This Resolution is in connection with the Sheriff Courts and Legal Officers (Scotland) Bill, and there are four points raised in it: firstly, in regard to salaries; secondly, in regard to pensions; thirdly, in regard to gratuities; and fourthly, in regard to expenses of procurators fiscal. I do not think any question will arise in regard to these four points, with one exception, namely, that dealing with pensions, and the position in regard to that question is this, that in the Bill there is a provision made that back service is to count as from 1st October, 1918. I understand that objection is taken to that date and that it is felt that the back service should either be full service or go back to a much earlier date. Successive Governments have considered this question, and in particular the Labour Government considered it, and their final decision was that they could not go back beyond 1st October, 1918. I may say that that was a concession which went very far, and I doubt if there is any other body of men in a similar situation where the date has gone back so far. The nearest analogy to this case is that of the county court officials in England. The Labour Government brought in an Act in 1924, under which the earliest back service for those men was 1st April, 1922, and accordingly the Labour Government went even better with regard to the Scottish officials in going back to 1st October, 1918.

I take it that the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Financial Secretary to the Treasury in the Labour Government took a large part in the consideration of what date should be fixed for back service. I see the right hon. Member for Central Edinburgh (Mr. W. Graham) in his place, and he was, of course, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury in the Labour Government and no doubt took a large part in the discussion and in the decision which was arrived at. That decision was come to with the full knowledge, at any rate, of all the facts of the case. They, of course, had to consider the position of these officials—and very responsible and very valuable officials they are—they had to consider the conditions of the Civil Service generally, and, of course, they had to consider the general public. Having regard to all these circumstances, the date fixed by the Labour Government was 1st October, 1918, and, the present Government are of opinion that there is no good reason at all for reversing that decision. Nay, further, they agree, and they consider that the decision arrived at by the Labour Government was, having regard to the whole of the circumstances, a very fair and reasonable settlement for these officials. That being so, the Government, in moving this Resolution, have, of course, included in it monies which will pay, to those who are entitled to pension, for back service as from 1st October, 1918. I do not think that there will be any other question which will arise, but if such other question should arise, perhaps I may be allowed to deal with it later.

With regard to the Amendment standing on the Order Paper in my name and in that of two of my hon. Friends—in line 12, to leave out "1918," and to insert instead thereof "1900"—that is, I am afraid, out of order, as it would increase the charge, and accordingly it will be easier for us to state our case on the Resolution as a whole. We recognise that the Secretary of State for Scotland cannot be in his place this morning. Accordingly we must address our attack to the Solicitor-General for Scotland, who has introduced this Resolution in a speech of a slightly provocative character. Of course, on the facts of this controversy, there is a complete reply to the hon. and learned Gentleman. To the average Member of the House of Commons this is simply a Financial Resolution dealing with some intricate offices in the Scottish legal system, and perhaps nothing more, but Scottish Members recognise that behind this Resolution there is a long and painful controversy. Unfortunately, this is the last opportunity, for all practical purposes, on the Floor of the House of Commons when we can state the ease of a particular section of the staff who are affected, because the moment this Resolution is passed it becomes substantially the Bill of the Committee upstairs. No Amendment designed to improve the position of any section of this staff will be in order, because that would involve an increase in the charge, and for that reason we must state our case on this Resolution.

This controversy goes back a very long time. Various Committees and Commissions have considered the position of the procurators fiscal, the sheriff clerks, and their staffs in Scotland, and it is no exaggeration to say that all these Commissions have taken the view that in many respects the conditions of employment and of service involved very great hardship and, in fact, were in some cases almost intolerable. For years there has been a more or less determined effort to get such a Bill for the reorganisation of the service, assimilating it as far as possible to Civil Service conditions, and, above all, to provide adequate salaries and pensions, particularly for the older members of the staffs. The Solicitor-General comes along this morning and takes refuge in the fact that certain decisions were reached by the Labour Government in 1924. It is perfectly true that this matter was considered when we were in office in the greatest period of British legislative history, and an effort was made to find a way out of this difficulty. I have previously taken the opportunity of saying on the Floor of this House that this solution was never one with which I, personally, agreed, and, in point of fact, the fullest recognition of that was made by the Secretary of State for Scotland in a previous Debate. I have tried to make my views prevail, both in writing and in speech, and in correspondence with the Secretary of State for Scotland since that time, indicating that this could never be regarded as a fair solution of a very difficult problem. There is therefore nothing inconsistent in my attitude in opposing the Resolution this morning.

Before we come to the merits of the case, let us notice the attitude which has been adopted so far by the Secretary of State for Scotland, and also, I think, by the Lord Advocate, if not by the Solicitor-General. Some time ago the Secretary of State for Scotland indicated that, unless this was to be an agreed Measure, it would not make any progress in this House, and it was also suggested that the whole Bill might be abandoned unless the Labour Members withdrew their opposition. In point of fact, the Measure was very nearly abandoned. May I make it Perfectly plain that we have never disguised our opposition to this proposal? It is true that we hoped there might be some measure of agreement, and that the Bill would go through. But when it became plain that the Government were not prepared, in the case of the older men, to go beyond 1918 in recognition of back service, neither I nor my colleagues on this side could for a moment agree to this Bill without protest. If the Secretary of State for Scotland—I regret his absence; this is not in any sense a personal attack, but a Debate on merits—had confined his point to this Bill, perhaps we should not have troubled so much, but the very same point was made in connection with another Scottish Bill which also, it appeared, was not to be taken unless we were prepared to fall into line.

I want to take this opportunity, on behalf of my colleagues in this part of the House, to say that we cannot for a single moment agree that there is not to be opposition to Scottish Bills in this Chamber. We get very little time for Scottish legislation. This is a highly controversial matter, and, moreover, the Government have a large and a perfectly automatic majority, and can carry anything in this Parliament. They have only to carry this Financial Resolution with the 200 majority at their disposal, and they know perfectly well that upstairs we cannot move a single Amendment affecting the older men; in fact, there can be no further controversy, for all practical purposes, with regard to this proposal. We, therefore, make it abundantly plain to the Scottish people that if there is to be any delay in dealing with this matter, it does not lie at our door. Here are the Government, with an enormous majority, with which they can easily pass the Bill, and with which they could override a much more powerful minority numerically than our Opposition. I make that plain this morning in order that there may be no misunderstanding.

Let us now come to the merits of the complaint. This controversy has taken place over 50 or 60 years or more in Scotland, and this is the greatest extent of the concession we have been ably to obtain. Many of these older men, it is admitted, have served in the offices of the procurator fiscal and the sheriff clerk for long periods of years with inadequate salaries, and often on allowances which would hardly enable some of them to keep body and soul together. Hon. Members may ask whether their salaries have not been sufficient to enable them to make provision for their old age. I regret to say that has not been true of a large number of these servants. These men in many cases have had no opportunity to make provision for old age, the salaries and other conditions having been insufficient. The Solicitor-General himself, when a private Member, made a speech substantially on the lines of the one I am making now, but, of course, with very much greater legal skill, in support of this view, and, therefore, he is in a difficult position this morning in justifying something in which yesterday he did not himself altogether believe.

All the controversy has taken place about salaries and conditions, and now they are offered back service to 1918. That is an impossible position. The Government take the view, and it has been argued all along, that if you go back beyond that date, you will run the risk of re-opening the County Court settlement in England. But there is a great difference. We are not going to suggest for a moment that there were not hardships in the English system, but a promise of a kind has been held out to these men for many years in our own country. As a matter of fact, some of the conditions were described by the Committees as scandalous, and it was always recognised in these controversies that some very drastic provision would have to be made when a settlement was introduced in this House. They built up a case for special consideration and, if we went into the details to-day, we should be able to show that the analogy with the County Courts in England is very far from complete. But even if the Government could make a better case than, I believe, it is possible for them to do, the sum involved here is infinitesimal. The hardship is not denied, and it rests with the Government of the day to try to be generous to men who, after all, have served the country and the legal system of Scotland with efficiency and devotion to public duty.

The proposals are before the House, and what is the position in which we find ourselves this morning? The old officials did resolve to carry on the fight until the last possible moment, but, of course, we have to recognise that this Bill does confer benefits on, probably, 90 per cent. of the staff. Up to this stage, the younger men, and the men who have come in later, have behaved with great loyalty to the older men. They have recognised the hardship, and they have said they were willing to stand out if we could get better treatment for the older men. But they have recognised that the Government have taken this step, and the older men have come along and said that much as they appreciate the fight that has been made, and much as they deplore the settlement that is in store for them, they now suggest that we do not press our opposition further, because they would be sorry to sacrifice this Bill entirely. The hon. and learned Member for Argyll (Mr. Macquisten) suggests that this is probably not true of all these old men, and I entirely agree that there is a section among the older men which is prepared to fight on, but I am only concerned for the moment in stating the broad facts of the case. My colleagues in this quarter of the Committee do not yield a single inch in their criticism of this proposal, but we are anxious that the Bill should not be destroyed, and so at this stage all we can do is again to register our protest by voting against, this Resolution this morning and placing on record our conviction that the Government have treated with injustice a section of the older men who have rendered high and unselfish service to the Scottish legal system.

I think the older men and the others whom the right hon. Gentleman has mentioned must realise by now that in leaning on the support of the Labour party they have been leaning on what is more or less a broken reed, because, to my mind, the speech to which we have just listened is an effort to shoehorn this Bill through Parliament. The Labour party have contented themselves with a pious protest and a pious resolution, which is not seriously meant. It is just a polite way of saying, "We are very sorry for you, but it cannot be helped."

While trying to save their faces the Labour party are doing their best to help the Secretary of State for Scotland to get this Bill through.

Is it not the case that when we were fighting this Bill on the last occasion the hon. and learned Member did not support us in the Division Lobby?

I cannot charge my memory as to that, but I think it is quite probable. We have had further information since then. It is difficult to get the correct facts by listening only to the speeches from the Labour Benches.

You yourself spoke.

I think this Resolution is another example of the unfairness of which this House has been guilty in dealing with older men. When a grateful country presented the members of the teaching profession with a year and a half's salary on their retirement at an age when most of us are still at work, they left the old teachers out of the scheme. They did the same with the old police pensioners. I always thought, that if the younger men got too much, certainly the older men got too little, and I think a judicious compromise might have been arrived at. Here the Government are doing exactly the same thing with the old men. My quarrel with the Treasury is that they very materially increased the dues to litigants both in the Supreme Court of Scotland and the Sheriff Courts for the purpose of providing money to pay for all these people, and then, instead of using the money for the purpose for which it was intended, they collared it. That is doing a great wrong to the lieges of the Crown. Magna Charta laid it down that justice was neither to be bought nor sold; it may have meant bought or sold in the corrupt sense, but I think it meant more than that. I think it meant that the King's Courts ought to be open to the humblest and the poorest of his lieges, but the Government—I do not mean this Government only, I mean the preceding Government as well—have extracted more money from unfortunate litigants, and are not applying it for the purpose for which it was intended.

Litigation takes peculiar forms in modern times. The vast number of cases in which defendants appear are cases defended by great corporations or insurance companies, and if they can erect a financial wall which will keep poor men from pursuing their causes in the Law Courts, by making it difficult for them to go on with their actions, they are only too delighted. The heavy charges now made to litigants in order to pay for the expenses of the Courts are leading to a denial of justice and a denial of legal remedies to thousands of His Majesty's subjects. In the Court of Session the ordinary fees have been doubled, and, in addition to that, there is a charge of 10s. an hour to the litigant for the period during which his counsel is speaking, as if he had engaged a taxi-cab and the meter were ticking. The solicitor for the poor man has, in consequence, to find a larger sum of money than was required in the past to enable him to carry on his case. What is the result? The insurance companies simply wait until they think the solicitor has incurred a bill of costs, and then they offer a substantial sum for the expenses and a very small sum for the client, and the case is settled, although the poor man has been denied justice because the solicitor fears the outlay for Court dues. That is what is happening all through the Scottish Courts as a result of the heavy Court fees.

People say that the country is more peaceable, that there is less litigation and less fighting, but the explanation of that is to be found in the increase in the Court fees, not in lawyers' charges. A poor man can always find an enterprising solicitor or counsel who is prepared to undertake his case for a nominal fee if he has a good cause. No sensible solicitor asks a rich man for any money for his case, and there is no reason for him to ask a poor man. He asks only whether he has a just cause, and then goes ahead with it. An appeal to the Courts is being prevented by the charges which have been imposed upon the lieges of the Crown for the purpose of making the conditions of the Court officials better, but the Court officials are not getting the advantage intended. Nothing is more calculated to cause social discontent than a feeling on the part of the masses of the people that the Courts of Justice are barred to them on account of the dues charged to litigants.

I think the Geddes Committee was responsible for this state of affairs. They said the Courts ought to pay for themselves. That is a wholly unsound view. When a man undertakes litigation on a difficult point—and most litigation arises over a difficult point of fact or law—he very often comes out of Court financially crippled; but his case is a precedent for all time, and he has made the law just as surely, and perhaps even better, than it is made in the Houses of Parliament. When succeeding generations go to their law agents or solicitors, the solicitor will put his hand up to the bookcase and get down a volume in which he will find the precedent which that unfortunate man has made. He was the conscript on whom the lot fell to make the law. Is it not monstrous to think td at not only has that man to have the no doubt desirable pleasure of paying the fees of his counsel and solicitor, but that he has actually to pay for the upkeep of the Judges and the Courts?

Justice ought to be free, and there should be no court dues at all. That is what is happening, and in attempting to give these officials in the Sheriff Courts these so-called better conditions the Government are not giving them anything, because they are not getting anything out of the Government or the taxpayers, although they are getting something oat of the pockets of the comparatively small section of the population who have recourse to the civil courts in order to get justice for their civil wrongs. It is an entirely wrong position, and if there is to be this generosity it ought, at least, to be extended to the men who have borne the heat and burden of the day. I am informed that at the meeting of the Sheriff Clerks' Association a resolution was carried supporting this Measure by a majority of one, but I am now informed that if the decision was taken over again this Measure would be opposed.

But there is a broader ground to be considered quite apart from the question of the officials themselves and the general interest of the community. What does this proposal mean to do? It takes a large body of these men who enter the Civil Service, and it places them in the usual position in which Civil Servants find themselves. The Civil Servant used to receive less remuneration than the average citizen of the same grade, but that is no longer the case. The present position is due to the fact that it may be, with the assistance of the Trade Union Congress they have managed to squeeze up salaries to such a figure that they are now as well paid as the majority of citizens in the same grade who have to stand the competition of the labour market, and the possibility of finding themselves without any resources at all, and who have to provide pensions for themselves out of their own earnings. I suggest that if Civil Servants are getting the same remuneration as other citizens in the same occupation the time has come when those officials should not get pensions any more than the rest of us. We have to fend for ourselves and provide for our old age, and all we can claim from the State is the Old Age Pension.

I would like to see the Old Age Pension for all classes a good deal better than it is, and instead of adding to the, number of those who retire from the service at the early age of 60, in most cases after 15 or 20 years' service, I would make the Old Age Pension a good deal better. We all know that pensioners generally live to a good old age because they have no worries. I do not believe in doing anything which will add to the number of a particularly comfortable class of the community while all the rest of us are engaged more or less in a struggle for existence. I think we should create a healthier and a better position for the community if from now onwards all people taking up Government office or appointments of that kind were given to understand that they would have to make provision for their future out of their salaries. There are plenty of insurance companies ready to provide them with pensions if they like to pay so much out of their salary.

I do not see why there should exist such an enormous number of selected members of the community who are so immensely better off than the rest of us. We have heard much about economy and the endeavours that are to be made in that direction, which never seem to materialise, but here is a direction in which the Government could economise if they would decide that from now onwards there should be no more pensions, and that those people who take up Government appointments should take pot luck with the rest of us, and use their own salaries to make provision for the future as everybody outside Government circles has to do. But if you are going to make any provision of this kind, surely the old men who have borne the heat and burden of the day at very much lower salaries should receive our first consideration. I think the old men should have a preference under these proposals, and that is why I object to this Measure.

I am sure the Committee listened with interest to the opening sentences of the hon. and learned Member for Argyllshire (Mr. Macquisten), more particularly when he was denouncing my right hon. Friend the Member for Central Edinburgh (Mr. W. Graham) and the late Labour Government for the action which they took in regard to this matter. The hon. and learned Member for Argyllshire said that these old men had now discovered that in supporting the Labour party they had been leaning on a broken reed. When I heard that statement, the thought came to my mind that lawyers should have long memories. I have here the OFFICIAL REPORT of the last discussion upon this subject which took place in this House on the Second Reading of the Bill on the 23rd of March this year, on which occasion the hon. and learned Member for Argyllshire made pretty much the same speech as he has delivered to-day, and he criticised very severely the terms of this Bill. The hon. and learned Member wound up his speech by saying:

"I am influenced by what the Secretary of State for Scotland has said as to the desire of all parties in this matter, even though the right hon. Gentleman may have been coerced by the Treasury into bringing in. this Bill. … I must protest against the shabby way in which these officials have been treated."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 23rd March, 1927; col. 421, Vol. 204.]

But this protest stopped there, and when we went into the Division Lobby the hon. and learned Member for Argyllshire voted against these old men and in favour of the Second Reading of the Bill. In face of those facts, I think it is simply trifling with this Committee for the hon. and learned Member with a record of that kind to get up and make the statements he has made attacking those sitting on the Labour Benches.

I only want to make one or two observations in addition to what the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Central Edinburgh has said. Sub-section (2) of Clause 7 is the important part of this Bill, and, although it is a complicated business and very difficult to give precise figures, I understand that no estimate has been offered as to what it would cost the Treasury to bring these old men inside a decent scheme. The Solicitor-General very carefully avoided making any reference to this point. The fact is that these old men who retire between the age of 65 and 70 will receive a gratuity equivalent to one week's pay for each year of such service plus 50 per cent., and subject to a limit of 1½ years' salary at the time of retirement. Some of them were in receipt of a salary of only £80 a year—

Less.

My right hon. Friend says less, and I think that that is so in one case at least. After 27, 30 and 35 years' service, they are to be treated on this basis of 1½ years' salary. The Solicitor-General for Scotland very carefully and, I think, deliberately avoided stating to the Committee this morning that that was the essential element of difference between us in the discussions on this Bill. The hon. and learned Member for Argyllshire said that many of these old men were still fighting the Bill.

One of the reasons for my vote on the last occasion was that I had received certain communications from the source which I have here, and which was my chief source of information. They were then of a different aspect from to-day, and from what has been written to me now.

If such an explanation as that is satisfactory to the mind of the hon. and learned Gentleman himself, I am perfectly certain that it will not appear so satisfactory to other hon. Members present. I am speaking with some official knowledge. The Sheriff Clerk—I need not mention his name, but I can give it privately to the Solicitor-General if he desires it—who has been taking a very active interest on behalf of these men, sends me the official figures, and he also says that, even if the Government insist upon crushing these few of them, the organisations concerned art not prepared to kill the Bill, which will benefit from 90 to 95 per cent. of the men; but they do support him in uttering the most emphatic protest against the way in which the Government have dealt with this matter. My right hon. Friend the Member for Central Edinburgh said quite accurately that the manner in which the Secretary of State for Scotland has handled this and other similar questions is grossly unfair to Scottish interests when he comes forward and says, "If you do not accept my whole Bill, if you are not prepared to surrender your rights of Parliamentary opposition, if you are not prepared to accept blindly what I bring forward in this House, then I will withdraw the whole Bill, and you will take the onus of the responsibility for what happens." I think that a most energetic protest ought to be made against such an attitude. There is plenty of Parliamentary time; we are prepared to sit all night and deal adequately with measures of this kind, and it is preposterous for the Secretary of State for Scotland to put forward a plea of that nature. The Solicitor-General for Scotland ought to face up to the fact in this Committee to-day that the maximum which these old men are to get is 1½ years' salary. That is a scandal, and no one is prepared to justify it. The Solicitor-General does not justify it. He opposed it on a previous occasion, and Members of all parties—

I did not oppose the Bill.

I am not talking about the Bill, but about the conditions of these old servants who are 65 years of age and over. No one is denouncing the whole Bill; large parts of the Bill are common ground, and no one is opposing them at all. It is this small group of men who are 65 years of age and over who are under discussion at the moment, and no one, not even the Solicitor-General this morning, has attempted to justify the action that the Government are taking on this matter. There is one other point tinder the draft regulations issued in connection with this Bill, ex-service men are to receive a preference by examination. One other Sheriff Clerk—not the one I referred to a minute ago—in appointing staff, appointed his staff many years ago over a long period of time, and he has been quite satisfied as to their efficiency; but now, under these regulations, most of these old men will be compulsorily shoved out. Younger men, who are able to pass, probably a clerical examination, may be more efficient than some of these old men, but these older men are the majority, they do the work, and they are satisfying the Sheriff Clerk.

The Sheriff Clerk is thoroughly satisfied with every one of them, and yet, having appointed them and having given them certain promises, having worked with them, and knowing their efficiency, this Sheriff Clerk is to be told that he must fire out all these men on a miserable maximum of 1½ year's salary. I could give instances of the tragedy that this will mean in some homes, but I do not think it is necessary to do that, because, for personal reasons, some of these men do not want to be particularised or to have their position made known. The fact remains, however, that, if a man has been working for 30 years at one job, he has acquired no other post, and, if his salary is £80 a year despite the high cost of living, he can have saved nothing. Now the Government come along and say he must go into compulsory retirement with a maximum gratuity of 1½ year's salary, and, particularly in view of the fact that that salary is such a miserable one as it has been in many cases, I trust my hon. Friends on this side of the Committee will divide against this Money Resolution.

The House of Commons this morning is solemnly engaged in perpetrating an injustice. There is not a single member in any part of this Committee who does not realise that the proposed treatment of these old men is an injustice, and it seems to me ridiculous to suppose that it is impossible to devise, with regard to the people with whom we are concerned this morning, such a scheme as would avoid injustices such as are proposed in the Bill. Further, the attitude of the Secretary of State for Scotland, when the Bill was before the House, in threatening the House that the Bill would be withdrawn if we criticised it, was, in my opinion as a Scottish Member, a monstrous attitude to take. We Scottish Members are all keenly interested in this matter, and desire to see justice done.

The arguments that have been put forward in support of the attitude of the Government are mainly two. One is that the injustice is a small one, that it only affects a small body of men; but that does not prevent it from being an injustice, and, if that injustice can possibly be avoided, surely the House of Commons should take every step that it can to avoid it. The second argument is that something has been done in England which might be affected by it. What has that to do with it? This is a Scottish matter. Special arrangements have been made, and special Commissions and inquiries have been held in Scotland to deal with this matter. Arrangements have been made about the money, promises have been held out to the men concerned, and now, when the money is provided and the scheme put forward, we are told that this injustice has to be perpetrated with regard to a few old men, because it would affect something that has been done in England. That argument does not appeal to me in the slightest degree.

We all realise that this is the last opportunity we shall have of registering our protest, and I should like to take the opportunity of associating myself wholeheartedly with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Central Edinburgh (Mr. W. Graham), who very clearly stated the position. I am glad the hon. and learned Member for Argyll (Mr. Macquisten) emphasised in the way he did the increase of fees which has been made to provide the money. It is not that we are going to the English Treasury to deal with the matter. The money has been raised in Scotland and, though I disagree with the hon. Member with regard to primitive courts, anyone who has delved into history with regard to primitive courts in the past, or people like myself who have some experience of them in the East, know that while, without the payment of fees, they have easy access to the Courts, a judgment is difficult to obtain unless some sort of fee. goes into the pocket of the judge, and I do not think we desire to go back to that state of affairs. Money has been provided in Scotland for a Scottish purpose, and I do not think any argument put forward from the English Treasury, that it might affect matters in England, should enter into consideration of the subject. I regret very much that the House of Commons should be asked to approve of an injustice even though it only affects 20 or 25 old men.

I would not take part in the discussion merely on the Resolution, because I think the question is past praying for, but I want to make one or two comments which seem to me to arise from this very remarkable incident. Curiously it is an incident that affects both sides of the House, and it is not a party question at all. Several years ago a Commission was appointed to enquire into the status of the officials under consideration. It was felt that their salaries and prospects were unsuitable and inadequate, and arrangements were made whereby the fees of the Courts were increased in order to form a fund to deal with their financial position. The fees were raised, and the fund was at the disposal, one would suppose, of these officials. Like all other funds, it got into the hands of the British Treasury, and from that moment the object with which it was raised, and the nature of the fund, were entirely and absolutely forgotten, and it went into the maw of the British Treasury as successfully as an animal goes into the maw of a snake. [An HON. MEMBER: "Like the Road Fund."] Not exactly, because this was a smaller matter affecting fewer people. Looking at it from a broad point of view, there was not the opportunity of adequate pressure on the Treasury, which distinguishes it from the case of the Road Fund. But the injustice is complete. It is unjust to the people who paid the fees, and it is notoriously and glaringly unjust to the people whose claims were recognised by the Committee, and to meet whose claims the fees were raised. The situation is remarkable. Both in the case of the late Government and the present Government we have had the Secretary for Scotland pressing the Treasury, I believe hard and honestly, to restore this money which has gone into their maw, and of course if one was going to analyse it a little more closely, the man who really sold the pass, and the man who makes such an interesting feature of the machinery of Government in this country, is the right hon. Gentleman opposite.

That is quite wrong. Both in writing and in speech I have always, in office and out of it, been resolutely opposed to this proposal. That fact was fully recognised by the Secretary of State for Scotland in a recent speech in this House.

The right hon. Gentleman, I think, was Financial Secretary to the Treasury. Let me take the situation as it was then. The Scottish Member of Parliament who is Financial Secretary to the Treasury is urged by the Secretary for Scotland to assist in preventing this obvious injustice. He cannot do it, because in this country, in matters of high policy as well as in comparatively small matters like this, the Treasury has too much say. I am not a Member of long standing, but I have spent a considerable number of years in an effort to study politics and I am satisfied that again and again the development of proper policy in this country is hindered by the too great power of His Majesty's Treasury. I do not say it in any way as a personal comment on the right hon. Gentleman, and I withdraw, because it was a misleading phrase to talk about selling the pass, though I think from the point of view of Scotland a perfectly justifiable one, but the right hon. Gentleman knows the facts. He is one of the very few people in the House who know what a Procurator Fiscal is. The power of the Treasury is so great that if we are talking about automata, the real automaton is the Financial Secretary to the Treasury. He has simply to say what the Treasury tells him to say. It is equally true of both sides of the House. In my view, it is an unsound situation that the Treasury should have power of framing policy. You may say this is a small matter because it affects so few people. In point of quantity it is small, but in the quality of the injustice it is glaring

I regard this question of the Sheriff Court Officers as one of the most enlightening examples of the way in which policy in this country is directed. Let me give another case in which, as I think, the influence of the Treasury upon policy is out of all proportion to the importance of that department. Take the question of the relations between the Treasury and the whole of rural and agricultural life. In other countries, it is not the Treasury that determines policy. There is hardly a country in the world that has not realised the fact that if a State is lending money for the development of rural life, or agricultural life, the rate of interest must be smaller than it is for any other purpose. If you are going to use State resources for the development of the country, that is an elementary principle that is absolutely overlooked and forgotten. I think this is a very glaring example of the way in which government should not be conducted, and it applies to both sides of the House.

My last observation is going to be made by a Unionist who believes that on the whole the Union between England and Scotland has been fruitful. There are differing views on the Union, though many of them are based on complete ignorance or disregard all history and things of that sort. [Interruption.]. Let me try and use the word "Union" without causing interruption. The only other comment I wish to make on this Financial Resolution is, that as a Unionist who believes that there are great advantages which have been derived and which are to be derived from the Union between the two countries, I regard the kind of case we have before us to-day as most anxious and distressing. We have in a case like this one of those things which affects the mind of the country, affects it quite out of proportion to its size. It seems to me that if a united Parliament and a united Government are going to manage the affairs of this country, more attention must be paid to what remains peculiar and special in the life of the smaller country, namely, Scotland. More understanding must be exhibited in a Government and in a Parliament which necessarily are predominately English. A Government like the one in power, and the one which I support, as being a Government which supports the Parliamentary Union of the two countries, shows, in my judgment, a want of appreciation of the fact that below the acquiescence in the present system there are elements in the life of Scotland which indicate a feeling that there might be certain national advantages in an alteration of the system. I use these words very advisedly, because I do not want to be thought to be saying more than I mean. I say there is a certain feeling in Scotland—

That is too large a subject to embark upon on this Resolution.

I apologise, Captain FitzRoy, but I think you will see that, although I have trespassed in my last sentence, the point I am making is absolutely relevant to this Measure, because one of the direct effects of such a piece of injustice as this must be to awaken in Scotland great feeling on what is purely a Scottish question. Incidents like these, if repeated and exaggerated, as I have no doubt they will be, must raise questions which a Government introducing a Bill of this sort, must least desire to have raised. I have made the observations I desired to make, and the question which fills me with the greatest apprehension and seems to be of most importance—this comparatively small question does raise it very clearly—is the overriding and paramount influence which the Treasury has in matters, small and large, which really are matters of policy far more than they are matters of pounds, shillings and pence.

The last speech was one of the most interesting speeches I have heard for a long time in justification of the Union of the two Parliaments. It had nothing whatever to do with the subject matter we are discussing, and would have been most appropriate on the Second Reading of the Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell (Mr. Barr) dealing with Scottish Home Rule. One thing which interested me very much in connection with the speeches delivered by the hon. Member for Perth (Mr. Skelton) and the hon. and learned Member for Argyll (Mr. Macquisten) is the fact that both of them have been consistent Conservatives to-day. Both speakers were against the Money Resolution, and they will be consistent, as the Members of the Conservative party always are in connection with subjects of this kind, when the Division is taken. Though they delivered speeches against the Motion, they will, no doubt, vote for it. [Interruption.] I am very pleased to learn that the hon. Member for Perth is going to vote against the Resolution.

No.

Then, that proves exactly what I say. Two speeches have been delivered against the Motion, and we shall find that the Members concerned will vote for it. The hon. Member for Perth suggested that there are few people in this House who really know what a Procurator Fiscal is. I believe there is some truth in that, but I do know that agricultural labourers in a constituency adjacent to mine know what Procurators Fiscal are. Although we are appealing for justice to be done to the aged Procurators Fiscal, I do not agree with all that was said by the right hon. Member for Central Edinburgh (Mr. W. Graham) when he suggested that they have all given good and just service to the State in connection with the administration of law in Scotland. I certainly cannot accept that statement, because I know of a case in which monstrous injustice has been perpetrated against an agricultural labourer due to the fact that they refused to take evidence, which could have been gathered, and which was submitted against a farmer, and refused to take action to carry out the work for which they were appointed. In spite of that, however, I still want to see justice done to the aged men who have been giving services in connection with the administration of the law. The hon. and learned Member for Argyll suggested that these aged men had really been leaning on a broken reed when they trusted to the Opposition to help them in this fight for justice. I am afraid, if they have been trusting to the oaken beam of the Tory party, that, instead of it being used to support them, it will be used to crush them this afternoon when the Division takes place. We have been told that the resort to Courts of Justice is practically impossible as far as workpeople are concerned. I believe there is a certain amount of truth in that. I know that as far as some Procurators Fiscal were concerned, when dealing with charges against miners, particularly in connection with charges formulated during the mining dispute, they never hesitated to be as harsh and cruel as they possibly could be.

That is another subject quite outside this Resolution.

Like the hon. Member for Perth, I have been led a little astray in connection with the discussion in which we are engaged, but I think my observation had more substance in it than that of the hon. Member for Perth. I am one of those who believe that we ought to see justice done by the aged men. I have had experience in connection with other forms of administration in Scotland. Where we have had pensions schemes that did not do justice to aged people at the start, the matter has had to be discussed afterwards and legislation passed for the purpose of doing justice. This has been the case in regard to aged men and women in the teaching profession, aged policemen and others, and I feel absolutely sure that although justice may not be done to the aged servants under this Bill, sooner or later we shall be compelled to bring in legislation for the purpose of giving just and equitable treatment to the aged men concerned in this Measure. I am opposed to the Money Resolution because it does not make the necessary provision for men who have done good and proper service to the State.

The discussion on this Resolution must necessarily be very limited The Committee will agree that one fact emerges, and that is that had this question been left to a Scottish vote it would undoubtedly be the case that this gross injustice to old men would never be perpetrated. The discussion on the matter must he very hollow and futile, for the simple reason that the Bill is being passed under duress. We were told by the Secretary of State for Scotland that unless we assented to the passing of the Second Reading, nothing would be clone for the Civil servants concerned. I do not know the ins and outs of the arrangement which has been come to between the two front Benches, but during the discussion on the Second Reading, I protested very vigorously against the proposal to deal so badly with these old servants of the State. I could give a great many heart-rending cases, but the Committee does not wish to hear them. The fact remains that we are perpetrating to-day, and we are compelled to submit to it because of the threat that has been made, a grave injustice against valued servants of the State. Of course, we shall be out-voted when the Resolution comes to the test, and we must submit, although I shall go into the Division Lobby against the Resolution as a matter of protest. We were not able to carry our protest satisfactorily on the Second Reading, because had the Second Reading not been passed the benefits which are, undoubtedly, in the Bill would not accrue to the servants concerned. All of us in Scotland feel very strongly that a grave and gross injustice is being perpetrated upon old servants, and for that reason I and my colleagues will go into the Lobby as a protest against the Resolution.

What we are doing today is asking for an extension of the principle of the Bill, and one which ought to have been considered seriously by the Government. We are moved by a sense of justice and by financial considerations. Had this proposal for which we are contending been something that meant a huge sum of money which would be continuous and ever-increasing, I could have understood the opposition to it; but the position is that there are a few elderly men who have given good service, and the amount of money involved is small and it must be a depleting amount, because these gentlemen will pass away. The Committee is not being asked to vote a huge sum or an increasing sum of money, and that point of view might have been taken seriously into consideration by the Government. What can they have to say to these gentlemen who have given such good service, when they draw this line of demarcation, and a day and a week or a month may put them out of the scope of the real benefits of the Bill, despite the fact that they have rendered such service. Do the Treasury realise that the total sum cannot continue for a maximum period of more than 15 years? Is it too late for those in charge of the Bill to take further time to consider the point which I am putting forward?

Would it not be possible to come to some arrangement, even taking the present total sum that is involved, by negotiation between all concerned in order to tide the old men over their period? We find that in the correspondence which has come from the younger men who are to benefit that they have every sympathy with the claims of the old men. In the letters which I have received they have indicated that they would do much to have something done for the old men. Is it too late to suggest to the Government that something on the lines I have suggested might be done, and that even with the total sum agreed upon for the younger men, seeing that the sum will be a decreasing amount owing to the decease of the older men, some arrangement might be come to, by an adjustment agreed upon between the two sections, that would meet the case. The hon. Member for Perth (Mr. Skelton) dealt with the increase of fees. The interesting feature of his speech was that while claiming to be a Unionist, he gave the greatest proof that the English Treasury have always benefited by Scottish finance ever since 1707. The Government ought to realise that there is a special claim for justice in this case.

Had the whole nation been concerned in the increase of the fees, we could have understood the British Treasury saying that they wanted a say in the distribution, but the increase in the fees is confined to Scotland, and they have been increased for a special purpose, but that special purpose has not been met, because the money that was obtained by the increase of fees in the Scottish Courts is only being applied in part. Can the Government point out that the money is insufficient for the claims made, and can they tell us how much of the increased fees has gone to the Treasury, and how much is being distributed under this? If the Government are going to claim in Scotland that they have any sense of justice so far as Scottish affairs and Scottish money are concerned, and they base that claim upon this Bill, they will have a very rough time in the near future.

I do not wish to delay the Committee for any length of time, as I understand there is a desire that the proceedings on this Bill, which have been going on for four or five years, should be brought to a conclusion to-day; but I do want to voice the protest of my colleagues and myself against the way this matter has been handled. There is not the faintest doubt that if those for whom we plead had been a large body of men whose voting power in any constituency was something to be accounted for, this matter would have been dealt with much more generously and much more speedily. Because they are few in number, with very little electoral influence—they are the men who are engaged in the task of running the mechanism which returns us to this House—this is the amount of gratitude displayed for their work as far as their future remuneration is concerned, and particularly as far as their superannuation payments are concerned. This should be a great lesson to the workers generally throughout this country, that no financial or economic justice is to be secured unless you are strong enough to make yourselves disagreeable and objectionable to the powers that be at any time, and if these men are advised by me I should say that instead of accepting this, as they have done, under force majeure I would suggest that during the next week, before this Bill goes to Committee, they should simply stop operations, down tools as any body of manual workers would do.

This is the only way to make the Government of this country and the Treasury realise that these men, although few in number, are carrying on what is a key industry in the administration of legal procedure in Scotland. If on Monday next their responsible officials, the sheriff clerks, the procurators fiscal and other subordinate employés in the Sheriff Courts of Scotland, were to stop work, the administration of justice in Scotland, civil and criminal, would cease, and the Government of the day would find itself in very great difficulties indeed. One week of such a stoppage would, I am perfectly certain, considerably alter the attitude of the right hon. Gentleman, who is prepared to go on looking at this matter in a detached, philosophic and academic way as long as the peaceful comfort of the front bench of the House of Commons is not disturbed. If he gets a call from Edinburgh next week which is going to entail two or three trips to Scotland, he will begin to believe that this is a matter of active, live and burning politics. The attitude of the Front Bench is clearly shown by the fact that the Secretary of State and the Lord Advocate do not believe that it is worth their trouble to come here and attend to this matter. I do not know what other business may be taking them away from this House this morning, but this is a job they are paid for doing, particularly the Lord Advocate. These are the men who enable him to carry on the routine work in Scotland from day to day. The Secretary of State is not present. Probably he is attending some social junketing of some description. After all, that is the decorative part of the work of the two right hon. Gentlemen; their real work should be in this House, and this is a matter of primary importance to the people concerned. I am certain that the matter which has taken the Secretary of State and the Lord Advocate away from the House this morning is not so important as the one we are considering. I must protest against this attitude. I have protested against the delay every year since I have been in this House, and I am going to carry my opposition to the extent of voting against this Financial Resolution.

I am sorry the circumstances are such that we are being compelled to give way on this matter. The hardship that is being imposed on some of the people concerned in this matter has been emphasised already by one or two hon. Members, and the position as sketched by the hon. Member for Perth (Mr. Skelton) is particularly humiliating to hon. Members who represent Scotland in this House. It is not in order to pursue that matter, but we are quite entitled to say that the position as sketched by the hon. Member for Perth constitutes something approaching to political dishonesty. There is no other way in which to describe it, and if we face that position fairly and squarely then, if hon. Members are true to the interests of Scotland, they will say that this thing must be ended, that we must get down to the true interests of Scotland and see that justice is done to these men. On the last occasion we discussed this Vote the Secretary of State, who is not in the House to-day, evidently he is with more important functionaries of the State and has not time to consider the poor souls who are affected by this Bill, said that we have to de what he tells us to do—a kind of miniature dictator, to all intents and purposes—that we were to be dragooned into accepting the position under this Measure, no matter what injustice was done.

No one on the Government side of the House, not even the Secretary of State for Scotland, is prepared to defend the injustice which will be inflicted by this proposal. The Secretary of State and the Lord Advocate have simply said this is all they are going to do. In other words, that they are very sorry for these poor souls who had been landed in this predicament, but that they can do nothing more for them. I am very sorry that we on this side cannot do anything for them. We have had representations, and speaking for myself I have had communications from a sheriff clerk who says that it is now recognised that the best thing to do is to get this Bill through in the interests of the many, seeing that it is impossible to get justice for the older men. They do not want to imperil the interests of the others. I desire to enter my protest against this financial proposal, and I shall do so in the Lobby. Once again the interests of Scotland have not been considered at all. My hon. Friend the Member for Dundee (Mr. Johnston) asked one or two question this week for figures showing how England and Scotland stand in comparison with certain contributions towards the National Exchequer. We cannot get these figures, they are not available, and it all points to this, that we are not going to get any elucidation, in the way of figures, to prove the depth of the injustice to which we in Scotland have to submit.

I wish to support my colleagues in opposing this Resolution. We know, as Members of Parliament that the Financial Resolution relating to this Bill is the most important part, of the Bill, and that once the Resolution is passed no Amendment of any avail can be passed in Committee because the whole Bill is subject to the Financial Resolution. It is, therefore, of the utmost importance that those of us who come from Scotland should emphasize our opposition to the Resolution. Let me examine one or two of the arguments that have been used. When the Bill was introduced there was no man in this House who regarded the recipients of superannuation under this Bill with more antagonism than I did. I had no regard or love for them. I have nothing but deep-rooted opposition, almost hatred, of nearly all of them. In that I differ entirely from my right hon. Friend the Member for Central Edinburgh (Mr. W. Graham). I have nothing but absolute contempt for most of the persons involved in the Bill. Therefore, when I entered on consideration of the Bill I did so from the point of view of antagonism. But as I examined the Bill I found that, deep-rooted as my opposition was to most of these men, the more I examined the question the more I found that the case for the claim of these men was absolutely unanswerable on grounds of equity. Apart from prejudice their case cannot be answered.

Years ago money was earmarked and specially set aside to provide superannuation for these men. If any private citizen or private trust were to take money which was specially set aside for a particular purpose, and were to use that money as the Treasury now proposes to use this money, those individuals would be prosecuted by the Solicitor-General for doing an illegal act. There is no question about it. This matter is in a similar position to a trust. The money was definitely earmarked, and now the Treasury comes along and proposes to utilise the money for purposes for which it was never meant. That is a thing which cannot be defended in this House. There is only one point to be made, and it has been constantly made by Conservative Members of the House. They say, in effect, "What did the Labour Government do?" The hon. Member for Argyll (Mr. Macquisten) says it. He states that the Labour Government made no attempt to do much better, if any better, than the present Government.

The Lord Advocate, when speaking from the Front Bench some time ago, said: "If you want to see better things done, why did not the Labour Government do those things that they are now asking for?" There was no attempt to defend the principle of the Bill or to defend the Bill in any way. They simply used the old fetish that some other political party had not done the right thing and that that was an excuse for the present Government to continue a wrong. There was no statement that the Bill was right or that our Amendment was wrong, but simply a sheltering behind the misdeeds of another Government. I want to reply to that statement. Let me admit quite frankly that, so far as I can find out, the Labour Government proposed to do no better than the present Government. I am not sure that that is absolutely true, but I admit it for the sake of argument. But the Treasury is dominated by Englishmen, and the Englishmen at the Treasury were dominating the position at that moment. Let me, therefore, admit that the Labour Government were not going to do any better than the present Government. But there is this difference in the position. If the Labour Government had come forward with these proposals, I think I can speak for every Scottish Labour Member when I say that we would have opposed the proposals.

An argument used against us as Labour Members is that we are tied to our party more than the Tories are tied to their party, that the Conservatives have greater freedom than we have, that we are merely appendages and have to do what we are told. If a Labour Government came forward with these proposals, as our record will prove, there is not a single Scottish Labour Member who would not have gone into the Lobby even against his own Government. That is the difference. It is not the difference of money. If our Government had brought forward these proposals, instead of tamely making a mild protest as the hon. Member for Argyll does, and as the hon. Member for Perth (Mr. Skelton) does, we would unhesitatingly have made our protest, whatever the consequences may have been. Wrong is wrong, no matter what Government is responsible for it. There is the vital difference that, whereas Conservatives to-day will act merely as party hacks, we would at least have made some attempt to oppose even our own Government. The Solicitor-General for Scotland, while he did not oppose the Bill, criticised it. The Lord Advocate, if you could get him to talk in private, would admit the injustice of the Bill. Who does not? The Secretary of State for Scotland admits it; he admits it so much that he is too shamefaced to be present and is using a social function in Scotland as an excuse for absenting himself from this House. He throws the onus of defending the Bill on the Solicitor-General, who can state quite openly that he is not a Cabinet Minister and has not the responsibility on his shoulders of Cabinet decisions.

There was never a more contemptible business. The Secretary of State for Scotland knew that the Bill was to be taken to-day, for he arranged through the Scottish Whips that the business should come on to-day. The Secretary of State for Scotland is absent, the Lord Advocate is absent, and the Under-Secretary for Scotland is absent. When the right hon. Gentleman was made Secretary of State for Scotland I understand he wanted an increase of salary, and if it had not been for the sense of money values of the hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Johnston) an increase might have been granted. We were told in effect, "Make me Secretary of State and look at the greater influence and power and prestige I shall have." The only result of the influence that we can find is that because something has happened in England the same thing is to happen in Scotland. The influence has been all for the bad. There is not an increase in prestige. The test is not the alteration of the Secretary of State's title. The test to be applied is "If we alter your standing can you make the conditions of the people of Scotland in any sense better?" That is the one test. "If you cannot do that your name and prestige and everything else have failed." With that test applied the Secretary of State for Scotland has failed miserably. All or practically all, of the men affected by the Bill, the Sheriff Clerks, are Conservatives. I know them, though not in the same way as the hon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Maxton) once knew them. But I know them very well. In the Recess I go to the Sheriff Courts in Glasgow almost every day. I know almost all the Sheriffs, or at least they know me. There may be one or two Liberals, but there is hardly a Radical amongst them. Broadly speaking, they are all members of the Conservative party, the old State party.

This is how the Conservative party serve their friends, and clear knows how they will serve their enemies. I ask the Solicitor-General not to try to walk off on the ground that the Labour Government took a certain action in regard to this matter. I ask him, does he personally think that the old men are being properly treated in this respect? Can he justify money set aside for a trust being used for a quite different purpose? Would he, as a lawyer, in the Court of Session, defend that principle? Would he not, in his professional capacity, attack it? We have a right to ask him to withdraw this Resolution and not to place his own friends in the embarrassing position of voting for something in which they do not believe. I ask him to have pity, not on his opponents, but on his friends, and to withdraw this Resolution and come back next Friday with a Resolution which will do justice to all concerned in this matter.

In common with my colleagues, I protest against this proposal. In the first place, there has been great delay in connection with this matter. These people have had to wait years for a measure of justice, and it is a pitiable thing if, after they have waited all this time, the Government are only willing to concede what is embodied in this Resolution. In the second place, I join in the protest against the action of the Secretary of State for Scotland. Having regard to the circumstances in which the Financial Resolution was withdrawn on a previous occasion, it would lave been in keeping kith the dignity of his office, if not with his own dignity, had he made a point of being here to-day. The Secretary of State for that great country from which some Members on this side come, practically said on the last occasion, "If you do not accept this, I will drop the whole thing. I will not play with you any more." Evidently the right hon. Gentleman is still in a huff. I do not know if Members of the Committee understand that phrase, but if the Secretary of State were here he would understand it. It means that he is still a sense of grievance against hon. Members. But the Committee will notice that every voice raised in this Debate has been in condemnation of the Government. It is agreed that equivocation has taken place with regard to the purpose of the increased fees. Those increased fees were intended to put these people into a proper position in regard to these allowances, and I do not think either the Lord Advocate or the Solicitor-General can get away from that fact. This Government which came into office through the forgery of the Zinovieff letter is now indulging in embezzlement in regard to these officers, and I wish to associate myself strongly with the protest that has been made.

I regret that Members of the Opposition should object to the fact that I am representing the Government on this occasion. [HON. MEMBERS: "We do not!"] I inflict myself upon hon. Members very seldom, and I thought they would have been rather glad that it had fallen to me to address them on the present occasion, because both the Secretary of State and the Lord Advocate have already addressed them on this subject. With regard to the Bill itself, the position of the Government is that, having regard to all the circumstances, it is a just Bill, They do not hold the private opinion that it is an unjust Bill while they are trying, publicly, to force it through at the behest of the Treasury. That is not the view of the Government at all; and I give credit to the Labour party for having sufficient courage, if the circumstances were to arise when they were in office, to resist the pressure of the Treasury if the Treasury desire to perpetrate a wrong such as is now suggested. I cannot understand the position of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Central Edinburgh (Mr. W. Graham). One of the hon. Members for Dundee described this Bill as the perpetration of a gross injustice, and the other hon. Member for the same city said the Bill showed political dishonesty. I put it to them that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Central Edinburgh was a member of a Government which came to the same conclusion as is indicated in this Bill. If that conclusion can be characterised, as certain Members of the Opposition have characterised it, then there was a certain obvious duty on the Financial Secretary to the Treasury in the Labour Government when that Government refused to take his advice on this matter. I accept at once from him that he argued and advocated the case which he is now advocating. I assume that.

He said so. It is not a matter of assumption.

He did not do so publicly at that time, but I pass from that point with the comment that if, as a matter of fact, the attitude of the Labour Government on that occasion was one of perpetrating a gross injustice, I am surprised that the right hon. Gentleman did not take more active steps. However, the case is all the better if I take it upon the assumption put up by him here. We have this position. There is no better pleader in this House and no person who can marshal facts and figures better than the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Central Edinburgh. He put forward his view in the Labour Government with all the strength of his advocacy, and with all the weight of his personal influence and official position behind him, and yet that Government, after going into the circumstances, came to the conclusion that the Bill was a fair proposal having regard to all the facts of the case. We are not seeking to shuffle behind the decision of the Labour Government. The present Government agree with that decision, and they think that, looking at this question nationally, as it must be looked at, this is a fair Measure. After all, these officials are not at the present time in the Civil Service. If they wish to get the benefits of the Civil Service and to come into the Civil Service, then surely they must, to a certain extent, conform to the conditions of the Civil Service. Concessions have been given in this Bill. It is, for instance, a big concession to date service back to 1st October, 1918. I do not think such a large concession has been given in any similar case. Having been considered by two Governments, holding very diverse views, and those Governments having come to the same conclusion, namely, that in all the circumstances it is a fair concession, I cannot see why there should be this opposition. I am not going into this matter at any great length, but I should like to refer to another point. It is suggested here that certain trust moneys are going to be misappropriated. Nothing could be farther from the truth than that suggestion. When this system is working I understand that the fees will do no more than allow for the additional pay to these officials and the provision of superannuation or pensions. When it is working, expenditure and revenue will be balanced, that is, apart from the criminal court, which we do not look upon in the same way as we do the civil court. Certain additional fees were imposed in the civil courts and protests were received from many people. Now these additions were made because at the time they were made there had been a very large yearly deficit for several years before, due largely to the fact that bonuses were paid to these officials. The loss for one year was £35,000, and in that sum there was approximately £20,000 for bonuses. The surpluses since then have not made up for those deficits. Of those surpluses £23,000 is to be allocated, if this Bill passes, for arrears of salaries to officials in the Sheriff Court Department, and £11,000 in the Procurator Fiscal Department. In addition to that, there is no less than £7,500 additional salary to be paid yearly in the Sheriffs' Department, and about £3,000, roughly, to the Procurator Fiscal Department. Having regard to all these facts it is quite clear that the case sought to be made that the Government are going to misappropriate some fund is quite out of the question.

That brings me to another point, namely, the position with regard to the old men. The old men whose position has been referred to are I understand the old men who are not going to be established. The position at the present time is that these men have no security of tenure at all. They are not even appointed by the Government. They are simply the servants of the Sheriff Clerk or the Procurator-Fiscal. They can possibly be dismissed at a week's notice because they are ordinary servants. At the present time they have no right of gratuity or pension of any kind. Under Clause 7 of the Bill they are entitled to a gratuity which must not exceed two years' salary and I am told that if you take a case of one of those old officials with a salary of £180 a year and 40 years' service, who at present has no right to gratuity of any kind, he will be entitled to a payment of £800 or £900.

May I interrupt the right hon. Gentleman for a moment? He makes the statement that a gratuity can be given equivalent to two years' salary, but in the Appendix to the Bill it is definitely stated the gratuity is subject to the limit of one-and-a-half year's salary.

Some are entitled to a gratuity of 100 per cent. increase after a certain number of years service, which would result in their getting the equivalent of two years' salary.

How do you make it up to £800 or £900?

It is calculated on the length of service and the amount of his salary and because of the provision made that he is to get a week's pay for each

The new Clause (Removal of restriction, on importation on cows and heifers), standing on the Order Paper in the name of the hon. Member for Hillsborough (Mr. A. V. Alexander) and other hon. Members, is outside the scope of the Bill.

I beg to move, in page 2, line 31, after the word "shall," to insert the words:

"continue to apply in the case of store cattle, but shall."

When, in 1922, the importation of store cattle from Canada was permitted under the Act passed in that year and at the same time cattle which came from Ireland were placed in the same position as cattle coming from foreign countries, there was one provision in the Act of 1922 which to some extent mitigated the hardship which was thereby imposed upon the importer, and it was that the fee which could be charged in respect of the examination of imported animals was limited to the sum of 6d. per animal. It is now, five years later, proposed to remove that restriction and to allow any sum to be charged in respect of imported animals which the Treasury may think fit in respect of the expenses of testing such animals. Both on the Second Reading of this Bill and in Committee, the Minister has positively stated that there is no intention whatsoever of applying this provision to store cattle. He has explained that the object of the provision is to apply a test for horses for the purpose of seeing whether they are suffering from glanders, that as that test involves some expense it is reasonable that the importer should pay that expense, and that there is no intention to apply it to store cattle. Then, naturally enough, it is asked, Why not accept the proposal that is made in this Amendment, that the power to make this additional charge should not be applicable to store cattle? To that, the Minister replies: "The advances which science makes nowadays are so rapid that I cannot be certain but that in the course of a few years some test may be discovered which it would he desirable to apply to store cattle; and, therefore, I want to take this provision to enable me to apply such a test which may be hereafter discovered, not because it can be used at the present time, but because it may, if science advances, become useful hereafter."

I venture to ask if it, is desirable in the public interest to place this further difficulty in the way of importing store cattle, when the possibility of using the provision depends upon some discovery which is not even as yet adumbrated at all. After all, it is to the interests of this country that store cattle should be imported as economically as possible, and any further difficulty or expense that is put in the way of importation must, of course, add to the charge ultimately to the consumer and, at the same time, diminish the trade. Those are obvious and commonplace considerations which, I think, must appeal to the Minister. Further, the apprehension that such a charge may be made will in itself do a considerable amount of injury to the farmers who breed these store cattle for importation into this country. I therefore, hope that the Government will accept the Amendment, but, if not, I hope that the Minister will at least repeat the assurance that there is no intention whatsoever to impose this charge on store cattle, because, with that assurance, some of the injury which is done by inserting this provision in the Bill will be mitigated. I would also venture to make this appeal to him on behalf, anyhow, of the farmers in Northern Ireland. Before any Order is made imposing this further charge on cattle coming from Northern Ireland, I hope that the Ministry of Agriculture will communicate with the Ministry of Agriculture in Northern Ireland, with a view to seeing whether arrangements cannot be made for conducting whatever test is required to be made over there, before the expense of bringing the cattle to this country has been incurred. Let me assure the Minister that any stipulations he desires to make, any recommendations he may put forward, will be most readily and most loyally accepted by the Government in Northern Ireland. There is no precaution which he could suggest that they would not be ready to take.

May I make one further observation? When this proposal was before the Committee there was some apprehension that it was designed to limit, or had the effect of limiting, the protection which the flocks and herds of this country have by reason of the action of the Minister of Agriculture. That is not so at all. Everyone must agree that every possible precaution must be taken to protect the flocks and herds of this country from infection. There is no question whatever as to the Ministry having the fullest powers to examine, test and slaughter. The only question is whether the Government should obtain this power to impose the charge in a hypothetical case which has not arisen, and may never arise.

I beg to second the Amendment.

I only want to add to what my hon. and learned Friend has said, that I have not the slightest intention of advocating in any way that tests should not be applied as far as they are necessary. The whole matter arises in giving the Minister and the Treasury power to impose a charge which is not stated. I only wish to say, further, that any measures to obstruct the trade in store cattle from. Northern and Southern Ireland is a vital matter to many farmers who buy those cattle. Many farmers in this country have depended on store cattle from Ireland for many years, and I am informed that the supply is seriously diminishing. I hope that the Minister will not, by any action he is taking now, in any way curtail or prevent that supply flowing without needless restriction. I have no wish to imperil the cattle of this country through disease, but I am anxious that the supply should not be restricted needlessly.

Obviously, no Member of the House, on whatever side he sits, is anxious at any time to support any proposal which would be likely to increase in any way the risk of disease to the herds of this country, and thereby increase the risk to the health of the people, but one is bound to say, in considering this Amendment, that Clause 4 of the Bill gives ground for very grave suspicion to many of the people and associations who have been concerned with the general question of the importation of cattle for many years past. The history of the Ministry of Agriculture, of all shades of political opinion, in its administration of this matter for the last 34 years is not very creditable, and when the Minister comes along now with a Clause in a Bill in which it is sought to impose higher and restrictive charges, and, in some degree, those restrictive charges are not defined, and there is a danger, perhaps, of excessive charges being made, the suspicion of those people, who have been fighting so long for a freer importation of healthy animals into this country, becomes deeper.

If the Clause, as a whole, is looked at, it will be seen that it is an extension of the present powers under the Importation of Animals Act, 1922. That Act is part of the general series of Diseases of Animals Acts, but the reason given by the Ministry of Agriculture for the inclusion of this amending Clause is that, because of the failure to work properly the Importation of Animals Act, 1922, representations were made to the British Government by the Canadian Government, and because there was political disputation—I think that is a fair way to put it—the matter was referred to the Imperial Economic Conference of 1924. As a result of that, the Importation of Pedigree Animals Act was passed in 1925, and, according to previous statements made, we understand that this amending Clause 4 is in order to provide adequate testing for the animals to be imported under the 1925 Act. That, again, deepens our suspicion, because many of us hold the view that there was never any need of the 1925 Act at all, except as a piece of camouflage.

There was never any difficulty about importing pedigree animals at any time previously. The provisions of the 1896 Act have been invoked again and again for the importation of animals for any special cause whatsoever, and the officials at the Ministry of Agriculture, and successive Ministers, must have known that the 1896 Act has been used to allow the importation of a small herd of pedigree Holsteins and similar beasts. The whole Act of 1925 was, to my mind, simply a piece of camouflage to satisfy an agitation which was put up to the Imperial Economic Conference about the failure properly to apply the provisions of the Importation of Animals Act, 1922. That piece of camouflage having been passed, they now want to make certain that it shall not work to any great extent, and to make the conditions as restrictive as possible. It is to be possible for animals which come here to be held up for indefinite periods of time, with the owners left suite uncertain as to the charges in which they will ultimately he mulcted, because these will depend on the length of time the officials like to detain the beasts.

Although the Minister smiles he knows that our suspicions are fairly well grounded. He knows perfectly well that there has been intense dissatisfaction with the way in which the general provisions as to the admission of the store cattle referred to in the Amendment have been carried out. Again and again people have complained that animals sent as store cattle have been classed as fat cattle and slaughtered at the ports, in that way considerably restricting the development of what might have been a very beneficial trade in store cattle between Canada and this country. I am certainly not anxious to put anything like a real block in the way of proper provisions for preventing the spread of disease, but our experience is that the danger does not arise so much in the case of the countries from which we import either our pedigree stock or our storecattle, and that we ought to take much more adequate steps for the prevention of the disease which is bred in our own herds. I am not at the moment referring to pleuro-pneumonia or cattle plague, but to other forms of disease, but I do not wish to pursue that on this Amendment, as I may have something to say about the general failure of the Government to deal with the situation when we come to the Third Reading.

In regard to this particular Amendment, I think I have shown why there is suspicion in the minds of many people as to what is the real design of the Ministry of Agriculture in bringing in this Clause. If the fears of the hon. and learned Member who moved the Amendment are found to be well grounded, I think we ought to support him. He speaks for Northern Ireland, whereas I refer to the trade with Canada in store cattle which is of fair volume, although not nearly as large as one would like to see. If the breeders of Canadian store cattle are to be told that instead of a fixed per capita fee on these animals on landing any animal may be held up under observation and tests for two, three, four or five weeks, that will prove to be such a handicap upon the trade as to make it impossible for that development to conic about which we desire to see. That is where we fear the cloven hoof. What is the real design of the Minister of Agriculture? Is it still further to restrict the trade of this country in what we, at any rate, regard as healthy cattle, which would make first for the building up of the fresh meat supply of the country, and, secondly, would improve the herds of the country by introducing breeding cattle?

The speech of the hon. Member for Hillsborough (Mr. A. V. Alexander) has convinced me of the necessity for this power to be given to the Minister. I sympathise with my hon. and learned Friend from the North of Ireland, the hon. Member for Londonderry (Sir M. Macnaghten), and I would do nothing to injure the trade in the importation of store cattle from the North of Ireland, because I know their regulations for the prevention of disease are as efficient, and as efficiently carried out, as are those in this country. I cannot believe that he really has anything to fear under this Clause, and after the declaration we have had from the Minister that there is no intention to put this power into operation against the cattle of Northern Ireland l think he ought to be satisfied. But the hon. Member for Hillsborough has opened a serious vista. He has not only referred to the importation of store cattle from Canada but has referred to store cattle coming in from various other places, to Dutch cattle, amongst others, and South African, and to cattle from various places. He looks forward to a large extension of the importation of store cattle. The larger the importation and the more countries from which the cattle come the more absolutely essential it is that the Minister should have such a power as this.

I never mentioned any other country in my speech. I never mentioned Dutch store cattle. I only referred to the fact that the Ministry had admitted a small herd of pedigree Holsteins under the 1896 Act.

The hon. Member spoke of Holstein cattle, which I call Dutch cattle, and he certainly talked of a very large importation of Canadian cattle. As I understand it, the only power the Minister has is to order certain of these animals to be detained when he has reasons for suspicion. Why should he not have that power, and why should he riot have the power to put some of the cost on the importers? Apart from that, I think it is absolutely essential that he should have such power to secure the preservation of our cattle from disease. One of the most beneficial Measures passed by the Ministry has been the Order keeping out foreign pigs. I trace to that in the main, and also to the tightening up of the Regulations by the Ministry, our more or less comparative freedom from foot-and-mouth disease during the last three months. I do not understand why the hon. Member for Hillsborough should regard this power as unfair. As I understand the position, and the Minister will bear me out if I am right, it is only in test cases where he has some grounds of suspicion that he will take action, and in such circumstances the cost to the importer cannot be heavy, whereas the value of the safeguard to this country is immense.

The hon. Member for Hillsborough (Mr. A. V. Alexander) is raising a bogy in this matter. He talks about the Ministry of Agriculture interfering with the import trade by keeping animals from four to six weeks while a test is being carried out. In fact, these tests take two or three days at the most. Further, we already have the power to impose these tests, and what we are now asking the House is that where these tests are imposed the cost should not be thrown on to the State but on to the party who is making a profit out of the importation. At the present time we are limited to a charge of 6d. for the cost of examination. Of course, that does not cover the skilled attendance that is necessary in the case of one of these modern tests. We have no idea of dealing with store cattle in a different way, and we are not throwing any additional expenditure on the Irish exporters for whom the hon. and learned Member for Londonderry (Sir M. Macnaghten) speaks. Under the present law the importation of tuberculous cattle from Ireland or anywhere else is forbidden. We do not generally test under the Tuberculosis Order. Occasionally we do, and I can give my hon. and learned Friend the assurance that in those few cases where we have to test these stores we shall continue our present practice and not make any charge. This proposed new power is not intended for this class of traffic in our present markets.

The statement which the Minister of Agriculture has just made seems to be slightly different from that which he made on the Second Reading of this Bill on which occasion he said:

"There is no thought of testing store cattle with tuberculin."

The statement which the right hon. Gentleman has just made is that you do test certain store cattle.

I ought to have said "general testing," but where we do test I can give the assurance to which I have alluded. We have to see that animals are not imported showing obvious signs of tuberculosis. We do occasionally test them, but it is such a small matter that, quite apart from my hon. and learned Friend's anxiety, we certainly should never dream of recovering in so small a number of cases. I think it would be a mistake, in view of the possible advances which may take place in science, and the danger that there may be epidemics in other countries against which science may enable us by testing to take precautions in the future to tie our hands in that respect, and to exempt store cattle from the same liability as to cost in connection with testing as is imposed on other imported animals. It is for that reason I ask the House to agree to this Clause.

The assurance which my right hon. Friend has given is quite satisfactory, and I ask leave to withdraw my Amendment.

I should like to remind hon. Members that although this Bill is practically unamended it was amended in Committee, and it was owing to a technicality behind which the Minister hid himself that the Amendment which was considered in Committee does not appear in the Bill. I think that Amendment ought to be put on record, because it was a proposal in favour of one of the provisions of the Pretyman Committee which recommended that workers who were thrown out of work owing to foot-and-mouth outbreaks should be compensated. The proposal was carried largely by the votes of supporters of the Minister, and therefore the ground upon which the Amendment is based is a very strong one. On this point, the Pretyman Committee reported:

"As the Unemployment Insurance Act does not cover agricultural workers, these skilled men were left wholly unprovided for. We recommend that agricultural workers necessarily unemployed during the slaughter of stock should receive from the State the same benefits as they would have received had they been within the scheme of the Unemployment Insurance Act."

It is a fact that while the farmer may lose very heavily the worker, proportionately to his position, is affected far more disastrously, and may be totally ruined, because he has nothing upon which to fall back. The proposal is based upon the understanding that hardship should be the proper ground for granting compensation. This Bill results from the recommendations of two Committees, the Research Committee and the Departmental Committee which sat in 1922, which were again appointed by myself in 1924, and which very naturally expressed the opinion then that much expense would have been avoided if these recommendations had been acted upon without undue delay. I think we were very fortunate in the personnel we got for both those Committees, and they more than justified the confidence reposed in them. The Leishman Committee confirmed the virulence of foot-and-mouth disease, and I hope the Minister will be able to tell us that some progress has been made in this direction. I would also like to ask the Minister if he can give us some further information as to the total cost of the outbreaks which have occurred. The country ought to realise the colossal figure which has been reached in this respect since 1921.

At a moment when there is an appeasement in the situation it is very easy for the public, and even for the Ministry, to let the matter slide in the pressure of other work, but it is very urgent that full powers should be taken while the public is willing to support reform. This Bill does not go quite far enough. I know it adopts a good many of the proposals of the Pretyman Committee, but by no means all of them, although perhaps the chief recommendations are to be found in this Measure. The main proposal of the Pretyman Committee was that the policy of slaughter should continue. The Minister, in a speech, I think, on the Second Reading, hinted that circumstances might conceivably arise in which that policy would be too expensive for the country to tolerate. That is why it will be so interesting to know, if he can tell us, what the outbreaks of recent years have cost up to the present. Incidentally, I would like to ask the Minister whether the rule regarding slaughter by the firearm method is continued, and whether it is found that it can be universally applied.

The Government, however, are not relying entirely on regulations, either those in existence or those proposed in this Bill. The main thing that the Government have done in regard to foot-and-mouth disease is in regard to the embargo on foreign meat, and it is on that matter that I hope the Minister will give us more information to-day. I think the argument has been too freely used that it is the embargo which caused the improvement in the situation. I want to remind the House that the situation here cannot be compared with the situation abroad, and deductions cannot be drawn from that comparison in favour of the embargo, as has been done by the Government. For instance, in 1924, which was a very bad year, we had 1,400 cases; but in that year Germany had 40,000 cases, and we are even now, in the present year, above the figure for 1921, when there was no embargo at all. Other evidence is needed to support the policy of the embargo beside this comparison with foreign figures. I think that the proof has not been given as adequately as the Minister should give it, and that, especially when, by common admission, the Government is protectionist in its desires and ideals, it is incumbent upon it to give extra proof of its clean hands.

There is one particular side of the matter which especially interests the Minister, namely, the position of the bacon factories. It is a most disastrous thing that a set-back has been inflicted on the bacon factories because of the embargo. This is one of the most hopeful developments in better marketing. Our main need, as everyone knows, is for progress in marketing rather than in production, and, just as a beginning was being made with a number of factories, they are smashed by the embargo. The Minister himself, I believe, is interested in the Edmundsbury factory, and I should like very much to know what is the point of view of those who run it and who supply it with pigs. For instance, there is a very prominent farmer in Suffolk, Mr. Black, who is deeply concerned in it, and I rather think the Minister is on the board of that particular factory. It would be very relevant and interesting if he would tell us frankly what is the point of view of the Ministry themselves and of the persons concerned in the bacon factory movement—what they have to say to the policy of the embargo; and I should like the right hon. Gentleman in some way to show his readiness to lift the embargo at the very first moment that it ceases to be needed on account of disease. If it is needed in regard to European meat, why is it not needed in regard to South American meat? A distinction is drawn there, but one of the points in the evidence before the Pretyman Committee was to the effect that South America was suffering very badly from foot-and-mouth disease.

Taking the Bill as a whole, it is a great contribution to the improvement of the cumbersome procedure through which we are suffering. I certainly think, from my own experience, that a very large part of the cost that we have to endure has been due to defective procedure, a great part of which the Bill will remedy. Officials were hampered every day in the conduct of administration, and I welcome every bit of the stiffening up of administration which will be afforded by the Bill. My only criticism would he that the stiffening up is not great enough, and that rather more might have been done. For instance, with regard to the question of valuation, the Pretyman Committee actually held the view that a danger might arise from excessive compensation, and they devised a plan of panels of valuers, aimed, in the first place, at rapidity, which is vital, and, in the second place, at the removal of the possibly dangerous effect of excessive compensation. They recommended, for instance, a deduction of 10 per cent., and I wish the Minister could have included that in the Bill. But, of course, many of the proposals are extremely valuable, and, especially in connection with the movement for cleaner milk, which is of such vital importance, we are dealing with a matter of very great concern to national health in general, as well as to our agriculture. We have to remember not only what it has cost to deal with foot-and-mouth disease, but the far greater cost incidentally through the losses occasioned by the presence of the disease. I only hope that the Bill is adequate to meet the case, and I wish it all the success that it can get.

The remarks that I desire to make on this Bill are rather in the nature of a protest in regard to the attitude adopted in Committee by the Minister and his supporters against a certain Amendment which was got through. This Bill will introduce general principles of which we are in favour. It was fully discussed in detail by the Committee, and an Amendment was inserted on the question of increased compensation where agricultural labourers were thrown out of work. In spite of the severe opposition of the Minister to that Amendment, and of all his efforts to rally his supporters to his aid, he lost sufficient of his own supporters to lead to the Amendment being carried. They felt so keenly about this matter, and were so sure of the justification for the new Clause in question, that they actually voted against their own Minister and allowed us to carry it. Of course, however, it was brought back to the House, and, on the plea that the Financial Resolution did not allow of this extra charge, the Bill was recommitted; and, where the Minister failed in the first Committee, he succeeded in the second. This matter was referred to by the right hon. Gentleman who spoke just now—

I confess that I was not acquainted with the details of the matter, but this would appear to be really to be a reflection on the Rules of the House. I understand that the Committee was within its powers in acting as it did, and, obviously, Mr. Speaker considered that that was the case. I do not see how the matter can be further discussed.

Of course, if I may not refer to the matter, I will drop it. It was not my intention to reflect on Mr. Speaker in any what whatever. It was, however, the evident intention of the Committee, including the Minister's own supporters, that this provision should be included, and we think that ways and means could have been found, by another Financial Resolution, to meet the desire of the Committee; but, rather than do that—I am complaining of the Minister, not of the ruling—rather than do that the Minister, in spite of the intention of his own supporters, took advantage of this ruling and ruled out what was the intention and desire of the whole Committee. I think it does not reflect very much credit upon the Minister. In connection with this Bill, and with previous Bills dealing with this matter, ample provision has been made for compensation for farmers who lose stock that has to be slaughtered because of any disease that has occurred. But nothing has been done up to the present in this or any other Bill to make any such provision for those who may lose their employment because of the slaughter. After the fullest discussion it was agreed that this should he done, and then the Minister takes advantage of this set of circumstances in order to get away from it. It appears to me that the agricultural labourer is forgotten in nearly everything that comes before the House so far as this Government are concerned.

On Third Reading, discussion is limited to what is in the Bill. On the Second Reading it may turn on what ought to be in it. but on Third Reading it has often been laid down that it can only turn on the provisions actually contained in the Bill.

I am not so much against what is in the Bill as against what is out of it and might have been contained in it had it not been for the course the Minister took. I have recorded my protest and I will be satisfied.

We have come to the Third Reading of a, Bill which was described by the Minister at its introduction as having the object of improving and modernising our methods of defence against contagious diseases in animals. If that were adequately secured by the Bill there would be very little criticism of it indeed. It does not require any party feeling at all to get support to a Measure which is aimed against the spread of disease. One cannot help thinking, in analysing the Bill, that in taking Government time to deal with a general amending Measure to the whole series of Diseases of Animals Acts the Government would have been better advised to go very much further than they have gone. I am certain there will be very general agreement with the first two Clauses. I have been a little more doubtful about Clause 3. On Clause 4 we have had some reassuring statements made as to the intentions of the Ministry this morning, but what it really does fail in is in going any distance at all towards securing the object for which the Minister said it was introduced, especially in relation to one disease in which we are all vitally interested, not merely on the general question of the commercial prosperity of agriculture, but from the point of view of the health of the people, and that is the question of taking adequate steps to deal with bovine tuberculosis. I have heard the Minister from time to time rather scornful of some of the suggestions that have been made as to the prevalence of bovine tuberculosis and its effect upon human health, but all the weight of evidence has really been upon the side of those who have been fighting at every conceivable opportunity to get more stringent measures adopted with regard to this disease. I attended the National Milk Conference of 1922 at the Guildhall, and I have never taken part in a conference at which I was more impressed with the weight and technical value of the evidence, and the rather serious state of affairs that was revealed.

I must remind the hon. Gentleman of what I have just said about the limitation of discussion on Third Reading. If there are provisions in the Bill which purport to deal with it, he is in order, but I gather that this is outside the Bill altogether.

I have referred to the fact that the Minister in introducing the Bill said its object was to make better provision. I want to show that there is no adequate provision made in the Bill and I hope it will be in order.

The hon. Member is in order in pointing out that the Bill does not deal with matters of importance.

If the hon. Gentleman is allowed to develop his point, I hope we shall be allowed to disprove what he says—I have much medical evidence that I should like to bring forward.

I cannot say more than I have said, that on Second Reading anything relevant to the subject matter of the Bill, and what might be in it, and what is not in it, can be discussed, but on Third Reading it has been laid down by many Speakers that discussion must be restricted to the provisions found in the Bill.

The difficulty in dealing with that is that during the discussions on the Bill, statements have been made again and again as to the real object of particular Clauses. We understand, for example, that the object of Clause 4 is to make provision for tuberculin testing at the ports, and certain other provisions were similarly commented upon. We think they are inadequate to deal with the present state of disease in the herds.

If the hon. Gentleman hangs his argument on particular Clauses, he will be in order.

That is the case I wanted to put. It is argued by the Minister that the Bill will help to get rid of tuberculosis in the herds of the country. That was part of the argument of the Minister in asking for Government time for the Bill. While it will not be detrimental from that point of view, it will not secure anything like the amount of advantage, either to the herds or to the health of the people, that is desirable. The percentage of tuberculosis to be found in the herds of the country is stated to be of very varying degree according to where the statement comes from. Some people say it is as high as 70 per cent. in milch cows of from 10 to 15 years old. Others say it is 30 per cent. to 40 per cent., taking dairy cattle as a whole. But we have plenty of evidence from the milk tests to show that there is very real danger to the people of the country from the failure to arrest in any great degree the existence of tuberculosis in our herds. I have the evidence of a very well-known authority, one I have heard speak on this two or three times, Dr. Nathan Raw. who said:

"It is a sad reflection on our milk supply to know that over 15 per cent. of all milk supplied to the public contains living tubercle germs which have the power to produce disease in children and young adults,"

and that he has

"had over 10,000 patients suffering from tuberculosis of which 2,200 cases were caused by infected milk."

Surely that is a very serious state of affairs, and while we recognise that the intention behind an amending Bill of this sort is to try to deal with that state of things, we submit that this Bill fails completely to meet the situation. This will be read in conjunction with all the other Diseases of Animals Acts, and under the other Acts we have a Tuberculosis Order working. There is a lump sum voted each year by Parliament for compensation, and a number of animals are slaughtered each year. So far as one can tell at present, that is only dealing with the fringe of the subject. There is no evidence at present from the tests of the milk taken that there is a very rapid improvement. I have made inquiries many times during the last two years—

That has nothing to do with anything in the Bill. I do not think it is hardly appropriate on this occasion.

I am in your hands, Sir. It is difficult for me to pursue what seems to me to be a legitimate argument if you find it is technically outside the Clauses of the Bill. But what I do say is that the Minister has laid it down that the object of the Bill is to prevent the spread of these infectious diseases and to restrict them and that he has argued in Committee and upon the Second Reading that a part of the function of Clause 4 is to make provision for tuberculin testing. In the discussion this morning also on Report stage—

It seems to me it is as irrelevant as if on a Bill for vaccination a medical Member in this House were to get up and complain on Third Reading that it had nothing whatever to do with the prevention of cancer.

With great respect, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, I do not think the analogy is quite good. I am speaking this afternoon with reference to tuberculosis and I am attaching my argument to the claim of the Minister that that will be really attacked by the provision he is making through this Bill far tuberculin testing.

The Report deals with specific diseases and now the hon. Member has raised an argument about home herds and so on, and other matters which there is nothing in the Bill to support. We have already had an argument on the same subject.

I do not wish to be in conflict with the Chair upon this matter or to be seriously at variance with hon. Members opposite for the time being, although probably they will hear from us again with regard to this particular item. Generally summing up the position, it is this, that it is rather a pity that when there is a real need for dealing with the general disease situation in regard to cattle the Government should take the trouble in a Session in which the poor Patronage Secretary has been so harassed as to how to find time to allot even the necessary Supply days for the Session that Government time should have been given to this Bill without making adequate provision to deal with diseases which we know exist in the herds and to deal in a wider way still by having adequate means of replenishing the beasts which are destroyed from our herds by importing healthy dairy cattle from the free ranges of our Dominions.

May I, while keeping in Order, say why I welcome this Bill? One reason is because I think Canadian heifers coming into the country would be much more liable to get disease, tuberculosis especially, than our own heifers in this country. They come from a county where they are much more in the open air. Why tubercule comes to our cows is because they are kept so much in their stables. They develop tuberculosis, not when they are heifers but when they become cows. Those arguments which the hon. Gentleman put forward are not only refuted but they are disputed by many medical and veterinary authorities, and by no less a body than the Council of Agriculture for England who passed a Resolution which I should like to read.

The hon. and gallant Member can deny what has been asserted, but as I stopped one argument I am bound to stop the counter-argument.

You may stop the argument, but at the end of this Resolution passed by the Council of Agriculture for England there is this which I must read. It ends up:

"That the Council of Agriculture for England considers the statement of the Free Importation of Canadian Cattle Association of Great Britain that 50 per cent. of British dairy cattle are tubercular is unjustifiable, inaccurate, unsupported by any evidence or authentic figures, and is merely a biased estimate calculated to mislead uninformed opinion."

I think the hon. and gallant Member must not read any more.

Well, with reference to the Third Reading of the Bill,

"The Council is of opinion that any further relaxation of the"—

Having stopped one argument, I can only allow a denial. The matter cannot be further pursued on the Third Reading of the Bill.

I am very sorry, Sir, I only wanted to draw attention to the matter. I will conclude by expressing the hope that the Bill will be passed.

I feel in rather a difficulty on this Bill, because three subjects have been raised from the point of view that they are not dealt with adequately in the Bill, and you, Sir, have ruled them all out of Order in accordance with precedent. Therefore, I must deal with the question of fact which the hon. Member for Hillsborough (Mr. A. V. Alexander) was able, with his great ingenuity to sandwich in between your interruptions. I do wish to deal with two specific figures which he mentioned, because if his figures are allowed to go unchallenged very great and unjust damage will be done to our home dairy industry. The hon. Member stated that there was a suggestion that 50 per cent.—I think he said sometimes more had been suggested—of our cattle were tuberculous.

"75 per cent.!"

What I said was, that it had been stated to be as high as 70 per cent. in old milch cows of 10 to 15 years old. I was careful to say that the figure only applied to that class of cattle.

I want to explain the very misleading character of those figures. There has been a great deal of propaganda not from the hon. Member but from other sources against our own dairy cattle and just at a time when our agriculture is in great difficulty it really is very cruel to try and condemn a very wholesome food and a very valuable agricultural product. The hon. Member quoted a former Member of this House as an authority for the statement that 15 per cent. of the milk in this country was tuberculous. We have got some figures as the result of just 18 months' working of the Tuberculosis Order which the hon. Member says does not go far enough. Between the 1st September, 1925, and the 31st March, 1927, owing to the notification of tuberculosis on dairy farmers' premises and owing to the evidence got from the other end by tuberculous milk being traced back, inspections were made of premises including 1,051,000 cattle, a seventh or an eighth of the total head of cattle in the country. Of that 1,051,000 cattle there were 792,000 cows and heifers. Of those cows and heifers 28,871 were found to be suffering from those forms of tuberculosis which brought them within the Order—not 50 per cent. but 2·7 per cent. The classes of tuberculosis which involve slaughter are three—tuberculous emaciation, chronic cough, where the obvious danger is due to the infection of milk by expectoration, and the most dangerous, tuberculosis of the udder.

Emaciation and chronic cough are only indirect dangers, but tuberculosis of the udder is by far the most serious danger 'because that is the direct source of infection from the open flow of tuberculous infection. There we get not 50 per cent. but one-half of 1 per cent. Out of the 792,000 cattle on the inspected premises—the worst premises, one-eighth of the premises which were under suspicion—you get one-half of 1 per cent. suffering from tuberculosis of the udder. How does the hon. Member get his figures? He quoted from Dr. Raw. Dr. Raw has quoted 15 per cent. of tuberculous milk. Of course, if you get infected milk and mix it with clean milk and then make a test, you can get it up to any figure. You can get it up to 100 per cent. if you get a little tuberculous milk and mix it with clean milk. No doubt this half per cent. could easily be brought up to 15 per cent. sold over the counter in certain unfortunate dairies if that half per cent. of tuberculous milk were mixed with 30 per cent. of clean milk. I think that is the explanation of the terrifying but quite unfounded figure given by the hon. Member.

In view of the ruling from the Chair that we cannot move the New Clause, I wish on behalf of the Dundee Corporation to express exceeding regret that there is no opportunity of moving the Clause.

With regard to the destruction of cattle under the terms of this Bill, I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman what past experience has proved in regard to the loss of wages and the general effect upon the workers who are deprived of their employment as a result of action taken under this Bill and previous Acts dealing with the same subject. In the light of the right hon. Gentleman's experience as affecting a fairly large number of workpeople over a long period, I should like to know if he has taken into consideration the possible effect of this Bill on the future livelihood of workers who depend upon attending cattle which may or may not be slaughtered under the terms of the Bill. I understand that it would be out of order to refer to the Amendment accepted in Committee, but I would like to ask the right hon. Gentleman, who has shown a keen desire rather to serve the interests of a particular class instead of accepting the opinion as expressed by the Committee, if, having taken a peculiar stand in contradistinction to the feeling of the Committee, and having recommitted the Bill for that purpose, whether he has done anything to provide for people who are likely to be deprived of their livelihood as a result of the Bill. The Bill, I admit, is necessary for the purpose of safeguarding not only those people who care for their stock, but to provide cleaner arrangements so that disease is a very remote possibility. Has the right hon. Gentleman done anything? Has he anything in his mind? In the future, in applying this Bill, is he going to leave the workers to perish, as it were, without any consideration?

If the right hon. Gentleman should need any reminder I would remind him that the agricultural workers outside the unemployment scheme who are momentarily deprived of their work and wages, are in a very awkward situation. The least thing that we might expect from the Government, whom we are willing to support in the passage of this Bill, and from the right hon. Gentleman as the godfather of the agricultural community, is that the right hon. Gentleman will exercise some thought and sympathy for the poorest section of the rural community. An opportunity was provided for him to do something tangible, but that has been taken away. Has he, as an alternative, done anything to make arrangements for people who are likely to be deprived of their employment and wages when this Bill becomes operative? The right hon. Gentleman avoided any sort of reply to the previous observations on this question, but I think he is called upon to tell the House, without in any way referring directly to the Amendment accepted in the Committee, and disposed of since, that he is not forgetting the needs of the people who may be deprived of their livelihood by the Bill. If he will give us some indication of what he intends to do when cleansing the nation from a very dangerous disease, we shall be happier in supporting him in the passage of the Bill; but we do expect some answer as to his intention with regard to the future of this problem.

I have exhausted my right to speak. The hon. Member complains that I made no answer to the hon. Member for Doncaster (Mr. Paling) when he raised a subject which the Deputy-Speaker ruled out of order. I can, therefore, only deal with it in a very few words. The criticism was that when the Committee exceeded its powers under the Standing Orders and imposed a charge and that was ruled out of order, I did not get round the Rules of Order, condone the breach and enable compensation to be given to agricultural workers who lose their work through the slaughter of animals suffering from foot-and-mouth disease on the premises where they are employed. Quite apart from the necessity of conforming to the very salutary rule that expenditure should not be imposed upon the public by a Standing Committee, on the merits I do not think there was a case. The arguments were founded on the exceptional outbreak some years ago in Cheshire, but since then—

The right hon. Gentleman is now dealing with something which is not in the Bill.

Can the Minister tell us what has been the total cost of foot-and-mouth disease up to now? That information would be very interesting in connection with the passage of the Bill.

The cost has been about £39,000 since 1st January last up to date. Unfortunately, I have not the exact figures with me.

Could not the right hon. Gentleman by the simple process of proceeding with another Money Resolution have accepted the spirit and feeling of the considered judgment of the Committee?

Of course, he could.

I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

The House is well aware that one of the must serious losses with which farmers have to contend is the toll which is levied on them by destructive insects and pests. It is estimated that it costs the agricultural community something like £12,000,000 a year. In the last 50 years powers have been given to deal with the difficulty. The first Act, which was passed in 1877, gave powers to deal with the Colorado beetle. That Act was extended in 1907 to cover other insects and fungoid pests. In 1914 the administration was taken away from the local authorities because it was found necessary to centralise the arrangements which were made, and it was transferred to the Ministry of Agriculture without any financial powers being transferred which alone could make these administrative duties really effective. Our inspectors keep a careful watch on uncertified imports of vegetable produce from foreign countries and it is necessary that they should be given further powers to destroy, with compensation, any crops which may be infected from pests arriving in imported produce. At the present time we are alarmed about the Colorado beetle which is working north from the Bordeaux district where it first showed itself in Europe, and at any time we may be faced with the necessity of destroying crops or produce as the only means of preventing this disease getting a footing in this country. It attacks potatoes, and it is a very serious matter if it begins to spread as it would mean an extra cost of about £2 an acre owing to the spraying operations which would be involved and the necessary equipment and labour which would be necessitated by it.

The first Clause of the Bill will allow us to deal effectively with alien immigrants in the form of these insects. Where a non-resident pest arrives it is obviously necessary to be able to act at once and smother it on its arrival, while it is in a restricted area, and we want to be in a position to give compensation for the destruction of crops, up to £2,000 in any one year. Paragraph (c) of Sub-section (1) of Clause 1 increases the penalties. At the present time the £10 penalty is not always a sufficient deterrent. Under the Orders relating to wart disease in potatoes, a man may make a much larger sum by disobeying our Regulations than he risks losing by a penalty. Sub-section (4) removes the limitation of a portion of the value to be given in the form of compensation. It is very unjust, when a defective crop is destroyed, that the local authority can compensate only up to three-quarters of the market value, and undoubtedly it is a great deterrent to early notification.

Will this allow the whole of the value to be given?

Yes. Paragraphs 2 and 3 of the principal Act made that limitation, and that limitation is now repealed. Clause 5 is important. It enables us to deal with bacteria and virus diseases. We do that by an extension of the definition of insects to include bacteria and other vegetable or animal organisms and any agent causative of a transmissible crop disease, and this new power will enable us to take action against such diseases as mosaic and leaf roll in potatoes and reversion in black currants. The Bill has been approved by the Horticultural Advisory Council, which represents all branches of the industry concerned, and I hope the House will pass this little Measure which, I believe, is greatly needed for the defence of British agriculture.

I am sure that the House is in universal sympathy with any effective measure for dealing with insect pests, but I think the Minister really might give the House more information as to the situation and the grounds for legislating. It has not been made perfectly clear why any Act is needed now. The local authority system, confirmed in the Act of 1907, certainly is not rapid in connection with animals or plants, but it is rather a mystery, which the right hon. Gentleman has not fully explained, why he is bringing in a Bill now. Government time is considered to be fully occupied and there are many things which the Government said it would have been ready to pass had there been more time. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will speak again and tell us a little more about this extremely important subject, because everyone knows that the national welfare is seriously diminished by the prevalence of these diseases. The right hon. Gentleman gave an inclusive figure. It would be very valuable if he would enlighten the public a little more as to the incidence of that figure. Are the losses greatest in the familiar diseases? Are they considerable in connection with big bug, black eye in strawberries, or any of the well-known diseases? I should like more knowledge myself than I have been able to acquire. Then again, if the administration has been adequately conducted since 1914 and compensation on the scale that was legal has been given, what is wrong with the present method of administration? Was it possible to alter the present methods of administration without passing an Act; and if there is an Act I do not know why the matter of the rates of compensation was not settled also. The Minister is doing and spending a great deal on research. The laboratory at Harpenden is an interesting institution, and the right hon. Gentleman might tell us whether research has produced tangible economic results and justified itself in any evident way by introducing better methods. All this is the more important as we are becoming increasingly a fruit-growing country. We know the extraordinary precarious position of fruit crops. The black currant industry was becoming a very big thing in East Anglia and elsewhere, and the raspberry industry in Scotland was developing. We are now more dependent on methods of coping with pests than we were under the ordinary methods of farming.

The more interested the country is in this matter, the better for national prosperity on these lines, because the country will be more willing to devote money to the research that is required. It is none too willing now, and in the economy campaign that prevails to-day, I am afraid that expenditure is being cut down in various directions, research and educational, under the Ministry, at the instigation of the wielders of the economy axe, and if the country is not sufficiently aware of the importance of dealing with plant diseases, there may be very disastrous effects in the long run. I congratulate the Minister on having time to deal with a contingency which, as far as we gather, is not immediate and may be remote. It shows one thing which I have endeavoured to urge before, the importance of having more regular annual reports of the Ministry. Other Ministries, for instance the Board of Agriculture for Scotland, issue regular annual reports, and I think it would help the progress of control of disease, as well as many other things, if the Ministry of Agriculture would arrange for regular reports by its various Departments. Subject to knowing rather more the ground on which the Bill is based, we desire to give it our support.

It is not my intention to delay the Second Reading very long, but there are one or two comments I want to make upon the Bill. I suppose there is not a single Member who was in the trenches between 1914 and 1918 to whose mind the title of this Bill does not inevitably recall some of the most trying and irritating incidents of the War. Whilst it is true that we had no Bills before us, we had a good many acts aimed at the suppression of insect pests, in the execution of which we found no difficulty. This curse of insect ravages has been with mankind and with the animal kingdom all through history, from the Old Testament time of flies, lice and frogs, to the more modern times of locusts and wild honey and the tsetse fly and microbes. Indeed a poet has told us that

"Big fleas have little fleas

Upon their backs to bite 'em,

And little fleas save lesser fleas,

And so ad infinitum."

I believe that profound truth is the real reason why the farmer to-day is prone to describe agriculture as being—I am here quoting, so I assume I am in order—"one damned thing after another." That seems to be perfectly true. We have the fly after the turnip and the farmer after the fly, and the agricultural policies of the two parties opposite after the farmer—a vicious circle in harmonious progression. What is it that this Bill seeks to do? It seeks to give the Ministry of Agriculture power to destroy certain crops which may be found to be infested with certain insect pests. It is applying to them the same treatment that we have to-day to apply to foot-and-mouth disease. I should be the last to wish to prevent in the slightest degree the method that we at present apply, but, after all, "prevention is better than cure," particularly when the cure is of such a drastically surgical nature as is the cure of destruction. It seems to me that to have to apply these methods of destruction is in itself a confession of failure to find out the causes of these diseases and the true way of dealing with them. In fact, in our present state of knowledge or rather of ignorance, we are thrown back on the advice of the "Bad Boy's Book of Beasts," about microbes:

"Let us never, never doubt

What nobody is sure about."

Nature provides her own antidotes for these diseases. If that were not so, we should long ago have seen the complete elimination of our flocks and crops. It is the part of science to discover what nature's balance is; where it has been lost to seek to restore it. It is only when man has interfered with nature that we see this loss of balance. For example, it is only where we have extensive areas assigned to the cultivation of one particular crop, or where there are large numbers of one particular animal in one area, that these diseases really become a menace, not only because they can so rapidly spread over a homogeneous area, but because the damage that they can do in that particular area becomes magnified and multiplied. Therefore, the same methods of coping with it are less effective. It is as absurd to look over hundreds of thousands of sheep in Australia that are affected with sheep tic—though you can deal with it by a liberal application of Erribol—as it would be to deal with thousands of citrus trees in California infested with fruit fly by saying, "Let us spray." These are not the ways to deal with these pests on a large scale.

These insect pests are primarily, or nature's control of them is primarily, of two sorts, predatory and parasitical, and the parasite is the more difficult to deal with, not only because of its microscopic nature, but also because it is possible that these parasitic microbes may not confine themselves to the beneficent work for which they are primarily intended. By "predatory" is largely meant such things as birds and spiders and ladybirds and so forth, which keep the insects in check. But they are not always confined to anything so small. I remember once, in connection with a copra plantation in which I was interested, reading the manager's report which described how a great deal of damage was done on account of the ravages of wild pigs that had come to eat the young cocoanut trees, and of the further ravages of tigers that had come to eat the wild pigs. So that the predator was more dangerous than the predatee, and the cure worse than the disease.

I personally have had experience in achieving remarkable success in getting back nature's control over what has been a great menace of agriculture. Many years ago the total sugar cane crop of the Hawaian Islands was menaced with complete annihilation by two diseases, one which was popularly called the leaf hopper, a little creature which laid its eggs in the ribs of the leaves of the plant, and the cane borer, which got into the stem of the cane and deposited its eggs there. We took the opportunity of getting the best world scientists and field entomologists together and sending them abroad to find out the original habitat of these pests and to try to bring back nature's balance, if it could be found. We met with remarkable success in that way. Two insects were discovered and brought in, one of a quite microscopic nature, which laid its eggs in those of the leaf hopper, and the other which devoured the larva of the cane borer. In precisely the same way as when Socialist theorists bring up their young to be Socialists and the Communistic cell gets to work with the result that when maturity arrives, instead of up popping a, little Socialist, out pops a little Communist; so, instead of a little leaf hopper popping out, a little parasite pops out, and the same thing applies to the case of the cane borer.

To-day those two diseases have been practically eliminated, and no one troubles about them now. Nature's balance has been restored, and that has been done without employing methods of destruction which, as I have said, are in themselves a confession of failure. I would appeal to the Minister when he gets this Measure not to rest content with having the authority to effect destruction where necessary and to pay the necessary compensation. He ought to go further on the lines indicated by my right hon. Friend the Member for Northern Norfolk (Mr. Buxton), and see whether, in the case of many of these diseases which are causing immense loss to farmers and horticulturists, we cannot discover a means of restoring the balance of nature in the way I have described. He should see if it is not possible to discover a means of doing so, and by importing it, assist nature to assert itself once more. If he did that, and if he met success, even with only one thing, the right hon. Gentleman's name would go down to posterity as the Minister of Agriculture who did more for the agriculture of this country than any of his predecessors.

I am sure the hon. and gallant Member who has just spoken will convey to the Tory headquarters his idea about eliminating Socialists and Communists with the hope that it will be as successful in that case as it Was eliminating the insects from the sugar plantation. I am afraid, however, he will not find the one task as easy as the other has already proved to be. I desire the Minister to give an explanation of Sub-section (2) of Clause 2. The Sub-section reads as follows:—

"The Minister may out of moneys provided by Parliament pay compensation (to be ascertained in accordance with the provisions of the principal Act) in respect of any crop removed or destroyed by or under the instructions of an inspector authorised by him, and any other expenses incurred by him in the execution of the principal Act."

It seems to be clear that if a crop is destroyed under this Bill, or if an inspector recommends that a, crop should be dealt with, then full compensation is to be paid to the owner of the crop. I understood from the Minister that there is already in operation an Act which provides that only 75 per cent. can be paid in compensation, and I gathered that it was because full compensation was not provided for, that the Act did not work successfully.

The real difficulty is that at present the compensation has to be given by the local authorities and the local authorities do not administer the Act. We want to be able to take better measures by means of centralized organisation.

But I understand also that the action of the local authorities in the matter of compensation is limited to 75 per cent.

It has been a dead letter.

That may be so and the present Bill may be to make the system more effective, but still provision is made that compensation is to be paid for the loss of a crop. Most of us are in agreement with the Bill, so far as it goes, but I wish to know precisely what is included in this Sub-section. Is compensation to be paid only for the loss of a crop, or will the labourer who may be thrown out of work be brought into consideration in connection with the question of compensation? Is the compensation under this Bill as under every other Bill brought in by this Government, to refer only to loss of property. The argument is used that if cattle are slaughtered or if a crop is destroyed, the owner loses his livelihood and compensation must therefore be paid. We do not entirely disagree with that view, but there are many cases in which the man who works for the owner also loses his livelihood. Because the loss of his livelihood is not the loss of property, he is not recognised by the Government. A man in those circumstances ought to be recognised under this Clause and I ask the Minister if such an interpretation as I suggest can be placed upon it. I think he will admit that the hardship imposed on men who lose their jobs is as great as the hardship imposed on the owner who loses his crop or his cattle. At present the agricultural labourer is at a disadvantage as compared with every other worker in the country.

The principle of compensation for the loss of employment has been recognised by the Unemployment Insurance Act, but the agricultural labourer does not come under it. It is notorious that he is about the lowest paid worker in the country, and, when other workers protest against reductions of wages, they are always told that they get more than the agricultural labourer. That being so, the loss of his job is a very serious thing to the agricultural labourer. He has no opportunity of saving for a rainy day, and his prospect of getting another job is not too good. We hear that agriculture is approaching a crisis and that farmers cannot pay wages. All these circumstances make it difficult, in any case, for the agricultural labourer to retain his job, and when he loses it—particularly in circumstances like this—he has great difficulty in getting another. We think that the principle of compensation should be applied equally. If the agricultural labourer is thrown out of work in these circumstances, the least you can do is to apply the compensation principle impartially to him as well as to the owner. It may be that, if the Government choose to do so, a generous interpretation can be given to this Clause, and it may include compensation to the worker. I notice, however, it is provided that the amount of compensation and expenses is not to exceed in any one year £2,000, without the consent of the Treasury. Does that mean that if the right hon. Gentleman goes to the Treasury and represents that a case has been so serious that £2,000 is insufficient to meet the damage done, he can exceed the limit of £2,000 provided he makes a good case? I hope the Minister will inform us on these points, and that he will be able to tell us that by means of representations to the Treasury he can provide for compensation to the worker, as well as the owner, or else that it can be done within the limit indicated in the Clause.

The criticisms of the hon. Member for Doncaster (Mr. Paling) and the hon. and gallant Member for Yeovil (Major Davies) are founded on a misunderstanding of what is provided by the Bill. It is not suggested that we should go in for a general destruction of crops as the hon. and gallant Member for Yeovil seems to fear. This only applies to compensation far the destruction of crops which are infected with nonresident pests. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to draft a form of words which makes it clear that that restriction is to apply. You might get, just beyond the port of entry, a delivery of infected imported produce to an agriculturist, and, under these circumstances, it would be necessary that the consequent infestation of his crops should at once be stamped out. That explanation perhaps will reassure the hon. Member for Doncaster that no unemployment could possibly arise. It is not a matter of destroying farm crops wholesale, but we want this power of compensation, because otherwise a very serious delay might take place in stamping out an initial outbreak.

Would the right hon. Gentleman give us the name of some of the chief non-resident pests?

By far the most serious is the Colorado Beetle. As a matter of fact, about 25 years ago it did arrive in this country. The Treasury sanctioned an expenditure of about £150 for measures to deal with it. and it was stamped out before it spread to any extent in this country. It has spread at the rate of about 80 miles per year in the United States, and it is now in France. The House will see that the danger from the disease resulting from the importation of this pest is near, and measures are therefore necessary. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Northern Norfolk (Mr. Buxton) asked how it was that this Bill was necessary if we had powers to deal with this matter in 1914 without legislation. Under the original Act powers were given to the Ministry of Agriculture, and by delegation to the local authorities, and it was by arrangement with the Treasury in 1914 that the Ministry was authorised to act, because the local authorities found it impossible to administer the powers with effect. But of course the original Act did not provide for payment by the Ministry of even the small sum necessary in case of emergency, and it is for that reason we want to supplement the original legislation. The right hon. Gentleman asked what insects and pests were causing loss. He asked about Big Bud. We do not need any legislation to deal with the Big Bud which is already in the country, and is caused by an insect. The most serious losses are caused by mosaic and leaf roll in potatoes. In some cases 80 per cent. of the crop may be lost, and probably on the average 10 per cent. of the potato crop is destroyed in this way. We want to be able under this Bill to regulate these virus diseases, and keep them under control. Fungoid diseases are covered by the existing legislation. We do not want to provide for compensation in these cases but to prevent the spreading of virus diseases and to ensure that virus disease will be adequately dealt with. Really there is no danger of unemployment being caused by this Bill, and there is no danger of large expenditure. I hope therefore the House will agree to give the Bill a Second Reading.

I beg to move, in page 18, line 39, to leave out the word "The" and to insert instead thereof the word "Every."

The object of the Amendment is to make assurance doubly sure that in any parish, notwithstanding the particular parish to which he carries on his duty the relieving officer will have power to deal with urgent cases. I understand the hon. Gentleman is prepared to accept the Amendment.

I think I ought to say that no Amendment can be moved to change or amend any particular Clause except in so far as it consolidates the law.

I beg to move, in page 19, line 3, to leave out the word "the" and to insert instead thereof the word "any."

I beg to move, in page 59, to leave out from the word "that" in line 18 to the end of line 21 and to insert instead thereof the words:

"(a) where before the commencement of this Act an application has been made to justices or to the Minister to determine any question in relation to the settlement or removal of any person, that question shall in all stages of the proceedings be determined as if this Act had not been passed; and

(b) where any such question has been determined before the commencement of this Act, and an application to determine a question relating to the settlement or removal of the same person and dependent on the same facts is made after the commencement of this Act by or against a board of guardians not bound by the previous decision, the question on that application shall be determined as if this Act had not been passed."

This Amendment is occasioned by a rather curious circumstance. After the Committee had reported the Bill, the Divisional Court came to a decision in the case of Norwich Guardians versus Henstead Guardians which differed in some measure from the provision we had made in Clause 109 (1) as to questions of settlement. I have had the opportunity of conferring with hon. Members opposite in regard to this matter, which was rather technical. To put it briefly, it has been decided that Clause 109 (1) should stand as printed, on the ground that it gives a better result in practice than the decision of the Divisional Court, and also because that Court considered that it was a casus omissus, and it is within the proper function of a Consolidation Bill to cure defective drafting. The object of the Amendment is to prevent any proceeding, pending upon the Bill coming into operation, from being affected by its provisions, or any decision already given as to the settlement or removal of a particular person from being affected by the Bill. In both instances, the question is to be decided upon the law in force before the Bill operates.

I beg to move, in page 125, line 4, to leave out the word "July," and to insert instead thereof the word "October."

It is necessary to substitute 1st October next for 1st July as the date on which the Bill is to come into operation. It is impossible now for the Bill to be passed by the time anticipated, and in any event it is desirable to give guardians and their officers, in view of the magnitude of this Bill, which runs into more than 200 Clauses, an opportunity of studying its provisions before it comes into operation.

I beg to move, "That the Clause be read a Second time."

This Clause meets an objection put by some hon. Members opposite that the second half of Section 12 of the Poor Law Relief Act, 1819, is not reproduced in the Bill.

When the Bill was before the House on Second Reading, we put down a Motion with the object primarily of dealing with this question. I had the opportunity of consulting the Parliamentary Secretary afterwards and telling him that we felt that this power, although it might not be actually exercised at the moment, was an important one, and we are glad the Government have agreed to include this Clause.