LOCAL GOVERNMENT (SCOTLAND) BILL. (Hansard, 10 December 1908)

§ MR. MOONEY (Newry)
asked whether it was in order for the House to order a Bill 926 to be read a third time which was not before the House. The Bill on the Order Paper was a Bill of which one clause had been left out, whilst one subsection had been left out and two subsections put in. The Bill had never been reprinted. The Bill before the House now was not the Bill as it came from the Committee upstairs, and if passed now as it stood would not be the Bill as it came down from the Committee. To put himself in order, and to get a reply he moved that the Bill be read a third time this time three months. He desired some explanation from the Lord-Advocate as to what that course had been taken in connection with that Bill. Large alterations had been made in the Bill since it passed the Second Reading, and it was not in any legal shape or form the Bill that went 927 upstairs into Committee. It was utterly impossible to get any information as to what was done in Committee unless they went to the trouble of getting the reports of the Committee, and finding out what actually was done. As a matter of fact the Government voted against one of their own clauses upstairs, and that clause remained in the Bill as now before the House. He did not think it was treating the House with proper consideration to make large Amendments in the Bill and then for Members to find that the Bill before them was not the real Bill in any shape or form.

§ THE SECRETARY FOR SCOTLAND (Mr. SINCLAIR,) Forfarshire
said he hoped he would be able to explain the situation in which they were placed with regard to the Bill. There had been no exceptional treatment in regard to it. It was a very common practice that when complicated changes were made in a Bill, it should be reprinted at every stage. But in this case the changes that had been made in the Bill were of a perfectly uncontroversial nature, and perfectly easily understood by any Member who would possess himself of the Paper which contained the Amendments which were made in Committee. It was true that considerable changes were made in the Bill. In the dropping of Clause 3, however, a whole clause was dropped, and those hon. Gentlemen who took an interest in the Bill and were present 928 during the proceedings in Committee had no doubt in their minds as to the result of the proceedings in Committee in regard to Clause 3. The other changes were largely drafting Amendments, and where they were not drafting Amendments, they were fully explained to the Committee and in no way affected the principles. The ordinary course had been followed in this case. It was not the practice to reprint all the Bills at every stage. The House had always; had a discretion and judgment to be exercised in those mutters, and the ordinary practice had been followed in this case. There was no desire on the part of the Minister responsible for the Bill not to acquaint the House most fully with the proceedings that had taken place.

§ MR. SWIFT MACNEILL (Donegal, S.)
said the right hon. Gentleman gave them credit for the high intelligence possessed by himself. He (the speaker) was only a simple and ordinary Member and not a Minister, but he contended that the Bill would scarcely be comprehensible to the high level of intelligence on the Treasury Bench. They had a Bill, and with it a codicil of Amendments, and they were to read the Bill with the codicil and the codicil with the Bill. This was not a mere technical point. Everybody acquainted with the law, with the Courts of justice, knew the horrible difficulties of construing statutes because of the slipshod way in which they were drafted. In this case there came down to the House as if it were a legislating machine, all these Amendments, which it would take a man versed in the comparison of different documents to be able to incorporate one with the other. He 929 did not believe they were worth reading, but at the same time, it was not the kind of thing that should be done. There was one thing that made him rejoice and that was to see the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for Scotland an economical man. It was delightful to see the careful economy, the careful regard for the pence, in this matter. He hoped the ecnomical mind would extend still further, and that there would be some stay to the production of documents of great length, and with no value from another place. But he did not see why this Bill should be presented to the House in this slipshod fashion. Again and again in other times they had insisted that Bills should be presented to the House with Amendments in an intelligible form. He did not remember a single session in the twenty years he had been in the House in which great inconvenience and much dislocation of the Courts had not resulted from those slipshod methods of drafting Bills in a language which would scarcely be creditable as English in a King's Speech. He certainly thought this Bill should be reserved for some further consideration. He hoped they might get, in the first place, a distinct pledge from the Government that it was only in the interests of economy that they took such a course and, in the second place, a statement from the right hon. Gentleman that he would give one-fifth of his salary as conscience money to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

§ MR. ESSEX (Gloucestershire, Cirencester)
asked if the House of Lords was going to get the Bill in a better form than the House of Commons had it now.

§ MR. SINCLAIR
said he recognised that that was quite a proper question for the 930 consideration of the House. On the consideration of the ordinary procedure of the House would be the time to consider whether the present practice should be altered or continued. It was quite possible in normal circumstances to have a Bill reprinted. If the Bill had been reprinted after the Committee stage, however, and was again altered on the Report stage, that would involve a second reprinting. If it was reprinted after the Report stage, some alterations might be made on the Third Reading, which would involve still another reprinting before it was sent to the House of Lords. Consideration of those circumstances had led the House to adopt the present practice that there should be commonsense and discretion exercised where Bills were not of very great and widespread importance.

§ MR. MOONEY
said he thought the explanation which the right hon. Gentleman had given was a proper one. He was sure the right hon. Gentleman would excuse him for having asked the question, but to a simple unsophisticated Member the Amendments had seemed very considerable, for several of them had taken up half a page of the proceedings. If they were only drafting Amendments, it was, of course, quite a different matter from what he had imagined. He had no axe to grind and had only wanted to know what procedure the House was going to adopt. He asked leave to withdrawn his Amendment.

§ * MR. COCHRANE (Ayrshire, N.)
said he did not want to delay the Bill but he must enter a cave, at against the statement of the right hon. Gentleman that Bills might be presented under ordinary circumstances to the 931 House in the form in which that Bill had been presented, for it made it extremely inconvenient if not impossible to discuss a Bill. The Bill was considered by the Scottish Grand Committee on Tuesday, and it would have been quite possible to have it reprinted in time for the discussion that evening. The plea of economy seemed to him to be rather thin, and he thought it must be due to some carelessness of the right hon. Gentleman's Department that the Bill had not been reprinted. He shared that perfect trust in another place which the right hon. Gentleman had displayed, and he was quite sure that that other place would be quite able to interpret and deal with the Bill.