§ * MR. RITCHIEI wish to ask the leave of the House to introduce a Bill to consolidate the Factory Acts. While it is quite clear that it is desirable to consolidate the law relating to various matters, it is more than ever desirable that laws relating to the working classes should be consolidated and made as simple as possible. It is sometimes said that the law ought to be consolidated before it is amended, or, on the other hand, that it ought to be amended and at some future time consolidated. Sometimes consolidation is promised after amendment, and a considerable period elapses before the consolidation takes place. I want both these processes to proceed pari passu. I hope that both Bills will be sent to a Committee upstairs, and that that Committee will do as it did with the Public Health (London) Bill and the Housing of the Working Classes Bill, namely, that it should take the amending Bill first in Committee, go through all the Amendments proposed in the Bill or which any member of the Committee desires to propose, on the understanding that when the Bill is amended it should be then returned along with the Consolidation Bill to the draftsman with instructions to amend the Consolidation Bill by the Amendments in the Amending Bill. The Bills would then go before the Grand Committee, and the clauses be gone through pro forma; they would then be returned to the House as one Bill, which the House would consider on Report. Therefore we may hope that in one session we should get both the Amendments and the consolidation of the existing law that we desire.
§ Bill to consolidate the Factory and Workshop Act, ordered to be brought in by Mr. Secretary Ritchie and Mr. Jesse Collings.