§ MR. J. RAMSAY MACDONALDI beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if his attention has been drawn to the fact, as shown in the Annual Report of the Chief Inspector of Factories for 1906, that 634 medical officers of health still neglect to perform the statutory duties imposed on them by the Factory and Workshop Act to report to the Home Office regarding their ad ministration of that Act; and how long the Home Office proposes to allow this neglect to continue.
§ MR. GLADSTONEThe great majority of the medical officers who have failed to send in reports, viz.: 477 out of 634, are in Ireland. Under the Irish Public Health Law, medical officers, other than the few superintending medical officers, are not required to make any report to the local authority, and I am advised that it is doubtful how far in consequence any obligation is placed upon them by Section 132 of the Factory Act. As I have already stated, a special circular was sent out last year by the Home Office calling the attention of local authorities and medical officers to their duties in regard to home work—and I propose to communicate specially this autumn with those local authorities from whom no reports are received for 1906. I may add that in many districts from which no report is sent, the Factory Act has little or no application and the omission is comparatively unimportant.