HC Deb 09 December 1908 vol 198 cc670-1

Considered in Committee.

(In the Committee.)

Clause 1:

MR. CLAUDE HAY

asked for some information about the Bill. The Schedule contained various provisions which were almost unintelligible. He wished to protest against the Bill being taken in that form without any scheme in regard to it having been put forward.

MR. SOARES

said the whole scheme was put forward in the Schedule. There had been an agreement in regard to the Bill. It had been arranged that the Bill should be printed, and put in the Library of the House, and on that condition the noble Lord the Member for Chorley had agreed to let it go through its Committee stage and Third Reading.

Clause agreed to.

Clauses 2 and 3 were added to the Bill.

Schedule:

MR. CLAUDE HAY

asked what were the conditions in the Schedule in regard to property. The Bill gave the Church in question powers to take certain action by special resolution, but there was nothing whatever in the document to prescribe how such a resolution was to be arrived at, how a meeting was to be called, what a quorum was. That omission was singular when the Long Ashton Bill provided for the points referred to. In fact the whole document seemed to be most slovenly. He wished to enter a protest against Bills being put before the House at that hour in the morning and not printed and presented in the form which was usual in regard to public Bills presented to the House of Commons. There was nothing in the Schedule to make the trustees fill up vacancies, and it would appear that the whole of the property and the duties appertaining thereto might devolve upon one person, who might call himself the Church and pass a special resolution enabling him to dispose of the property.

MR. SOARES

said the whole of the scheme and the provisions in Section 8 of the Schedule had been approved of by all parties, and no objections whatever had been raised by anyone. As to the question as to what a special resolution meant, if the hon. Member would refer to Section 16 he would see it was there described as a resolution passed at a special Church meeting by a majority of not less than two-thirds of the persons present and voting.

Schedule agreed to.

Bill reported, without Amendment; read the third time, and passed.