LEAVE.—FIRST READING. (Hansard, 22 April 1858)

§ MR. ADDERLEY

then rose to move for leave to introduce a Bill to amend the Public Health Act (1848). The grounds upon which he made this application might be briefly stated. The Public Health Act of 1848 constituted certain officers, of whom the head was the Chief Commissioner of Works, as a General Board of Health for five years. That General Board, exercising the powers conferred upon them by the Act, called into existence local boards, in various towns throughout the country, and then became to those boards their referee in a multitude of cases; serving at the same time as a court of final appeal. In 1854, when the five years had expired, another Bill wa3 introduced by the noble Lord the Member for Tiverton, who then filled the office of Home Secretary, the object of which was to reconstitute the General Board, but placing it under the Home Office. The House, however, wished that the General Board should be placed under a responsible Minister and erected into a separate department; and the Bill of the noble Lord failed to pass through Parliament. At a later period of the same Session another member of the Government of the day—the late Sir William Molesworth—who was then the Chief Commissioner of Works, proposed a Bill, which ultimately became law, constituting the General Board of Health into a department of State, with a President and offices of its own. The first President was the right hon. Baronet the Member for Marylebone (Sir B. Hall); and no sooner was he installed than he dealt with the subject of the public health largely and decisively. In 1855 he introduced two Bills, and after reading them a second time, referred them to a Select Committee. One —the Removal of Nuisances Bill—he succeeded in passing into law, and, with some little modification and addition, it might be considered a satisfactory and permanent settlement of a difficult and important subject. He also passed in the same year two Bills, which dealt with the whole subject of public health as far as the metropolis was concerned. But the Bill which he introduced relating to the whole kingdom failed to become law, and Parliament sanctioned a mere Continuance Act for one year. In the year 1856 the question was again dealt with by the right hon. Gentle- 1555 man the Member for Hertford (Mr. Cowper), and subsequently by the right hon. Baronet the Secretary for the Home Department (Sir G. Grey), but upon both those occasions the measures which had been proposed had failed to pass into a law; and the result was that several continuance Acts had been passed, under the operation of the last of which the General Board of Health, and with it a number of local boards, would cease to exist in the month of September next. He had under those circumstances felt it to be his duty to introduce a Bill upon the subject, and in doing so he had clone his best to deal with it upon a permanent footing. The general principle of the measure which he was about to ask the House for leave to introduce was one the object of which was to decentralize the whole system; to allow the General Board of Health to expire in September; and to enable all those towns which desired to possess the power of self-administration to constitute local boards through the medium of meetings of owners and ratepayers, two-thirds of whom must consent to the adoption of such a course; it being open to town councils or commissioners, who fairly represented the inhabitants of large towns, to exercise similar powers in that respect as the owners and ratepayers to whom he had just adverted. The Bill further provided that due notice should be given of the time at which the meetings for the constitution of local boards were to be held, and gave a power of appeal in those cases in which such notice was not duly given. He also proposed that the boards which might be constituted under the Act, as well as all the local boards now in existence, should have the amplest powers of self-administration extended to them, and should be no longer subjected to the necessity of referring to a central board in London. Those powers of self-administration would, however, be placed under proper check by granting to individuals who might feel themselves aggrieved by the action of those local hoards a power of appeal, and also by rendering it necessary that they should annually undergo re-election. The appeal would be made to the Secretary for the Home Department. Having stated thus much he believed he had put the House in possession of the various provisions of the Bill. The general medical functions of the Board of Health, as contrasted with its towns' improvement functions, he proposed to deal with in a separate measure, the 1556 former being distinctly central and Governmental functions, the latter essentially local.