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

Although a Bill of this kind is perhaps more familiarly dealt with when introduced as private legislation, none the less this is a public Bill. It is introduced because of the very considerable increase that there has been in the supply of electricity, and, consequently, in the user of electricity. In other words, legislation, if I may say so without any disrespect, has not kept pace with the requirements of the various suppliers of electricity. Indeed, at the moment it is necessary for people seeking statutory powers for the purpose of laying electric wires and other matters of that kind to apply for very extensive powers, and that process is always going on. People apply for statutory powers in private Bills, and they obtain those statutory powers only after careful examination in various committees. Ultimately a series of precedents is evolved, so that those who apply at a later date obtain more extensive powers than those who have applied at a previous date. If the present Bill should receive favourable consideration at the hands of the House, it will undoubtedly shorten the work that has to be done when various provisions and Orders are applied for in private legislation. In a word, it may be said that the main object of the Bill is to avoid what might be called piecemeal applications to the Legislature for statutory powers. In these circumstances, having regard to the lapse of time since any Electricity Bill of any size was passed, the present Bill has been introduced in order to bring the legislation up to date.

There is a precedent—indeed, there are many—for introducing legislation of this kind, because a great many Acts of Parliament of general importance at the present moment had their origin in one or more private Acts of Parliament. The powers given in private Acts were found to be very useful and to effect a saving of public time and money, and therefore general Acts have been passed incorporating those private Acts. During the 40's of last century a number of Acts of Parliament were passed with the object of providing facilities similar to those provided by this Bill. For example, compulsory powers were given to people for the purchase of land in connection with canals, roads, and railways. In course of time those compulsory powers became practically stereotyped in their form, and they consequently led to the Lands Clauses Consolidation Act, 1845, which has been, and still is, a very useful Act and forms the foundation of the existing law on that subject. The same thing happened in the case of the Companies Clauses Act and the Railway Clauses Act, stereotyped forms that had appeared in private legislation having there found their place in public Acts. In 1847 there was the Gas Works Clauses Act, and in 1882 the Electric Lighting Act. These and various other Acts—the Waterworks Clauses Act, the Commissioners Clauses Act, the Markets and Fairs Act, the Towns Improvements Clauses Acts, and so on—were passed on precedents in private legislation which had been already passed.

Before the passing of these Acts it was necessary to put into private Acts Clauses incorporating powers conferred in various other Acts. That is confusing and certainly inconvenient, leading to waste of the time of the House, of local authorities, and of those who have to work with these Acts of Parliament. An even closer analogy is to be found in public health legislation. Here again, when local authorities have promoted private Bills, parts of those Bills have been found to be of general public utility and have been incorporated in public Acts for general application throughout the country. This can be said of the first Public Health Act of 1848, which with some amendment led to the Public Health Act, 1875, and the Public Health Act, 1925. It will perhaps be not without point to refer to some observations upon private Bills which were made by the Select Committee on Private Bills in 1930, and, with the leave of the House, I should like to read a short extract from that Committee's Report, which was published in July, 1930. Dealing with the subject of the Public Health Acts, the Committee said:

"There is one obvious way in which the bulk of local legislation might be diminished, and that is to reduce the gap between local and general legislation, so that powers, granted by Parliament as a matter of course in local Acts, might be embodied in the general law and made of general application. The last Amendment of the Public Health Act took place in 1925, but there is still more that needs to be carried out. The Ministry of Health stated in their Memorandum that, owing to the provisions as to borrowing in the Public Health Act, 1875, not being up-to-date, it was necessary, in the case of a private Act in 1929, to incorporate no less than 18 Clauses for this purpose. There is a universal desire for more frequent amendments of the Public Health Acts, and the only real difficulty is for the Government of the day, on account of the pressure of business, to find time for such legislation. But a Bill of this character, drafted by the appropriate Department, which is in possession of the necessary information and machinery, would only make general the provisions which have been allowed over a period of years in numerous local Acts, and if referred to a Joint Committee of both Houses in the same way as Consolidation Bills, should have an easy passage through Parliament. Your Committee recommend that amending legislation of this kind should be passed approximately every five years."

As regards electricity supply, the public legislation concerned is to be found in the Electricity (Supply) Acts, 1882 to 1933, together with the Electric Lighting (Clauses) Act, 1899, the Schedule of which contains provisions which are in nearly every special Act or Order. The Electricity (Supply) Acts apply only to undertakings, that is to say, local authorities, companies, statutorily authorised persons, or persons authorised by Orders. When it is realised that the first public Act relating to the supply of electricity was passed in 1882, it is not difficult to see that much legislation has been applied in that time which is now out of date because of the enormous increase in the use and value of electricity. The powers in that Act, and, indeed, in many of these Acts, are not applicable to and not suitable for the greater demands of to-day. The changed conditions have required at various times amending Acts. The Act of 1882 was amended by an Act of 1888, and again in 1909, 1919, 1922, 1926, 1928 and 1933. The last two Acts, however, did not effect very considerable amendments, so that the Act of 1926 is really the most recent Act which increased those powers and brought them, comparatively speaking, up-to-date.

In view of the recommendation that this should be reviewed every five years, and of the fact that some seven years have elapsed, the time is now ripe for putting into operation a further amending Act. The Bill has been carefully considered, and it has received the support and encouragement of various people who have, naturally, a very intimate and detailed knowledge of the subject. It has the approval of the Electricity Commissioners, the Association of Municipal Corporations, the Association of Electric Power Companies, the Provincial Electric Supply Association of the United Kingdom, the London Electricity Supply Association, and the London and Home Counties Joint Electricity Authority. In another place a Bill in substantially the same form received some approval. The Bill is entitled

"a Bill to amend the Law with respect to the supply of Electricity and for other purposes connected therewith."

It might have been more aptly called "the Electricity (Various Powers) Act," because its main object is to provide undertakers and suppliers of electricity with powers additional to those which they have now.

It follows precedent in the main and those precedents, naturally, have received, so far as they are taken from Acts of Parliament, the approval of Parliament. At the same time, there are Clauses for which there is no precedent. There is no precedent for Clauses 1, 2, 17, 23 and 25. With regard to the other Clauses I can, if necessary, draw attention to the private Bill which constitutes the precedent for their introduction. Clause I is to remove an anomaly owing to the fact that in 1882 there were no county councils. Roads are repairable by highway authorities, and the repairing of highways by county councils, which were not considered to be highway authorities, led to difficulties, and roads could not be broken up. Clause 2 again gives power to break up private streets. Undertakers have power to break up private streets subject to notice and plans approved by the Ministry, but if a street is not repairable by a local authority, consent has to be obtained. As streets are not repairable by the highway authorities until they are dedicated, people seeking to lay electric wires are unable to do so except by getting consent or going to a great deal of trouble and expense. If the Bill is passed in its present form, electrical authorities can lay their wires although the streets may not be repairable by the local authority. Needless to say, there are proper safeguards for compensation, and various provisions with regard to restoring the streets after the wires have been laid. The position is very analogous to that of gas and water companies under the Public Health Act, 1925, Section 80, which in itself is not applicable to electricity. The remaining Clauses have in the main precedents for them. They have only been altered to bring them into a suitable form for legislation in a public Bill.

My hon. Friend the Member for St. Albans (Sir F. Fremantle) has raised a point about the power to refuse to supply electricity on the ground that by-laws have not been complied with. My hon. Friend's point is that there should be power to inspect a building in course of erection. That suggestion seems a very logical one. Indeed, there seems some absurdity in watching a person put up a building and, when he has done it, saying, "This, that and the other does not comply with the by-laws, and we will not supply you with current." It would be better for all concerned if the power of inspection were to be given, so that in the course of a building being erected there should be a general power to inspect the wiring and warn people that such and such alterations would be advisable. No doubt, any reasonable person would be only too glad to meet those objections. If my hon. and gallant Friend will raise the question in Committee, a small Amendment might be put in to meet the point.

Another question has been raised as to whether there should be an independent tribunal to decide any disputes as to whether by-laws were complied with or not. The suggestion has been made that any such dispute between a supplier and a consumer should be referred to an association consisting of people who were working in the business and were familiar with it. I do not see my way to accept that suggestion. The Electricity Commissioners have pointed out that there are already in the Bill, as drawn, ample safeguards to meet any such question if it should arise, and that, before by-laws can come into operation, they have to be approved, and that a dispute as to whether they have been complied with would go to an electric inspector. An electric inspector is not a mechanical robot, but a human being, an indepen- dent person of high technical qualifications who may be relied upon to decide whether by-laws have or have not been complied with.

I beg to second the Motion.

I have the honour of seconding this Bill which has been so ably proposed by my hon. and learned Friend. He has probably sufficiently sketched to the House the history of the Bill and the necessities for it, and has pointed out the very important fact that, as legislation which deals with electricity is somewhat old, certain cases have arisen which the law does not cover. I do not propose at this point to try to give any further general outline as to why the Bill is advisable, but another point of great importance is the fact that the Bill is the outcome of deliberations which have taken place over a long period between people who have been engaged in supplying electricity, both local authorities and private companies, who are called undertakers, and people who during that time have been in the Government. Therefore, the House can take it that the Clauses of the Bill have only been put in after very careful scrutiny and after a great deal of trouble has been taken to see that they do in fact effect what they purport to effect. Although I do not wish to bore the House by going through all the Clauses, at the same time, possibly a useful purpose would be served if I were to touch generally on the actual Clauses of the Bill.

On looking into the Bill for many weary hours I have come to the conclusion that the Clauses may properly be divided into three classes. First, there are such Clauses as deal with existing anomalies; secondly, such Clauses as are required by the undertakers of electricity for more properly carrying on their work; and, thirdly, certain provisions which, in view of modern conditions, are necessary for their proper protection. Dealing first with the question of anomalies, I think the House will readily understand that the first two Clauses with which the proposer has so ably dealt constitute a particularly good instance. I was going to explain those provisions, but they have been so fully explained that it is not necessary for me to do so, but, if the House will look at Clause 5, I think that hon. Members will come to the conclusion that it deals with an anomaly which it is right and proper should be put right. They will see that previously, although current might be cut off if the cost of it had not been paid, it did not apply actually to the cost of the fittings. It seems to be a peculiar anomaly that, although statutory powers were given by the Act of 1882 for undertakers to cut off supplies where payment had to be made for the current itself, as far as another important matter is concerned, that is to say, fixtures, and hire or hire purchase of fittings, they have no power, if the money is not forthcoming, to cut off the supply. This Clause endeavours to effect that purpose, and possibly the House will agree that it is an anomaly and that it is necessary that the undertakers should have that power.

Under Clause 6 the cost of cutting off supplies may be recoverable if there is no payment. It so happens, the world being what it is, and men not being quite as perfect as they might be that current which is supposed to be used in one way is used in another way. Sometimes current which is supposed to be used for power is used for lighting, and in that case there is no power under which the undertakers can take steps to prevent it by cutting off the supply. This Clause gives power to the undertakers to remedy a thing of that kind. In regard to Clause 7, a very peculiar anomaly has arisen. Although any money which may be due for the actual supply of power may be recovered in the police court, if a person who uses power thinks fit for some reason not to pay for the fixtures and fittings, it is necessary for an undertaker to go a county court. Probably the House will agree that there is no reason at all why, if the money can be recovered for actual supply, the second rule should not also apply to the hire of fixtures and fittings which, after all are a very essential part of the service. Under the same heading there are two other Clauses. It is rather peculiar that until the actual passing of this Bill no power is given to undertakers to enter premises to see whether there has been any contravention of Acts or Orders relating to the undertaking. I know that this House is properly very jealous of the rights of people so far as their private liberties are concerned, nevertheless dangers may arise where rules and regulations are not complied with, and Clause 8 seeks to give safety in that respect by allowing inspection to take place in certain cases.

There is another peculiar anomaly which the Bill seeks to remedy, and it is dealt with in Clause 12. The best illustration of the necessity of this Clause can be put as follows. Sometimes when people who are supplying electricity get into a certain area a rather peculiar or silly position arises. Although the houses are within the area, it turns out that the street abutting on them is outside the area. Therefore, unfortunately, those who are supplying electric light or power are unable to put the light or power in those houses because they are unable to break up the street which abuts upon them. That seems anomalous, to put it at its lowest. Undertakers are very much handicapped by this lack of power to break up the road, and this Clause seeks to deal with the anomaly.

The second heading deals with powers which are necessary owing to modern conditions. It is almost impossible for modern Acts to keep up with the progress of electricity. In these circumstances, from time to time it turns out that the electricity undertakers have not the powers which they reasonably might have in order effectually to carry out their business, and the Clauses with which I am about to deal seek to give power where the lack of that power at the present time is preventing the undertakers from performing their duties. Clause 9 deals with transformers. It has been found in many cases that it is extremely useful where there is a transformer on a building to use it for other tenements or for parts of that building, but as the law now stands there is no such power. It has been thought by those responsible for this Bill that powers should be given to undertakers so that they can use transformers in the way I have mentioned, without having to come to this House to get statutory powers.

Clause 10 deals with the acquisition of land for sub-stations. There are powers which enable people engaged in supplying electricity to buy land for substations, but it has been found in practice that the steps that have to be taken are unreasonably expensive, and this has led to difficulties and delay. At the present time before it is possible to buy land an application has to be made to the Electricity Commissioners, and I am sure that every hon. Member who knows what it means to deal with Government Departments and the powers-that-be will appreciate that there is sometimes a little delay. It is necessary, in the first place, to apply to the Electricity Commissioners and then an Order has to be made, and that Order has to be confirmed by both Houses. In these circumstances, it would probably appear to the House to be reasonable that greater facilities should be given, and this Clause proposes to cut out the long procedure that I have mentioned and to give power to the undertakers to get their land subject, of course, to the confirmation, I think, of the House of Commons or, alternatively, of the Electricity Commissioners. I am not quite certain on that point.

The same thing applies so far as dwelling-houses are concerned. Undertakers go to a district for the purpose of carrying on their job of supplying power and electricity, and they often find that at a moment's notice they want somewhere to house their employés. The position of the law as it now stands is that it is often impossible to get that accommodation within a comparatively reasonable time, and Clause 11 deals with that point. Clause 13 relates to brackets. There is no statutory power to attach brackets to buildings where electric light or power is to be supplied. That can only be done under statutory power and even then it is necessary to get the consent of the owners, and other formalities are also necessary. In many cases very unsightly electric light posts are erected. In the small village where I live electricity has recently been brought and, although the electricity is very useful, I do not hesitate to say that the electric post put up is exceedingly unsightly. In many cases it would be possible for attachments to be placed upon buildings if better facilities were afforded. We propose that before that can be done the person who owns the building must give his consent, but that consent must not be unreasonably withheld.

There is no power at the present time for undertakers to make bylaws for the safety of the public, except in the case of local authorities who are undertakers. There is no power, except in the case of local authorities, for the undertakers to make any rules or regulations to secure the safety of the premises where power or light is supplied. Although power is given to the local authorities, so far as they are concerned, for a reason which I do not understand, no such orders have ever been made. I am sure the House will realise that it is essential that when electricity is being put into a house there should be safety from fire and other dangers, and those who are responsible for the introduction of the Bill are of the opinion that the undertakers should have the power to make bylaws or rules and regulations which will ensure safety so far as the building is concerned. Such rules or regulations would have to be approved by Parliament.

Lastly, I should like to deal with certain Clauses which seek to give adequate protection to undertakers in view of the different circumstances in which they now find themselves compared with the time when previous legislation was passed. Clause 3 deals with the penalty for using for lighting purposes electricity which is supplied for power. I am told that sometimes when electricity is supplied purely for the purpose of power, people manage to get light in the house from the same source.

And they get music nowadays.

Yes, music as well. It is possible, apparently, to get both music and light and be in the fortunate position of not having to pay specially for it. I suppose we are all liable to get something for nothing if we possibly can, but as fair-minded people we must appreciate that the other side are perfectly entitled to have protection, and Clause 3 gives protection in cases of that sort. Clauses 16 and 17 are not quite new. In another place these two Clauses were one and have now been made into separate Clauses, because the cases are rather different and the penalties are also different. One Clause seeks to meet the case of someone who may play a prank. It was thought that possibly some small boy, with the human weakness which is characteristic of a boy, when he saw an electric fitting might be inclined to see how it was made and to pull it to pieces. It is to be hoped that if and when he tries to do that he will not be electrocuted. At any rate, it is merely a boy's prank and, therefore, the penalty is small.

Clause 17 deals with a much more serious matter. It deals with the case where someone wilfully and wantonly interferes with the electric light for the purpose of preventing it being used at all; and Clause 18 prevents its improper use. Clause 22 deals with the case of the seals. I am told that this provision is very necessary because some people when they have electricity for power, and it is cut off make rather a short cut in order to get a little something for nothing again. I am told that what they do is to break the seal. There is usually a fuse box, whatever that may be, and I understand that sometimes they take an instrument, break the seal and insert a new fuse, with the result that they succeed in getting something for nothing. If, however, they are not so villainous as that I am told that if they want they can put in a larger fuse with the result that they get a larger amount of light than that to which they are entitled. [AN HON. MEMBER: "And set the house on fire."] As an hon. Member says, they may set their house on fire; sometimes that is an extremely useful thing nowadays.

There are two or three other Clauses which in the submission of those responsible for the Bill are essential for the protection of the undertakers. I thank the House most sincerely for their indulgence in listening to me. I am afraid that I have been somewhat dull, but a Bill of this sort is difficult to explain unless you get down to brass tacks. I am certain that hon. Members, when they realise the object of the Measure, the care that has been taken to see that every safeguard is provided, and the necessity there is for these provisions will be good enough to give it a Second reading.

I desire to support the Bill in the somewhat unusual guise for me of an undertaker, my ordinary job being of a very different kind. The position I take up in this connection is that of a director of a company which supplies the progressive community of Welwyn Garden City, which has now a population of about 10,000, increasing steadily year by year. They consider that it is necessary to have these powers in order to support their actions. The policy of those responsible for the Welwyn Garden City is to proceed as far as possible without statutory powers and by common agreement. There is a great deal of co-operation between the different officials in the community and, therefore, it is opposed to the whole policy of the community to ask for powers, or support any proposals for statutory powers, which are in any way compulsory in cases where compulsion is unnecessary. It is only to secure the proper carrying out of proposals which have already received recognition in this House that the company with which I am associated would wish to support further proposals. The proper way of advancing any public supply of any commodity is that power should only be given as is found necessary in actual operation. Solvitur ambulando is the proper way of working the supply of a public utility commodity such as this. Compulsory powers should be given only where they are necessary. At the same time, in the case of a commodity such as this, of wide application and comparatively novel in this country, we have to be practical in asking only for such powers as are necessary.

It may be said by some that it would be better to proceed in a more leisurely way and at long intervals, and perhaps by Government legislation rather than by private Members' legislation, but I do not think that that is applicable in such a case as this. This is pre-eminently a case in which it is desirable that the public utility companies, private concerns under strict regulations, should themselves take the initiative through private Members' legislation, and bring forward proposals such as these which can be properly submitted to the investigation of this House and be allowed to advance step by step, and not wait for a more general measure of advance under compulsory powers. Advances have been made in the last few years, advances which have been very great both in requirements and in invention, and they do require such a measure as this. In that sense, taking my own Board as typical of the smaller companies supplying electricity, I support the Bill.

The Bill on the whole is good and the general powers that are proposed to be given are to the advantage of development, especially where there is a great deal of new housing and therefore a great deal of development in electricity sup- plies. Reference has been made to Clause 20. I do not want to go into details now, but I put this point as essential in supporting the Bill. In Clause 20 proposals are made for by-laws as to wires, apparatus and fittings. It is obvious that such by-laws must be wide enough to include what is required, but not too wide. It is also obviously necessary that they should be effective. My contention is that Clause 20 as it stands is nugatory for the purpose, because the undertakers may for the purpose of preventing fire or injury to any building make these by-laws, and the by-laws are limited in certain respects to which I wish to draw attention.

I maintain that Clause 20 can be made effective only if Clause 8 is also effective. Clause 8 definitely refers to the powers of entry upon premises. It says that the powers conferred by the Electric Lighting Act of 1882 of entering upon premises shall extend in certain respects. My contention is that those respects are not sufficient and that amendment of the Clause is necessary. Let me give an actual instance. We had a case recently in Welwyn Garden City. The officials of our public utility electric supply company observed some bad workmanship being undertaken in an important building. The building was being wired by an outside firm. The work that is going on in the Garden City is rather common property and there is a great deal of give-and-take about the place, and our officials are naturally on the look-out for any work which is eventually to come before them, and they take note of what is going on in the building line. In this case our mains engineer directed the attention of the foreman in charge of this work to what was being done, with the idea of saving the contractor possible trouble later.

Obviously an electricity supply company can only be allowed to refuse to supply in circumstances that are laid down in statutory regulations. It is helpful to the contractor to be told in advance that he is undertaking certain work in a way that will necessitate such refusal. Our mains engineer in a friendly way pointed this out to the contractor's representative on the spot. But the outside man was not accustomed to dealing in that kind of way; he was accustomed simply to carrying out his orders and let- ting his chief suffer if necessary. The only reward of the mains engineer was to be told to mind his own business, and he was ordered off the premises. What is the result? We have not yet reached it. By friendly representations in other ways the contractor will probably take the hint and eventually there may not be the trouble that we foresaw. But that sort of thing would not apply generally, and we therefore want power to go into a building during its erection in order that we may see whether the conditions on which we shall base our statutory right to supply or to refuse supply are being properly carried out.

Let us look into the actual regulations that apply in this case. The Bill only allows us to enter any premises to which electricity "is or has been supplied by them, whether for the time being occupied or not." Therefore our officials can go in as soon as the house is finished, and before it is occupied, but not until it is finished and not until the electricity "is or has been supplied". The regulations are quite definite as to what they have to do. For instance—

"The undertakers shall not be compelled to give a supply of energy to any consumer unless they are reasonably satisfied, firstly, that all conductors and apparatus are sufficient in size and power for the purpose for which the supply of energy is to be used; secondly, that every distinct circuit is protected against excess energy by means of a suitable fusible cut-out or other automatic circuit breaker of adequate rupturing capacity and suitably located."

All these matters are implicit in the actual building and the house.

"Thirdly, that every electric motor will be controlled by an efficient switch or switches for starting or stopping."

The next regulation says that the undertakers shall not be compelled to supply unless satisfied that the supply terminals are—

"arranged in separate pairs in such a manner that so far as is reasonably practicable there shall be no danger of shock at medium voltage."

Again, that the wiring connected to separate pairs of supply terminals is kept separate and distinct. Then there is a regulation that the whole apparatus must be sufficiently connected with earth and so on. All these are matters of importance. Again, it is required that the consumers' wiring should be completely enclosed in a strong metal casing or sheath which is electrically continuous and that the supply of energy should be controlled by means of an efficient cutoff switch, placed in such a position as to be readily accessible.

These are all points concerned with the actual building of the house, and that does not mean the mere construction of the walls, but includes the plastering. At present it is only when the connections have been made and the wiring has been completed and plastered in, that the application comes to the undertakers to supply electricity. How can they tell whether there is a leakage in that wiring or not? How can they tell whether these regulations as to a proper sheath and a proper allocation of the different points and so forth have been observed until they are supplying the electricity and are able then to find out, by degrees, whether there is any leakage or not by methods of testing? Eventually they would ascertain whether there was a leakage or not but meanwhile there might be an accident and the leakage might be the cause of fire. When they discover a leakage they have to make good their case. They may perhaps even have to take it to a court of law and the contractor has to undo the plastering and a great deal of the other work that he has done, before the matter can be put right.

One or two simple Amendments are required in this Bill, but I think I have shown the House that, as matters stand, the power of entry after the electricity has been supplied, and the power of refusal at a later stage are quite useless. There should be further powers as to entry upon premises under such conditions as may be decided in Committee. There should be power of entry into premises in course of construction, in order to ascertain whether the wiring and fitting are being properly installed. That is necessary in order that we may get the most efficient and in the end the most economical construction, and save waste in the house as well as providing safeguard against accidents. If the points which I have mentioned are borne in mind in Committee upstairs then under those conditions, but only under those conditions, my company, and I take it other companies, will be prepared to give their hearty support to the Second Reading of the Bill.

In the whole of this Debate so far, there has not been a single mention of the consumer. Throughout, it has been a debate about the position of those who supply electricity.

Except for the one reference to economy.

Surely there are two sides to this question. The hon. Member for St. Albans (Sir F. Fremantle) said something about economical working, but he did not develop that point. He just mentioned it and passed on, and it is quite evident that in the view of some hon. Members, only the suppliers are to be given any real consideration or any advantage. The speeches which we have heard seem to be directed more towards the development of particular companies and suppliers of electricity than anything else. The hon. and learned Member who moved the Second Reading of the Bill, made a very good speech. He reviewed the Acts already in operation, and I think his statement showed that a consolidation Bill is necessary. But while we are not going to take any exception to the Second Reading of this Bill, there are many points on which we propose to put down Amendments, if the Bill goes to Committee. Many of the Clauses of the Bill are not satisfactory to us because we do not think they comply with that equality between the parties concerned which ought, to obtain, or that consideration to the consumer which ought to be given by the supplier.

I must admit that I do not know much about the question of electricity, and I may be wrong in some of my arguments, but if I am shown to be wrong, I am always ready to try to put myself right. Although this Bill has, shall I say, the blessing of many great organisations such as the Municipal Corporation Association, we in this House are compelled to give full and fair consideration to all points which directly affect the interests either of the selling company, the consumers, or the community as a whole. To begin with, I would point out that Clause 1 which gives power to suppliers to break up private streets reverses the provision of the Electric Lighting Act, 1882, which definitely states that electricity undertakers may not break up streets, not repairable by the local authority, without the local authority's consent. This Bill confers this power upon undertakers, on the application of owners or occupiers of premises abutting upon undedicated streets. Does that mean that if a street is not dedicated it is taken as belonging to the property owners, and that the undertakers can break it up without the consent of the local authority, on the application of tenants in that particular neighbourhood?

Then there is nothing in Clause 1 as to laying dawn the road again after it has been broken up by the undertakers. There is no provision requiring that it shall be laid down to the satisfaction of either the local authority, or the owners or occupiers of property near it, nor is it stated who is to be the judge as to whether a road has been left in a proper condition or not. These matters should not be left entirely to the undertakers. In Clause 3, Sub-section (2), powers are to be taken in regard to the misuse of electrical power. I think the penalties laid down in this Clause are too heavy, particularly for small consumers. It is true they are said to be maximum penalties, but a fine of £5 and of 40s. for every day on which an offence is committed after conviction seems to impose a penalty which is in excess of the offence. People of course ought not to misuse electricity, but the penalty ought to be within the competence of the consumers.

Clause 4 deals with the supply of electricity by agreement. I understand that undertakers may be and are required to supply electricity within the meaning of paragraph 30 of the Schedule to the Electric Lighting (Clauses) Act, 1899. I do not know whether there have been any subsequent orders or regulations altering that Schedule. Paragraph 30 of it states that undertakers failing to supply energy to any owner or occupier, to whom they may be and are required to supply energy, shall be liable in respect of each default to a penalty not exceeding 40s. for each day on which the default occurs. If that provision has not already been altered, this Clause is going to alter it, because Sub-section (I) provides

"if the undertakers fail to supply electricity to such persons they shall not be liable for any damages occasioned to such persons, by reason of such failure unless the failure is caused by, or in consequent of the wilful neglect or default of the undertakers."

Who is going to be the judge of "wilful neglect"? Is it to be where a supplier has failed in his contract or undertaking with the consumer? "Wilful neglect" ought really to be defined by some competent person or competent authority, and I am sure that that could be done. It appears to be a one-sided matter if everything is to be left entirely at the discretion of the undertakers. In Clause 5 there is a question which has been mentioned by others this morning as to the power to cut off supplies when charges have not been wholly paid by the consumer for energy or for apparatus or fittings supplied on hire purchase terms. It is quite new to include the cost of fittings, which are quite a separate thing.

It is not quite accurate to say that that is new, because it is already in Section 23 of the Oxford Corporation Act, 1933.

I am not referring to what is in a private Act, but to whether it has been provided in a public Act. A private Act of a city or corporation cannot be looked upon as being the law of the land. It is something specifically defined for the benefit of that particular area, and I am confirmed in what I have said that these things ought to be treated separately from every point of view, and ought not to be looked upon as one charge. Also in Clause 6 there is power to charge the consumer for the cost of cutting off supplies. If people are not fulfilling their contract, I suppose you are right in cutting off supplies, but I am sure that in Clause 6 something is being introduced which is not in common practice. The undertakers determine that a consumer's supply shall be cut off, and they send their inspector or workman to cut it off, afterwards sending in a bill for the cost of the work. It is like a trader sending in a bill for a debt and charging the cost of the postage. I think that the cost ought to be borne by the undertakers, because the consumer is not asking the undertakers to cut off the supply.

These are only one or two points which probably will have to be dealt with in Committee. Then Clause 7 gives power to recover summarily as a civil debt any sum less than £20. Why £20? Does that mean that the small consumer is to be singled out for different treatment? A small consumer may be in debt for a sum of £5, £10 or £15, but a large consumer may owe £50, £60 or £70, and the same power, according to this Bill, is not given to prosecute if the amount is over £20. Is this provision definitely put in, in order to penalise the small consumer?

It is the very reverse. The object of putting that in is to avoid taking two sets of proceedings against the small consumer, so that he may have the whole case dealt with in a court of summary jurisdiction.

I am quite satisfied with the reply of the hon. Gentleman, because he understands the law better than I do. In Clause 8, power of entry is given. That has been mentioned also, I believe, by the hon. Member for St. Albans (Sir F. Fremantle). It is rather a peculiar thing, because everyone looks upon their own home as their own property, at least as long as they are paying rent for it, and it is not reasonable for any inspector or person employed by the undertakers to insist upon a right of entry and inspection without proper notice being given. There is nothing in Clause 8 to say that an inspector must give notice if he wants to inspect an inhabited property. Under Sub-section (3), 48 hours' notice has to be given where property is unoccupied. Why should they have power to demand an entrance to a house to inspect the building or anything else without giving due and fair notice to the tenant? Why should the circumstances of occupation not be taken into consideration?

There is no tenant when the house is unoccupied.

I am speaking about houses when people are living there. Surely they are entitled to the privacy of their own homes, unless they are given proper notice asking for inspection. In Sub-section (3)we find that if the premises are unoccupied, not less than 48 hours' notice must be given. That is reasonable, provided every effort has been made to find who is really the owner. Then, in Sub-section (4), if immediate admission is refused to any officer of the undertakers, or he is hindered from exercising such powers, a person may be liable to very heavy penalties. Why should the undertakers have a right to insist upon going into private homes, and persons who refuse them admittance be subject to very heavy penalties? These are points which will be raised in Committee, and we are hoping to move several Amendments to the Bill as it now stands, because we do not consider it quite reasonable from the points of view to which I have referred. Then Sub-section (5) of Clause 8 says that the provisions of the Clause shall only apply to dwelling-houses. Why this differentiation? Is it intended to penalise the small consumer or the poorer section of the people who use electricity?

I want to help the hon. Member. One very much appreciates that a man's house is his castle, and therefore it is necessary to take some steps to see that a tenant or owner is protected; but the purpose of this Clause is to deal with cases of emergency. Cases may arise where, perhaps, there is a fuse or something of that sort which might possibly set the house on fire, in which circumstances it would be, obviously, impossible to give 48 hours' notice.

I can understand that, but I have never known anybody who would not give way in case of emergency or who would rather see their house burnt down. If there was any emergency, I am sure that nobody would stand in the way of an immediate entry by anyone who was going to help in the difficulty to be faced. These are some of the points with which we want something done, because in some cases the penalties are too heavy. In Sub-section (4), for instance, the penalty is to be a matter of £5, and 20s. for every day on which the offence is committed after conviction. Clause 10 deals with the acquisition of land for sub-stations, and I agree that they must have land, but there are powers and opportunities for getting land under present Acts of Parliament. There is a provision in Sub-section (1) as follows:

"Provided that the Acquisition of Land (Assessment of Compensation) Act, 1919, shall not be incorporated with any order made under the provisions of this section except in the case of an order made by a local authority."

Why the word "not"? Is it in order to give some further power to suppliers or undertakers to get land by easier methods? I am sure that the opportunities now open for the acquisition of land that is proved to be necessary are numerous and not very difficult to operate.

It is only in the case of local authorities that they have these powers, not in the case of private companies.

Why should private companies have them?

Private companies are not given the powers.

In Clause 12 power is given to break up a street for the whole width of the street, and again nothing is said about relaying the street to the satisfaction of any authority or owner. I think that is giving the undertakers far too much power. It is a kind of home rule to do what they think right and proper without consultation, agreement, or understanding with other people. Clause 13 deals with the attachment of brackets, and so on, to buildings and bridges. I had to deal with this question a very great number of years ago, because I happened to own the house in which I lived at that time and they required to put a bracket on the chimney stack of my house. I took objection, because to me it was obnoxious; I did not like it. I thought it was not only defacement of the property, but something which I would not allow if I could avoid it. However, I had to yield to the powers that be. I feel that a large number of people are like myself and do not want these attachments to their houses, and if they do not want them, they ought not to be compelled to have them, because there are other means whereby wires can be carried, without imposing a nuisance, or an eyesore on persons owning property in order to meet the requirements of an undertaking.

It is never impossible to find a second way out of the difficulty, and I think these people ought to have the right to say that they shall not have what they believe to be unsightly, or it might even be dangerous, fixtures attached to their property. If it is neither unsightly nor dangerous, it may certainly be distasteful to the property owner, and I hope something may be done in this regard. We are not going to vote against the Second Reading of the Bill, but, as I say, we reserve to ourselves the right to put down Amendments in Committee, because I feel that the Bill as it stands is one-sided and ought to be given further consideration in the interests of the consumers, of the local authorities, and of the community as a whole.

I approach this Bill from the point of view of the private individual who is a little bit afraid of monopolies. The House has heard already that nearly every one of the powers asked for in the Bill has been granted, either to a public authority or a private distributing company, in the Committee rooms upstairs, no doubt after very careful and, it must be added, very costly inquiry, but I think the time has come when the House of Commons should have an opportunity of taking a bird's-eye view of the whole of these powers that are creeping into, private Acts of Parliament, so as to be able to see whether the course of these various powers is such as to interfere unduly with the rights, and not the liberties, but the pockets of private citizens. For that reason, I was very glad to hear the hon. Member who spoke last say that his party would not oppose the Second Reading of the Bill, because this, to my mind, is eminently a Bill to be dealt with in Committee upstairs, and there is no doublt that the promoter of the Bill will be willing to listen to any reasonable requests that are put forward for amendment in the direction of protecting the private citizen.

There is no doubt that the Bill is backed by an immense amount of authority. It has already been stated that the Electricity Commissioners have given it very careful consideration and, I believe, taking it all along the line, their approbation. I do not think it is out of order to say that in another place it has gone through the whole of its stages after extraordinarily careful examination, so that I would urge that the Bill should be allowed to go now to its Committee stage, where any objections by individuals or others can be dealt with. One point more. I think that, in view of the costliness of legislation to undertakers in having constantly to apply for one or other of these powers in Bills which they have to put forward, it is in the interests of the community as a whole and of avoiding wastage of time and expense—those who are connected with local authorities know how much time and expenditure it takes in order to carry private legislation through—the House should deal with these various powers in a comprehensive Bill like this, which will be carefully considered in Committee.

I do not wish to oppose the Second Reading of the Bill, but I can find absolutely no enthusiasm in its support, and my principal reason for that is that it does not deal with the one thing which, to my mind, is all-important in regard to the supply of electricity, and that is the disparity of prices in different parts of the country. I recognise that it would not be reasonable for me to oppose a Bill introduced by my hon. and learned the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Thorp) merely because he is not setting out to do something which I would have liked him to do. Therefore, I will come at once to the two Clauses in the Bill about which I want to say a word. My hon. and learned Friend gave a very impressive list of associations in support of the Bill, but I failed to detect in the list the name of any association of consumers, and it is with that in mind that I view one or two of these Clauses with some doubt. I come, first of all, to Clause 21, the title of which is, "Period of error in defective meters". This Clause deals with the case where the meter of a consumer has been in error, and it is found subsequently that the amount of the charge by the supplier to the consumer is either too high or too low; and it sets out that in such a case the adjustment is to be limited to the amount of the under or over-charge which has accrued in one quarter. I understood from the speech of my hon. and learned Friend that this was one of the Clauses for which he said there was a precedent.

It is in the words of the Worksop Act of 1933.

There is a difference of view between my hon. and learned Friend and myself and some other Members of the House as to whether a Section in an Act of some particular corporation is a precedent for general legislation. I cannot hold that view. Although Worksop has this power, I do not know whether it has worked there well or ill; but when it comes to saying to the whole country that where a meter, which is probably the property of the supplier and which in any case can be sealed by him, is found to be in error, and it is found that consumer has been paying too much for a period perhaps of a year or more, before the error is found, the consumer is not to be able to recover the overcharge, this is a Clause that requires careful examination. As I understand, the charge for electrical power is not always based on the figures shown on the face of the meter. Sometimes, owing to the type of agreement between the supplier and the consumer, the figures which can be read on the face of the meter have to be multiplied by a factor, which may be 1.1 or 1.5, or something of that sort. Suppose, however, that by carelessness when the meter was installed, the wrong factor was put on the face of it, and for a year the consumer pays too much for his current, he would be unable to recover the overcharge. I cannot find any justification for a suggestion of that sort.

There is a provision by which the consumer can contract out of the operation of the Clause altogether.

I know, but I cannot see that that is a satisfactory excuse for bad legislation. Suppose the consumer has not contracted out or does not know of the provision, that is no excuse for putting in a provision of this character. I pass to Clause 25 and I am not certain whether I have interpreted it aright or not. On the face of it, it appears to me to limit the power of Parliament to alter or revoke special orders, and to provide that in the future Parliament will only be able to do so with the agreement of the undertakers in question. I am certainly very doubtful whether it is desirable that Parliament should give up its rights in this matter in favour of the party which, after all, is the interested party in the case of a special order of this character.

I should like to relieve the anxieties of the hon. Member for Wigan (Mr. Parkinson) with regard to the breaking up of roads. In Section 12 (2) of the Electric Lighting Act of 1882, he will find that the provisions of the Gas Works Clauses Act, 1847, with respect to the breaking up of streets for the purpose of laying pipes, etc., are applied. If he will consult the Gas Works Clauses Act, for which Sir Robert Peel was responsible 87 years ago, he will find in the summary of the Sections at the side, "Streets etc., broken up to be reinstated without delay." The next Section is, "Penalty for delay in reinstating streets", and in case of delay other parties may reinstate and recover the expense. The words "make good" are used. What the hon. Member desires, therefore, is already part of the law.

That does not mean that they are compelled to reinstate to the satisfaction of the local authorities.

The phrase "make good" is used.

That is only a proviso in case there is delay and other people take on the work to make good.

In Section 11 of the Act of 1847 it says they shall make good; "making good the same" are the words used, and power to put up red lamps and all the usual things with which we are familiar were provided for as long ago as 1847. I do not think, therefore, that the hon. Member need worry very much about that aspect of the matter.

My hon. and learned Friend was kind enough to ask me to put my name on this Bill. I did so with pleasure, because I thought of the days 30 years ago when I was trying to understand such things as the electro-magnetic theory when I was an engineering student. I was inclined then to believe that the lack of electrical progress in this country was due to the fact that it was so complicated and that we did not succeed technically in the way we should have succeeded. Later on, when I got into practical affairs, I found that it was not our lack of technical skill that was the trouble. The delay in progress of electricity in this country originated in the Houses of Parliament. The Act of 1882, passed by a Liberal Government, and the Act of 1888, which slightly improved the position, passed by I Conservative Government, apparantly thought that everybody who was going to risk his money in an electrical undertaking must be presumed to be a scoundrel, that it was not right to make any money, and that if he did provision must be made that within a measureable period of time somebody should come and take the undertaking away from him. This country was the pioneer, the country of Faraday, who discovered the process on which this great industry has been built up. It was the country which had the first electric undertaking—Mr. Gatti and his restaurant started the first electricity supply company, and Ferranti, running on new lines, opened up the second. In those days the idea of distributing current more than half-a-mile from the station was not dreamt of.

There was chaos and anarchy and varying systems of supply areas in this country because we were the pioneers and doing all the experimental work, but Parliament, instead of helping, very largely hindered. It was not until 1919 when the Act of that year was passed to set up the Electricity Commissioners, and also to some extent to liberate the enterprising people, that we really started to make progress. I do not know whether hon. Members realise what amazing progress has been made. If you contrast the output of units by the authorised undertakers, that is to say, those people who generate current to sell to somebody else, excluding the railway companies which generate for their own use, it will be found that the authorised undertakers in 1933 produced three times the number of units produced in 1923. It is the most amazing progress, for it was made in the main during periods of difficult trade. There was no boom throughout that period. Progress has continued during the worst time of the slump, and that progress has not been in the least assisted by the grid because that, practically speaking, has only just commenced to operate. Much of the progress has been done by municipalities, and I think even more by some of the greater private enterprises which have done the pioneering work in the rural areas.

My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Dumbartonshire (Commander Cochrane) wondered why the Bill did not deal with the variation in prices of electricity. I am afraid Parliament cannot deal with that. It arises out of physical conditions, conditions of density of population and a variety of factors. As anyone with any experience in electrical engineering will know, you cannot deal with this variation by Act of Parliament.

Parliament dealt with the penny post.

But the varying conditions in electrical supply are so great. It is true that if you could make the electrical supply industry in this country one vast monoply to supply large numbers of people at a loss, and recoup that loss by charging the other people more than they ought to be charged, you could get a flat rate throughout the country, but it would not be an equitable rate. It is manifest that if you have to carry expensive lines through thinly populated areas and tap off a supply from the grid that your minimum transformer installation will involve a capital charge of, maybe, £10,000, and in any event there will be an expensive local distributing system. It is clear, therefore, that those consumers cannot be supplied on the same terms as people living in a densely populated area. I remember the three years when I was a member of the electricity committee of a municipality. Two of us who were electrical engineers had to spend three-quarters of our time trying to explain to laymen why it was legitimate to charge different prices for what appeared to be the same thing, why the lighting rate should be different from the power rate. Such points are not quite so simple as would appear at first sight.

But we have made very great progress, and I think this Bill will help that progress. I should call it "a consumers' Bill"—quite honestly a consumers' Bill. Naturally, the companies and municipalities will gain, because anything which helps them to sell more electricity will be to their advantage, but they can only sell more if they have greater facilities and it is made easier for them to carry out their duties. Public utility undertakings require monoply powers, which are essential, up to a point, because of the vast capital expenditure involved. We must give them certain rights of interference, rights of digging up streets and rights of entry, because they are inevitable rights, and the more cheaply they can get these rights, provided the liberties of the public are protected, the better. If we impose upon every electricity supply undertaking the necessity of coming to Parliament, at great cost, to promote a private Bill, with all the expense of expert witnesses, counsel and Parliamentary agents, it is the consumer who has to pay for it in the long run. The purpose of this Bill is to relieve the consumer of those charges, and when the powers which are asked for are powers which ought to be general and not special I hold very strongly to the view that they should be incorporated in general Acts and not be sought for at all by special Acts.

I do not think this House ought to legislate on general matters by means, in the first place, of some small Clause in some private Bill which goes through without the House as a whole ever being aware of it. What happens is that four of our colleagues upstairs examine the Bill, and the fundamental issue which happens to be embodied in a particular Clause may not be apparent to them, and it goes through without anybody realising it. Then, in a few years' time, we come along with a Bill such as this, the bulk of which is good, and get Parliament to give its assent. A whole lot of things have crept through almost unnoticed in that way. I have objected as much as most people to private Bills which have incorporated some piece of general legislation. On Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of next week every one of us will be uttering the magic word "object" after prayers against Bills seeking certain powers for corporations. It is a very good thing that powers of this kind should come before the House for general review, and therefore this is a good Bill, from that point of view, because it gives us an opportunity of examining powers which have been given to this company and to the local authority.

In one sense this is obviously a committee Bill. There is no general, broad principle running through it, but it is made up of a series of committee points, and most of the speeches this morning have related to matters which will be developed when discussion in Committee arises. I would like to draw attention to one or two of those points. My hon. Friend the Member for Edge Hill (Sir J. Rutherford) who has had to leave in order to attend to another engagement, asked me to draw attention to Sub-section (2) of Clause 2, where reference is made to the roads belonging to canals. He is thinking there of canal towpaths. I am not certain whether the point he desires to raise is a sound one, but I am putting it forward at his request in order that the introducer of the Bill may have an opportunity of consulting with those with whom he is acting to ascertain whether the point is a sound one. They are perturbed about the breaking up of canal towpaths.

Negotiations on that point have been taking place for some time.

I am glad to hear that, and I will not press the point any more. I am not in a position to say whether the contentions my hon. Friend desired to urge were sound or not, but I promised that the Bill should not pass its Second Reading without me mentioning them. I have received a communication with regard to the proviso of Sub-section (1) of Clause 2. This is a somewhat technical matter to those who are not directors of electric lighting companies or members of electricity committees of local authorities. I am not one now. I understand that under the Local Government Act of 1929 the responsibility for the streets referred to in that proviso is no longer that of the local authority, that is to say, of the municipal corporation or urban district council, but of the county council. But in any event we are now contemplating streets which do not belong to a local authority but to private individuals or companies or co-operative societies or other bodies of that kind, and it does seem uncertain whether, in the matter of certain individual rights—vested interests if you like to call them that: all interests are vested interests, and are only undesirable when they are somebody else's—we have not thought of the wrong people.

Then by hon. Friend the Member for St. Albans (Sir F. Fremantle) discussed the right of entry, and suggested that under Clause 8 further provisions were required. He told us of a mains engineer walking past a building in course of construction and coming to the conclusion, I presume, that the insulation of the wiring would not be very satisfactory; and it was suggested that one could not find it out once the place had been built. Let me assure him that there is no particular difficulty about that. It is only necessary to apply to that wiring system a sufficiently high test voltage in order to find any weakness if the installation be inadequate. If the installation is lacking there is a little instrument which will reveal that information.

The point is that when you have detected a leak you want to know in which room it is and in which part of the wall, and after that you have to pick the plaster to bits in order to put the matter right; whereas it would be more satisfactory if the test were made during the construction of the house.

Every firm which undertakes electric wiring is familiar with what happens—that the system is not connected up to the supply mains until it has been subjected to a test, and as the contractors who have done the wiring do not want to be involved in loss—because they would have to put it right—they are careful to see that the installation will pass the test of the "unseen eye," which is much more efficient than the human eye, even the eye of the mains inspector of Welwyn Garden City. I congratulate the hon. Member on the way in which he advertised the merits of his constituency.

Clause 20 raises a point of conflict between two groups of people in the electricity industry, those who make apparatus and those who supply current. There is in this Clause, very properly, a provision with regard to the type of apparatus, in order to ensure safety against fire, and the risk of personal injury from shock. One reads occasionally of the tragedy of people being killed by an electric shock while in the bath. Water renders the surface of the body highly conductive.

It says in Sub-section 4:

"Byelaws made under this section shall not have any force or effect unless and until they have been confirmed by the Electricity Commissioners."

Broadly speaking, it is the supply authority who will draft the by-laws and the Electricity Commissioners who will approve them. Manufacturers of apparatus take the view that they should be brought into consultation, because it is the endeavour of manufacturers to standardise. If they standardise their manufacture, they will sell cheaply, although standardisation may be the enemy of progress if the standard becomes stereotyped. If you are not careful in standardising, or if you over standardise, you will check progress.

I am a little doubtful whether my friends who are engaged in the production of apparatus would be right in trying to force upon all supply companies what, for the moment, is standard apparatus, because that might check the adoption of improved apparatus produced by somebody else. While anxious to do all that we can in the way of standardisation which results in cheaper production, and is serving the consumers' interests immediately, we must be sure that in the long run we do not check progress. In Clause 23 there is a reference to working capital. I have had some correspondence with my hon. and learned Friend about this, because that is an indefinite phrase. I do not think that the Interpretation Act has defined "working capital." It may be said that it is difficult to define, but that you "know one when you see one"—it may be that you know working capital when you see it. If my hon. and learned Friend will refer to Section 27 of the Electricity Act, 1926, he will find that a variety of types of capital are mentioned, and that working capital is one of them. Therefore, it does not fall by implication into the other capital.

What I have in mind is that when an undertaking is carrying out a development for which normally it requires sanction, because of the capital expenditure involved, they should not be put into the position of carrying through a development without notice by using capital for expenditure which, in the ordinary way, would be regarded as permanent capital expenditure. There might be opportunity for certain people to evade that strict supervision which we desire with regard to electrical undertakings if they are permitted to use as permanent capital that which is, strictly speaking, authorized as working capital. If working capital is not defined there is a chance of some improper use, and I should be glad if my hon. and learned Friend would consider that point.

One of my hon. Friends was a little doubtful about the power with regard to meters. He only interpreted it in one way, but this is a two-way matter, because it treats the supply company and the consumer in the same way. There may be occasions when the meter is running fast and registering more current than is being used, and there are occasions when the meter is running slow. There are ingenious people who, by putting certain pieces of apparatus near a meter, can induce it to run slow. Obviously, no one can know upon what date a meter, which upon the date of its installation was presumably accurate, began to go wrong. Care is taken to see that meters are initially accurate. The process of testing meters is most elaborate. Every manufacturer does it, and the meters are also tested by an independent authority before they are put into operation. If it is subsequently discovered that a meter has gone wrong, we are entitled to assume that it was right to begin with. We do not know when it went wrong. Everything is done to avoid unfairness, because some consumers might be overcharged and others undercharged.

Since no one can tell the date when the meter went wrong, Parliament has fixed an arbitrary date by saying that it will be presumed that the error commenced at the beginning of the last quarter. That seems a satisfactory way of settling a dispute which cannot be satisfactorily settled in any other way since nobody knows when the trouble began. The hypothetical case mentioned by the hon. and gallant Gentleman of a meter wrong in the beginning will very seldom arise. It may conceivably happen in a very small number of cases, but any reasonable supply authority would be willing to make the necessary adjustment to meet a case of hardship. It would be a terrible mistake to leave the law so vague that every case of the wrong working of a meter involved a dispute instead of laying down a definition of the terms upon which such disputes are to be settled. I therefore ask my hon. and gallant Friend not to press his objection.

Clause 21 is as much in the interest of the consumer as it is in that of the supply company, because meters run fast as frequently as they run slow. Since the consumer lives constantly with the meter and the supply company only sees it once a quarter, the opportunities of the consumer to influence the habits of the meter are very much greater than those of the supply company. On balance, the risk is far greater against the companies than against the consumer. I hope that the objection will not be pressed. My hon. and learned Friend is to be congratulated upon having selected this Bill, in the opportunity given him by the Ballot, and he will be rendering a service not merely to the supply companies but to the consumers if the Bill becomes law. I have indicated that there are one or two Amendments I should like to see included, but I hope the House will give the Bill a Second Reading, because it represents a step forward in the progress of the electrification of our country.

This is a very dangerous Bill to introduce on a Friday morning. It has some 29 Clauses of penalties to be inflicted on citizens and householders, penalties of all sorts and kinds up to five years' penal servitude. My hon. Friend the member for South Croydon (Mr. H. Williams) has said that it is a consumers' Bill, and that it is all for the good of the consumer. Of course, it is very nice for the consumer to get five years' penal servitude under one Clause, or five or 10 pounds' fine under other Clauses. I can find nothing in the Bill in favour of the consumer. We are told that the Bill has been approved by the Electricity Commissioners. Surely the Commissioners ought to have some regard to the consumers, and they might have put in something to show that they had considered the consumer when approving the Bill. Hon. and learned Gentlemen will come along one Friday morning, and we shall find that they have repealed Magna Charta. Exactly what will happen then I do not know. I submit that a Bill like this——

I should like to remind the hon. Gentleman that it was the legal gentlemen who recently prevented the repeal of Magna Charta, and that they did not receive as much support from non-legal hon. Members as they might have had.

I am interested to hear that the legal Members prevented the repeal of Magna Charta, but generations change, and even legal Members cannot be relied upon. In all seriousness I submit that we ought not to have Bills on Friday morning which inflict penalties upon private citizens. If penalties are to be inflicted, let the Government introduce the Bill and let the Government expound it to us. The hon. Member for Wigan (Mr. Parkinson) has touched upon the case of the cutting off of the supply of electricity. Under Clause 5 the supply of electricity can be cut off—

"in any case in which any part of any charge or sum due to the undertakers for electricity supplied by them or in respect of any apparatus or fitting let on hire by them or supplied by them on hire purchase terms … remains unpaid."

What an unwarrantable thing.

I would remind the hon. Gentleman that corresponding provisions exist in regard to gas undertakings, and that it is only by accident that they have not been applied to electricity.

We must consider the Bill on its merits. It is all very well to say that certain Clauses are included in certain Acts, and therefore ought to be included in this Bill, but, if you have a string of twenty camels with a load on each, that does not mean that you can shove the whole load on to one camel. With further reference to Clause 5, if you buy an electric kettle at a shop and do not pay for it, the shopkeeper has the ordinary recourse to the law for the recovery of the money, but if you buy an electric kettle from the electricity supply undertaking, the undertaker comes and cuts off the whole of your lighting supply, perhaps because you are a few pence in debt. You may dispute it; you may say that it is a rotten bad kettle; it may have obvious defects and need repair; but that does not matter; you are to sit in darkness until you have paid the last penny. That is very unreasonable, and I hope that, if this Bill is given a Second Reading, it will be examined very carefully by the Government and by those Members of the House who are appointed to the Committee, in order to see that the rights of the private individual are adequately and properly protected.

We have had a very interesting debate this morning, and I feel almost certain that my hon. Friend the Member for Bilston (Mr. G. Peto), who complained of its taking place on a Friday would have complained just as much if it had taken place on any other day. I was very glad to find that I had opposite to me, in the hon. Member for Wigan (Mr. Parkinson), such a firm defender of the rights of private property. In that I sympathise with him, although my real estate in this country is not as extensive as his.

Question.

I do not propose to say very much this morning, because this is a private Member's Bill, and all that I want to make clear is the position of the Government. As was pointed out by my hon. and learned Friend who introduced the Bill, it is very similar to a Bill which was passed in another place in the last Session of Parliament but made no progress in this House owing to the Prorogation. Most of the provisions that it contains already exist in the private Acts of a large number of electricity undertakers, and I think that that fact may be taken as proving that the provisions set forth in the present Bill are provisions which are useful, and possibly necessary in many cases, to electricity undertakings.

The provisions of the Bill are in the main non-controversial. There may be matters of detail with which some hon. Members disagree; we have heard this morning that that is the case; but on the whole it is a non-controversial Bill, and, if passed into law, it will undoubtedly have the effect of saving in the future considerable expenditure on Private Bill legislation by rendering it unnecessary for private undertakers to ask for powers which will have become part of the general law of the land. The Ministry of Transport and the Electricity Commissioners consider that the conferring of the powers set forth in the Bill should prove useful to authorised undertakers. Therefore, the Government propose to raise no objection whatsoever to the Second Reading of the Bill, and consider that it is a Measure the provisions of which might very well be considered in Committee. If the House does give the Bill a Second Reading, and it does go to a Committee, the Government, of course, reserve their right to put forward any Amendments which they may regard as necessary on further consideration of the Bill in Committee.

I shall not detain the House for more than a few moments. I desire, in the first place, to support the Second Reading of this Bill, and to congratulate the Mover and Seconder on the clarity and rapidity with which they explained to the House a very complicated Measure. The Seconder even went a little further than an ordinary explanation, because he endeavoured to show the House how to get electricity for nothing, and I am not sure how far he was inciting us to any criminal offence. The House will perhaps wonder how the big rival industry of the local authorities, namely, the gas undertakings, would view this Bill. Naturally, they have given the matter very careful consideration, and, jointly with promoters of the Bill, have agreed to the Measure. Of course, they do so with a sense of envy at the facility with which the younger electricity industry, backed by a vast and powerful Government Department, is able to amend its legislation, while they, a much older industry, are still in darkness, working under Acts which are over 80 years of age. I do not desire to detain the House any longer, but only to wish the promoters success through all the stages of their Measure.

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

I beg to second the Motion.

The explanation of this Bill is perhaps rather technical. The subject-matter of it is the old common-law doctrine that, if a workman in the employ of a person is injured by reason of the negligence of someone who is in the same employment, then the employer of the negligent person is not liable for damages to the workman injured. It is a very old doctrine of the English Common Law, and it never applied in any country except England. I do not know the origin of it, but very possibly it was to prevent workmen from conspiring among themselves to inflict an injury on a fellow-workman and so enable that fellow-workman to obtain damages from his employer. I am sure, however, that, whatever may have been in the minds of our ancestors when this rule was brought into existence, it is nevertheless a rule of law at the present day, and it is a distinct hardship on a workman who is injured by the negligence of a fellow-workman that the mere accident that they happen to be in the employ of the same employer should render him incapable of recovering damages. Furthermore, at the present day no doubt all employers are, very wisely and properly, insured against the kind of accident that happens in a case of this kind, and in these circumstances it is only proper that the very old Common-Law doctrine should be altered. Accordingly, I hope the House will give the Bill a Second Reading.

I must apologise for my absence when the Bill was called. I did not think that it would come on so early. The object of the Bill is, roughly, to repeal what is known as the doctrine of common employment. In normal circumstances an employer is responsible for the negligent acts of his servant and if anyone is injured by the negligence of the servant the employer is liable to make good by damages the injury which is caused. There has been, however, since the year 1837 an exception to that rule; an exception engrafted upon the common law of this country by a decision which has certainly received a great deal of criticism. The decision comes to this that, although an employer is liable to make good any injury caused by the negligence of his servant, he is not liable if the person injured happens to be another servant of his. Stated in that bald way it seems to be quite an indefensible exception. It is a very gross injustice to a large number of people, and for the past 70 years considerable efforts have been made to mitigate that injustice, and set aside this principle engrafted upon our common law, but no one has gone so far as to try and get rid of the injustice altogether. A great many things have been done and a great many alterations have been effected in the law, but nobody has faced the question of totally amending the law as brought about by that decision in 1837.

The idea which gave rise to the decision was this: as it was said that an employer only undertakes with his work-people that he himself will not be negligent in his conduct towards them, and that the only duty he undertakes is to employ reasonably competent servants. It was also stated that when a man goes to work for an employer he impliedly takes the risk of his fellow servants being negligent. That is a doubtful proposition and one which is very likely to work injustice. However, that was the principle adopted in 1837. Somewhere about the same time the same principle was adopted in some of the States of America, but in America very strong measures have been taken to mitigate the effect. So far as the Continent of Europe is concerned no Continental country of any importance has allowed an employer to escape from making good the result of the negligent acts of his servants.

I was giving some of the facts in regard to other countries with respect to this doctrine of common employment, and I should like to illustrate its effect so far as this country is concerned. Considerable inroads have been made upon the doctrine in this country and there are liabilities on the part of employers now which will in some cases cover the negligent acts of the employer's servant who causes injury to a fellow servant, but those inroads upon the doctrine do not themselves abolish the doctrine, except with regard to one Statute. What I am saying now must be taken purely with reference to the Common Law. As the Common Law stands, I might give one or two concrete illustrations of the way in which it works.

Suppose a man has in his employment a chauffeur and a gardener. On some Saturday afternoon, say, when the gardener is off work and has no contractual relation with his employer he happens to be walking along a public street and is knocked down by his employer's car, negligently driven by the employer's servant. In that case the employer is liable to make good in damages the injury to the gardener. But suppose, instead of it being a Saturday afternoon, when there was no contractual relationship, the gardener happens to be coming out of the drive of his master's house during the period of his service and the chauffeur brings the car down the drive, negligently, and knocks down the gardener while he is at work in the drive, at Common Law that gardener has no remedy against his employer for the damage inflicted upon him. Let me give another illustration. A chorus girl is employed in a theatre, where staging has been put up under the direction of the manager and that staging has been put up negligently. The chorus girl is injured, perhaps for life, but at Common Law she has no remedy against her employers or the owners of the theatre. It may be that she can prove personal negligence on the part of the stage carpenter and she might have a remedy against him, but everybody knows that that is not worth very much.

Let me take another example, which I think is more striking. Every seaman on board a ship is in common employment with the master of the ship. Let the master of the ship be negligent, as negligent as he may, thereby injuring one of the seamen, so far as the Common Law of the country is concerned the seaman has no right of any sort or kind against the owner of the ship, although the master is put in sole control from the point of view of navigating and managing the ship while it is at sea.

As I have said, there are considerable inroads upon this doctrine, but before I deal with those inroads let us consider the ordinary Common Law rule with regard to damage and injury caused by negligence. The master of a negligent servant, if the servant causes injury to a third person, is liable in Common Law, as far as damages go, to make good to the person injured the damage which he has received. That includes all the loss of wages resulting from the injury, all expenses to which the injured person may be put in getting right as far as he can from the injury, and a sum such as a jury may think is reasonable for the pain and suffering which he has undergone. All those ingredients go together to make up, as far as it can be made up, money compensation for the injury that a man has received. Therefore, the remedy at Common Law is a substantial remedy, and it is also an immediate remedy, because when an action is brought at Common Law the damages are assessed once and for all, and juries are always warned that they have to take care that those damages shall be reasonably ample because of the fact that they are assessing the damages once and for all.

Let us take the position with regard to the inroads which have been made upon that doctrine. The first substantial inroad was made in the Act of 1880. I am not going into every detail with regard to those remedies. I am stating them roughly, but I hope precisely, in order to illustrate the difference. Under the Employers' Liability Act exception to the doctrine of common employment was made to the extent that a master became liable for defects in his machinery or plant and for the negligence of servants who had the power to give orders while in the exercise of that power, and also for servants who had powers of superintendence while in the exercise of that superintendence. But while Parliament recognised that those inroads should be made, on the general doctrine of common employment, Parliament limited very wisely the amount of damage which might be recovered, because in no case under the Employers' Liability Act could a man recover more than three years' estimated wages although he might be maimed for life as a result of the injuries which he had received. Not only that. The inroad upon the doctrine was strictly limited in its scope. It did not apply to seamen, so that the difficulty with regard to the seaman and the master of the ship still remains, and it did not apply to any domestic or menial servants. Therefore it was partial in its effect and limited as to the amount of damages that were recoverable.

A further inroad was made upon this position by the Workmen's Compensation Acts. There a remedy was provided which is irrespective of negligence altogether. There, in what one may call a short illustration of employment risks, a workman who is injured in the course of his employment, whether the injury is caused by the negligence of a fellow servant or by his own negligence, or without any negligence at all, is entitled to compensation, but again there are serious defects in the amount to which he is entitled—limits which are supported and justified by the fact that the remedy under the Workmen's Compensation Acts is entirely irrespective of the question of negligence. Therefore it is thought, when you are giving an all-round remedy of that kind, where the employer may have been the most careful employer in the world and yet the injury happened, that it is only fair that the injury should be apportioned. In those circumstances a man receives under an injury which leaves him still alive, roughly speaking, half the average money which he has earned per week during the 12 months preceding the accident.

There again there is a limit. Although the amount has been pretty sensibly increased, suppose a man is employed at a weekly wage of £4 or £5 a week the limit that he can get in workmen's compensation is 30s. per week. So assuming that he is a workman employed at £4 or £5 per week, his loss would be from. £2 10s. to £3 10s. a week. Apart from that altogether he is not allowed—because workmen's compensations are on the principle of the risk—anything for medical expenses, and should death unfortunately result from the injury the highest amount which his widow can get, irrespective of children, is £300, and in certain cases where there are children she may get as much as £600, but no more. It does not take very much imagination to picture cases where figures of that kind are wholly inequitable and unjust to the widow, and to the children who are left.

The result is that you still have a large number of cases in which substantial injury is caused where there is no effective remedy because of this doctrine of common employment. I will give a simple illustration. Suppose a man earning, say, £4 a week was injured by accident caused by the negligence of a fellow employé. If he was off work for three months, he would be entitled, if he had a remedy at common law, to £52 for loss of wages, to all the medical expenses, and to any other expense to which he was put in recuperating and bringing himself back to health, and he would also be entitled to whatever sum a jury or a judge thought was the right amount for pain and suffering. He will still have the £52, and all the other matters will be added to it. On the other hand, so long as the doctrine of common employment remained, all that he would get under the Workmen's Compensation Act would he £19 10s. doled out to him at 30s. a week. I venture to think that where there is negligence on the part of some persons for whom, in normal circumstances, an employer ought to be responsible, figures of that kind—I have only taken small figures, and I could take much larger figures if I chose—tend to show what a rankling sense of injustice that position may leave. One might take larger figures. An illustration came before my notice not very long ago where a man who was earning a very considerable amount of money per week received from the jury a verdict of £350. He was defeated by the doctrine of common employment. The only remedy left to him was under the Workmen's Compensation Act, and under that Act the total amount that he was entitled to was £40. That shows clearly what a rankling sense of injustice there can be in these circumstances.

My own view has always been that, wherever there is negligence on the part of an employer or a person for whom he ought to be responsible, he should be made to pay full and complete damages for the injury that he has caused. Our law has always been careful to provide that in normal circumstances a man who is himself negligent and causes his own injury should not recover damages, and that is perfectly just. But midway between that we have workmen's compensation, where you get a perfectly just principle of sharing the risk between the two where there is no blame to be attached to either or where the position is equal so far as blame is concerned. But we have not got that position at present because of this doctrine of common employment. That picture will not be completed until we have eradicated from our law the doctrine which I am seeking to eradicate in this Bill.

For some 70 years efforts have been made to get rid of this doctrine. A Commission sat before the Employers' Liability Act of 1880 was passed. The doctrine of common employment has always been a subject for derision among lawyers who have carefully thought it out, but we have not been able to get rid of it. We have rather played with the question by allowing certain inroads upon it because we saw that it was so unjust. I think the day has come to rid our law of injustices of that kind. I think the illustrations that I have given are sufficient to show the grave injustice of the position. I hope that the House will pass the Bill and that it may go on to the Statute Book, where I think it will remove a sense of injustice which has quite rightly rankled for a century, and prejudiced the good relations between employers and employed.

We on this side heartily support the Bill. So far as it goes, it will ensure improved facilities and better protection for the injured workman and his dependents. The criticism to be levelled at it is not so much in regard to what it contains as the absence of provisions to amend the Compensation Law. A great deal of improvement is necessary in the Compensation Law. I should like to see the Home Office introduce a comprehensive Bill covering every phase of compensation. This Measure is only a further proof of the development of the Compensation Law in the tendency towards a complete scheme of insurance for all occupational accidents and diseases. Until 1880, in order to justify a claim for damages against an employer, the injured workman had to prove negligence not only on the part of the employer but also on the part of the employer's servant, and the various defences available made it practically impossible to succeed.

He had not to prove negligence on the part of the employer's servant. If he did that, he defeated his own claim. He was limited to his employer. Unless he could show that his employer was negligent he had no case.

I made that mistake. He had to prove negligence on the part of the employer. It became evident that a change was necessary, with the result that the Employers' Liability Act, 1880, supplemented the Common Law. Subsequently we had the Compensation Acts, and a number of these have been introduced and passed, but years of experience demonstrated the necessity of more protection for the injured worker. Under the Compensation Act of 1927 there was no need for the injured worker to prove negligence on the part of the employer or on the part of the employer's servant. All that is essential now is to prove that he received the accident arising out of and in the course of his employment. This shows the gradual tendency towards a very complete scheme of insurance on behalf of injured workers. If the Bill is passed, as I hope it will be, I believe it will bring the Common Law more into conformity with the principle that was introduced in the Compensation Act, 1927.

Under the Common Law an employer is bound to provide facilities, so far as he reasonably can, which will prevent accidents to his workmen. It is true that he cannot warrant that the conditions of employment will be entirely immune from accident. That is impossible. But still, under Common Law he is bound to carry on his business in such a way as not to expose his workmen to unreasonable risks. There is a duty imposed upon the employer to see that his workmen shall not suffer injury arising out of any negligence on his part. The responsibility of employment rests either personally upon the employer or upon one of his agents and the responsibility of selection should also carry with it the onus of responsibility for any risks arising either in connection with negligence on the part of the employer or of any of his servants. The right of selection is entirely personal on the part of the employer or his agent. If because of incompetence on the part of an employer or an employer's officials, or by reason of the negligence or incompetence of a fellow workman, injury is caused to another workman it is unfair and unreasonable that an employer should be able to evade his obligations.

A large number of changes in the conditions of employment, and many economic factors have come into existence during the last few years which make the possibility of accidents through mistakes or incompetence, or negligence on the part of fellow workers, much more evident to-day than was the case years ago. There has been the introduction of machinery, which has a tendency to group workers together and make them more dependent on one another than they were 30 or 60 years ago. The risks of accidents occurring through negligence on the part of a fellow worker are more frequent to-day, and there is a tendency for these risks to increase. These changes in the conditions of employment are not the result of anything the worker has done; they are the outcome and should be the responsibility of the employer. Take again economic conditions as they apply to-day. There is an intensified competition for labour, the problem of unemployment, piece work methods, all of which have a direct bearing on the mentality of the workers in our various industries. Therefore, I cannot see any justification why, in the case of any accident occurring as a result of the negligence of the employer, his agents or officials, it should not carry with it the responsibility of the employer to indemnify the injured worker. I welcome the Bill for these reasons. I wish it had been a more comprehensive measure and had covered a large number of the inequalities which now exist. I hope the House will accept the Bill and place it on the Statute Book as soon as possible.

I have the greatest pleasure in supporting the Bill. The doctrine of common employment is now absolutely obsolete. It was invented years ago at Common Law for the protection of the employer when the worker was not in a position to defend himself as he is now. It arose from the old legal doctrine volenti non fit injuria, that is to say, that if a worker chooses to work with another workman he does so at his own risk. That was the ground upon which the doctrine proceeded. A case decided in 1837, is about the best example. The plaintiff was the employé of the defendant, a butcher, and he was injured in his master's cart on account of it being overloaded by another employé. It was held that plaintiff's master was not liable because of the negligence or incompetence of the fellow servant who had overloaded the cart. That was the position at Common Law. The Workmen's Compensation Act made great inroads in this matter, and has done away with it in many cases, but there are a certain number of cases to which it does not apply and to which the doctrine of common employment does still apply. For instance, to members of the Army, Navy and Police; secondly, to persons earning more than £250 per annum, otherwise than by manual labour; thirdly, to casual employés, otherwise than in trade or business; fourthly, to outworkers; fifthly, to members of the employer's family living with him; and, lastly, to persons temporarily hired from another firm. I think it is time that these absurdities should come to an end; that this absurd doctrine should come to an end, and that employers should be liable for the negligence of anybody in their employment.

I find myself in a rather curious position. Hitherto the hon. and learned Member for Norwood (Sir W. Greaves-Lord) and I have always been at variance on questions of compensation. Up to this morning I have always regarded him as looking at these matters from a different point of view, but after hearing his speech this morning I must admit that there are good grounds for a Bill of this character, and I shall support the Second Reading. The hon. and learned Member is well versed in these matters, and this morning has given us a resumé of a position, with which some of us were not familiar. I was not aware of it. When the Bill was printed, I looked first at the names of those who were supporting it. I am afraid that we on this side of the House are always suspicious of hon. Members on the other side. At any rate, I always look to see the names of hon. Members who are supporting any Bill, and I am suspicious if there are no Members of the Labour party. I saw the name of the hon. Member for Bodmin (Mr. Isaac Foot) on the back of the Bill, and that caused me to make some inquiries as to what the measure meant. I wondered what point of view the Bill was putting forward, whether it was for the benefit of the worker or otherwise. I wanted to find out whether there was any change in the outlook of hon. Members opposite, and I am glad to say that they are in this Bill following a line of thought which generally comes from this side of the House.

It has always been our line.

I am afraid that I have not noticed it up to the moment. I support the Bill because I want to give all the protection possible to the worker. An employer has the right to engage his workers and, therefore, it is his duty to see that he engages the type of man who will not endanger the life of his fellow workers. It is his duty. He has the right to employ, and when he does that he should see that he is protecting all his workmen. Assuming that the Bill means that, we heartily support it. The hon. and learned Member for Norwood re- ferred to medical expenses. Later on we may persuade the hon. and learned Member and other hon. Members opposite that medical expenses should be obtainable in all cases. I do not see how a line can be drawn, let us be candid with hon. Members opposite. I want to bring in much greater recompense than men get now. I think they are entitled to it. It a man is injured in his occupation his household income ought not to be lowered in consequence. If he is deprived of the opportunity of earning wages he is entitled to full wages while he remains idle because of injury. I do not think any one can argue that he is not entitled to medical expenses. I would like to debate that point with any hon. Member opposite. I do not think it is possible to put forward a case against my argument.

Later we hope to get the assistance of hon. Gentlemen opposite in securing an Amendment of the Workmen's Compensation Act. This Bill is certainly a step in the right direction. I do not know how many cases it will involve. I do not know whether it means greater expense to the employer, or whether it will mean that he would have to be more careful as to whom he employed. I have not found out many cases to which the Bill would apply. I certainly cannot remember many in the trade to which I belong. But if the Bill means only six outstanding cases in a year it will give to the workmen a confidence and security which have been overlooked for many years. The last speaker told us that there had been many attempts made since 1837 to get the law amended. Now is the time for a National Government which claims to represent all interests to put the matter right. On this occasion they will get the help of the Opposition, and it is not often that we can offer that.

I am glad of the opportunity of giving a kick to a doctrine of English law which, since it was initiated in 1837, has perpetrated an immense amount of injustice amongst workmen. Carrying my memory back to the earlier years of my life, before the Workmen's Compensation Act was introduced, I can remember specific cases of grave injustice, generally in the case of women, done because negligent employers escaped the consequences of their negligence. The doctrine is less than 100 years old. As has been said, it was introduced in 1837. It was laid down by Lord Abinger and has been followed ever since. One of the ablest of British lawyers was Lord Esher. Giving evidence before a Commission in 1877 he condemned the doctrine in the strongest terms, and from time to time eminent judges have pointed out how unsatisfactory it was. The position has been explained by the hon. and learned Member for Norwood (Sir W. GreavesLord) with his usual clarity and lucidity. He put the case so clearly that I need not detain the House by pressing the matter, but it does give me satisfaction to give a kick to a doctrine that has done much injustice to the workers of this country.

I would like to congratulate and thank the hon. and learned Member for Norwood (Sir W. GreavesLord) for introducing the Bill. It is true that it is not a big Bill. Perhaps the statement made by the last speaker will explain why an injustice that appears to be admitted by everyone has not been abolished hitherto. The hon. Member said that the doctrine was less than 100 years old. It is perhaps one of our British characteristics that we never redress an injustice until it is at least 100 years old. If the Bill becomes law I think it is true to say that every act of negligence will come under it. In my personal experience of the building industry I have known of hundreds of cases. There is no doubt that every year there are hundreds of cases in which a man is puzzled to know why he cannot proceed under common law. He knows from his connection with a trade union, or from advice given by a trade union that he cannot proceed under the Workmens Compensation or the Employers' Liability Act, but he may have heard that there are other means of recovering damages where the negligence of a fellow-workman is admitted, but that that source of justice is barred to him. He therefore feels that he is being unjustly treated because the court of justice which is open to other people in similar circumstances is closed to him.

I could give many instances within my own experience of accidents in which people have been seriously injured by the almost deliberate neglect of fellow-workmen. I could give examples by the score. In the case of many buildings there is a great rush if the building has to be opened by a certain date, and the foreman is speeded up by the manager or perhaps by the employer. He is told that he must get the job done. The workmen are then compelled to get on to scaffoldings that are known to be unsafe. They are compelled by the action of the foreman either to take risks which an ordinary foreman ought not to be compelled to take or to throw up their jobs. If, as a result, an accident occurs and they suffer injury they have under the Common Law no opportunity such as other people would have of getting damages which would include not only compensation for actual loss of wages but the cost of medical attention and some adequate compensation for the personal suffering inflicted upon them. Everybody with any sense of fairness will support the principle of this Bill. I hope the Government will give it the facilities which they alone can give and do away with one of the grossest injustices on the Statute Book to-day.

I was not here when my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Norwood (Sir W. Greaves-Lord) addressed the House but I am certain that he explained with his usual clearness the meaning of this Bill. For that reason I do not propose to go into the question of common employment further than to give one example of how this doctrine may operate most unfairly against a certain class of people. Speaking from memory I think anyone who is in receipt of more than £350 a year is not covered by the Workmen's Compensation Acts. Hon. Members opposite will agree with me—or I should say, perhaps, that I agree with them—that there is a great deal of hazard and danger involved to those who work down the pits. I wish to give the case of an underground manager who is in receipt of more than £350 a year and who through the negligence of someone who is working at the surface, a worker who has let go one of the tubs, or in some such way, sustains injury and perhaps loses his life. What is the position of such a man at the present time? If he is injured he cannot recover any damage. If he is killed his widow or other dependants cannot recover compensation.

During the short time that I have been a practising member of the Bar this doctrine has struck me as one which operates very harshly and unfairly indeed, particularly against those in the class I have indicated. It may be asked why should we differentiate between various classes. Why allow a certain class to have a preference because they happen to have been injured through the negligence of their fellow workmen, over and above those who are able to receive workmen's compensation only? But we already have what one may call, for want of a better term, a favoured class. A person who is injured in those circumstances may call in aid any breach of or any statutory offence under the Factories Acts, as the doctrine of common employment does not they apply. Therefore the answer to those who put forward the argument which I have just described is that it does not hold water for one moment.

When settling pleadings, or looking into the question of whether an injured person had or had not a case at Common Law, I have gone through certain statutory rules and regulations made under the provisions of the Factories Act, and, as I say, I have found that at times this doctrine has acted very harshly and unfairly. There is no reason to my mind why a person who is injured owing to the negligence of a fellow servant should not be in the same position as a man who is knocked down on the highway. The master should be made liable and the injured party should not be one penny out of pocket for putting himself, as far as possible, in the same position as he was in before the accident. We shall probably be told that the proposed change may add to overhead charges. I do not think it will add anything worth speaking of to overhead charges. If people employ men in factories and at dangerous trades and occupations, the least they can do is to insure properly against accidents which may occur owing to the negligence of their servants. I have pleasure in supporting this Measure.

This Bill raises a very important issue, and I shall suggest to hon. Members that the real point which is involved in making up one's mind as to whether it ought to pass or not has not been brought out as fully in this Debate as it might have been. We have had several speeches in favour of the Bill, and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Norwood (Sir W. Greaves-Lord), whose knowledge of, and interest in, this subject is so well-known, has given the House an admirable survey of the history of the matter and the present position. I want to supplement that survey to some extent by offering certain considerations different from any which have been brought out so far. It is quite true that we must start with the general principle of our law that a master or employer is liable for damage done by the negligence of his servants, provided it is negligence in a field where under the Common Law there would be liability. That doctrine was modified by the doctrine of common employment. It is no part of my case this afternoon to defend the doctrine of common employment. It has been very much criticised. I may quote what was said about it by Mr. Justice Neville as recently as 1917:

"The doctrine of common employment appears to me a purely arbitrary and artificial rule founded upon neither principle nor, prior to 1837, authority; a mere excrescence on the Common Law, devised, apparently, for the purpose of exempting a particular class from an otherwise universal liability. The best to be said for it probably is that it was considered at the time of its invention to be in furtherance of public policy inasmuch as the application of the law as it stood might operate to the discouragement of the employment of labour. The rule, however, to-day is established beyond question, and it cannot be disregarded by the court."

It was founded, as the hon. and learned Member said, on the idea that you implied in a contract of service a term that the worker took the risk of the negligence of fellow-servants. The result of that was, as he pointed out, that in Common Law the only ground or right of action against the employer was for his own negligence. No doubt from 1837 onwards this matter was questioned. Certainly from 1875 onwards the matter became what I may call acute in this House, and Bills were introduced, there was a Select Committee, and in 1880, as a result, the Employers Liability Act of that year was passed which did away with the defence of "common employment," broadly speaking, so far as superintendents, foremen, or plant and machinery were concerned, with a limit to the right of compensation.

Perhaps the House will bear with me, because I think this is perhaps an important point in connection with this Bill. That Act having been passed in 1880, an acute controversy arose in this House as to masters and men contracting out of it. There was nothing in it and there is nothing in my hon. and learned Friend's Bill to prevent an employer and employed person contracting out. I think it is fair to say that in most cases where employers did contract out of the 1880 Act the alternative terms offered were such as could not properly be criticised. In some cases no doubt they could be criticised, and there was a movement, by Members in this House to forbid contracting out, or rather to see that contracting out was only on terms which were fair to the workmen. That was an acute controversy, and so far as I can see, if this Bill is to be passed it is likely to raise that controversy again, because, unlike the Workmen's Compensation Act, there is nothing in my hon. and learned Friend's Bill to prevent contracting out, not in its terms nor in its general idea of getting the atmosphere of the Common Law into this matter, it might be contrary to its idea to forbid contracting out. That seems a serious difficulty to which we may be brought back if this Bill is passed.

On the question of contracting-out and common employment, Mr. Burt—a very well known name—introduced a Bill in 1890, very much on the lines of my hon. and learned Friend's Bill to-day, but that Bill was not passed, and Parliament arrived at what, I think, I may describe, without pressing the word too hard, as an alternative solution of the problem which had been raised by the admitted anomalies of common employment. Parliament then said: "We will not abolish common employment, but we will adopt quite a new principle. We think it right that a worker who is injured in the course of his employment should get compensation, negligence or no negligence. That is to say, we will put on the employer a liability quite unknown to the Common Law; a liability in the direction of insurance." I have heard the hon. Member for Leigh (Mr. Tinker) make speeches, in a slightly different connection, and I think he would like to give the principle a further push in the direction of insurance, but it was undoubtedly the idea underlying the Workmen's Compensation Act that workmen within its terms should be insured to some extent against any injury received in the course of their employment. Successive Acts, of course, have extended the principle. In 1900 the agricultural labourers were brought in. The Act of 1906 was the big extension, and the Acts are now consolidated in the Act of 1925. There have been one or two minor Amendments since.

May I point out how much beyond anything that could conceivably be regarded as ordinary Common Law liability are the principles laid down by Parliament in those Acts. Compensation is payable whether there is negligence or no negligence. Further, the fact that the workman has contributed by his negligence to the injury which is a defence at Common Law, is no defence. Under the latest Acts, even serious and wilful misconduct which precludes getting compensation for partial incapacity is no defence, in the case of death or serious disablement. So that Parliament has imposed on employers, liabilities quite unknown to our Common Law—liabilities which were not contemplated by Common Law as liabilities at all. What I am suggesting to the House to consider is whether there is not some inconsistency between now, as it were, going back to the other solution and putting on employers—and I am one of those who think that employers as well as employed contribute to the health of our body politic—extended Common Law liabilities, whereas at the same time you are imposing on them the statutory liability for negligence or no negligence.

Of course, the object of this Bill and the reason behind it is the fact that Parliament having extended the area of liability, in the way I have attempted to describe, restricted the amount of compensation recoverable under the Act below the amount which would have been recoverable at Common Law. Imagine for a moment this case. A man gets a job with two alternative forms of contract. The master might say "You come into my employment, and I will pay you damages on the ordinary Common Law basis if I or my servants are negligent." That is one alternative. Or he might say, "You may prefer to be paid, negligence or no negligence, if you receive any injury in the course of your employment, but the amount of compensation will be less than the full Common Law negligence scale, but, on the other hand, you will be able of course to draw it in many cases where you could draw nothing at Common Law." Surely one great advantage of the Workmen's Compensation Act principle is that it makes it unnecessary to go into the question of negligence or no negligence.

As I understand it, a master must not employ incompetent fellow-servants under the Compensation Act.

I am much obliged. It is true to say that Parliament has not been completely logical and has left a certain amount of old Common Law or quasi Common Law liability about, because it was not anxious to take away rights which were in existence.

Mr. Joseph Chamberlain in 1897 pointed out that he was keeping the Common Law remedy available because in those cases where there was negligence there should be full damage, and Common Law remedy, weak though it is, I admit, is expressly kept alive in the Workmen's Compensation Act.

I did not remember what Mr. Joseph Chamberlain said, but I will remember it in future. Parliament said, very naturally, "We do not want to take away any existing right."

He expressly put two scales of payment, one, full damage, where there was any question of loss.

He left the full scale for negligence in cases where it could be recovered at the time, but I should be surprised if he did not suggest that the principle of workmen's compensation was the right way of dealing with the problem that had arisen. I was saying that surely it is better that in these cases where workers are injured the matter should, if possible, be settled without litigation or with the minimum of litigation and controversy. That is one of the great advantages of the Workmen's Compensation Act. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Norwood, in a speech which he made in this House in a debate in the Autumn, I think it was, pointed out that of the 460,000 workmen's compensation claims settled in a year, only 1/2–3rds per cent. went to the courts, and of that 1/2–3rds per cent. only some 83 got beyond the county court and got to the Court of Appeal. I do not think my hon. and learned Friend would suggest that it would be possible for claims made under this Bill to be settled without litigation in a very large number of cases. There would be many cases in which the higher scale of compensation would naturally and inevitably, and quite rightly, encourage a workman to start proceedings, which would necessarily be controversial, which would in many cases be unsuccessful, and which would involve costs to both sides.

Another point that I would ask hon. Members to consider is whether, if there are cases, as I accept, where my hon. and learned Friend feels that the compensation paid is not sufficient, this is the right way of dealing with that matter, namely, to extend the number of cases and the area in which liability depends on negligence and contributory negligence. I do not know what views employers as a class will take as to this Measure. Certainly it is not conclusive of the merits of any Measure, what view one body or other that may be affected by it may take, but I suggest to hon. Members that at any rate they might say something of this kind. They might say, "You have put on us a very extended liability under the Workmen's Compensation Act. Is it really right now to put on an increased Common Law liability?" Unlike the suggestion made by one hon. Member, might they not, with some force, advance this Bill if passed, as an argument against any extension or development of the Workmen's Compensation Act?. That, I think, is worthy of consideration. With regard to the attitude of the Government on this Measure, of course, it is a free vote of the House, and hon. Members will make up their own minds. The case for the Bill has been put so strongly and ably that I am afraid that my speech may seem to be almost exclusively de- voted to arguments against it, but they are put forward in no unfriendly spirit, and I think it is right that these reasons which the Government feel ought to be considered before the Bill is approved or otherwise dealt with ought to be borne in mind and weighed before hon. Members make up their minds as to what action they will take in regard to the Bill.

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

I ask the special indulgence of the House in carrying on the heavy task which I have undertaken, and I will endeavour to deal with it as speedily as possible. The Bill which I am presenting is a Bill to enlarge the liberties of England, namely, the liberty to enjoy a decent and happy life. This task has engaged the largest abilities which have been seen in both Houses of Parliament in recent years, and it would be wrong to reopen this matter without acknowledging the very considerable help which was given by the late Lord Birkenhead in bringing these matters under the consideration of Parliament. There fortunately still remain powerful voices in the other House, of men who have given yeoman service in prosecuting this reform, and to-day I venture, as one who has very long experience of the administration of justice, to ask the House to consider this very grave matter. I desire to repeat an observation I made here two or three years ago in proposing a related measure, that in my view a review of the divorce laws of this kingdom should be undertaken by a responsible Government. Unfortunately, it is the case that no responsible Government is in sight, as far as I can see, which will undertake this task, and such is the accumulation of private and public mischief as the result of not proceeding with this reform that I have undertaken this task in the hope that the Government may be persuaded to respond to the general opinion, not only in this House but in the country, that this matter should be brought under close discussion.

At the same time, I realise that there are aspects of the matter which are not suitable for discussion on the Floor of the House, and I am going to ask the Government to consider the propriety of assisting this reform by giving the House an opportunity of considering upstairs the matters which I raise. The House knows that as far back as 1912 a Royal Commission sat for two years. It examined 246 witnesses and finally, by a majority of nine to three, recommended Parliament to carry out the proposals which are contained in this Bill. The origin of these proposals is not a private source. It is the most influential source to which Parliament can turn, namely, the considered and prolonged activity of a Royal Commission. In another place a distinguished ex-Lord Chancellor introduced a similar Bill to this, and in 1921 in another place, in a large assembly of, I am informed, 252 peers, a majority of 38 was obtained for these proposals. The sense of the other place was sought in 1922 and its approval was gained. In 1924 the sense of the House of Lords as to these proposals was again sought, and approval again obtained. So that the House of Commons is in the almost unparalleled position of being asked to consider proposals which have, in detail, been approved by another place on three occasions.

I desire rapidly to scan the proposals of the Measure for the House has, no doubt, a general familiarity with the matter. In form, the Bill enlarges a Statute, passed in 1925, which was connected with a review of the work of the High Court of Justice. It sets out that a petition for divorce shall be on these grounds: first, that the respondent has committed adultery; second, has deserted the petitioner for a period of at least three years; third, has since the marriage treated the petitioner with cruelty; fourth, is incurably insane, and has been continuously a certified lunatic for a period of at least five years immediately preceding the petition; fifth, is an incurable habitual drunkard, and has for a period of at least three years been separated from the petitioner in consequence of habitual drunkardness; and, sixth, is undergoing imprisonment under a commuted death sentence. These are the main grounds for divorce which were recommended by the majority of the Royal Commission. I ought to say, to allay very proper anxieties which are entertained in some quarters, that the Bill recites that the court must give the closest possible scrutiny to the facts relied on in the petition. It says that the court, whether the petition is opposed or not

"shall satisfy itself so far as it reasonably can that the facts alleged in support of the petition are proved, and as to the existence or otherwise of any of the circumstances specified as constituting defences to petitions for divorce."

Further, it puts upon the bench a judicial discretion which may give rise to objection, but, in my submission, the recommendation of the Royal Commission should be acceded to, and, if the court is satisfied that the case is one in which a decree should be granted, it should grant a decree. That is the general discretion which is placed upon the judge.

Does that mean that at present cases are not examined thoroughly by the court?

It is the present practice, but I am afraid, judging from some comments I see of this proposal, the present practice is not familiar to every person. I took occasion to emphasise this point, for there may be doubts as to whether a case can slip through owing to any loose administration. I was surprised to see it suggested by a prominent solicitor the other day that if this discretion were distributed over a number of judges, instead of being confined to two or three, there was a risk of some loose administration. I thought that was a very surprising observation coming from that source, and for that reason I thought it necessary to emphasise the scrutiny which is to be provided.

The Bill provides that the defence to these grounds of petition shall be: first, that the petition is the result of collusion between the parties; second, that where the petition is on the ground of adultery, the petitioner has been accessory to or connived at or condoned the adultery; third, where the petition is presented on the ground of cruelty, that the petitioner has condoned the cruelty; and fourth, where the petition is on the ground of insanity or habitual drunkenness, that the petitioner has been guilty of such wilful neglect and misconduct as has conduced to the insanity or habitual drunkenness. The House will see that the closest possible compactness is provided so that these enlarged grounds of jurisdiction shall not result in petitions being granted without good cause. In addition to these defences, there are certain discretionary defences: first, that the petitioner has during marriage committed adultery or treated the respondent with cruelty or deserted the respondent; and, secondly, that the petitioner has unduly delayed presenting or prosecuting the petition.

There are other matters in the Bill into which I need not go in detail, but I ought to mention a circumstance which may cause criticism. It is that where a petition for judicial separation is presented, either by the husband or the wife, on any ground for which a petition for divorce might have been presented, and the court is satisfied that such grounds exist, the court may grant a decree of judicial separation and thereupon it shall no longer be obligatory for the petitioner to cohabit with the respondent. Further additional grounds are set down in accordance with the recommendations of the Royal Commission for making a marriage void. I will not trouble the House with them, but will put the matter generally in this way. The House can be assured that the grounds set out in this Bill are the grounds recommended by the Royal Commission founded upon the long inquiry to which I had alluded, and that there is reason to believe that these grounds have received additional urgency during the 20 years since these recommendations were made by the Royal Commission. I think there is a special danger before the country if any further delay takes place in reviewing the matrimonial law. It is said—I do not take the responsibility of saying it—that the delay in bringing about necessary changes in the Marriage Law has resulted in that law being ignored, and that the redress which is not available within the law is now being taken beyond the law. I do not think that is a circumstance which will fail to impress the House as showing the urgency of dealing with this matter.

In the last few minutes I want with great respect to glance at the opposition that is made to this Bill. It cannot be said, I think, that I have ever shown any want of respect for the religious scruples of others, and in what I am going to say I do not wish to utter any words of offence, but I consider I am performing my duty in making this comment. This House is ready at all times to receive advice and counsel from any quarter as to changes in the law, but it is not prepared to accept dictation. There is no authority outside this House which should presume to intervene between this House and the discharge of its duty. There are religious communities bound together by doctrines which are not generally accepted, acting under a sanction which is not universally followed, and derived from a jurisdiction which does not meet with the approval of every person in the Kingdom. While we are ready to recognise the usefulness and validity of sanctions we do not accept, we are bound to recognise, in this mixed Kingdom, that there are others who do not accept that jurisdiction, and any intervention is wrong which will have the effect of limiting or seeking to limit the supremacy of Parliament.

I have purposely stated the matter in very general terms, because I do not want to cause any offence, but I desire to say with the utmost deliberation that the duty of changing the law of this realm rests in this House untrammelled, and we are not going to accept dictation as to that duty from any quarter, however distinguished and however devoted. Further, this opposition, I understand, is founded upon a belief in the indissolubility of marriage, which is a view the law of England, for good reasons, under the wisdom of Parliament, set aside as far back as 1857. There are persons who have never accepted that jurisdiction and never acted on it. This Bill does not require them to do so. All the Bill does is to provide for citizens who desire to have broken marriages reviewed by a court on grounds which Parliament can alone determine. We are not asking any person to resort to these proposals who does not wish to have them. I received a few days ago, as I dare say did other hon. Members, a publication in which it is alleged that Clause 4, the Clause which enables the court to issue a decree of divorce, although the petitioner applies only for a judicial separation, will prevent many from obtaining the relief of separation to which they are now legally entitled. That is a complete misunderstanding of the matter. A lady is quoted there as saying:

"I cannot feel that the guilty party should have any power to impose upon the innocent a remedy against which he or she may have conscientious objections."

The case referred to is where the petitioner with religious scruples applies for a judicial separation and the court, in its discretion, comes to the conclusion that the marriage is so broken that it should be ended, and that the right way of dealing with the case is to make an order for divorce.

Would the hon. Member say what the document is, from which he is quoting, and how it goes on after he stopped reading?

The document comes from a very devout organisation, of which I wish to speak with the greatest respect, the Westminster Catholic Federation; and the words I have just cited conclude that part of the document which deals with the point I have now raised. I am obliged to my hon. Friend for his interruption because it leads me at once to say something of the support which is being given in the country to these proposals.

The House has no doubt received, as I have, a communication from the Mothers' Union. I thank them for their courtesy, because it does not always happen that the promoters of Bills are favoured as I have been in this case with communications. The Mothers' Union is certainly a very distinguished and devout organisation of church people, and it is opposed, and always has been, to these proposals. I am bound to remind hon. Members that the women's organisations of the Labour movement, representing a large concourse of women, have always been in favour of the proposals, and have repeatedly passed resolutions in their favour; and further that the Women's Liberal Federation, which represents a large body of distinguished and active women throughout the country, are also in favour of them, and have taken steps during the last week to inform the House, through various important Members, of that support. In addition, there is very considerable support.

We were not quite sure to which Women's Liberal Association the hon. and learned Member referred, because I believe there are varieties of associations.

I must ask my hon. Friend to excuse me from going into the niceties of Liberal organisation, because I am not a member of them.

The hon. and learned Gentleman is quoting their support as evidence. He calls these women "Liberals" but, from the point of view of some hon. Members in this House, it may be unforgivable to call them pure Liberals if they are not.

May I ask the hon. and learned Gentleman to give us the title of the association?

I am aware of the intense anxieties of the hon. Member for Torquay (Mr. C. Williams), but I can tell him that the resolutions to which I am referring as having been received from the Women's Liberal Federation were passed over a long period of years before the unhappy divisions which he deplores took place. The House can rest assured that my reference to the Liberal women of the country relates to all the organised Liberal women, in whatever way they may now be separated.

I apologise for interrupting the hon. and learned Gentleman again, but he is quoting from what happened years ago, and we ought to know how many years ago it was or whether these resolutions are modern. We have a right to know this. I am interested, and am quite undecided about the Bill.

I desire to relieve the anxieties of the hon. Member as far as I can, but I do not quite appreciate at the moment what they are. I can assure him that the reference to the Liberal women who are supporting these proposals relates to the organised Liberal women of the country over a long period of years, from 1912, when the proposals were first laid before Parliament by the Royal Commission.

I am very unhappy about it.

Will the hon. and learned Gentleman give us a few facts about the Primrose League?

There are hon. Members present who have a closer familiarity with the Primrose League than I have, and who can supply the hon. Gentleman with facts regarding it, although I suspect that he has for long been an ornament of that distinguished organisation. I shall conclude by saying that the support for this Bill is very considerable. While I appreciate that there is opposition, and conscientious opposition, which I desire to respect and which is largely concentrated in some women's organisations I must remember that there are other organisations, to which I have alluded, which equally represent the women of the country, and which are whole-heartedly in support of these Recommendations of the Royal Commission.

I thank the House for giving me an opportunity, in this very short space of time, to deal with this very big matter, and I beg that the opportunity may be used to advance these long-delayed proposals, the lack of which is causing untold harm to the family life of this Kingdom. The proposals ought to receive the active attention of the House at the earliest possible moment. I renew my request to the Government. I do not ask them to assume responsibility for the Bill, but that they should give the country the satisfaction of knowing that the proposals are receiving close investigation. For that reason, I ask the Government to give facilities for the Bill.

I beg to second the Motion.

I am very conscious that I am both ill qualified and insufficiently prepared to do so, and only the strongest and deepest conviction would induce me to intervene in a discussion of this sort upon a matter of such grave importance. We have heard from the hon. and learned Member some details of the origins and the inception of the Bill, and of the Royal Commission, but my own researches lead me to think that it goes back much further than that. The principal proposals of the Bill were, in fact, advocated, particularly by Lord Lyndhurst, as far back as 1857, and they were supported by no small number of bishops, even in those days. It is within my knowledge that there is a substantial minority of bishops on the bench to-day who would unquestionably give this Bill their support. As for the women of England, and of the Church of England, I am sure that the circulars with which the House has been bombarded by the Mothers' Union in no way represent the convictions or the opinions of the 500,000 women therein mentioned. I have good reason for knowing that in a very large number of cases the mothers' unions in various parishes and villages have not for many years had any discussion on the subject, and that the pros and cons have not been brought before them. The Mothers' Union is run by its own council and that council is responsible to itself and does not in my view voice the views of members.

The proposals of the Bill are old-fashioned, in the sense that they were put forward by a very strong all-party Royal Commission in 1912, only three members, two of whom were bachelors, dissenting. The proposals had the support as recently as last October of the President of the Law Society himself, a man of immense experience, and I believe that they have the support of most women of England who have given this matter personal consideration. I cannot believe that a vote on the part of this House to send the Bill upstairs would be received with anything but public approval, and, indeed, public relief. May I make it clear that there is no desire on the part of the promoters of the Bill to make divorce easier; quite the contrary. Rather do we wish to make marriage more holy, easier, stronger and healthier, by making it possible for the State to terminate unions the maintenance of which makes the sacrament of marriage an abiding blasphemy and marriage itself a living hell. There are hundreds—thousands—of homes which are made miserable, and where the life of children is intolerable, from the fact that the very basis of the union has long ago disappeared.

The law in Scotland in the matter of desertion is precisely as set forth in this Bill. It has worked in Scotland for the past 300 years, and I have yet to learn from any Scottish source that it has not worked satisfactorily. Surely the people of England can be trusted with a degree of latitude which the Scottish people have enjoyed for the past 300 years. The basis of the Bill is the basis of the law in Australia to-day. That law, as I am informed, has worked well and smoothly; it has not increased substantially the average number of divorces; and it has the almost unanimous consent of the vast majority of the people of Australia. Australia is not a Continent in which the Churches are unrepresented; it is a Continent where public morals and the public decencies of life are looked at with the same careful scrutiny as in this country. If, then, the law works in Australia and works in Scotland, surely there is at least a case for a further and more detailed inquiry into the need for modifying our own law.

We have to move with the times, and the times have moved. For various reasons desertion is far easier than it was 20 years ago. Divorce has in fact greatly increased in the past 20 years, but the first thing we have to get out of our minds is the idea that divorce is a crime the prevalence of which should be regarded statistically and made the subject of public comment and public discussion. Divorce merely means that some particular union has become impossible and has been terminated. It is, in the enormous majority of cases, the means of entry for both parties into a happier and more fruitful life; it is the end of one frustrated life and the beginning of a new life. But the claim that we should not make divorce easier is one which I think most of us who support the Bill would accept as desirable. We do not want to make divorce easier; we do want to make marriage more of a reality.

If we take the question of our marriage laws as part of our social system, surely the position is this, that we in this House are all engaged, from our various angles and points of view, in the quest for social unity, and that social unity which we seek is based upon the maintenance of the family as the unit in society. All the legislation that we are constantly discussing is meant in the ultimate resort to strengthen the family as the unit. For that purpose we are pressing on with housing; for that purpose we start infant welfare centres; for that purpose we send children earlier to school; for that purpose we have old age pensions and widows' pensions. Everything is done by this House, so far as may be, to strengthen the position of the family as a social unit. This Bill, which aims at a reform of the marriage laws, is to that extent simply an extension of the normal legislative activities of this House in its desire to reform laws which were based upon the Canon Law of 300 or 400 years ago—indeed, some will say, upon a misinterpretation of that Canon Law.

The opposition is, broadly speaking, as I understand it, of two kinds. Firstly, there are those who regard marriage as indissoluble on whatever ground or for whatever excuse. Secondly, there are those who regard marriage as indissoluble except upon two specific grounds, namely adultery or fornication. Marriage concerns not merely the two individuals. It concerns the children. It concerns society as a whole. I would not go so far as the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for South Nottingham (Mr. Knight) in suggesting that religious authorities outside this House have not the right, and indeed the duty, to put forward their views upon a matter such as this, which is of the most profound importance to society and to the country.

I entirely concur in what the hon. and gallant Gentleman has just said. What I objected to was a sort of dictation to the House in discharging its duties.

I apologise to the hon. and learned Gentleman. I can scarcely imagine it possible that this House would be dictated to by any authority, however eminent. But, descended as I am from three generations of clergymen of the Church of England, I am far from underrating the importance of the ecclesiastical aspect. I believe it to be of vast importance to the country as a whole that this House should examine any change in the Divorce Laws with the greatest care and should discuss them, not indeed on the floor of the House but in an atmosphere better suited to such discussions, in the light of the very best available information. Social workers and judges of the metropolitan and the High Courts have practically without exception expressed their abhorrence of the present state of the law. They have expressed in books quite recently published their disgust at the working of the law which makes the practice of adultery in order to secure the termination of a union, a practically inevitable preliminary proceeding. We hear a good deal about the guilty party. It is clear that in the courts no deduction can be drawn from the result of the proceedings as to who is the guilty party. The word "guilty" has no real relation to civil actions of this sort, and it would be well if those who claim that the guilty and the innocent parties to a suit should be differentially treated should have somewhat greater experience of the proceedings in courts of law.

Our primary duty in the House is to strengthen in every way the position of the family as a unit. This Bill, were it to be considered by a qualified Committee based somewhat on the principles which actuated the Government of 1912 when it constituted the Royal Commission, could be greatly improved. I should wish to surround the institution of marriage with further safeguards than those in the Bill. I should wish to see certain limitations placed upon the operation of certain provisions of the Bill. The last place where these things could be usefully discussed is on the floor of the House. But I appeal to the Government to consider carefully whether they are not doing an injury to the country as a whole by not taking steps to examine afresh the whole question of the Marriage Laws. If the Bill goes upstairs, an opportunity will be given to the House and the Government to apply their mind to one of the most urgent of all problems. I have some experience of working-class difficulties in this connection. The well-to-do have ways and means, distasteful as they may be, to secure release from unions, but working-men, in spite of various alleviations which have been introduced, are in practice debarred in nine cases out of ten from the operation of the modifications introduced in 1925. The mere expense of obtaining evidence, from Canada and Australia, for instance, as to the circumstances of the spouse who has deserted makes it impossible for the Poor Persons Act to be effective.

I do not wish to continue the discussion on the theological aspect. I have dealt with that elsewhere. The convictions of the people of this country are to a very large extent based upon the New Testament to which the vast majority of people of this country still turn as the highest standard they know, and rightly. There is a great body of opinion in this country, not vocal but very real, which attaches greater importance to the spirit of Our Lord than to the interpretations which have been placed in successive ages upon His particular words and phrases, which may or may not be recorded in their correct sense and at the right moment. We ought to give freedom to women and men who are labouring under the cruellest disabilities. We ought to remember the children of those unions. We should bear in mind that, both in Scotland and in Australia, to mention only two countries, this legislation has in fact worked well. I beg the Government, whatever the decision of the House may be upon this Bill, to consider carefully whether they will not take up the whole question and cut the gordian knot by initiating a further inquiry where the Royal Commission of 1912 left off, bearing in mind that the family is the unit to which we must all look in whatever progress we may reach during the next few centuries, and that the object of the Bill is not to make divorce easy, but to make family life more helpful, more healthy, and more sacred.

I beg to move, to leave out the word "now," and, at the end of the Question, to add the words "upon this day six months."

The Debate upon this Bill has, I think, been started under a misapprehension. There is no question of the opposition assuming the nature of a dictatorship. I, as a new Member, and my friends who are associated with me in whole-hearted opposition to this Bill, are in no sense dictating to this House or to our fellow Members, whom we regard as our equals, and even as being better informed than ourselves and more experienced in life, nor are we here at the dictation of any outside body in our opposition. If, as the hon. and learned Member for South Nottingham (Mr. Knight) said, the opposition is dictated by an outside body, that is an innovation not usually followed in this House, I assure him that the intention that such organised bodies as I know which are opposed to this Bill—I refer to the Church of England, and to the Catholic Church which preceded it in the occupation of the Sees of this country—the intention of both those churches was that both the hon. and learned Member and myself should, in due course, reach Heaven. That intention, I take it, is not unfavourable to the state of the Mover of this Bill. He says that the Church has a jurisdiction which does not meet with the approval of a person in this kingdom. That is s very difficult statement to make, and more difficult, I think, to substantiate. Looking to the jurisdiction to which he objects, I have here the Book of Common Prayer, which is a schedule to an Act of Parliament passed in this House, and I think that we might spend a minute or two profitably considering a book which has jurisdiction over many people in this country—a powerful and sacred jurisdiction. It is headed "the Solemnization of Matrimony." It begins:

"Dearly Beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation, to join together this Man and this Woman in holy Matrimony."

That is the origin of the word "Holy," used by the last speaker.

"it is honourable among all men: and therefore is not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy men's carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts that have no understanding; but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly and in the fear of God; duly considering the causes for which matrimony was ordained."

If that is a jurisdiction unacceptable to the hon. and learned Member who moved the Second Reading, it is a jurisdiction which is very effective over the great part of this country. They are words which have been read over the great majority of married women in this country, whom we have been wrongly informed look upon this Bill with favour. Later on it says:

"If no impediment be alleged, then shall the Curate say unto the Man: 'Wilt thou have this Woman to thy wedded wife, to live together after God's ordinance in the holy estate of Matrimony.' Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honour, and keep her in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?"

There is no need for anyone to invoke the shades of the 5th of November, or any historical iniquities in order to draw a red herring across the path. Then it goes on to say:

"Then they shall give their troth to each other in this manner.—I take thee to my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part."

If that is a jurisdiction which the hon. and learned Member does not accept, there should be an affirmation on his part that the cause to which he will devote his life is the disestablishment of the Church of England. Further to the question of dictatorship; a most offensive, tendentious and misleading reference was made to a pamphlet issued by the Westminster Catholic Federation. It is headed "a statement against the Matrimonial Causes Bill"; and the pamphlet most modestly says:

"It is not expected that the legislature will be much influenced by the teaching of the Catholic Church as such."

If those are the words of dictatorship, it is a dictatorship of a type which has not been known in the history of Europe. We are told that this a grave matter. I entirely agree. It is so grave a matter that I do not approve of the suggestion that this Bill should be taken in Committee. The discussions do not receive much publicity; matters which are discussed on the floor of the House are brought to the notice of the community, and the more this matter is discussed before the public the better they will be able to realise the disastrous implications of the Bill upon the public and family life of the country. We shall also be able to draw to the ranks of our opposition those who are more experienced and able to advocate our cause. The word "reform" has been used. "Reform" is a question-begging a word; and to suggest that it must be reform because it is new indicates a want of logic on the part of those who bring forward the Bill, proving that they are not the best custodians of the laws of the country.

The hon. and gallant Member who seconded the measure said that our courts to-day are familiar with what he called "the faking of adultery." If that is the way our courts are managed, if faking of adultery is a common thing, can we trust them with more power than they have at present? If our courts give judgments dissolving marriages upon faked evidence, if that is a true representation of the case, we should not entrust them with further powers. I think their powers should be severely restricted. The proposals in the Bill are, of course, drawn from the recommendations of the Royal Commission. The hon. and gallant Member said rightly that three members of the Commission oppose the Bill, but it was an incomplete statement to say that two of them were bachelors. Bachelors may be lawyers, and may be able to give very dispassionate views in regard to the family troubles of those who are married. If the hon. and learned Member will look at Isaiah he he will find that

"more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife."

Those who are not tied down by their own marital problems may be able to give a dispassionate judgment, and, therefore, the names of these three gentlemen, including the two bachelors, are worthy of record. They are: Cosmo Ebor, William R. Anson, and Lewis T. Dibdin. These names have been known to me from my boyhood, and they must be men who have made their mark on English life. Many of those who received the Royal Warrant in this case have disappeared. The Royal Warrant was issued by King Edward VII to—

"Our right trusty and well beloved Counsellor John Gorell, Baron Gorell, late President of the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division."

It is fair to say that the judgment of a President of the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division on a matter of extended divorce could be foreseen before the appointment.

Does not the hon. Member agree that it is the judgment of a man charged with ripe experience and knowledge?

I should be the last to attempt to give the House a half representation of the case, and when I say—

"our trusty and well beloved counsellor, John Gorell, President of the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division"

it necessarily follows that he is a man of experience, and judicial qualifications.

I did not suggest anything that called for that remark. If I understand the hon. Member aright he intended to convey the impression that the judgment of the President of the Divorce Division was such that it could not be relied upon to guide this House in its deliberations upon this subject.

I repeat my remark that a man who has attained great professional eminence in the expert administration of divorce is not to be expected to give a judgment adverse to the extension of divorce; otherwise he would not hold that position. That view may be open to comment, but it is the view I have.

Surely a man who has had a life-long experience of this subject can be expected to be able to give a view which is of value to a Committee. The hon. Member's point, if I understand it, is that because a man has been a judge in a divorce court he is naturally, or very likely, not from any prejudice but because he has had brought before him many cases of divorce, to realise the value of that side of divorce as against the side of those who oppose this Bill. Is that the hon. Member's position?

If I can, let me deal with this minor point by analogy. It would be as strange to expect a surgeon to advocate homeopathy as an alternative to surgery as to expect a practitioner of divorce to advocate its abolition.

Would it not be as reasonable to suggest that a judge of the Criminal Court would always advocate the extension of crime?

If my hon. Friend can see an analogy there I must leave him with it. I do not want to recede from what is my opinion, and Members must exercise their own judgment on what I have said. The second Member of the Royal Commission was "the most Reverend Father in God, our right trusty and right entirely beloved Counsellor, Cosmo Gordon, Archbishop of York, Primate of England and Metropolitan." The third was "Our right trusty and right well beloved Cousin and Counsellor, Edward George Villiers, Earl of Derby," with many distinguished honours. Then there were Lady Frances Balfour, Thomas Burt, Charles John Guthrie, Sir William Reynell Anson, Sir Lewis Tonna Dibdin, Sir George White, Henry Tindal Atkinson, Mary Edith Tennant, Rufus Daniel Isaacs, Edgar Brierley and John Alfred Spender, and I note with some pleasure that there was added later to the list of famous and unknown names.

No, no, not unknown!

I speak for myself. I am not the common denominator of all the wisdom of this House.

The hon. Member spoke of "famous and unknown names." Surely Lord Derby's name is fairly well known? I do not think the hon. Member really means that they are unknown, if I interpret his mind correctly. It is not usual to criticise the members of a Commission by saying that they are unknown. I do not think this House has ever heard it done before. Perhaps the hon. Member would like to give an explanation as to why he is taking this point of view, which entirely beats me.

I would point out that I did not originate the discussion. The Minority Report was referred to—in my humble opinion flippantly referred to—as the report of three, including two bachelors. I am, therefore, entitled to consider who are the signatories of the Majority Report. Having indicated to the House who were the minority of three, including two bachelors, and who were the majority, I think I can proceed with my argument, and pass from that very casual reference of the hon. and learned Gentleman opposite to men whose names I have held in respect from my boyhood onwards. The first point upon which I would dwell is this question of desertion for three years. I think it will be agreed that desertion is one of the most easily arranged causes for collusive divorce. If it is possible to have faked adultery nothing can be easier than the arrangement of faked desertion. Three years represents a very short period in a lifetime, and there are in this world many bad-tempered men and many sharp-tempered women. There are many who might, in a fit of temper, leave their spouses and for want of some reconciling friend remain separated for three years or more.

Will the hon. Member deal with the question of why it has been so successful in Scotland.

I reply by reference to the Minority Report on the question of desertion. Speaking with all respect of the Scottish people, I gather from the Minority Report—I have not lived in Scotland myself—that divorce in Scotland was twice as common as it was in England at the time of the Minority Report, and that that was attributable to the use of desertion as a cause of divorce. If it is the case that the more divorces we have the better, then there is no objection to quoting the Scottish increase of divorces as a reason for making desertion for three years a valid cause of divorce. But if divorce is a bad thing, the Scottish evidence adduced in the Minority Report is evidence against the use of that cause in England. Further, the Minority Report drew attention to the fact that in America where there was much more experience than there is in this country of the use of desertion as a plea for divorce, it was used so much that divorce had been reduced almost to the plane of divorce by mutual consent. This country in my opinion will be reduced to a very bad way indeed when the contract and status of marriage, which is governed by the words of the marriage service, is reduced to a registered concubinage that can be destroyed and made of no avail on a plea of desertion for three years. I see no reason why three years should be accepted unless as a slavish following of the wish of the Royal Commission. If three years why not two years or one year I It is the experience recorded in the Minority Report that the acceptance of deserton as a ground for divorce is only one removed from divorce by mutual consent.

Then there is the question of cruelty. Cruelty is most difficult to define. The Minority Report points out that what is cruelty in one class, may not be cruelty in another. It suggests that among some people a word or a blow may be accepted without the suggestion of cruelty, whereas in another circle a blow would be an unforgivable insult. Cruelty that is so interpreted in various ways is a poor weapon, an uncertain weapon, for administering justice, and if this word "cruelty" is to be left to the interpretation of His Majesty's judges, it is almost unescapable that mental cruelty will be interpreted under that head, and we know what mental cruelty may be. It may be a long continued torture, but it may also be the imaginings of a neuropath. Unfortunately, in the Press, in magazines and books to-day there is too much consideration given to the sex question. Too much importance is attached to it, and doctors are besieged in their consulting rooms by spouses who are of the opinion that they are suffering from marital, sexual disabilities and disharmonies. There is no question that in the mind of a neuropath any act of the other partner may be misinterpreted as mental cruelty. Mental cruelty is almost every act with which a neuropath disagrees, every action, every word of affection that is omitted, every hour that is not accounted for, every kindness to another are interpreted as cruelty by the neuropaths who have a hungry mania for the burning of incense before their intensified ego. I trust that this House will consider well the word "cruelty" before regarding it as a matter to be presented for the consideration of His Majesty's Judges, and before they are themselves allowed to interpret it as seems best to them.

They have done it for years.

If the judges have interpreted it for years, it helps my case.

The term "cruelty" has been a ground for separation for years. The judges have laid down that there must be some physical result from the cruelty, and it has nothing to do with mental cruelty at all.

I accept that valuable interruption, but physical results from mental cruelty can be produced by any competent physician after three minutes, observation and listening to the patient. [An HON. MEMBER: "It depends on the fee."]

The hon. Member made a statement in regard to physical cruelty which leads me as an ordinary person to inquire what is meant by physical cruelty. Surely if my hon. Friend makes that statement, he ought to clarify what he means by this technical definition so that we may judge.

On page 181 of the Minority Report, there is this passage:

"Speaking of a charge of 'a mild form of cruelty' as the easiest mode to secure divorce, Mr. Stephen Crane said 'The large number of suits filed, and the ease with which decrees may be obtained have a growing tendency to familiarise the community with divorce, and it must be admitted that it is now looked upon by people of respectability in certain walks of life as a popular and firmly-established institution. The view is spreading that if an unhappily married couple desire to have their marriage dissolved, it is a matter which is peculiarly their own affair, and one with which the public has nothing to do. If they mutually agree as to the result, the method of procedure does not much mind as long as it conforms to the Statutes and the rules of court, and provided also that there is no open fraud upon the court in suppressing and inventing evidence.'"

The Minority Report says:

"The conception of what constitutes cruelty differs materially in classes, even in families, and may also differ in the minds of judges."

That word "cruelty" will change in content as other words have changed in the history of the English language. Judges' interpretations vary with popular feeling. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] If you read, as an outsider, the change of outlook with which Judges administer the divorce laws, an outsider is entitled to say, subject to comment, that their interpretation of the statutes with which we entrust them varies from generation to generation.

Paragraph (d) says that one of the reasons for divorce is if a spouse

"is incurably insane, and has been continuously a certified lunatic for a period of at least five years immediately preceding the presentation of the petition."

I am astounded at the moderation of the hon. and learned Member who drafted this Bill. If insanity for five years, if mental incapacity, is sufficient ground for divorce, I am astounded at his want of courage and determination in not adding to that five years' insanity five years' physical incapacity for any cause whatsoever. It may be that the insane cannot speak for themselves, but if it be simply a question of making life easier for a spouse with a sick wife, I could give the hon. and learned Member a present of a number of incurable diseases, paralytic diseases, rheumatic diseases, unpleasant and revolting diseases, which will last for many years and which have caused husbands to live apart from their wives; and I cannot understand, if my hon. and learned Friend is moved by compassion and the intention to go to the root of the matter, why he has only put his finger in this matter upon the incurably insane. The Royal Commission noted that those who had the care of the insane were quite certain in their own minds that the pas- sage of a Clause such as this would have a bad effect on their patients. The least we can do in this House is to say a word in favour of those who cannot speak for themselves. The incurably insane are not incurable in the first five years. It will add to the torment of those insane if they know that their affliction may be an excuse for robbing a man or a woman of the status of marriage. Moreover, to-day, we are taking greater and greater care to allow the insane to go back to their own homes as part of the curative or convalescent process, but that releasing of the insane from the confines of asylum life will be put a complete end to in many cases if the partner outside is already counting up the years of separation in order to get a divorce and marry someone else. It is a blow to the cure of the insane and an added mental torture, unless they are in a condition of complete amentia.

In paragraph (e) we seem to have Victorian temperance propaganda in reference to the incurable habitual drunkard; but owing to the Chancellor of the Exchequer's demands on the brewing industry, the incurable drunkards to-day are hard to find, and I do not think it would pay anyone now to open a new inebriates' home. On the other hand, as I have referred to the difficulties of judges and lawyers in defining cruelty, I would also refer to the great difficulty that members of my own profession have in defining what drunkenness is. There is no more awkward predicament than for a young doctor, not much versed in the use of language, to find himself in the witness box in a motor car case, defending his simple use of the word "drunk", when cross-examined by a counsel learned in the law and experienced in the simplicity in the use of words of members of my own profession.

The incurable drunkard is hard to find, but I can well conceive that if drink be a help to divorce, those spouses who find life with their present partners difficult will find means to increase the consumption of alcohol. Speaking personally, I would find it difficult to give sworn evidence that any drunkard was incurable. There are religious motives that have effected the most magical cures of drunkenness that has persisted for 20 years. I have listened to members of the Salvation Army testifying in public places that after 15, 20 or more years of chronic drunken habits, they have in one minute been cured of that obsession and have spent the rest of their lives telling the world about it. On the other hand, if it is to be suggested that incurable drunkenness is a ground for divorce, I can see many people who have not the most pressing motive to seek the rehabilitation of their partners ceasing to do so because the hon. and learned Member for South Nottingham has now made it possible for them to say, "If we cease to aid our weak partner, then we can have a new partner." To have the prize of a new wife in middle age, a young, beautiful wife, if only one does not take steps to try and assist one's elderly wife to correct her tippling habits, is a shocking proposal. It causes the House to laugh, but laughter is often close to tears.

The proposal is not a kind one to those who weaken in the stress of middle life, in the natural strain that many women feel at the climacteric. It is not kind to suggest that that should be the reason for their being cast away rather than for taking the most adequate and complete steps for their restoration to health and to being once more useful members of the community. Those reparative steps can be taken, and I do not like seeing in black and white the suggestion that there are a sufficient number of incurable drunkards in England to-day to make it worth while adding that to this Bill as a cause of divorce.

We have under paragraph (f) the cause "Undergoing imprisonment under a commuted death sentence."

I can well imagine that in times of civil commotion a servant of the Crown may be sentenced to be hanged for having killed a citizen. I believe it is within the recollection of most of us that that happened in the rebellion in Dublin. Now, that death sentence may be reprieved through the good offices of the Home Secretary. A man in civil excitement has killed someone, but is reprieved from hanging, and then we add to his punishment by permitting his wife to quote that as an unescapable ground for divorce. I think that would give rise to hardship if the condition of this country should not remain always as peaceful as it is to-day. Anyway, I think there is nothing more touching, more beautiful, in the history of domestic life in this country than the fact that women have waited for their husbands for many years, and welcomed them at the prison gates, and that a man who leaves prison, having purged his offence, should see his wife in the arms of another, looking after children that are not his, would add tremendous mental agony to the punishment which he has duly served to purge his offence.

A certain reference has been made to a pamphlet that bears upon Section 5 under new grounds for nullity. There is no word that is more misused on questions of divorce than the word "nullity." Nullity is not divorce, is not a dissolution of marriage. If the conditions of marriage never existed from the beginning, then there never was a marriage, and all a court can do is not to annul the marriage but to declare that a marriage never existed. The great Henry VIII, whose, I think, was the leading case that has been considered by both Houses of Parliament, never sought a divorce. He never asked for his marriage to be annulled. If the hon. and learned Member will look up the records in the Case papers he will find the King sought for a declaration of nullity; in other words, he sought a declaration that His Majesty had never been married. He never claimed that he had made a valid marriage and that it should be broken. It is often suggested in arguments in lower spheres that nullity is an alternative to divorce. That may do as "back chat", but among those who are familiar with the use of words, nullity is no alternative to divorce, and in point of fact, speaking for the Church of which I am a most unworthy member, there are fewer decrees of nullity granted in the courts of Rome than decrees of nullity granted in His Majesty's Courts in the Strand. Nullity bears no relation to divorce, but is often used to cloud the issue, under the suggestion that but for the 5th of November we should still be suffering under a certain dictatorship.

The hon. and learned Member who opened this Debate referred to a pamphlet which drew attention to the fact that there was a great hardship to women applying for a separation if the judge, in the exercise of his discretion, decided that a marriage should be broken. The hon. and learned Member did not inform us fully on that point. The reference in that pamphlet was a reference to a remark of one of the majority Commissioners of the Royal Commission, Mrs. H. Tennant, who made a special statement dissociating herself from the rest. Mrs. H. Tennant said:

"I cannot feel that the guilty party should have any power to impose upon the innocent a remedy against which he or she may have conscientious objections."

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

I think it is a pity that a debate which is of great importance should be clouded by the suggestion that the Westminster Catholic Federation, a small body of people, who have a right to exist, have put forward a claim that the hon Member is doing to-day an act of injustice. The claim that it was an act of injustice was made by Mrs. H. Tennant, one of the majority members of the Royal Commission; and I think the hon. and learned Member owes a word of thanks to the Westminster Catholic Federation for drawing his attention to this statement by a Member of the Royal Commission. There is one big issue behind this question, and that is family life. Family life is a most precious thing, and a man is no help to the good estate of this country if he is enabled, by what is miscalled reform, to start one, two or three families. If the separation of married life is in itself good, and the restarting of new families is good, the only possible conclusion is that the more we have of it the better. If divorce is good and if divorce is a reform, then more divorce would be an even greater reform.