§ BARON HENRY DE WORMSasked the Postmaster General, Whether, in view of the great importance to the working classes of the new scheme with reference to Government Annuities and Insurance, which is embodied in the Bill of which he has given notice, and of the serious delay which may arise in bringing the scheme into operation if the consideration of the Bill be much longer postponed, he is able to state whether the Government propose to afford any, and what, facilities for the early discussion of the measure?
§ MR. FAWCETT,in reply, said, he need scarcely assure the House that he should be very glad if an opportunity could be found for consideration of the Bill. In the existing condition of Business, however, he feared he must look rather to facilities being afforded by private Members than by the Government. At any rate, he felt there would be very little use in asking the Prime Minister to give him a day for the consideration of the Bill, or any special facilities at the present time. He was, however, in some hope that the private Members who had given Notice of opposition to the second reading of the Bill 1599 might afford facilities, and he had given private Notice to those hon. Members on Friday that he should make an appeal to them on the subject; and, with the permission of the Speaker, he would ask their indulgence for a single moment while he made that appeal. He based his appeal on this ground—that the Bill affected a great number of people, in bringing facilities before them for obtaining life insurances and obtaining annuities. It was the result of the unanimous recommendation of a Select Committee; but the strongest ground of his appeal to the hon. Members who had to remove their blocking Notices was this—that the important change to be effected by the Bill was the linking of the annuity and the life insurance business with the Post Office Savings Bank. As he understood, that part of the Bill was unanimously accepted. The only point to which objection was taken was simply the limits of insurance and annuities, and he ventured to submit that that might be considered in Committee. One hon. Member who had given Notice of opposition to the Bill had most kindly said ho would remove his Notice. Ho referred to his hon. Friend the Member for Lambeth (Mr. Alderman M'Arthur). He addressed a similar appeal to the hon. Members for Cambridge (Mr. W. Fowler), Wolverhampton (Mr. II. Fowler), and Bridport (Mr. Warton), and could say that if the second reading of the Bill were taken, he should spare no efforts to secure a proper discussion of the points to which they objected when the Bill should reach the Committee stage.
§ MR. W. FOWLERsaid, he had no objection to the Bill, so far as it related to the alteration of the machinery of the Savings Bank. His only objection to the Bill was in respect to the limits of insurance—[Cries of "Order!"]
§ MR. SPEAKERIt is only with the indulgence of the House that the hon. Member can speak.