters raised by the Secretary to the Treasury. He said that it was the custom of the authorities to, as I understand, rely in the ordinary way chiefly upon the Census of 1841, rather than the Census of 1851, and for reasons which I think are good reasons. Let me say that there have been some curious instances to the contrary. I have heard of particular cases, which an hon. Gentleman has given to me since this Debate began, where the Census of 1841 shows a claimant to have been three years of age at that time, but where, for some reason, by the Census of 1851, she is represented as being now only sixty-seven years of age. The Census of 1851, which is to the detriment of the applicant, has been preferred to the Census of 1841, which was to her advantage. The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Treasury said, as I understood him, that there were cases where the claimant was not found in the Census Return at all, but that if the pension committee were of opinion that the pension should be granted, and the pension officer satisfied himself, on seeing the claimant, that the pension ought to be granted, no further difficulty was raised. It has been pointed out to me that there have been cases in which the pension officer was so satisfied that the claimant fulfilled the statutory conditions, and where he has stated in his written report that there was no doubt of age, yet when that pension officer, after a lapse of a year, was removed to another district and another pension officer came in his place, the case was reopened on the very same ground as had been raised before. I want just to say a word as to the leading cases of Pawley and Synnott. As I understand it, the Synnott case would be conclusive against the claimant. On the face of it it seems the rule that there is a right either in the pension officer to raise, and in the pension committee and the Local Government Board to reconsider, again a case that had been once settled. I am very glad that that is to be appealed against. It is quite clear from certain of the judgments in the Pawley case, that, to say the least of it, the matter is open to very grave doubt. Lord Justice Holmes says:—

" I notice that the Lord Chief Baron in coming to the same conclusion, seems to have been of opinion that there can be no reconsideration of an order granting or refusing a pension, unless it can be shown that there has been a change of circumstances after the order has been made‥‥ This is an important question which it is not necessary to decide in this case, and as to which I shall keep my mind open if it arises hereafter, but I have referred to it to prevent it being thought that it is involved in my decision of this appeal."

The claim of the pension officer opened up a very important question, which it is not necessary to decide in this case, and as to which I shall keep an open mind if it arises in the future. Lord Justice Cherry said:—

" I guard myself, as other members of the court have done, from expressing any opinion upon the argument which was pressed so strongly upon us, that there is no jurisdiction to deprive a man of a pension once granted unless some evidence is given of a change in his circumstances after the award of the pension‥‥The question involved is one, however, which we are not called upon to determine in the present case, and we accordingly leave it open for future discussion and determination."

I am very glad it is to be brought up again. It seems to me to be exceedingly cruel, and I think the Local Government Board ought to be extremely careful while this matter is still in dispute, and seeing how doubtful such eminent judges as the Lord Chief Baron, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Justice Holmes, and Lord Justice Cherry were as to the state of the law, as to how they act. I think it is nothing short of a scandal that the Revenue authorities, while it has not been legally determined whether these pensions have been legally withdrawn at all or not, and whether they are not at this moment legally payable, should be pursuing hundreds of poor people for repayment of the money already paid to them.

3.0 P.M

I know many cases in which that has been done, in which, after a man has been paid without any question, with no allegation of fraud, and where the evidence has been exactly the same as that which was given at the time the pension was granted and where poor people have been paid their pensions for five, six, seven, and eight months, they are now suddenly, because the authorities have become doubtful as to whether the pensions were originally rightly granted to these poor people, faced with the demand for the repayment of sums of £8, £9, £10, or £12. In most cases it would be entirely impossible to repay such sums. Nobody disputes that you have a right to demand money back if it has been improperly paid or if it has been got by fraud, but where a mistake has been made by your own officers, who ought to have made the discovery in time, it seems to me to be monstrous to go and prosecute these poor people in this matter. I join in the appeal made by my hon. Friends, who said, "Do not spoil a great Act. Do not spoil the ship for a ha'porth o' tar?" The Act has been received with real gratitude, and has made an enormous difference in the lives of many poor people. Do not spoil it by raising all sorts of insecurity in cases where there has been no allegation of fraud, and where the mistake has arisen by the fault of the officers of the Government themselves. Surely to do so is to defeat the whole object for which this Act of Parliament was passed. It was intended, of course, that the Statutory conditions should be fulfilled, but once you had satisfied yourself by the best evidence procurable, whatever it might be, that the particular old man or woman should be paid a pension, and that the pension is actually being enjoyed at the time, you cannot without upsetting the whole basis of security, which is a great part of the benefit you desire to confer upon those people, leave it for ever in the hands of the pension officers or the Local Government Board or anyone else to be continually opening the matter up, and threatening them with continual reopening of their cases. If you do so, you do away with the little security they have in the last years of their lives.

I am sure nobody will be surprised to hear a Debate in this House upon this subject when we consider what an extraordinary revolution in the lives and happiness of a very large body of the population was created by this Statute. I am sure that none of us want to quarrel over the administration of a beneficent Act. About that there is no doubt. I want the House clearly to understand why I am here at this box at this moment. I am here in my character as President of the Local Government Board. I have nothing whatever to do with the Treasury, I have nothing whatever to do with the Revenue officers, I have nothing whatever to do with the pension officers. I am a court of appeal. A most tremendous duty was imposed by this Act of Parliament upon the Local Government Board. We have had 35,000 appeals, of which I think three or four thousand only are still pending, and we have been called upon to decide difficult and minute questions which are none of our seeking, and so far from desiring to exclude any person from the benefits of the Act if they can really be brought within it, the anxiety of the Local Government Board, if it had any desire for peace and quiet, would be to take the most lenient possible view of all these cases. I asked the House to bear in mind that I am here, as the appellate tribunal, called upon to decide a great number of cases, amounting to 35,000 appeals. They may be divided into two classes—age and means. On the question of age the condition of the Act of Parliament is that you must be seventy years of age, and anybody who cannot prove that does not come within the bounty of this Act at all, and is a mere interloper and intruder. The obligation is upon the person claiming to prove that he or she is seventy years of age. That is a matter of evidence and proof, and when you come to examine it you often find that it is a matter of such evidence as carries reasonable and honest conviction to the mind of the appellate jurisdiction. That jurisdiction has to be satisfied that the person is seventy years of age. In England no very great difficulties arise because of your system of the registration of births. You can get a certificate from Somerset House, and there is an end of the matter, but in Ireland that state of things does not apply. The operation of the register in Ireland did not begin until 1864. As time goes on this difficulty will not longer exist, but at the present moment, and for some years to come, we cannot have in Ireland that easy method of ascertaining how old you are.

It has been supposed that the appellate jurisdiction which I represent has laid down fantastic rules of its own, excluding the best evidence that could be forthcoming as to age, and that it has relied simply upon the Census of 1841. A person who is now seventy years of age will have to have been born in 1840, and would have been one year old when the Census was taken. Now, we have always accepted the entry in the Census of 1841 as proof positive that the person was seventy years of age, and I ask hon. Members from Ireland not to be too critical or sweeping in the censures they pass upon the method in which the Census of 1841 was brought about, because there are hundreds and thousands of people in Ireland who would not have been in possession of pensions at all but for that Census. It was only because they could show a record in the Census of 1841 that they have got the benefit of their 5s. or 3s. or 2s. a week as the case might be. We have not been fully satisfied with the Census of 1841 for the reasons given by my right hon. Friend, which were obvious, but however imperfect it may be as to the ages of persons above fifteen, twenty, thirty or forty years of age, at any rate it is good evidence of the infant inmates of the house when the house to house visitation was taken. Therefore, the Local Government Board has always accepted it, but supposing a person is not recorded there. We have no different rules for them. We do not lay down hard and fast rules as to what is good evidence and what is not. As for baptismal registers, they have not been kept with the same precision that is customary in England, because Ireland is the Christian country, and everybody is supposed to be baptised; therefore, the people have not attached the same value to the keeping of such records that has usually been the case in England. Nevertheless, we are constantly able to procure baptismal registers in Ireland, and when they exist and the certificate is found to be a true and faithful account of their contents, baptismal registers have always been accepted.

In many Nonconformist families in this country, family Bibles were always kept as a record, and have always been received in courts of justice, in the absence of other evidence, as evidence of the age of a person, if entered by the parents at a reasonable date after the event. That practice does not generally exist in Ireland, but I may inform the House that stacks of old Bibles have been forwarded to the Local Government Board in support of the ages of pensioners, and they have been examined, and in a great number of cases accepted. Every kind of evidence, including photographs, has been accepted. Every kind of evidence as to the fact that a pensioner remembers his father and is able to produce evidence as to the death of his father, photographs of the tombstone of his father, and such evidence as that has been accepted when it carries conviction, and scores of pensioners have been admitted upon evidence of that description. Sampler evidence has been produced and accepted in England as evidence of a child's age at a time the sampler was made, and sampler evidence would be accepted as freely in Ireland as in England. As a lawyer, I would not be a party to any regulations which excluded from the purview of the Court of Appeal anything that was reasonable and good evidence. Some hon. Members from Ireland seem to think that when you cannot get good evidence it is a monstrous and wicked thing to exclude bad evidence. We cannot accept bad evidence. We have the highest possible respect for the evidence of the clergy of all denominations, and that kind of evidence. The clergy is often able to produce evidence that the parishioner has attained seventy years of age, but the mere statement that a clergyman believes the person to be seventy years of age cannot be accepted as evidence at all, and it would not be accepted in any court. Besides, a clergyman is not an expert in age. Local knowledge may be excellent and first-rate evidence, but on examination it often proves perfectly delusive, and a thing upon which nobody with any sense of responsibility or any public person could for a moment rely.

Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us whether, in any case where this dispute has arisen, and where the pension committee has testified satisfaction as to the age, the Local Government Board has had a local appeal for investigation, or has it merely accepted the recommendations of the pension officers?

A perfect myth has grown up as to the procedure of the Local Government Board. I cannot deal with every particular case, but I am perfectly certain that if the hon. Member would supply me with particular names it can be gone into. Papers in regard to these cases have gone forward and backwards again and again. It has come before the Local Government Board and we have sent it back in order to obtain inspection, and persons have been sent at our request to inquire of the applicants themselves. We have taken as much pains to get the best evidence in these cases as though millions of money were involved. In no case have we shirked our responsibility for getting the best evidence available. I am satisfied the hon. Member would be surprised at the pains that have been taken in all these cases in order to ascertain whether a person is seventy years of age. The Local Government Board in these matters have no connection whatever with the Treasury, and no underground communications with that body; they have been simply animated with the desire, not to save the taxpayer's pocket, but to secure the production of reasonable evidence to prove that the persons applying for the pensions were actually seventy years of age. Then there is the question of means. That, of course, is a matter in which discretion has by Act of Parliament to be exercised. The task of ascertaining whether a poor farmer in the West of Ireland, with ten or fifteen acres of land and a certain amount of live stock, has or has not an income which can fairly be represented in cash as £31 10s., is, I admit, a task which nobody could pretend to discharge with absolute mathematical precision. But in order to carry it out we have had most laborious tables drawn up for all parts of the country. We have certain scales which have been verified as to the value of an acre of land whether it is laid down with potatoes, oats, or barley. A question has been asked about cows. This subject of milch cows has pressed very heavily upon the Local Government Board, and we have had most particular inquiries made in regard to these animals with regard to the value of a cow on prime land, on medium land, on poor land, and even, worst of all, on Achill Island. Then inquiries are made as to the quantity of milk produced at various stages of the animal's career; in fact, there have been the most painstaking observations made in regard to all those particulars. We have as a Department most laboriously worked out this matter in the interests of the Irish people, and in the interests also of the Act of Parliament. We have gone to the extent of estimating the value of the labour expended upon an acre of land, and have made deductions accordingly.

Do I understand the right hon. Gentleman to say that he has deducted the value of a man's own work in the calculation of means?

Yes.

We do not do that in England. In nine cases out of ten the wages are taken into consideration.

In considering the net value of a man's income from land, we deduct, all expenses incurred to enable him to produce the result, and whether he employs labour or not we deduct the expense of that labour. In reference to these poor people you really do require very special conditions in deciding whether or not you shall exclude them from pensions, and the difficulty of working out all these minute particulars must be borne in mind. I am not here to pretend that anything more than an honest endeavour has been made to get at the facts. I am only sorry that under the law, as it stands, we are bound to exclude from the benefits of the Act a great number of persons who, in my judgment, are far more within its intentions than those who have already secured the benefit. There is many a poor fellow earning a shilling on the roadside who, being forced to accept poor relief, is excluded from the benefit of the Act, whereas persons who seldom or never feel the pangs of hunger are enabled to get the advantage. Our difficulties have been increased by the habit of the Irish people assigning all their property on marriage to the son or daughter or niece. It is a bonâ fide transaction. It has not been done in order to get pensions, as some people seem to think. It is a well-established Irish custom. I do not believe any case can be brought home in which we have not done our honest best to discharge the most difficult duty cast upon us. The Vice-President has acted with the utmost self-denial in taking on these enormous duties, and he has in difficult cases referred to me. The Department has done its best under all the circumstances, and I am certain that nobody could have carried out the work better. Some people, possibly over seventy years of age, may not have been able to produce evidence satisfactory to us, but that is not our fault. We cannot make evidence; we have to insist upon some standard of evidence being brought forward in order to satisfy us, and I repeat we have done our best to the best of our ability. You have got 183,976 persons in receipt of pensions in Ireland at the present time; that is a fact, at all events. I am not going into the question whether the number should be greater or less. But it is the truth that there has not been any wicked action on the part of the Local Government Board with a view to cutting down the total. I do not want to go into the terrible stories of the famine era. God forbid that for polemical purposes one should refer to so ter- rible an incident in the history of Ireland, an incident which produced the most terrible mortality and reduced the population of Ireland by millions. But the mortality fell largely upon the very young— it was the children who perished, and therefore it would be rash to assume that we are entitled to say that these septuagenarians are the survivors of a population of eight or nine millions. I think, with all the facts and figures before us, we are entitled to say that the Local Government Board have done their best. Any information and any particulars with regard to individual cases which may be forwarded to me I shall be most happy to examine; but I am certain, in regard to all these transactions, that in nine cases out of ten the House will be satisfied that everything possible has been done to deal justly with the applicants.

I desire to avail myself of the opportunity afforded by this Report stage to offer some observations on the administration of the Labour Exchanges, and a few remarks also with regard to the condition of the unemployed and the working of the distress committees. During the last General Election we heard a great deal about the unemployed, and whatever may have been the leading issue in that contest it cannot be denied that in every constituency the question of unemployment had a leading place. In the discussions in this House it is to be hoped that hon. and right hon. Gentlemen who took their part in the controversy during the election will exhibit a corresponding interest in seeking a solution of the unemployed difficulty. The Labour Exchanges have only recently been established, and they ought not to be subject to severe criticism in this very early stage of their experimental work. At the same time, faults which are provable ought to be pointed out, as they might be remedied. The opening of these exchanges was almost simultaneous throughout the country, and the newspapers provided us with scores of photographs, showing, I believe, in some cases thousands of men assembled outside, in order to prove the degree of unemployment and consequent distress and suffering. The Labour party are wishful to see the success of the exchanges for the particular purpose for which they were created. We never believed that they would do much to actually provide work. We believe, however, that they will do a great deal to direct workers to the place where work exists, and that they will tend to lessen the degradation that is involved in a man's travelling about from place to place.

We were informed when the Labour Exchanges Bill was under the consideration of the House that the business of the exchanges themselves would be largely a matter of the regulations under the various clauses of the measure then under consideration. Those regulations have recently been issued, and I thank the right hon. Gentleman for supplying me with a copy in order that I might see exactly what the1 position was. I do not allege that we have any very large number of faults to find with the terms of the regulations, but there are two or three points which I wish to submit to the attention of the President of the Board of Trade. One clause in the regulations declares that any association of employers or workmen may find at a Labour Exchange a statement with regard to the existence of a strike or lookout affecting the trade in a particular district. That statement is only to be in force for seven days from the date of its being filed, and must be renewed from time to time. I should like to point out that this matter of filing particulars or information as to strikes has not been made an obligation upon those who are involved in these troubles. We think it essential that it ought not to be left to the discretion or will of either the employer on the one hand or the workers' organisation upon the other. The obligation should be upon both, and we have to be more strict than the regulations have so far made them. I come across a regulation relating to agreements between associations of workmen and employers with regard to conditions of labour and rates of pay. The regulation says:—

"Mutual arrangements between associations of employers and workmen may, with the consent of the two parties, be placed with the Labour Exchanges, and documents so filed shall be open to inspection upon application."

I cannot find in any other part of the regulations explanations as to the meaning of that concluding statement. To whom will these documents be available? Will the workmen applying for a situation at the Exchange, and being offered one, be able to apply then for permission to see these agreements so filed, and will he have an opportunity of doing so?

Certainly.

That makes that point clear, but a more important question in the regulations, to my mind still requiring some explanation, is that with regard to trade disputes. I have examined the statements given to this House by the right hon. Gentleman, who is now the Home Secretary as to what the purpose and intention of the Government was in regard to trade disputes, and the House was assured by him that neither party to the dispute would be aided in the struggle. Where there is a struggle with regard to wages it is obvious that there is a dispute, and also, on the other hand, it is equally obvious where the employers lock out a body of men there is really no question as to whether a dispute exists or not in those cases. It is patent to all concerned. But our experience in regard to labour questions shows that on very many occasions the employers effect a reduction of wages by a piecemeal process without any evidence of the dispute existing. Now, supposing an employer had a workman who was receiving 30s. a week, and if he left the employment or was dispensed with he was replaced by the employer engaging a man at 28s. a week; thereby the employer would effect a reduction in his wages. I would like to know whether in that case Labour Exchanges could or would be used for the purpose of effecting the ends of the employer by this piecemeal reduction brought about in this way, and I can assure the House that these reductions are very extensive and very serious indeed in the case of a large number of bonâ-fide labouring men who have not the defensive powers or the means of organisation belonging to the better-paid class of men. Another point of the regulations is as to whether the right hon. Gentleman would under no circumstances admit so far as he could prevent it the use of these Labour Exchanges for helping employers of labour to engage nonunion workmen in preference to trade unionists. I have here, for instance, a communication which reached me only this morning to the effect that a workman applied to a Labour Exchange at Clapham and asked for his name to be placed on the lists. He was asked if he was a trade unionist. Another member in this same neighbourhood—he is connected with the Wandsworth Trade and Labour Council—relates that he had exactly the same experience, and also stated that there is an advertisement of work shown in the window of this Labour Exchange for a brick burner, and the advertisement declares that a non-unionist would be preferred.

It is distinctly improper on the part of the manager to ask a man whether he is a trade unionist or a non-unionist. It is not his business at all, and I have stopped questions of that effect being asked.

I am very glad to hear that statement from the right hon. Gentleman, and I should like to ask whether the windows may be used for advertisements for non-union workmen for certain employers of labour. A further aspect of this matter was the subject of a question to the right hon. Gentleman a day or two ago, and generally I gathered from his answers that his Department was only wishful to maintain a neutral position as to these matters between employers and employed, but I put it to him that if the effect of these Labour Exchanges is to supply non-union labour to employers and to stipulate for nonunion labour—if that is the effect of the administration, it cannot be said that the Labour Exchanges are maintaining a neutral attitude towards the two sides. The particulars that I have in a case show that a particular firm, the Leadhill Company, Limited, near Glasgow, has for long had a continued dispute between itself and its men because it insists on demanding that the men shall absolutely forfeit the elementary right, which workmen generally in this country possess, of being and remaining members of unions if they so desire to do. Here are the terms of the agreement, as it is called, which this firm insists upon the workmen signing as a condition of employment:—

"The workman will faithfully and diligently employ himself at the mines of the company and guard and defend its property from spoil, waste, and injury. He will be submissive to and obey orders given to him by those in authority at the mines. He is not to he a member of any trade union and will not join any such union while in the service of the Company."

"If the said so and so shall at any time refuse to perform or comply with any of the conditions of this agreement, he shall be liable to be dismissed, and to forfeit all sums of money which may be due v him by the company in the name of wages or otherwise."

One need not go back to the discussion which occupied the time of this House so often during the days of our Chinese labour Debates, but I do not think that anyone then alleged that the men who were imported into South Africa were placed under more stringent or degrading conditions and terms of service than this firm has sought to impose on its men. We do not wish to apply too strong terms of criticism in this early stage of the work of these exchanges. We look forward, indeed, to the exchanges becoming most important centres of helpfulness to the industrial population of the country, so that we are waiting, not merely with interest, but with concern, for the promised pronouncements on those other subjects of industrial legislation which form the material for speeches in this House and in the country. I do not know whether it is too early to ask the right hon. Gentleman how soon he may be able to place before us the main points of the proposals with respect to unemployed insurance. We are, of course, now engaged throughout the country in the experimental work of regulating the wages of the sweated workers in the various trades affected by the wages boards, and we are wishful to make these exchanges as early as possible more than mere signposts for the men who are out of work. They ought to be centres for giving any beneficial form of State assistance to the working classes of this country.

I wish also to submit a few points with regard to distress committees, and the general position of that large number of working men who at this moment are unemployed. We have all been pleased recently to observe some improvement in the condition of the labour market, and it may be that the tendency is in the right direction. But supposing in the next month or two, what we can hardly suppose with confidence, that the number of unemployed now in the country will be diminished by one-half, there would still be over 2½ per cent, of unemployed and a great unemployed problem for the House to concern itself with. The prospects are not sufficiently hopeful to cause us to believe that no exceptional or special effort is required during the course of this year on the part of the right hon. Gentleman who is at the head of the Local Government Board. Now I find that a number of the distress committees are forming the impression that not only has their glory departed, but that their task is completed by the establishment of the Labour Exchanges. That is, I think, a great mistake on the part of these distress committees, and I should like to know if adequate steps have been taken to prevent this mistaken conclusion. I have seen resolutions in the Press in the case of certain towns intimating that these distress committees would be kept open for a short time, but indicating the intention to close them up on the assumption that the unemployed classes were being provided for in other ways. The outlook does not justify any attitude of non-interference with regard to this difficulty on the part of the distress committees. I find from the figures available for the area covered by the Central (Unemployed) Body in London, that the situation is almost as bad now as it was when the most extreme steps were taken by the right hon. Gentleman. In Stepney the figures I have show that in the five months from September to February, 1,654 men applied for work, 85 per cent, of whom were declared to be fit for labour. Only 345 were found any employment whatever.

We have heard some hon. Gentlemen in the House, and in the country, offer as one solution of the unemployed problem, facilities for emigration. Even these, it appears, have almost entirely broken down. Of 130 persons registered as wishful to emigrate who applied for the facilities which are assumed to exist, only six emigrated, the remainder, I am assured, being rejected or not being provided for because they could not give the necessary security for the repayment of expenses. I think there are few working men in this country who are wishful to leave its shores who are in a position to give guarantees in regard to the payment of money. Men and women who are able to raise sums of money, who can, in a sense, procure for themselves credit, are usually wishful to provide for themselves without leaving their own land.

I want, also, to put to the right hon. Gentleman the complete figures, as I have them, for the whole area covered by the Central (Unemployed) Body. Roughly, I find that there were 45,000 persons registered, only 6,000 of whom were found any employment whatever. No doubt the right hon. Gentleman has also observed that so acute is unemployment in certain provincial centres that demonstrations are organised in some of them, Manchester, for instance, and I observe that a few days ago a deputation, consisting almost entirely of unemployed workmen, visited the Lord Mayor of Salford to place the distress of the unemployed of the district before him. We have, so far, received no intimation, no hint of an encouraging character whatever, with regard to the further provisions which will have to be made, I assume, if the difficulty is to be met. We have questioned the right hon. Gentleman as to his intentions about a further grant of money. It may be that the time has not arrived for him to make an announcement, but I think we ought to have some assurance that it is not intended to discontinue the sums of money which have been previously provided to some small extent, at any rate, to meet the distress of the unemployed. We were fortified by promises from this side of the House during the last Session of Parliament, and again especially during the election contest we have heard a good deal about the millions which were to be spent upon the unemployed. I saw announced this morning the intention of spending somewhere about £8,000,000 to meet the difficulties of the unemployed classes. The distresses of the unemployed are themselves too keen to justify this deception, which is practised for mere vote-catching purposes. If we really mean to deal with the unemployed we should lose no time in doing 60. Starving men cannot possibly wait. The money, of course, has not been provided, and all manner of reasons are given as to why more money has not yet been offered. But if it be true that obstruction is placed in another place on any of the intentions of the Government with regard to the providing of money for the purposes of social reform, that, I think, would justify the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues in even providing more money by such means as he was able on a former occasion to provide it, and, therefore, to escape any check or obstruction which the House of Lords might have placed upon their intentions. In addition I would say that the money which has been provided, in my judgment, has not been fairly distributed, and the men have not been allowed to continue in employment after a period of sixteen weeks, though individual cases are known where extreme distress was suffered by the men with families. The regulations are so drawn that at the end of sixteen weeks they must cease the employment. Most of these men are not able, after a short interval, to obtain any work for themselves in the ordinary private market, and I think a little more leniency should be shown in regard to men whose circumstances are really distressful. When they are turned away from the work provided for them they cannot possibly hope to find employment in the ordinary private market.

I have here particulars of an undertaking which, if sanctioned by the Local Government Board, would have provided work for some hundreds of men. That work was of the nature which we have always understood the Government are willing to provide. The Herne Bay Urban District Council submitted some time ago to the Central (Unemployed) Body particulars with regard to certain constructive work, and supplied also the necessary information as to their own intention. The report said that the council had spent considerable sums at various times in sea defence works, and only as recently as last month they were called upon to repair damage done to their seawalls by the storm experienced at that time. It is anticipated that, if the proposed work should be carried out, the danger of the sea being able to destroy the coast defence will have been greatly diminished and an effectual barrier to further erosion provided.

The Council report:—

"Originally a bay existed at this portion of the const, but owing to the destructive and erosive influence of the sea, the headlands were washed away, and a danger now exists of the land on which the town is situated becoming a peninsula, by reason of the inroads of the sea on the unprotected eastern and western boundaries. The cliffs more immediately concerned with this proposed work are principally composed of loamy soil with clay substrata, and owing to the constant percolation of surface water through the ground and to the action of the waves at the base, they are constantly crumbling away and falling into the sea in a detrited condition. The work when completed would not only ensure a certain immunity from the erosive effects of the sea, but would provide a promenade at the base of the cliff. The council are willing to pay for all materials, allow their surveyor to give the necessary expert supervision, and provide an experienced man to supervise the work of pile driving, and they are willing to provide the halls, for the accommodation of the men."

The Central (Unemployed) Body made the following statement:—

"The committee are of opinion that the work is essentially of an unskilled character, consisting chiefly of the cutting away of earth. The one advantage in this particular class of work is the ease with which same, can be measured up, and the efforts of the various gangs checked, which, in the opinion of the committee, is very necessary when dealing with unemployed labour."

The particulars were duly forwarded to the right hon. Gentleman, and his Department has thought fit to absolutely refuse to give any encouragement to this scheme or to offer any monetary assistance with the view to its completion. The Central (Unemployed) Body, on 26th January this year, sent to the Local Government Board the following letter:—

"The Central Body at their meeting held on Friday last had under consideration your letter of the 10th inst., intimating that the Board could not see their way to make a grant in respect to the above proposed scheme of work, and will be glad if the Board will be good enough to state the reasons which Jed to the rejection of the scheme. In view of the suitability of the proposed work and of the difficulty experienced in providing schemes of public and substantial utility, the Central Body would urge the Board again to consider the proposals and to make a grant in order to enable the work to be commenced this season."

The reply of the Local Government Board was:—

" I am directed to state that owing to the amount of money already advanced out, of the Parliamentary grant to the Central Body for works in or about the neighbourhood of London, and the sums which will be required to bring the works to a conclusion, the Board is not prepared to make a grant in aid of this scheme."

We may take it that they were not able to assist in that particular instance because there was not money for the purpose, but the Herne Bay Council offered special opportunities for employment of that class which so largely composed the unemployed, and here we were assured that there is not enough money to meet the demands which were reasonably made upon it. I think, therefore, we are entitled to have some additional information why such schemes of public usefulness and substantial utility are not encouraged and assisted by the Local Government Board. It may be that in the course of the discussion we shall be told that the solution of these problems does not at all lie in State aid of this character, and that by other means industrial difficulty can be met and the problem of the unemployed solved. May I mention to the House that I recently for myself sought information, as to the condition of unemployment in Berlin, and that the secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unionists in Berlin answered me by saying:—

"The number of unemployed at this moment in Berlin is 50,000 alone, and the trade union and official returns of the respective unemployed offices show that they have on the average five applications for every job for every skilled man, and that there was more than double that number in the case of unskilled workers. The cost of living has become dearer and dearer in recent years owing to ever increasing duties.?"

That is the latest available information as to the conditon of things prevailing in Berlin, and that is why we press on the attention of the House the need of direct State action with respect to those who are absolutely unable to find work in the ordinary private market. Our schemes or suggestions are so frequently described as impracticable and on wrong lines that I think the time has arrived when we are entitled to call upon others in different parts of this House to submit their schemes. We have, so far, had no alternative schemes capable of immediate application, and capable of effecting what we desire, in response to the various suggestions and plans which those who are associated with the party for whom I speak have from time to time submitted to this House.

There is another point with reference to men who are found work through a Labour Exchange but have to travel from, that town to another. This question is of interest in many individual cases, a few of which have come under my own personal observation. The regulations, as I understand them, now provide that some small sum may be lent to a man who has to be sent from one town to another in the event of employment being got for him. When we were discussing the subject last year certainly I was under the impression that when in a given case work was found for a man, and it was essential to send that man a railway journey, the money should be provided for the purpose of that journey. And I recollect certain hon. Gentlemen on the opposite side of the House offering objection to it upon those grounds. But eventually the main provisions of the Labour Exchange Bill were unanimously agreed to by this House, and not very strongly objected to in the other. We now find that where any money is advanced, and where a man is assisted to get to his place of employment, it is only paid over after assurances are secured that he will repay it. It is not given as assistance to help him to a place of employment but as a loan. A letter indicating the condition of the average man who has to be so assisted I found in a Manchester paper—the "Daily Dispatch "—only a few days ago. It was written by a workman who had himself been affected in this way; and this letter written in plain working-folks terms is an indication of the trouble that a skilled workman has to take in connection with long spells of idleness. He said:—

" I received a postcard on Saturday from the Lever Street Exchange requesting me to attend on Monday. I did, and received a green card, and was sent off to an agent and got the job to start this morning. I had been out of work four months. I have had to pawn everything I possessed, even my tools of trade. I am a bricklayer. I keep myself in food and lodgings. I stated my erase to my prospective employer, and told him I should be very grateful if he could see his way to help me. He told me that this was not a loan, office. I returned to the Labour Exchange and told the manager, but, got no satisfaction, and I suppose it would be the same way anywhere else. How do they expect any man who has been out of work for any length of time to manage? There is the question of board and lodging for at least a week to consider, besides, as in my case, the provision of necessary tools."

The workman's name is attached to that letter. It is one of the distressing cries that working folk have to use in order to attract attention to their grievances. I found that when the right hon. Gentleman, who is now Home Secretary, was referring to this question of monetary assistance and the paying of expenses in the case of men suffering under exceptional difficulties, he said" in many cases travelling expenses even to the Colonies are advanced, not merely by way of loan, but by way of gift"; and if it be that you can under the circumstances provide money as gifts to carry men to other lands, it is not too much for us to ask that where in extreme cases men have to be assisted with railway expenses those railway expenses should be not the shadow, but the substance of assistance, and that they should not be asked to pay them.

May I ask my hon. Friend whether the Home Secretary was speaking of something which had occurred in the past, and not of what was contemplated by the Act?

My impression is that the right hon. Gentleman, in the course of his speech from which I quoted, justified the proposal to provide money to carry men from one place to another. The impression left on my mind was that the money was to be given in the way of State assistance to men who had been invited to record their names in a State office. But for the time being I feel more interested to hear from the right hon. Gentleman something in regard to the thousands of men who are now out of work in different parts of the country than even in the more efficient management of the Labour Exchanges. On the most modest estimate I should say there are not less than a quarter of a million of men out of employment at the present moment. The last return shows in the case of those trades which make returns to the Board of Trade that the number out of employment amounts to a little more than 5 per cent. On a reasonable and defensible estimate the number out of work is not less than a quarter of a million, and, in view of all that has been said in the way of party promises to deal with the problem of the unemployed, it rests with those now in power to apply a remedy to the evils which arise from the present condition of unemployment.

I do not desire to approach the question of Labour Exchanges in either a partisan or controversial spirit. On the contrary, I congratulate the Government on their having established them. I believe they are doing a very good work I can only speak for the constituency which I represent, where Labour Exchanges are becoming better known and better appreciated. For instance, a very large railway company which usually keeps a number of men seeking employment outside its gates every morning, now goes to the Labour Exchange instead for its hands, and I believe it gets a better class of men than it formerly obtained. Trade union officials also are now pointing out the value of these Labour Exchanges, for they are beginning to realise that, whereas they had a number of unemployed on their books, the exchanges now find for them situations such as they can accept. The point I wish to urge on the President of the Board of Trade has not been raised by the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Clynes), that is the question of child labour. The hon. Member for Leicester (Mr. Ramsay Macdonald), about ten days ago, on the question of the condition of workmen in Woolwich Arsenal, said one of the most pernicious influences in our industrial life was the habit which some employers have of taking boys and girls as soon as they have left school, giving them no mental or moral training which will enable them to be independent wage earners, and then turning them into the streets at the age of seventeen or nineteen and entirely washing their hands of responsibility. No doubt that is becoming a growing evil, thanks to the specialising of machinery, and I believe it is an established fact that about 90 per cent, of the unemployed owe their condition to the fact that they have worked in early youth in industries of that kind. What is the attitude of the Labour Exchanges towards this problem. As far as I can make out that attitude the official view is entirely impartial and immoral. The Labour Exchange is bound to supply applications to the demands for both the unjust employer and the just employer, the bad employer as well as the good. That is a state of things which I do not think ought to be. We are spending a great deal of money on those Labour Exchanges, and I do not think they ought to be used to subsidise the exploitation of the rising generation, and I do not think this expensive machinery ought to be used to increase the number of unemployed, and so increase the eventual burden on the taxpayers' shoulders. Another point I urge on the consideration of the President of the Board of Trade is that there is an excellent institution in London called the Apprenticeship and Skilled Employment Associa- tion, which is doing really splendid work in getting in touch with boys and girls as they leave school and finding skilled employment for them. That association has only been in existence for about three years, but has already done a great amount of useful work. They have acquired a great deal of specialised information, and have got together a band of most devoted workers. I am very much afraid what is going to happen is that the steamroller of the Labour Exchanges is going to pass over these associations and squeeze them out. I hope that will not be so. I hope room will be found for this Apprenticeship, and Skilled Employment Association. What I would suggest is that the labour should be divided, and that the question of finding work for the unskilled labourers should be undertaken by the Labour Exchanges, and the duty of finding employment in skilled occupations should be given over to those associations wherever those associations are strongly established. If the President of the Board of Trade will kindly consider those two questions sympathetically and considerately, I shall be very grateful.

I am very glad of this opportunity of laying before the President of the Board of Trade the points regarding the action of the Glasgow Labour Bureau upon the Leadhills strike and lockout. It appears to me that, under the circumstances I am about to point out, it is very necessary that the Board of Trade should reconsider their regulations. Theoretically, I am bound to admit, that the regulations which they have already put forward appear to be the very acme of impartiality, but practically they have been found, in this particular instance at any rate, to work to the detriment of the men who are on strike. The regulation appears to be or works out in this way: The manager of the bureau reads out, or allows the men to read out, certain statements of the case for both sides which have been made. He asks the men to decide whether, after they read the statements of the case in dispute for both sides, they will take employment, and he asks them to decide impartially. I beg to submit that it is impossible for working men out of employment to regard these cases impartially. The Board of Trade apparently leaves out of account the great necessity of the unemployed man to get employment, and to leave out of account everything that necessity means with regard to the man's family, with regard to rent that may be due, or with regard to the impending necessity for supplying his family with food. There must be, especially in bad times, an overwhelming anxiety on the part of unemployed men to get employment, and they will never be able under these regulations to consider impartially the whole circumstances of the case. Everything inclines them to have a bias towards accepting work. If this took place to a very large extent the Labour Bureaux would become factories for black-legs and the Labour party would live to regret their establishment. That is the general state of the case.

Perhaps I may be allowed to go into a particular case—that referred to by the Vice-Chairman of the Labour party, and which happens to be in my own Constituency. Some months ago the hon. Member for West Ham succeeded in persuading a number of miners at Leadhills to joint his union. After a little time they approached their employers for an advance of wages. Their request was refused, and after some negotiations they withdrew their demand. But they found then that the employers would not engage them on the old terms, or indeed at all, as long as they belonged to any union whatever. There were other conditions equally obnoxious, to which the Vice-Chairman of the Labour party has referred. As an old employer of labour, who has employed some thousands of men, I consider those conditions so humiliating that no man of self-respect, unless he was forced to do so by hunger or distress, could accept them. As a matter of fact, these men were to be punished for having joined a trade union. Another fact to be remembered in this case is that there are only 160 men involved in the dispute. They work in an isolated spot in South Lanark. The village of Leadhills is, I believe, the highest inhabited village in Scotland. These men and their forbears have been there for generation upon generation, for hundreds of years, before the directors of this mining company were born. They will not leave their village unless they are forced to. They own their houses and the bit of land at the back of them. After eighteen or twenty weeks' lockout they are exceedingly anxious to get back to work, even on the old terms; but now these humiliating terms are placed before them, and the Labour Bureau at Glasgow steps in and sends down fourteen men to take the places of some of those who are out. Had these men been resident at Leadhills, had they known all the circumstances, the hardships involved, and the humiliating conditions, they would probably never have gone down. But they have to remember that their fares were paid there and back; probably they were told that they would be isolated, and everything of that kind was done. I only ask the President of the Board of Trade to consider whether what I have said is not likely to ensue—that is that if that regulation is continued and men are sent to a village, not near Glasgow, but sixty miles away. If it had been 160 miles away it would have been even worse, because men at Glasgow have not the knowledge of the local conditions there. Men were sent, I say, to fill those positions in Leadhills, where in reality they are blacklegs. I do not want to labour the point unduly. I have always been in favour of Labour Bureaux. I believe they do a great deal of good. I believe they will bring together men who want work and the men who want workers; but I believe that this regulation will act detrimentally to all concerned. I anxiously ask the President of the Board of Trade to reconsider that particular regulation.

I think that of all the points that have been raised with regard to the registration of Labour Exchanges this point is one where, I take it, the Board of Trade has a policy, which is likely to be even more successful than the German policy—if they are able to carry out, as I believe they will do, their policy of impartiality. It is, of course, impossible for a great Government Department, handling any local machinery such as these Labour Exchanges are, to arrive immediately at the golden mean between employer and employed. I have no doubt whatever—I say it in the humble capacity of an observer from a distance of what went on under the late President of the Board of Trade— that the President of the Board of Trade of today will carry out successfully the policy which his predecessor sketched. Though, I say, in the course of administration—and I think lion. Members below the Gangway will agree with me—it is a matter of considerable difficulty to find what I have called the golden mean between the interests of employers and employed, yet a Government Department, directed by such an individual as the President of the Board of Trade of to-day, and with the goodwill of this House, which it undoubtedly possesses, has a great chance to carry out a great policy.

The policy of Labour Exchanges is undoubtedly only the first step in the whole Question of dealing with the industrial situation which has arisen in late years. And I should like to hear something from the President of the Board of Trade in answer to the words which have fallen from the hon. Gentleman the Member for North-East Manchester as to the lines on which his policy in the future is to be carried out. We have made, as I think we all agree, a very hopeful beginning in the foundation and administration of Labour Exchanges on a national basis. As I think we must all be agreed there is a much deeper question involved, and the Labour Exchanges, valuable as they me in their own way, can only operate, in the first place, as an easier means of communication between employer and employed; and, in the second place, as a valuable centre of social investigation, where all the various problems which lead to unemployment may be handled.

I, for one, in my humble way, believe that the policy of Labour Exchanges gives us this, and I am a firm supporter of the Government policy in that respect. That policy is only a first step, I hope, in the industrial policy of the future. I should like to hear something today, if only a vague outline, from the President of the Board of Trade as to what line he proposes to take in carrying out some industrial improvements against the various industrial risks to which the working men of this country are exposed. Other countries have gone ahead in that direction, but no country has really made a national effort to deal with the problem as a whole. Unemployment is as acute and severe in this country as in any other. I grant my hon. Friends opposite any advantage which they may gain from that admission. After all, we know perfectly well that the roots of unemployment lie very far below the fiscal system of this country or any other country, whether that system be Free Trade or Protection, and as this is an international question, I think we might very well lead the way in dealing with on a courageous national basis. So far as I am able to gather, the Imperial Government of Germany have met the various demands from various quarters of the German communities with a non-pos-sumus because each different locality in that great empire has adopted different methods for dealing with that great problem, and they have not yet provided any single method as successful. After a close study of the methods adopted both by the Government and the municipalities in Germany and elsewhere we might get very considerable material gathered together to form a basis on which we might proceed in this country. I personally, and I am sure everybody in every quarter of the House will welcome today a declaration from the President of the Board of Trade that there is some hope in the immediate future of adopting a national system of industrial insurance.

I will deal, in the first place, with the speech of my hon. Friend who has just sat down, and also with the speech which has been made by my hon. Friend who first spoke. They want to know, apart from the question of Labour Exchanges, what is the policy of the Government with regard to the question of unemployment. No one dealing with the question of Labour Exchanges has ever said they were more than a modest though practical attempt to deal with the first stage of the question of unemployment. It is necessary that the matter of organisation should be dealt with as the foundation for almost any treatment of the question of unemployment, and that that certainly is not the final desire of this Government, and I am sure I may say of any British Government. My hon. Friend asks what is the policy of the Government in regard to this matter. The policy of the Government in this matter has, I think, been sketched out on more than one occasion by the Prime Minister. What he has said, what his colleagues have said, and what I should certainly like to repeat is this. The policy was founded, if I may say so, in the first place—largely founded and dependent upon—the Budget, because for the first time we had financial proposals which, in our opinion, followed on the right and proper lines in regard to taxation, and which provided a large number of millions of money for social reform and for old age pensions. It has been pointed out more than once by the Prime Minister that the object of raising these large sums was to endeavour to place the taxation of the country upon an elastic basis, and thus to have at our disposal increasingly large sums in successive years for the reason that for various social reforms we should require very large sums of money. Roughly, I think it was estimated that the Labour Exchanges would cost about £200,000, that the experimental insurance against unemployment would cost £1,250,000, and that to deal experimentally with invalidity and death we should need £2,000,000 or £3,000,000. There was also the question of the Development Fund, which in itself is expected to do something in the direction of keeping people on the soil and keeping them out of the ranks of unemployment. We all recognise the difficulties of the political and Parliamentary situation, and I can only say to my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Manchester (Mr. Clynes), that a Bill dealing with insurance against unemployment has already been prepared, and it only depends upon circumstances here whether we shall be able to proceed with it at an early date. It is also dependent to a large extent upon the question of dealing with invalidity and death, because these are all subjects which go together, and it may be found better to deal with them as a whole or piecemeal; but whatever be the way in which these questions are ultimately dealt with, the first step to lay a foundation is the establishment of Labour Exchanges, and the other questions of unemployment insurance, invalidity and death are only another part of that programme. Of course, one portion of the programme will be in the hands of my right hon. Friend the President of the Local Government Board, and he will deal drastically with the whole question of the Poor Law. Those four things are bound together, and although you cannot deal with them all at once, they will form part of the policy of the Government for the future, if we have the good fortune to retain the confidence of the country.

So far as the general Debate has gone, it is very gratifying to the Board of Trade— and I am sure it is gratifying to the Home Secretary, who, after all, is the author and founder of Labour Exchanges—to find that the Exchanges are meeting with friendly approval on the part of all sections of the community, because it is quite clear that unless they receive friendly assistance from all quarters, and unless the mode in which they are managed receives the confidence of both employers and workmen, Labour Exchanges cannot be a success. It is gratifying to those interested in their success to feel that there is a real and honest desire on the part of all sections of this House to give a fair opportunity to see whether they are going to be successful or not. Allow me to thank hon. Members for the friendly terms in which they have spoken about them. I welcome criticism upon this question be cause Labour Exchanges are entirely experimental. The Board of Trade do not profess to be heaven-born, and any action they take will always be subject to amendment. They will always be ready to take into account such criticism as may be made upon this question. I do not propose to follow my hon. Friend in the detailed criticism which he has made this afternoon, for the reason I have already given, that the matter is experimental. All these points to which he has referred are receiving our attention. We are giving them the utmost consideration with a view to making the Labour Exchanges the success we all desire. He criticised the regulations to a certain extent, and said they are not fully explanatory. I think he has forgotten that they are statutory regulations and there fore must be short and bald; but they are added to and supplemented by instructions of the Board of Trade to the managers of the various Labour Exchanges. I will ask him to believe that we are dealing, not only with statutory regulations, but also with commonsense instructions, which we hope may, as far as possible, remove such difficulties as may have occurred. My hon. Friend the Member for South Lanark (Sir Walter Menzies) mentioned a particular case. I do not propose to go into the merits of that case, because I do not think it is altogether germane, and it would lead me off the main point, but there is one thing I should like to contradict. He said these men who are taken by the employers have had their expenses paid. That is not so, for this good reason—

Not paid by the exchange.

It is specifically and very properly laid down that money shall not be advanced towards sending a man to a place in any case of dispute, or in any case where the current rate of wages is not being paid. Therefore, so far as that is concerned, that statement is without foundation. May I say, with regard to travelling expenses, that, whatever may be the rights of the case, we have no option in regard to the matter at present, because the Act of Parliament specifically says these advances are only to be made by way of loan and where work is actually found. That went through the House of Commons without any proposed amendment, and my hon. Friend must, therefore, take it that for the time being we are only acting under statute with regard to that matter. With regard to these regulations, we are anxious to make them a success. They are in no sense of the term regulations of the Medes and Persians. They are open to amendment, so far as a consideration of them shows amendment is required. All the various points which have been brought up this afternoon, and which are very often brought up by correspondence, will receive the greatest attention. There has not been time yet, in the great pressure of work in starting the Labour Exchanges, to create the advisory committees which are to consist of equal numbers of representatives of the men and of the employers, but we look to them very much for assistance on these difficult questions which arise in connection with the exchanges.

I think the House may desire that I should give them a few figures to show how far these Labour Exchanges have already been a success. I ventured, when Members were good enough to ask me questions about it, to deprecate giving figures at a very early date, or indeed giving them in reply to questions, because it appeared to me they would not give the real facts of the case, and, at all events, might be misleading. I can assure hon. Members on this side of the House that there is no desire to keep anything back or to conceal the figures connected with the Labour Exchanges. What we want to arrive at are the actual facts which will give us knowledge as to how far these Labour Exchanges are being a success or a failure. I said the other day that they were making a promising beginning, and I am glad to say that is so. They have now been working from five to five and a half weeks. Some eighty have been working during the bulk of that time, and there are now about 100 of these exchanges in working order. Before I give the figures, I want to say that, although the figures I can give are a fair sample of the work of the exchanges at the moment, still they have not yet got into a working condition. The managers and others in them have not had a fair opportunity, owing to the pressure of registrations at the beginning, of bringing the exchanges to the notice of employers.

Therefore such figures as I give must be taken with that discount. The total number who have registered from the beginning is 270,000. At the present moment there are on the register 104,000. That looks as if there had been a great diminution in the number on the register. It is true from one point of view—namely, that a considerable number who registered at the beginning did not reregister. Men who were on the old distress committee registers were to a large extent men who really were not suitable for the particular class of work which we hoped to bring under the Labour Exchanges, and after practically finding that there was no opening for them they gave up registering. That accounts for a considerable number. Again, the total figure I gave represents a considerable number of duplicates. Men not unnaturally registered at two or three exchanges, with the hope of getting a better opportunity of the work. That, as far as we can judge, has now practically ceased, and men now only register at the exchange likely to be most useful. You must not, therefore, take it that the 270,000 represents individuals. But a more satisfactory feature is that out of this reduced number a very large number have been put in the way of finding work. A very considerable number of those who have ceased to register have found work for themselves, and we have evidence of that, inasmuch as they have returned through the post their registration cards. That is the satisfactory feature in the reduction of numbers. The live register now totals 104,000. The number of vacancies notified to us in five weeks, roughly speaking, was 32,500. Of these 19,942 have been filled.

About 7 per cent.

My hon. Friend must take the live register as representing those who really utilise the Labour Exchanges. One reason why more of the vacancies were not filled was that we were extremely anxious only to recommend men to places likely to be suitable for them. We did not wish to send unsuitable men—men who would not do justice to the Labour Exchanges. I think the House will agree that these figures are satisfactory from the point of view of a first start of the Labour Exchanges, and I am glad to think that many municipalities and Government Departments and others are taking the matter up and doing their best to bring about a satisfactory result. I would appeal to this House to regard the matter as a whole, and to give the fullest opportunity for success by allowing criticism for a time to be in abeyance with the view of enabling us to deal with the matter from the public point of view to the best possible advantage of the Labour Exchanges. There are two points in connection with it to which I will refer. The Noble Lord asked what we were doing about juvenile applicants, and said that he was afraid we were not going to look after them properly. He asked, moreover, what we were going to do about these voluntary associations which dealt with them. We have issued special rules in consultation with the Education Department to deal with questions of juvenile labour, and we should welcome the co-operation of these voluntary associations, many of which have done very valuable work.

May I ask when the right hon. Gentleman intends to begin giving a record and returns of the results of these Labour Exchanges?

In the next number of the "Labour Gazette" I shall present the figures. It is a little difficult to know what is the best way of dealing with them. We want to give information as to the trades affected, and the next "Labour Gazette" will include these returns, and they will then be published periodically.

I am very much obliged to the House for listening to me on this matter, and I wish to express my gratification at feeling that there is a general desire on all hands to give this experiment a fair trial, and make it a real success. It may lead to the very remarkable success which has attended the experiment in Germany, and these exchanges really may in time become National Labour Exchanges, in which the whole of the employment on both sides comes under the purview of the exchanges, and under the purview of the State. I now beg to appeal to the House to take this Vote on Account, as there are one or two other Orders which we wish to dispose of.

I do not wish to delay the proceedings, but I want to ask the right hon. Gentleman one question. I interrupted him by saying that the number of men who found employment was about 7 per cent., and the right hon. Gentleman said I had no business to talk about the number who applied for work being 270,000 and then saying the percentage of those who found work was 7 per cent., or whatever it might be, but that I should take the number on the register. That is what I understood him to say. For the life of me I cannot see why. I think he is wrong. I do not make these observations in a critical manner.

There are many duplicates in the 270,000.

Yes; there are certainly a number of duplicates, but the right hon. Gentleman did not say how many.

I cannot say, but a very large number.

I was answering an interruption from behind the right hon. Gentleman. I do not see how anybody can tell what the duplicates are. What you have to consider in ascertaining how many men have found places out of those who applied is to take the total number of men applying, and the total was 270,000. The fact that there are now 104,000 on the register has nothing to do with the number of people who applied. As far as I can make out, about 8½ per cent, have found places.

I wanted to point out that 270,000 is really not the figure you ought to take into account in considering this matter. What you want to take into account is what we call the live register. Those who are remaining and re-registering, if necessary, are really those who are applying, and in the bulk of the cases are suitable persons.

That is a question I cannot go into, because I am not one of the officials, and I do not know how they came to have accepted people who ought not to have been accepted. But the fact remains that 270,000 people registered, and only 20,000 have found employment. The right hon. Gentleman omitted to tell us what the cost of these Exchanges had been and how many officials it took to obtain employment for these 20,000 people. That is a very important item.

It is all issued in the White Paper.

Then apparently £131,000 will be applied for the Labour Exchanges, and all they have done is to supply work for 20,000. [Several HON. MEMBERS: "In five and a half weeks."] Yes, but hon. Members below the Gangway rather smile at that suggestion. They know perfectly well that in the five and a half weeks there has been a considerable increase in trade. I do not know whether the Home Secretary cheers. I did not say it was due to his action. It is due to the fact that even this country suffering under the dead-weight of right hon. Gentlemen opposite, has managed to survive and put a little life into itself at last, possibly ii the hope that within five or six weeks right hon. Gentlemen will be adorning another sphere.

rose in hi place, and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put;" but Mr. SPEAKER withheld his assent, and declined then to put that Question. Debate resumed:—