asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will cause inquiry to be made as to why Charles Holdaway, of Easton, Winchester, is only receiving an old age pension of 4s. a week, seeing that he is seventy-two years of age?

The reason for the 4s. rate of pension is that this is the rate appropriate to Holdaway's means, as estimated by the committee who adjudicated on his claim. I understand that since the pension was originally granted Holdaway's means have not changed so as to entitle him to a pension of 5s. a week.

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer why special particulars of milk production are asked for by the Inland Revenue; and if it is suggested that the products of dairy farms are to be placed in a different category to those of other farms?

I beg to refer the hon. Member to my reply to the hon. Member for the Wilton Division of Wiltshire on the 9th instant.

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is aware that, on 28th January, a mass meeting of the surveyors of taxes was held at Birmingham to protest against the amount of overwork in the Taxes branch; and what action he proposes to take with regard to the promised improvements of the clerical staff in tax offices?

The answer to the first part of the question is in the negative. As regards the concluding inquiry, I beg to refer the hon. Member to the answer given on 20th ultimo by my right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury to the hon. Member for Hawick Burghs.

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is aware that at a meeting in March, 1910, of the Associated Chambers of Commerce in London, a resolution was passed unanimously condemning the present system of staffing tax offices, and calling on the Government to substitute Civil Servants in place of the present staff; if so, whether he proposes to take any, and what, action in the matter?

I do not propose to take any action on the lines referred to by the hon. Member.

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what increases and improvements the Board of Inland Revenue have asked the Treasury to sanction in the matter of staffing of tax districts; and whether the Treasury have refused, in whole or in part, to sanction such increases as the Board have asked for?

An increase of 108 clerks has been applied for and approved by the Treasury. Thirty-three clerks already in the service will be placed on the establishment.

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether his attention has been called to the case of J. A. Eckersley, who was recently sentenced to four years' penal servitude, and who was formerly employed as a boy clerk in the Claims Department at Somerset House, and who had used the knowledge therein gained to defraud the Government; whether he, like many others, was thrown out of employment by the Government at the expiration of his term of employment as a boy clerk; whether nearly 100 boy clerks per annum, employed in offices of surveyors of taxes, where they gain much confidential information, are regularly thrown out of employment; and whether he will take steps to have the clerical staff in these offices taken in future entirely from the ranks of established Civil servants?

I am aware of the matter referred to by the hon. Member. The reply to the second part of the question is in the affirmative, in accordance with the conditions of entrance into the public service. The reply to the third and fourth parts of the question is in the negative.

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether his attention has been drawn to the inequality of the incidence of Income Tax as between persons who receive their emoluments from limited liability companies or corporate bodies, and persons who receive them from individual employers; whether he is aware that a person coming within the first category is held by the Commissioners of Inland Revenue to be precluded from assessment on the three years' average, while a person coming within the second category and receiving precisely similar emolument to that of the person referred to in the first is not so precluded; and whether he will include a provision in the Revenue Bill to remove this inequality as between one taxpayer and another?

The officials of limited liability companies and corporate bodies are assessable on the salaries accruing to them in the year of assessment under the provisions of Rule 3 of Schedule E, Section 146, of 5 and 6 Vict., Cap. 35. In practice, however, no objection has hitherto been raised where the District Commissioners of Taxes give subordinate officials of such concerns the benefit of the three years' average, thus placing them on the same level as employés of individual employers.

asked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether there is any untenanted land on the estate of Catherine Barlow, situate at Drumrone, county Meath; and, if so, whether the Estates Commissioners will approach the owner with a view to acquiring it for the enlargement of holdings on the same estate?

The Estates Commissioners cannot identify this estate as pending before them for sale under the Land Purchase Act.

asked whether the Estates Commissioners have taken any steps to acquire the untenanted land on the Massy estate, at Castleconnell, county Limerick; and if the land has been inspected with a view to purchase?

Proceedings for the sale of this estate direct to the tenants are pending before the Estates Commissioners. The owner has included 130 acres of untenanted land, which he proposes to sell to the Commissioners, and it will be inspected and dealt with in order of priority.

asked the Chief Secretary when the inspection of the Gould-Verschoyle estate, Athea, county Limerick, took place; can he state the price offered to the owner by the Estates Commissioners, and is he willing to accept it; what stands at present in the way of the acquisition of the untenanted land on this estate for distribution amongst evicted tenants, small-holders, and labourers; and have any arrangements been entered into by the tenants on the estate to purchase their holdings?

The Estates Commissioners received in February, 1910, their inspector's report on this estate which is the subject of direct sale proceedings under the Irish Land Act, 1903, and purchase agreements have been lodged for the sale of the tenanted lands. It is not expected that payment can be made in respect of this estate during the present financial year. No offer has yet been made by the Commissioners for the purchase of the untenanted land, which will be dealt with when the estate is reached in its turn.

asked the Chief Secretary whether in many districts of Ireland the building of new schools and the rebuilding and improving of old ones are being held back owing to the Board of Works not being put in funds by the Treasury from which to provide the usual Grants-in-Aid; and whether he has made representation to the Treasury on the subject, and with what result?

I would refer the hon. Member to my replies to the questions asked yesterday on this subject by the hon. Members for East Tyrone and South Antrim.

asked the Secretary of State for War whether any rise in the minimum wage of labourers employed under the War Department has recently taken place or is in contemplation; and, if so, whether this increase will be extended to barrack labourers employed by the Army Service Corps, whose maximum wage is at present 17s. per week and has not been increased for many years?

The case of the barrack labourers is under consideration with others. I can make no further statement at present.

asked the Home Secretary whether he will give the exact wording of the instruction to make as few arrests as practicable, under which the Metropolitan Police were acting in dealing with the women's deputations on 18th and 22nd November last; whether this order was issued in writing; and whether he has made any inquiry to ascertain by what means it was conveyed to the men and in what form it reached them?

No fresh instructions, verbal or written, were issued to the police on or before 18th November. The Noble Lord will, no doubt, appreciate the peculiar difficulties of the police and other authorities in dealing wtih disorderly demonstrations of women Suffragists. If a body of four or five hundred men were to endeavour to force their way into the House of Commons, they would, after being duly warned, be dispersed by charges of police. Many would, no doubt, receive blows from police truncheons; the rest would take to their heels, and very few arrests would be made. In regard to women, and because they are women, no such course is conceivable. Two alternatives alone remain, each attended by its own disadvantages. First, the police may show great patience and defer making arrests until the conduct of individual women has become so outrageous that their arrest is imperative. This course involves comparatively few arrests, and is confined to persons who have committed serious offences, but has the great advantage of allowing the disorder to continue for a long time, during which the women work themselves into a high state of hysteria, expose themselves to rough horseplay at the hands of an unsympathetic crowd, and finally collapse from the exhaustion of their own exertions. The second course is that the police should arrest disorderly women as soon as there is lawful occasion, with a view to conveying them as speedily as may be to a place removed from the disorders they have themselves provoked. In this case, a large number of arrests must be contemplated, many of them for offences which in the case of men would have been dealt with by the summary methods of a police charge, and would never have become the subject of prosecution in the courts.It was my intention from the beginning of my tenure of the Home Office to proceed by the second method and not by the first, to have these women removed from the scene of disorder as soon as was lawfully possible, and then to press the prosecution only of those who had committed personal assaults on the police or other serious offences. The directions which I gave were not fully understood or carried out on the 18th of November, first, because of the difficulties of making precise rules to guide the constables in the exercise of what is and must remain their lawful discretion, namely, to decide when the facts justify an arrest, and, secondly, because it had been enjoined upon the police in the days of my predecessor to avoid so far as practicable arresting women for merely technical obstruction. The constables on the 18th of November continued to act on old instructions, and the very fact that the superintendent in charge addressed them on parade before posting them and exhorted them to behave with the greatest restraint and moderation, as they would be dealing with women, may in many cases have been construed by individual officers to mean that they should not take them into custody if they could avoid it. I have given explicit instructions that in the future, with a view to the avoidance of disagreeable scenes, for which no one is responsible but the disorderly women themselves, police officers shall be told to make arrests as soon as there is lawful occasion. The degree of emergency, the numbers involved, and the exercise of their discretion by individual constables, must, however, be governing facts in any such proceedings. I have given the Noble Lord a full answer on the subject of his question, but I cannot conclude it without reaffirming my conviction, that the Metropolitan Police behaved on 18th November with the forbearance and humanity for which they have always been distinguished, and again repudiating the unsupported allegations which have issued from that copious fountain of mendacity, the Women's Social and Political Union.

asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the Government of the United States of America has signified its final adhesion to the Declaration of London?

The United States are signatories of the Declaration of London, which has not yet been ratified either by them or by any other country.

asked the Lord Advocate if his attention has been drawn to the depredations committed by trawlers in the waters lying within the area between Caithness and Orkney; and, if so, whether he will give instructions that a fishery cruiser be directed to patrol this sea more frequently?

The Fishery Board has not recently received any specific complaints of trawling from the north coast of Caithness, but that coast is patrolled as frequently as the exigencies of the service permit. I have to remind my hon. Friend that the Pentland Firth is not an area to which the prohibitions contained in Section 8 of the Herring Fishery (Scotland) Act, 1889, extend.