HC Deb 08 March 1905 vol 142 cc716-7
MR. WEIR

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he is aware that on April 5th last, Mr. Philip J. Cook applied before Mr. Fordham at the North London Police Court for a certificate of exemption from vaccination for his infant child, and that, although he explained that a certificate had been granted to him at that Court on a former occasion for another child, the magistrate declined to grant a certificate, that application was renewed a few days later before Mr. Cluer, who refused on the ground that it was extremely undesirable that he should overrule his colleague's ruling, and as an appeal at the Thames Police Court before Mr. Dickenson, who had granted the first certificate, failed on account of the applicant not being resident within the district of the Court, will the Secretary of State consider the advisability of directing the attention of Metropolitan Police Magistrates to the remarks made by the Lord Chief Justice on July 27th last when addressing the Grand Jury at Birmingham relative to the principle on which the Act ought to be administered, especially having regard to the fact that in the present instance the applicant was eventually forced to have his second child vaccinated under the pressure of a summons, although he still persisted in the same conscientious objections which secured him a certificate of exemption for his first child.

*THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. AKERS-DODGLAS, Kent, St. Augustine's)

Mr. Cook wrote to me on February 9th and requested my intervention in this matter. The granting of certificates of exemption from vaccination is, however, placed by the statute within the discretion of the magistrates, and I have no authority to interfere with that discretion. The attention of all the Metropolitan Police Magistrates was called, by a circular issued in September last, to the remarks of the Lord Chief Justice at the Birmingham Summer Assizes.

MR. GIBSON BOWLES

Will the right hon. Gentleman lay on the Table a copy of the Memorandum issued by the Home Office?

*MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS

I see no objection to that.