HC Deb 04 March 1903 vol 118 cc1356-7
MR. BULL (Hammersmith)

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will explain why police officers who have given evidence before the Royal Commission on Alien Immigration were instructed to refrain from expressing any opinions, and that Mr. Herbert Evans, one of His Majesty's Assistant Inspectors of Factories, who also gave evidence, was allowed and even encouraged to express his opinions freely.

* MR. AKERS DOUGLAS

It has long been the rule, for obvious reasons, that the police should, in giving evidence before Commissions or otherwise, confine themselves to statements of facts. The same considerations do not apply with equal force to Inspectors of Factories, and in the case in point it was not thought necessary to curtail the full statement which Mr. Evans made to the Commission of the results of his experience.