§ *THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (SIR M WHITE RIDLEY,) Lancashire, BlackpoolI have to ask leave to bring in a Bill to amend the law relating to burial grounds. It carries out the recommendations of the Committee which in 1898 sat upon the Burial Acts, under the chairmanship of my hon. friend the Member for the University of Cambridge, and which came to a substantially fair agreement on the points which for years had been engaging the attention of the House. I think it would be a great pity if this House did not take the opportunity of endeavouring to settle some of these questions at any rate. During the autumn I had the honour of receiving a deputation composed of what I may call the contending parties, and they were entirely at one in urging the Government to introduce a Bill based on the recommendations of the Committee, and assuring me if it were introduced it would be approached by them with a desire to bring about an amicable settlement. I have therefore to ask leave to introduce this Bill. It does not, as I told the deputation, propose to consolidate or amend the whole law. That would be a rather too ambitious attempt on my part, but I hope it will go a considerable way towards it. Dealing with the two separate parts into which the Burial Acts may be divided, it leaves the whole ecclesiastical side to the Home Office, and the whole sanitary and financial part to the Local Government Board. It is hoped that by that means the present conflict of authority and confusion of interest may be avoided. Substantially, the whole of the recommendations of the Select Committee, with the exception of two or three points which appear to be outside the general tenor of the Report, are embodied in the Bill.
§ Bill to amend the Law relating to Burial Grounds, ordered to be brought in by Secretary Sir Matthew White Ridley and Mr. Jesse Collings.