§ MR. MARKHAMI beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department will he say if he has at any time given the Commissioner of Police a discretional power in the matter of motor prosecutions; and, if not, will he instruct this officer that his duties are to administer the law as enacted by Parliament.
§ *MR. GLADSTONEThe discretionary power of the Commissioner arises not from any instructions of mine, but from the provisions of the law. It is the duty of the Commissioner to take reasonable steps to enforce the Motor-Car Acts; but no obligation is imposed on him by those Acts to prosecute in every case where an offence may possibly have been committed. In that matter a wide discretion is left him by the law, and that discretion he has, I am satisfied, exercised wisely and with a full sense of the responsibilities imposed on him.
§ MR. MARKHAMwas understood to ask if the right hon. Gentleman was aware that the streets that day had been filled with petrol vapour. Was it not possible to construct motor cars which did not emit vapour?
§ *MR. GLADSTONEThe Commissioner is taking expert advice on this point.