§ MR. WEBSTER (St. Pancras, E.)I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he is aware that at several of the older police stations in the Metropolis the sleeping dormitories are not divided into compartments, and that the constables occupying them were, at the last Registration Courts, struck off the Register of Voters, and thereby disfranchised; and whe- 528 ther he will take steps to remedy this for the convenience of the men, and also for enabling them to exercise the franchise to which they are entitled?
§ MR. ASQUITHIt is a fact that at the older police stations, which include some of the most important in the Metropolis, the dormitories are not divided into compartments. I am not aware to what extent the claims of constables to vote have been disallowed on this ground; but I am informed that the Revising Barrister at Hammersmith allowed the claims of 35 policemen, who slept in common rooms at the Hammersmith station-house, to be put on the Register in respect of a £10 occupation qualification. In all the new stations the men have separate cubicles, and the same arrangement is adopted in the older ones as they are from time to-time rebuilt. But I cannot sanction the expenditure of public money in the making of structural alterations, which are not needed for reasons of administrative convenience or efficiency, for the sole purpose of increasing the number of Parliamentary voters.