HC Deb 03 April 1908 vol 187 cc861-79

Order for Second Reading read.

MR. HIGHAM (Yorkshire, W.R., Sowerby)

in moving the Second Reading said that the object of the Bill was a very simple one. The present state of the law was that the jury must view the body, however repulsive it might be or however great the danger from infection. The essence of the Bill was that the viewing should not be compulsory as provided by the Act of 1887, but optional at the discretion of the coroner. There might be cases in which the viewing of the body was essential, but the experience of a good many years and the opinion of many coroners was favourable to such an alteration in the law as was foreshadowed by the Bill. He had known cases where infectious diseases had been transmitted through the act of viewing a body. In many cases the viewing of the body under the present law was a mere pretence, for they kept as far away from the body as they possibly could, and that was a breach of the oath they took. The object of the Bill was quite in harmony with the whole tendency of modern times, because the compulsory viewing of a body was almost on a level with the idea of public executions and other barbarous methods in vogue centuries ago. With the option given to the coroner to avoid possibilities of going wrong, and other safeguards, he thought the House might safely and advantageously pass the Bill which he had now the honour of moving.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."—(Mr. Higham.)

*MR. LUKE WHITE (Yorkshire, E.R., Buckrose)

said the Bill had been before Parliament for several years. In 1897 a Committee of the House reported in favour of doing away with the compulsory viewing of bodies by coroners' juries. His experience as a coroner had induced him to introduce the Bill two years ago. Three-fourths of the coroners in the country were in favour of the Bill. The measure did not do away with the viewing of the body in cases where the coroner or a majority of the jury considered that a view was necessary. He had received a great many letters from coroners, doctors, and jurymen, and, so far as he could gather, opinion throughout the country was almost unanimous in favour of passing the Bill. He could give instances which would assure the House that it was cruel to compel jurymen to view bodies. None could speak better regarding the measure than the members of the Labour Party. He had had communications from a great number of trade unions in districts where frightful catastrophes had taken place, and where jurymen were obliged to examine bodies in conditions under which the duty ought not to be imposed upon them. He hoped the House would read the Bill a second time.

SIR F. BANBURY (City of London)

said he had listened to the two hon. Members who had spoken in favour of the Bill in the hope that he should hear some valid arguments in its support, but the only argument which they had brought forward was that coroners' juries should not be compelled to perform the disagreeable duty of viewing bodies, He was not surprised that the hon. Member who moved the Second Reading should advance that argument, but he was rather surprised to hear it from the hon. Member for Buckrose Division, who was himself a coroner. It was not, he contended, a valid reason for asking the House to pass the Second Reading of the Bill to say that it was disagreeable for the jury to perform their duties. There were many duties cast upon men in this country, and in all countries, which were disagreeable, but which they had to carry out. One the conditions of having the franchise was that the electors had to act as jurymen. Hon. Gentlemen below the gangway were always insisting that everybody ought to have the franchise, and yet, while people exercised the privileges of the franchise, there was an objection on the part of some to discharge the disagreeable duties connected with it. No doubt it was disagreeable for coroners' juries to view bogies, but it did not at all follow that they ought to shirk that which was disagreeable. He had always understood that the more disagreeable a thing was the more willing a person should be to carry it out, if, by so doing, he was assisting the welfare of the country. He had a letter from a coroner telling him that it would be a very great obstacle to the detection of crime if the compulsory viewing of the body by the coroner's jury was abandoned. He himself did not pretend to be able to say whether that statement was well founded or not, but it had been sent to him unsolicited. It seemed to him to have some probability of being correct. He was not in the House at the time the law was passed, and he did not know what the object was, but he presumed that the object was that there should be additional means placed before the jury for determining whether or not a crime had been committed. The viewing of the body went a long way in that direction. The hon. Member for the Buckrose Division said that the Bill, supposing it became law, would not prevent the coroner from insisting upon the jury viewing the body if he thought it necessary that they should do so. His answer to that was that there would be cast upon the coroner a very unpleasant and invidious duty.

*MR. LUKE WHITE

Or a majority of the jury.

SIR F. BANBURY

said that a majority of the jury could demand to view the body, but the Bill provided that they could only do so "at the first sitting of the inquest." He had no hesitation in saying that in many of the cases where an inquest was held, the real facts as to the cause of death were not disclosed until the second or third sitting.

*MR. LUKE WHITE

said a body could not be interred without a burial certificate.

SIR F. BANBURY

said the hon. Member was well aware that there had been many cases in which burial certificates were given, and, later on, when the bodies were disinterred, it was found that the burial certificates were absolutely incorrect. If the hon. Member founded his case on the burial certificates, why have any inquest at all? The coroner could insist on the jury viewing the body, according to Clause 1 of the Bill. If the jury considered it unnecessary that they should view the body, there might be a wrangle between the jury and the coroner as to whether or not the body should be viewed. He believed he was correct in saying that there had been on many occasions unseemly wrangles between coroners and juries.

Attention called to the fact that forty Members were not present.

*MR. SPEAKER

The recent division has shown that considerably more than forty Members are in attendance.

SIR F. BANBURY

said the jury in the case he had supposed would go to view the body, not with the idea of giving a proper verdict on the question, but with their minds rankling; because the coroner had forced them to do something which was in their opinion unnecessary. The hon. Member who moved the Second Reading had referred to cases in which jurymen had deliberately made excuses for not going on a jury. The fact that jurymen did not like to go through the disagreeable duty of viewing the body was not a valid reason for not serving on a jury. He was sorry the Bill had come on now, for he thought it cast a lurid light on the motives which actuated juries. Of late he had not had that confidence in juries which Englishmen were supposed to have, and, if the statements which the hon. Member had made were correct, he would have no confidence in them at all. He would hesitate to introduce any change in the law which would cast doubt on the integrity of juries, and on their determination to do their duty, however disagreeable the duty might be. He did not see the object of the Bill unless the promoters, while wishing to abolish the viewing of the body altogether, did not like to go so far as to say so. The Bill might not appear to have that object, but that would be the ultimate effect. It was evident from what the lion. Member for the Buckrose division had said that he would not ask a jury to view a body unless he had grave suspicion that serious foul play had occurred. It might be very difficult for the hon. Member to form an opinion as to how death came about until he had heard all the evidence, and it might be then too late to view the body. Inquests were often protracted, and he would like to know what advantage a jury would gain by viewing a body four weeks after death when in all probability marks of foul play would have disappeared owing to the process of decomposition. All that showed the disadvantage of legislation by private Members on a Friday afternoon when, as the last division showed, there were only 124 Members in the House. He ought to have added Mr. Speaker, who unfortunately was debarred from taking part in the debates. He had not the slightest doubt that Mr. Speaker would have been on his side if he had been able to take part in the debate. There were 545 Members of the House who did not in the least know what was going on. [An HON. MEMBER: That is their fault.] Yes, that was their fault. He would point out that of the 500 Members of the Government and their supporters only eighty - nine had attended the discussion of a measure which had for its object the amendment of the system of Poor Law administration in Ireland, and of the Bill now before the House in regard to coroners' inquests, which after all affected the great body of the working classes. Hon. Gentlemen below the gangway had better not call attention to the lax manner in which the followers of the Government were performing their duty. To sum up, his objections to the Bill were, first, that investigations into crime might possibly be prevented; secondly, that if the coroner endeavoured to force the jury to view the body under this Bill, he would have an extremely difficult duty to perform, because the jurymen would consider that they had been forced by the coroner to do something which they were not bound to do; and thirdly, that anything which would relieve people from the discharge of a disagreeable duty, simply because it was disagreeable, ought not to be allowed. The tendency of modern times was to do nothing that was unpleasant; to take no trouble to do anything; to put all responsibility on other people's shoulders; to work only eight, six, or even less hours, whereas the tendency in the old days was for a man to do work to the utmost of his capacity. That was what ought to be the spirit now-a-days, and he regretted that the old energy once characteristic of the English race had departed, and that the old ideal "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might," was now supplanted by: "Do as little as you possibly can." Under these circumstances he hoped the Bill would not have a Second Reading.

*THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL,) Yorkshire, Cleveland

said that the hon. Baronet's argument seemed to amount to this, that so long as a task was disagreeable it ought to be imposed in order to strengthen the national character, and, further, that crime might not be detected unless the body was viewed by the coroner and his jury.

SIR F. BANBURY

said that what he had stated was that he had received a letter, quite unsolicited by him, from a coroner who gave utterance to the opinion that crime would not sometimes be detected unless the body was viewed.

*MR. HERBERT SAMUEL

said that the cases in which the crimes were detected by viewing the body by the jury must be excessively rare. He had gathered from the more eloquent passages in the speech of the hon. Baronet that in his opinion the discharges of a disagreeable duty tended to the virility of our national character. Be that as it might, there was undoubtedly a very strong body of public opinion in support of this Bill. The duty of viewing the body at an inquest was a very disagreeable one, and at times it might become far more than disagreeable—exceedingly painful in particular cases. Moreover, there was a certain risk of infection, rare he admitted, in viewing the body in cases where death had been caused by infectious disease. Another drawback to the existing system which, though slight, should not be left out of account, was that it frequently entailed on busy men like coroners and members of juries a very considerable and quite unnecessary waste of time. The places where the inquests were held were often in a different locality from those in which the bodies were lying. An adjournment therefore had to be made from the court-house to the mortuary, and the amount of time occupied by the coroner and jury over an inquest might be doubled or trebled. Again, where large juries had to be brought together, burials in some cases might have to be delayed owing to the custom of viewing the body, and that might be a very great disadvantage and even prove to be a public danger. For all these reasons there was undoubtedly a strong case to be made for the Bill. On the other hand, there was not in his view, any powerful argument to be advanced against it. The chief objection to the proposed change was that the present system did make the juries take a serious view of their functions, or at any rate it tended to do so. Coroners' juries, it was true, were sometimes inclined to regard their duties too lightly, and that tendency was counteracted by the somewhat solemn ceremony of viewing the body. But, apart from that, there was very little to be said against the change. The argument had been advanced that it was an ancient custom and ought not to be lightly abolished. The office of coroner was indeed one of the most ancient in the State; its origin was lost in the mists of antiquity. The hon. Baronet opposite said that he was not in the House when the law establishing this practice of viewing the body by the coroner's jury was passed. That was very true, for it dated probably from before the Norman Kings, sometime between the reign of Alfred the Great, and William the Conqueror; and the hon. Baronet, though an old Member of the House, was not quite so old as that. The purpose for which the custom was originally established was that the neighbours might be called together to identify the body of a person who had died, the jury being regarded as the representative men of the neighbourhood. Further, in those simple days the average man was as well able to declare what was the cause of death as anyone else. Both of those functions were obsolete and useless now, because the cases in which the juries were acquainted with the person whose body they were called upon to view were very rare; and in these days no jury would venture, merely from their own observation from viewing the body, to say what was the cause of death. He found that the Coroners' Society was in the main in favour of this change, and the hon. Member for Buckrose, who had been a coroner himself, and than whom no one was better entitled to express an opinion, shared that view, and supported the Bill. For all these reasons the Government saw no objection to the Second Reading of the Bill, and carrying it a stage further by sending it to a Committee upstairs for further consideration. The proposed exemption of the coroner as well as of the jury from the duty of viewing the body was a matter which should be very carefully examined in Committee before Parliament was asked to accede to it. Then it was said that a majority of the jury should have the right of demanding that the body should be viewed; whether that right should not be conferred on a smaller proportion would require to be considered. In dealing with this matter they were touching one aspect of a somewhat complicated body of law His right hon. friend the Home Secretary had long since had his attention called to the working of the law relating to coroners' inquests and the possibility of its amendment in many directions, and he had had under consideration the advisability of appointing a Committee to inquire into various matters—whether it was necessary to have so many jurors as twelve, the methods by which the juries were now summoned, whether unnecessary inconvenience was sometimes caused under existing arrangements, whether in some cases juries might not be dispensed with altogether, whether the discretion of coroners as to holding inquests might be enlarged beyond what the law now allowed, how coroners' salaries were paid—in boroughs they were paid by fees and in counties by salaries—and which was the best method in the interests of the administration of the law. All these were matters which demanded inquiry. But perhaps more important than all was the suggestion that coroners should be empowered to hold inquests, not only in cases of death, but also in cases of fires which did not result in death. That suggestion had been urged on the Government by the Association of Municipal Corporations, and the Association of Chambers of Commerce. In the City of London there was at the present time an Act in operation which permitted the City coroner to hold investigations on his own initiative or when requested by the Lord Mayor or certain other personages; and many inquests had been held, the causes of fire had been discovered, and valuable suggestions made for the better protection of property. It was a question for consideration whether the coroner was the right person to undertake such inquiries, or whether it should be some other official, and whether a jury should sit with him, or expert assessors. These and other questions of detail called for investigation and settlement. Therefore, though there was no objection on the part of the Government to this Bill passing into law, perhaps in a modified form, if it failed to do so the subject would not be lost sight of, but would form a subject of consideration for the Committee to which he had referred.

*SIR WALTER FOSTER (Derbyshire, Ilkeston)

said that twenty years ago he had introduced a somewhat similar Bill, and he thought it would be clearly in the interest of the juries, of the coroners, and of the public at large that this measure should receive a Second Reading and go to a Committee upstairs for detailed consideration. The duties of coroners' jury were numerous and onerous, and it was the duty of the House to do its utmost to lighten those duties in a way which would not conduce to public injury. From a long experience of coroners' courts and juries he had felt the very serious inconvenience and trouble to which juries were put in attending inquests and viewing bodies. In all cases the duties were troublesome and disagreeable, and in many instances local some. He thought that the hon. Baronet had taken a far too narrow view of the question, and he was afraid that the hon. Baronet had never attended a coroner's court, or acted as a juryman. If he had, he would have had a better idea of the difficulties which arose than was indicated by the speech which he had made. There were three grounds on which he thought this Bill should pass into law. In the first place, the duty of viewing the body was a disagreeable task to impose in all cases on men who were giving their time and money in order to perform a public service; and if they could make that service less objectionable the House was bound to do so. In the second place, it exposed these men to possible infection, and that was by no means such a small danger as h id been represented by sonic of the speakers. And in the third place, the duty of viewing the body was an exceedingly painful one, from which the jurors might well be spared, especially in cases of accidents in mines and factories, when the mutilated body of a comrade had to be viewed. The Bill which he brought in in 1888 had then the support of the great majority of the coroners of the country, and when a body of men like these came to the House with a request for a change in the law they ought to recognise that their opinion was worthy of attention and respect. When three-fourths of the coroners of the country came to the House with a suggestion of that kind, as in the case of the present Bill, they ought to consider it. When the Bill went into the Committee it could be improved, and he thought the responsibility should still remain with the coroner to view the body upon which he NV S to hold the inquiry. The jury, however, stood in quite a different position. He did not think the House ought to postpone this useful Bill which so many of the coroners of the country supported.

VISCOUNT HELMSLEY (Yorkshire, N.R., Thirsk)

said the House had had the advantage of hearing three speeches in favour of the Bill, including that of the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department. But those speeches contained only the one argument that the viewing of the body was a disagreeable and painful duty. The Under-Secretary it was true had advanced the argument that viewing the body might expose the jurymen to the risk of infection, but those cases surely must be very few and far between, because in the majority of cases where death ensued from infectious diseases there was no coroner's inquest, and burial took place upon a medical certificate. Even if that were not so, it would be easy to take precautions against infection. It was quite possible to arrange that such a body should be viewed through glass or in some other manner by means of which there would be prevented any exposure to infection. That it was a painful and disagreeable duty to jurymen no one would deny, nevertheless he agreed with the hon. Baronet and did not think the argument was sufficient to do away with such an ancient custom, and if that was the only argument in its favour he should vote against the Bill. The Under-Secretary having mentioned that argument in its favour proceeded to mention others which were stronger in opposition to the Bill. It was surprising that after he had mentioned those he did not conclude by saying the Government could not support the Bill, and asking the House to vote against the Second Reading. The hon. Gentleman pointed out that the duty gave the jury a serious view of their functions, and that taken alone was a very strong argument against the Bill. It was most important that jurors, upon whose verdict depended perhaps the discovery of a criminal, should have the importance of their functions impressed upon them. If the viewing of a body had that effect it was an exceedingly important part of the coroner's inquest. But there might be in this very ancient law a sounder reason for its continuance. The Under-Secretary had said it was not necessary for the purposes of identification; that no jury nowadays could identify the body, that others identified the body and no jury could say what the cause of death was. But of the law originally was to certain that there was person whose death it was necessary to investigate. Everyone knew that there were cases of conspiracy to be considered. Supposing a man desired that it should be believed that he was dead when in fact he was not, and that he could get a sufficient number of corrupt people to aid him in his object, if the viewing of the body were done away with he would have no difficulty in carrying out his purpose. The viewing of the body being done away with the thing would become very easy. It was not a case that would often occur, but that it might occur everybody knew from what had taken place in a recent case. He did not suggest that the jury would not be above suspicion. It was for that reason that he desired that they should continue to view the body. He wished to prevent a corrupt witness coming forward and saying he had drawn the dead man out of the water, for instance, and others saying they had seen the body. That might have been one of the reasons why the viewing of the body was imposed upon the jury and why it was retained upon the Statute-book when the Coroners' Acts were consolidated in 1877. The Under-Secretary of State had given a stronger reason still against the present Bill being passed. He had said there were many points in Coroners' Acts that needed amendment—that the whole question needed a Committee of inquiry in order to see in what way they could be best amended. He could not, therefore, see the object of passing this measure, which would only deal with a fraction of the question, when very shortly, as the Under-Secretary of State had said, the whole question would have to come up for review. Of course, if the Bill was to be referred to a Committee of the Whole House, no possible harm could result from its being read a second time. If, on the other hand, it was to be referred to a Committee upstairs, then he thought it would be a great waste of time to send to a Committee a Bill which in the opinion of the Government was not very desirable, especially when the Committees had plenty of work to do in examining and discussing other matters which were of some importance. If the `suggestion that the Bill should be I amended in such a way that the coroner should always be compelled to view the body were acted upon a great part of his objection would disappear, and had the Bill been introduced in that fashion he would perhaps not have been prepared to oppose it.

*MR. C. DUNCAN (Barrow-in-Furness)

said he had himself had some experience on inquests, and although the House had been told that the viewing of the body induced jurymen to take a serious view of the inquest, so far as his experience went there never was any flippancy displayed by the people empannelled upon the juries, or any suggestion that they were not likely to take as serious a view of their functions as any Member of the House. He thought the Bill was an extremely modest one and had a very reasonable object. Some of the duties which fell upon those who sat upon juries were of an extremely loathsome character. The case quoted by the hon. Baronet where at the first meeting of the jury one juror was taken so ill that the body could not be viewed for some weeks was one of the strongest arguments in favour of the Bill. Accidents also happened. Supposing an accident happened in a mine and a large number of men were killed. In such places the community was a very small one, and it seemed to be a pitiful thing to compel a jury sitting on an inquest of such a kind t look at the bodies, very often of their friends, torn, burnt, and riven in all directions. Then let them take the case of a man who had been drowned. He knew of such a case where the body had been in the water three months. Could anything be more loathsome than to compel a jury by law to view a body of that kind which had been bloated and swollen to three times its natural size? Hon. Members who had opposed the Bill had had no experience of these things, and therefore should be the last to oppose such a measure. If they had had his experience they would have been strongly in favour of the Bill. The hon. Baronet had told

the House that hon. Members below the gangway would be unable to reply to his argument: there might be some truth in that, for he did not think anyone would be able to reply to him until votes were granted to women and women sat on the floor of the House.

Question put.

The House divided:—Ayes, 118; Noes, 45. (Division List No. 72.)

AYES.
Abraham, William (Cork, N.E.) Holt, Richard Durning O'Dowd, John
Ashton, Thomas Gair Hope, John Deans (Fife, West) O'Grady, J.
Asquith, Rt. Hn. Herbert Henry Hudson, Walter O' Kelly, Conor (Mayo, N.)
Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight) Illingworth, Percy H. O'Shaughnessy, P. J.
Barker, John Jones, Leif (Appleby) Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek)
Barlow, Percy (Bedford) Jones, William (Carnarvonshire Phillips, John (Longford, S.)
Barnes, G. N. Joyce, Michael Price, C. E. (Edinb'gh, Central)
Beale, W. P. Kearley, Hudson E. Price, Robert John (Norfolk, E.
Bennett, E. N. Kekewich, Sir George Redmond, John E. (Waterford)
Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Waldon) Kelley, George D. Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)
Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine Kilbride, Denis Roberts, John H. (Denbighs.)
Boland, John Laidlaw, Robert Roche, John (Galway, East)
Bowerman, C. W. Law, Hugh A. (Donegal, W.) Rogers, F. E. Newman
Branch, James Lehmann, R. C. Russell, P. W.
Brigg, John Lewis, John Herbert Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford)
Brocklehurst, W. B. Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David Samuel, Herbert L. (Cleveland
Burns, Rt. Hon. John Lyell, Charles Henry Seaverns, J. H
Cameron, Robert Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester) Shaw, Rt. Hon. T. (Hawick B.)
Carr-Gomm, H. W. Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J. Summerbell, T.
Causton, Rt. Hn RichardKnight MacVeagh, Jeremiah (Down, S. Tennant, Sir Edward (Salisbury
Channing, Sir Francis Allston MacVeigh, Charles (Donegal, E.) Torrance, Sir A. M.
Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R. Mallet, Charles E. Ure, Alexander
Collins, Stephen (Lambeth) Masterman, C. F. G. Verney, F. W.
Corbett, C H (Sussex, E. Grinst'd Meehan, Francis E.(Leitrim, N. Wadsworth, J.
Crean, Eugene Menzies, Walter Walters, John Tudor
Delany, William Montagu, E. S. Wason, Rt. Hn. E (Clackmannan
Devlin, Joseph Mooney, J. J. Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)
Dobson, Thomas W. Morrell, Philip Waterlow, D. S.
Donelan, Captain A. Morton, Alpheus Cleophas White, Sir George (Norfolk)
Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness Muldoon, John White, Patrick (Meath, North)
Dunn, A. Edward (Camborne) Murphy, John (Kerry, East) Whitehead, Rowland
Fletcher, J. S. Murray, James Whiteley, Rt. Hn. G. (York, W.R
Flynn, James Christopher Nicholson, Charles N. (Doncast'r Wiles, Thomas
Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter Nolan, Joseph Wills, Arthur Walters
Gill, A. H. Norton, Capt. Cecil William Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.)
Gladstone, Rt. Hn Herbert John O'Brien, Kendal(Tipperary Mid Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)
Grant, Corrie O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)
Griffith, Ellis J. O'Connor, James (Wicklow, W. TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Mr.
Gwynn, Stephen Lucius O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.) Higham and Mr. LukeWhite.
Hayden, John Patrick O'Doherty, Philip
Hobart, Sir Robert O'Donnell, John (Mayo, S.)
NOES.
Acland-Hood, Rt Hn. Sir Alex. F Beckett, Hon. Gervase Bowles, G. Stewart
Anstruther-Gray, major Bignold, Sir Arthur Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)
Aubrey-Fletcher, Rt. Hn. Sir H. Boulton, A. C. F. Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.)
Collins, Sir Wm. J. (S. Pancras, W Long, Rt. Hn. Walter (Dublin, S. Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)
Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim, S. Lonsdale, John Brownlee Talbot, Rt. Hn. J.G. (Oxf'd Univ
Craig, Captain James (Down, E.) MacCaw, William J. MacGeagh Thornton, Percy M.
Dixon-Hartland, Sir Fred Dixon Moore, William Tuke, Sir John Batty
Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers- Morpeth, Viscount Waring, Walter
Du Cros, Arthur Philip O'Neill, Hon. Robert Torrens Williams, Col. R. (Dorset, W.)
Fell, Arthur Pickersgill, Edward Hare Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E.R.)
Fetherstonhaugh, Godfrey Remnant, James Farquharson Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm
Gretton, John Ronaldshay, Earl of
Hamilton, Marquess of Sassoon, Sir Edward Albert TELLERS FOR THE NOES—
Harrison-Broadley, H. B. Sloan, Thomas Henry Viscount Helmsley and Sir
Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth) Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie Frederick Banbury.
Kimber, Sir Henry Smith, Abel H. (Hertford, East)
Lamont, Norman Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon)