HC Deb 23 July 1900 vol 86 cc854-5
COLONEL WYNDHAM MURRAY (Bath)

I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether the instructions to the Commission of Inquiry into the medical arrangements in South Africa will include the making of a thorough inquiry on the spot by the medical members of the Com- mission into the results of inoculation for enteric fever, in preventing the disease, or lessening its effects.

THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,) Manchester, E.

The inquiry to which my hon. and gallant friend refers, though doubtless one of very great importance, appears to be outside the scope of reference of the Commission, and it would require some- what different circumstances to investigate a purely scientific medical subject of the kind suggested.

MR. SWIFT MACNEILL (Donegal, S.)

I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether Mr. Harrison, who has been appointed a member of the South African Hospitals Commission, holds an appointment as member of the Army Railway Council, a body which advises the Army authorities in matters of railway transport and engineering, and has the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the Army; and will he state in whom is the appointment to seats in the Army Railway Council vested, and was that council, of which Mr. Harrison is a member, consulted in the matter of railway transport in South Africa, which will form one branch of the subject matter of the inquiries of the South African Hospital Commission, of which Mr. Harrison is also a member.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I believe he is not a lieutenant-colonel in the Army. He is, however, a member of the Army Rail- way Council, an unpaid body called into existence at the request of a Departmental Committee of experts in order to advise the War Office, not on anything connected with South Africa or South African transport, but simply on the question of transports and mobilisation within the four quarters of the United Kingdom.

MR. SWIFT MACNEILL

By whom are the appointments made?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

They are made by the War Office, of course. Whom else could they be made by?