MR. J. CARVELL WILLIAMS (Notts, Mansfield)I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what has been the result of the promised action of the Home Office in regard to the illegal tables of fees and charges adopted by the burial boards of Bishop's Stortford, Weston-super-Mare, Walton-on-Thames, Aylsham, Soham, and Uxbridge; and whether, in view of these and other cases of the like kind, he will take steps to ensure that no tables of fees and charges in parochial cemeteries shall in future receive the approval of the Secretary of State which are not in conformity with the requirements of the law in regard to fees for interments in the consecrated and un-consecrated parts thereof respectively?
§ SIR M. W. RIDLEYThe burial boards of Bishop's Stortford, Walton and Aylsham have now adopted and put in force satisfactory tables of fees. In the other three cases correspondence is in progress with the prospect in each case of a satisfactory settlement. The defects in these and similar tables have arisen, not from the Secretary of State having approved fees which are not in conformity with the law, but from the burial boards printing in their tables, without proper explanation, fees not approved by the Secretary of State. Care will be taken in the Home Office, in the future as in the past, that no fees are approved, but such as are in conformity with law.