OLD-AGE PENSIONS BILL.

HC Deb 01 July 1908 vol 191 cc780-899

Considered in Committee.

(In the Committee.)

[Mr. EMMOTT (Oldham) in the Chair.]

Clause 7:

THE CHAIRMAN

said that the Amendment of the hon. Member for Norwood (to leave out subsection (1)), as it referred to the whole of the subsection, would not be in order, because striking out the subsection would be equivalent in this case to striking out the whole clause, and any proposal of that sort ought to come on on the question that the clause stand part.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR (City of London)

asked when the important questions raised by subsection (1) could be rised—not until the end of the clause?

MR. WALTER LONG (Dublin, S.)

said the clause proposed to set up three distinct authorities—the pension committee, the pension officer, and the central authority. As a matter of fact, parts of the clause did hang together, but yet they were separate and distinct. Did he understand it would be impossible to discuss the clause as it stood and the duties of the three officers or bodies created until they reached the end of the clause?

THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE,) Carnarvon Boroughs

said he could quite see the difficulty raised by the Leader of the Opposition, but he did not see that that point could not be raised on the Amendment next on the Paper.

THE CHAIRMAN

said that so far as questions were correlated he always tried not to interfere with proper discussions on them, but as the Chancellor of the Exchequer had said, in this case the question arose on the next Amendment.

^*MR. BENNETT (Oxfordshire, Woodstock) moved the omission of all the words of the clause after "determined" in the opening sentence, in order to insert "by the pension officer." He said the object of his Amendment was to substitute the pension officer for the pension committee. He thought a considerable feeling existed in the House with regard to the appointment of a local committee of amateurs to control the distribution of State pensions, and he was more particularly opposed to it from the point of view of a Member for an agricultural constituency. He did not think the majority of Members of the House adequately realised the social conditions under which the older and poorer labourers had to live in our country villages. He was well aware that most towns, like Leicester, and some of the country districts, like the West Riding of Yorkshire, could take ample care that fair play was exercised in the composition and conduct of a pension committee, but he would like to ask with all sincerity what they imagined would be the character of such a committee in an average agricultural district of England. It was not an exaggeration to say that such a committee would, in some cases, be saturated with sectarian, political, and social prejudices, prejudices leveled, be it remembered, against the feebler and older labourers. He knew something about it, because he was the son of a country vicar, and he had come into friendly contact with hundreds of labourers. He had no wish to exaggerate, a good case, but hon. Members probably saw in the newspapers of yesterday or the day before a case in which an agricultural labourer in the Tonbridge Division of Kent had been evicted from his house, because he had had the audacity to apply for land under the Small Holdings Act—that was the kind of prejudice and petty tyranny to which the labourers might have to submit. Some of these pension committees would probably be recruited from the ranks of small squires, parsons, their wives, who were often worse than themselves, Tory farmers, retired snobs, et hoc genus omne. Full play would be given to local gossip, and the members of the committee could make political capital out of the fact that they were the arbiters as to whether a pension was to be bestowed or withheld. It might be said that some check existed against that kind of thing, and that it would be unpopular for any local committee to refuse a man a pension, and so put him on the rates. Many unsuccessful applicants, however, might not go on the rates, but relapse into that state of independent semi-starvation from which if they got the pension they would emerge. The faithful adherents of the Government in the counties frequently lived under singularly oppressive conditions, and he regretted to have to say that to some extent the fetters of this accursed feudalism had been rivetted more firmly than ever by some of the Liberal appointments to the Bench, and by handing over our citizen soldiers to County Associations. If it was thought that it was unfair or unwise to entrust so much power to one individual, an Amendment could be framed and accepted, which would allow an appeal from the decision of the pension officer to the local Bench of magistrates. They had, after all, a sense of responsibility and were, by the expert advice of the magistrates' clerk, kept more or less within the bounds of legal rectitude. A pension officer, of course was a public official, or, to use the more grandiloquent expression of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he was an Imperial officer. He would have local knowledge, he would understand his metier thoroughly, and he would be paid by the central authority and be responsible to that authority alone.

Amendment proposed— In page 4, line 14, to leave out from the word 'determined' to end of the clause, and to insert the words 'by the pension officer.'"—(Mr. Bennett.)

Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out, down to the end of line 14, stand part of the Question."

MR. WALTER LONG

said he did not suppose he was speaking alone for Members on his side of the House when he dissociated himself entirely from the speech just delivered, which would have more appropriately found place in a book of ill-natured fairy tales than in the records of the House. The hon. Gentleman had been good enough to take them into his own personal family history, and claimed to be an authority on the subject of squires and country labourers because he was the son of a country rector. Anybody familiar with country life in any part of Great Britain would altogether fail to recognise the description given by the hon. Gentleman as having the smallest relation to what actually occurred in our country districts. Reference had been made more than once by those really conversant with the question to the action of landowners and others in making provision in the form of a pension for their own labourers, and anybody who had studied the question of the present position of the agricultural labourer must know perfectly well that on the estates of the gentlemen so curiously described by the hon. Member for Oxfordshire there was almost invariably to be found a system of pensions by which the old labourers were provided for to the end of their lives, and under which it was never necessary for them to apply to the Poor Law. He was speaking of what he knew from his own personal experience; in almost every case where a village belonged to one or two large owners the number of people found on the Poor Law was infinitesimal. He spoke of some villages where it was the record of the village that no man or woman in the most remote degree connected with the estate had ever been allowed to go on the Poor Law; and that was the kind of thing described by the hon. Gentleman when he sought to get rid of the pension committees. The hon. Gentleman said that an agricultural labourer had been evicted because he applied for a small holding; he did not go into the details or facts of the case. He thought even those who did not believe in the land system of the country would agree with him that, in common fairness, before the owner of that property was condemned he ought to have his case stated, and that they ought not to assume, because the hon. Gentleman gave one single case, without one atom of verification, that therefore he was justified in——

MR. BENNETT

The case occurred in the Tonbridge Division of Kent.

MR. WALTER LONG

said it was alleged merely that a man was turned out because he made a particular application. The hon. Gentleman was a distinguished member of one of the Universities, and he would, therefore, know perfectly well the difficulty of proving that an act of an individual was due to one particular cause. It suited him to say the man, whose name they did not know, was turned out because he made a particular application. He did not think that kind of charge would weigh much with the House. It was on totally different grounds that he found himself, with great reluctance, supporting an Amendment moved in such a speech. Owing to the difficulties of the Parliamentary situation he had no other opportunity of considering the question he wanted to bring to the notice of the Government. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, who had borne with great good humour and patience the heavy burden of carrying through this Bill, had charged some Members of the Opposition with inadequate study of the Bill. That charge had been made against him more than once, but he could assure the Chancellor of the Exchequer that he had read the Bill, he suspected as often as the right hon. Gentleman himself had done, and he was sure as carefully. He wanted to know from the Government whether they attached to the English language a different meaning from that which was given in any dictionary in any bookseller's shop. He ventured to say the other day that the pension committee under this Bill were charged with a particular duty, and he based that view on the language of subsection (b)— The pension officer shall inquire into and report upon any claim or question so referred to him, and the local pension committee shall, on the receipt of the report of the pension officer, and after obtaining from him, if necessary, any further information as to the claim in question, consider the case and give their decision upon the claim in question. Their decision would not require legal interpretation. "Decision" meant a settlement of the case; therefore, he had assumed that the pension committee were intended to hear all the facts as narrated by the pension officer, and then arrive at their decision. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer the other day had pointed out that that was a mistaken view altogether; that the real official in the matter was the pension officer in the first instance—he called him the Imperial officer—and the President of the Local Government Board, through his Department, was also an Imperial officer in the final case. If that were the correct interpretation of the Bill, and of course the Government were necessarily the authority on that point—then he asked for what purpose was the pension committee appointed, and what were the duties they would have to perform? The pension committee was to be appointed as other committees had been appointed in previous Acts of Parliament; that was to say, they were to be members of certain popularly elected bodies, and they were given power to co-opt people from outside. That was the basis on which the education committee, of the county council was appointed, the animals diseases committee and certain other committees. It was obviously a very good plan. They got the representative element of elective members of local authorities, and they were able to bring in outsiders who were suitable for the work, and who had the necessary local knowledge. But what was the use of going through this elaborate machinery if, when the committee was appointed, its work was to be limited to approving of the action of the pension officer? The Government might have been very careful in drawing up this clause and its subsections, which defined the limitations under which the Bill was to be applied, but it was unquestionable that there would be great room for a discretionary interpretation of those limitations. But what they were entitled to know before they went further was with whom that discretionary duty was to rest. Was it to rest with the local committee or the pension officer? The hon. Member proposed to abolish the pension committee. If they were to have no discretion, and were merely to act upon the authority of the pension officer, then, in common respect for local government, what was the good of the committee? If the pensions were to be provided by the pension officer on certain conditions set out in the Bill, why go to the trouble of setting up a committee whose duties apparently would be non-existent, and who were merely to ratify the report of the pension officer, which report, if they took the Government's view of their own Bill, was the real decision of the case? What was there left for the pension committee to decide? If they said that in proportion to population there was to be only a limited number of pensions given, if the Government had taken the line that these pensions were to be the reward for exceptional merit in local life, he could have understood that they would discriminate between different candidates. But nothing of the kind was done. What they did was to say that men of a certain age, of a certain income, and fulfilling certain conditions were to be entitled to pensions. The man made his application to the pension committee, and the matter was referred to the pension officer, who made his inquiry and report. What were the inquiry and report upon? The pension officer had to find out whether the statements of the man or woman were correct, and whether he or she conformed to the regulations and conditions of the Bill. Having made his inquiry, the officer reported to the committee. What had the committee to do? There was no option left to them; there was nothing whatever for them to do but to act upon the report of the officer, and give the man or woman the certificate with which to obtain the pension at the post office. Was any body of self-respecting men or women going to act in that manner? If the committee disagreed with the report of the pension officer, what was to happen? The matter was to be referred to the Local Government Board. In his ignorance, when he first read the Bill, he assumed that no Government would appoint a semi-locally elective body without charging them with the duty of decision, together with appeal against their decisions, and that if there were no mala fides in their decision it would be upheld by the appellate authority. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer had wiped all that away the other day, and said that they had the Imperial officer, and also the President of the Local Government Board and his officials. If that were so, why have a pension committee at all? They ought to be told what their duties were to be. He did not desire to abolish the pension committee, and his alteration would be of a different kind from that of the hon. Member. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had described the pension officer as an "Imperial officer," but he ventured to say that the people among whom the Excise officer lived would find it very hard to recognise the ordinary revenue officer under the title of Imperial officer. So far as he knew, the revenue officer had never hitherto been regarded as one who was at all familiar with the lives of of the people among whom he lived. To begin with, he usually worked over a large area, and lived in that part of it which he found most convenient for trains or the use of his bicycle. He was absolutely unknown to the life of our poor country villages, and he should have thought that he was the least known of any officials in the towns. And where he was known he was an extremely unpopular and unwelcome visitor. Yet this was the man selected by the Government to make these invidious inquiries. So far he had dealt only with the inquiries which were antecedent to the granting of the pensions; but there was a very much more objectionable duty cast upon the pension officer. He had not only to make inquiries before the granting of the pension, but he had the duty of, seeing that the men or women who had received pensions continued to conform to the conditions laid down by the Act. He could not conceive a more odious duty being cast upon any person or a less suitable person than the officer chosen for the purpose. He quite understoood that the Government wanted—and there was a great deal to be said for it, though he believed it rested more on sentiment than on practical knowledge—to dissociate the pension system from the Poor Law, which was very unpopular in many parts of the country. Yet, as was said by the right hon. Baronet the Member for the Forest of Dean, it was perfectly true that in the country districts no stigma rested on those who needed Poor Law relief. It was well understood that outdoor relief was the last resource which the public had to adopt in order to prevent people from starving and suffering, and they gave outdoor relief because there was no pension. The relieving officer was not the unpopular person he was thought to be, and he believed that he would be more popular than the revenue officer. Of this he was quite certain, the relieving officer knew the requirements of the poor in the country better than the revenue officer. If he had to recast this clause, he would leave the pension committee in it, and get rid of the pension officer. He believed that the pension committee in the country districts would be able to get the information they wanted in their own way. In the towns it would be totally different. The mistake the Government were making was in their applying the same machinery to both the towns and the country. In the towns no doubt they would want more than one pension officer. In the big towns the congested population included a large number of the poorer classes, and there the revenue officer would have to be doubled and trebled before he would be able to do his work. In the country districts, if they did not like to employ the relieving officer, they could have the pension committee to make choice of the people to furnish them with the necessary information. But the Government said that the pension committee did not find the money out of which the pensions came, and, therefore, they could not let them grant them. Why did they say in the Bill that the pension committee were to arrive at a decision, and then say they could not trust them because the money was not theirs, and they must have somebody above them? He believed that they could perfectly well leave this matter to the local committee as proposed under the Bill, and get rid altogether of the pension officer, leaving, if necessary, an appeal to the Local Government Board. It was rather an absurd position in which to be placed that they had to raise this question on an Amendment of which they could not approve, moved in a speech of which they strongly disapproved. In order to follow a course which they thought was right they had apparently to support an Amendment which they thought wrong. That was not the fault of the Opposition. They would much rather make their statement and survey on the general discussion of the clause as a whole. They could not pick and choose, and were compelled to raise it in a most unfortunate form. On the decision at which the Committee arrived in reference to this most important question depended the smooth and successful working of the Bill or the reverse. Further, it should be remembered that the money they were spending was Imperial money, and they were touching closely on the limits of local government. However carefully they might frame the provisions for old-age pensions, in the rural districts they would undoubtedly come alongside, and very close up to, the action of the Poor Law guardians in granting relief to the poor. They were going to call up a body of men who were members of various local authorities to form the pension committee, and he submitted that they had no right to put them in that position unless they clothed them with actual power. He believed it would be better to strengthen the position of the pension committee and to get rid of the pension officer. He thought it right to take the present opportunity of telling the Committee what the view of the Opposition was as to this clause. He hoped to see it altered before it left the Committee, and made at once more agreeable to the people concerned and more likely to be successfully administered.

THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. MASTERMAN,) West Ham, N.

said it was of course entirely in agreement with the general wishes of the Committee, and had already been suggested by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that the whole question of the machinery should be raised on the first Amendment. No doubt it might have been more convenient to deal with each piece of the machinery separately, but they had no guarantee that each piece as it arose would have been able to be dealt with with liberal discussion, thanks to the fact that they had only a day. As a matter of fact, as everyone would honestly acknowledge, this was not a party controversial point in any sense of the word. It was true there had been a controversy between the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Dublin and the hon. Member for Woodstock, but that was rather a discussion on the amenities and realities of rural life, upon which they held different opinions, than of the machinery of the Bill. He had no wish to enter that discussion, but he supposed most of them would agree in their hearts that if they drew something like a mean between the picture of universal benignity on one side, and what the hon. Member for the Woodstock division called accursed feudalism on the other, they would not be very far from the truth. As to the question of the inquiry and the obligation laid either on the Imperial officer or the relieving officer or upon some local committee, not only to make the preliminary inquiry, which was difficult, but also to continue the inquiries from time to time, to which the right hon. Gentleman stated he had a fundamental objection, they agreed, but in so much of this debate, they were not dealing with stupidities or lack of foresight in the drafting of Resolutions or Bills, but with fundamental difficulties which had been familiar to all who had gone into the subject, and which accompanied any scheme which was not a universal scheme, as the right hon. Baronet the Member for the Forest of Dean had pointed out two days ago. If there had bee a different drafting in the Bill the same fundamental difficulties would have arisen. It might be objectionable that the Imperial officer should have laid upon him this continued inquiry, but it would be more objectionable if it was given to the relieving officer. If there was one thing upon which that House would absolutely make up its mind in connection with this machinery manipulation, whatever Amendments they were prepared to listen to, they would not be prepared to lay this burden of pension investigation upon the relieving officer, because that, certainly in the towns and, to a large extent, in the villages also, would bring the whole scheme into such intimate connection with the disability of the Poor Law as would make it profoundly unpopular among the very class who they hoped would come in and immediately benefit by it. With regard to the functions of the committee, he had less controversy with the language of the clause, and more difficulty in finding out exactly what the objections were to the clause as it stood, than perhaps some other Members of the House. To him the working of the machinery appeared comparatively simple. The pension committee, under subsection (a) of Clause 7 received all claims for pensions and automatically referred them to the Excise man or the Imperial officer. He should think they would be prepared to receive suggestions from anyone as to those who had a right to claim. There were only two possibilities under the Amendment. Either they must leave the pension officer absolute authority to decide in any case of uncertainty as to income, as to association with pauperism, or as to past history in connection with what his right hon. friend called the industry test, with his decision final, or they must make some tribunal to receive an appeal from the pension officer, or they must adopt some such system as this, where under subsection (b) the reports of the pension officers were submitted to the local pension committee. The local penion committee, in the case of any doubt, might obtain any further information from the pension officer as to the claim in question, and might certainly consider any difficult cases brought before them, such as those indicated in the general discussion they had been having for the past few days. Further, there were a number of small but difficult points that it would be exceedingly undesirable to throw entirely upon the responsibility of a single man to decide in connection with this most important decision as to whether an old man or woman should receive a pension or not. Supposing the pension officer reported in favour and the pension committee accepted the report, the applicant would get his pension. If the pension officer reported against a pension, and the committee also reported against it, he would not get his pension. But in any case where the pension committee said "Yes," and the pension officer "No," then the matter was referred to the central pension department. Surely that was the natural meaning. If that was not so, and the point was raised later in the debate, he was sure the Local Government Board and his right hon. friend were fully prepared to establish a satisfactory system. Now he came to the demand of the hon. Member for Woodstock to sweep away the pension committee. He was not quite sure whether the hon. Member was as anxious that the committee should be swept away as he was to emit some explosive sentiments. To begin with, he made no distinction between town and country, and swept away the local committee because, he said, in rural life county councils and their nominees were against the democratic spirit and would be inclined to be prejudiced against ardent democratic work. If he desired that, he ought to have drawn the distinction very sharp, because that was certainly not the case in towns where the great majority of the population were, and the only method by which labour representation could be introduced into the scheme was by some such committee as this, the town councils appointing members of their own bodies and outsiders to form a first court of appeal. Without some such committee as that, the whole decision as to whether a man should have a pension or not depended entirely upon the nominee of the Department whose interest must be, from its nature, not to give a pension rather than otherwise. If the Treasury was not the guardian of the public purse it would be unfaithful to its duties, and in consequence it would be for the Imperial officer, representing the Treasury, to be more inclined to use evidence which tended to prove that the man came under one of the disabilities, than for the local committee, where, as was declared in the characteristic and welcome speech from the noble Lord the Member for Lincolnshire, the whole impulse both in towns and country would be to get as many pensioners as possible. Allusion had been made to West Ham. Speaking with a due sense of responsibility for that respectable neighbourhood, he assured the Committee that its whole inclination where Imperial money was concerned was to get as much of it as possible—not only because it was good for the people themselves, but because it was good for trade generally, most of the money being spent in the neighbourhood; and therefore, so far from the fear of his hon. friend being fulfilled that the pension committee would act as a check upon the liberality of the Treasury and the Imperial officer, he was almost entirely convinced that the impulse towards enlargement would come from the pension committee, and the impulse towards the reduction of expenditure from the Treasury. Then, it was very evident that Parliament would under no circumstances give absolute discretion to an Imperial officer as to whether a pension should be given or not in doubtful cases. They must, therefore, have a Court of Appeal. He would submit to anyone familiar with the realities of rural life that the knowledge that an appeal had to go to the justices of the peace would, of itself, cause a very large amount of repugnance to carry out any appeal at all; whereas the pension committee would be regarded as a perfectly natural and satisfactory method of machinery in so far as it was kept apart from and recognised as independent of the machinery of the Poor Law. If they were not to have a local committee of some such character as this, the only other suggestion was that every appeal should go to the central authority, and that as a matter of machinery would break down. It would mean an enormous increase in staff, because they might have to deal with thousands of appeals. It seemed to them that this first sifting, under which no substantial injustice could be done, was a quite satisfactory method by which all the obvious cases of doubt could be first of all dealt with locally, and the right to challenge in the event of diverse decisions in cases of more intricacy and difficulty should be carried to the Local Government Board. For these reasons the Government asked the House to support the formation of the local pension committees.

MR. WALTER LONG

asked what provision was made in the Bill for the publication of the report of the pension officer. Was it proposed that it should take some public form?

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

said he would answer the various points raised later on.

MR. LYTTELTON (St. George's, Hanover Square)

said the effect of the machinery made the appointment of the local pension committee entirely useless. The committee had to refer claims to the pension officer, who would submit his report to the pension committee. The pension committee could return the report to the pension officer. If the decision of the local pension committee allowed a claim for a pension not in accordance with the report of the pension officer, then the matter could be referred to the central pension committee. If the supplementary information upon which the local pension committee wished to act differed from the report of the pension officer, the report stood and the matter had to go to the Local Government Board Surely that was not common sense, but it was the only option left to the local committee. Obviously, what would be sensible and just was that the committee with the pension officer should consider the supplementary information, vary the report, and come to an agreement. He did not think that that was the effect of the clause as it stood. He would like to know if the Attorney-General was satisfied with the language of subsection (c). What would happen in the case of disallowing the claim? He would like the Government to consider these two questions. He held strongly that they ought not to put this limitation upon a body of local gentlemen who would be desirous of doing justice, because it was most undesirable that they as well as the pension officer should be fettered by these very restrictive words; they should be left to arrive at a determination of a case together.

MR. BARNES (Glasgow, Blackfriars)

said the Government had discovered that there were fundamental difficulties in connection with the Bill. He and some of his colleagues had foreseen them before they had had much experience of the discussion; all these difficulties were inseparable from any Bill of a partial character. He was going to vote against the Amendment, feeling perfectly sure that what the hon. Member had proposed would not work out satisfactorily. There were objections to the Bill as it was framed, so far as these committees were concerned. He looked with considerable apprehension to the formation of co-opted committees which might include all sorts of faddists and people who arrogated to themselves the possession of virtues which sometimes they did not possess. The Charity Organisation Society was no doubt a very useful body in its way; but he felt that the Charity Organisation agents would be on the spot when these committees were formed and would no doubt be appointed on those committees, and inasmuch as that Society took a view in regard to the provision of pensions by the State altogether contrary to the principle of the Bill, it seemed to him that they would not get efficient service from them. He would be just as keen to exclude local authorities dealing with the Poor Law as the Charity Organisation authority, since the Bill was intended to dissociate pensions from the Poor Law, and he was not going to agree to the Poor Law officer coming in at the back door after being thrust out from the front. He was likewise opposed to a friendly society man or a trade unionist official on these committees, since they would be liable to judge partially in regard to cases brought before the committees. He was in favour of the committees because he wanted this pension scheme to be associated with the local life of the people where pensions were to be distributed, and he wanted to see a committee of really representative men who had gone through the mill and been elected to public positions. That would be a very considerable safeguard for the exclusion of faddists and the other persons he had mentioned. If women could be added to these bodies so much the better. He would heartily welcome any proposal for the inclusion of women in those bodies. It had been said by the hon. Member for South Dublin that those committees would not really have much power, and that the central official and the Excise officer who made the report would really be the man to determine whether or not a pension was to be paid. He did not agree with that. So long as they kept the committees apart from the Excise officer, and they were in a position to discuss amongst themselves with absolute independence, there was considerable scope for the committee. He had had experience in connection with trade unionists, and they frequently found it necessary to have recourse to local officers upon cases sent up for adjudication. He hoped the Excise officer would not be brought in to act with the committee, because in that event he would be sure to become the guiding factor, and he wanted the committee to consider the report in a perfectly independent manner. He noticed that no provision was made for an appeal by the claimant to a pension which was refused by a local committee. The right hon. Gentleman had referred them to an Amendment on the point which was on the Paper, but in view of the closure it was useless to refer them to Amendments later on. He was not speaking against the closure because he felt that it was a regrettable necessity. He referred more to the long-winded speeches from the front Opposition Benches. If they reached the Amendment referred to there would certainly have to be less speeches from the front benches, and they would have to be much shorter.

SIR WALTER FOSTER (Derbyshire, Ilkeston)

thought the committee ought to be got rid of at any cost. He admitted that Committees that had examined this question had regarded a local committee as of primary importance, but this was under different conditions. The Report of the Select Committee of 1899, which was presided over by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wimbledon, contained this sentence— It seems to us to be essential that the authority to grant the pension should also be the authority which finds the means. The committee to be constituted under this Bill, however, did not find the means, but on the contrary they would relieve local charges by using the Bill, and consequently they would have an inducement to grant pensions widely, because by so doing they would relieve the local rates. Every Committee which had proposed that there should be a local committee had done so on the ground that, having the charge of moneys raised by the local rates, they ought to have the right of granting the pension and judging of the claim which an applicant had to it. His view twenty years ago was that there should be a committee, and that it should be appointed by the county council. In the Bill which he took about the country some fifteen years ago and discussed in various parts of rural England, he proposed that a committee should be appointed by the county council. A local rate was to be levied for pensions, and, therefore, it was only fair that a local committee should be appointed to spend their own money. In every locality he was met with hostile criticism in regard to the proposal to appoint a committee. If there was one form of mind more suspicious than another, it was that of the agricultural labourer. That suspicion was deep-seated and strong; they feared not only the favouritism and partiality of a local committee, but they resented any inquisition on the part of neighbours or local residents into their affairs. If a committee was to have any power whatever in this matter, and to command confidence, it must be one consisting of active people acquainted with the poor who would make inquiries in every case where a pension was suggested. But the committee now proposed was worse than ordinary committees, because it was not of a representative character. It might consist of men who had gone through the ordeal of election to public bodies, or it might consist of nominated members. There might be sub-committees nominated to do the work, and consequently any inquiry or investigation would be of the most odious nature to the rural mind. He believed that a committee of that kind would be a serious blot on the administration of the Bill. It would engender an amount of suspicion in the rural districts which would be fatal to the efficiency of the work, or to that satisfactory working which would give confidence to the people to whom the awards were made. He had been driven from the position of approving of a local committee to that of desiring to substitute something else. He did not think the appointment of a pension officer was the best solution, though it was one which he would prefer to a committee. There were various other means. He would like to see the Treasury in this matter doing away with all appeals to the Local Government Board. He did not think the Local Government Board, which was already the most overburdened Department of the State, had time to do this work. If the Department had to go into appeals in hundreds and thousands of cases in regard to pensions the work would be left to a permanent official, who would look over these things from the high and dry position of the exact wording of the law, and consequently the decisions would not command that regard and consideration which they would if they were dealt with in other ways. That it should be left to a Department which was not properly in charge of the scheme, and that the Treasury should allow the Local Government Board to incur expenditure in these cases, was a blot on the system. He thought they might get rid of the pension committee altogether if they had another kind of authority. All the preliminary inquiries must be made by the pension officer. He would find out all about the individual. The Bill had been improved in the course of its passage through Committee. Now, nearly all these inquiries were to be of a documentary kind. The Bill had been made more automatic. It ought to be absolutely automatic. There ought to be no personal inquisition into the life of any applicant. He wished to see the Bill improved in that direction. It could be made so that nothing but documentary evidence need be required. About the applicants' means, the evidence would be given on oath so that the applicant made himself liable to severe penalties if he made a false statement. That would all be done if they substituted what was found necessary in New Zealand. There they had adopted the principle of having these pension cases all decided in Court by a stipendiary magistrate, who, with all the documents before him, allowed the claimant to come in and make a statement to the contrary if he desired to do so. The inquiry was made by a local officer, called the registrar, who reported to the magistrate, and the Court gave a decision. The decision need not be in public, so that there would be no unnecessary exposure of a man's life or means. That would do away with the necessity for any appeal to the Local Government Board. He would much rather that the work was done by the mayor of a borough or the chairman of a county council than by a committee. If it was to be done by an Imperial officer, it might be done by a stipendiary magistrate or a County Court Judge. If none of these officers were available they might follow the example in connection with the preparation of the electoral rolls. That was difficult and delicate work, and yet they could entrust it to the revising barrister. Such an officer would not cost very much, he could sit so many times a year to hear claims, and the judgment he gave would settle the cases. On the other hand, if local committees were chosen they would find various reasons for rejecting applications for pensions. A committee might consist of local busy-bodies who prided themselves in taking a stringent attitude, or it might consist of men who would not regard with favour applicants in a rural district who had ever killed a rabbit or a hare. Such people would have a very poor chance of getting their pensions. [Cries of "Oh."] He was not saying that from any political bias. It would be equally the same with Members on that side of the House. Wherever they had local committees they were bound to have a certain amount of political feeling introduced into work of this kind. There was a great deal of human nature in both the Tory Party and the Liberal Party. He had found that it was very prevalent in local committees. It was almost inevitable that partiality of feeling should enter into the minas of the local committees, and that, taken in conjunction with the suspicion which characterised the rural mind, would, he was sure, lead to great dissatisfaction in connection with the work of such committees.

MR. BOWLES (Lambeth, Norwood)

said the question they were now considering was whether or not the proposed local pension committee was of any practical use. It seemed to him that all the speeches he had listened to were to the effect that the committee would be of no practical use whatever. It had been pointed out with practical unanimity by hon. Members holding widely different views on the general subject of old-age pensions that the function of the local committee, if the clause stood as it was in the Bill, would be merely to register the decisions of the pension officer. He understood that they were able on this Amendment to consider the larger and more important question whether the whole machinery of the clause was of any use. He was bound to say that his concern on that subject had been greatly strengthened by what had been said on the present Amendment. The machinery clause was of the greatest practical importance in regard to the scheme, and it should be perfectly explicit. It was, however, absolutely vague on all the matters of detail which were of real importance in the working of the scheme. There were two forms of questions which were dealt with in this section. There were questions raised by the original claim and questions raised after the pension was granted. Nothing was said as to how the original claim was to be made; but, having been made, it was to be laid before the local pension committee, and that body was to pass it on to the pension officer to make inquiry and report. The pension officer was recommended as being, at any rate, an Imperial officer. No doubt there were many devoted and laborious servants of the Crown, but it seemed to him that none of them would be able to compare in point of dignity or favour with this lonely unbefriended man defending the taxpayer and the Exchequer against extortion by repeated and continuous inquiries of the most sordid and disagreeable description—inquiries which it would be the direct interest of every human being to render nugatory. He did not know whether hon. Gentlemen realised the extraordinary duties and functions which this officer would have to perform under this clause. He would have, in every case, to have produced to him the applicant's birth certificate, and, if married, his marriage certificate; to take a complete account of the man's means and of the means of his wife, of how long his residence had been within the United Kingdom, and to make sure in every case that the man had not for ten years been in gaol. He would have to discover whether or not the applicant had habitually failed or not failed to work according to ability, opportunity, and need—which would vary in every case—and which need and opportunity throughout the whole of the man's life the pension officer would have to determine for himself. He must make an absolute exposure of the whole financial position of the man, not only actually but potentially, and of his discretion to manage his own affairs. He had to discover whether or not he had joined within the last few weeks a friendly society or benefit club, or had received a Christmas-box or charitable donation of any kind. He would have to sound the wall of the man's cottage to be sure that he had no hidden hoard, and to search for papers in order to be certain that he had not conveyed some portion of his property to some of his relations to their mutual benefit. He knew that the Chancellor of the Exchequer ridiculed a description of that sort. An hon. Gentleman opposite on the previous night had ridiculed the notion that the pension officer would search to see whether a man had a hoard or make sure whether a man actually owned his own house. But he was not overdrawing the picture of what was really possible. He was simply stating what were the actual duties laid by the Government on this pension officer who was bound to carry them out. It was perfectly absurd for the Government to come down and lay these enormous and vital duties on their servants in the interest of the taxpayer and the Exchequer and expect that they would be seriously carried out. From his point of view, he was sure that this wretched Imperial officer would do his best. He would make, and have to make, a most invidious and painful inquiry, and it seemed to him that an officer to whom those powers and duties were to be entrusted might equally well be entrusted with the decision of the claim to a pension. But when the pension officer had made this laborious inquiry, as the clause was drawn, he might be overruled, and without any appeal, by the pension committee. According to his reading of subsection (c) it would be perfectly within the power of the pension committee to disallow a claim, and although they disagreed with the report of the pension committee the pension officer was not to make any appeal to the Local Government Board, or to make any appeal whatever. The subsection said— If any decision of the local pension committee allowing a claim for a pension or determining any question is not in accordance with the report of the pension officer, the matter should be referred to the central pension authority, and should be considered and determined by them. There was nothing there about the decision of the pension committee being disallowed. There was one other consideration. The clause contemplated not merely the case of the original claimant, but the case of a pension having been granted, and the man for one reason or another being disqualified from continuing to receive the pension. But if the information as to disqualification could not easily be got at what was to prevent the man from receiving the pension for life? A man might have made a false statement; he might have come into a fortune after receiving the pension; or many other events might happen which would disqualify him from continuing to receive the pension. What was extremely important was that the Government should provide that it should be somebody's interest or duty to see that the pension did not go on being paid for an indefinite time. There was no machinery by which it could be discovered whether the man continued to have a right to draw his pension. Under the clause it would be nobody's business to ferret into the case. Why should one object to an old man of seventy-two or seventy-five years of age getting this little money? The right would be taken on trust. Nobody would put himself in the odious position of objecting to the old man getting the pension of 5s. a week. The subsection suggested that that extremely disagreeable duty should be carried out by the pension officer. Was the pension officer to occupy what little spare time he had in running over the whole district to see whether any pensioner had become disqualified or had done something which might disqualify him from continuing to receive his pension? Was he to understand that the case would have to be referred to the central committee; and would they refer it back to the pension committee, who in turn would refer it to the pension officer to inquire into his own report? The whole scheme was full of objections; and he did not believe that any pension officer or any human being could be found who could satisfactorily make these enormous, prolonged, and complicated inquiries. In regard to the Amendment, for his part he regarded the pension committee as, on the whole, likely in the practical working out of the scheme, to be a useful body, but he would hesitate to throw the complete obligation on to the pension officer. If the hon. Member merely moved the leaving out all the words after "determined" he would feel no hesitation in supporting him, but as to what other words should be inserted he was not now prepared to say.

SIR J. DICKSON-POYNDER (Wiltshire, Chippenham)

said that there were difficulties almost inseparable from any scheme of old-age pensions which the Government desired to meet as far as possible. He did not think that hon. Gentlemen opposite would support a universal scheme of old-age pensions; therefore if they were in favour of any other schemes they should be prepared to consider possible methods of overcoming the difficulties connected with the present proposal. He wished to express shortly the pleasure he felt that the Government were resisting the proposal made by the hon. Gentleman who moved the Amendment. He thought it was necessary in the disposal of these pensions that there should be some form of local committee, composed of gentlemen connected with the district, who had known for years past those who would become applicants for and who would enjoy the benefits of a pension. He ventured to say that the appointment of a committee of members of the county council was not the wisest form of constituting the body. For himself, he would advocate that work of this character should be placed under the guidance of the district council. They were a more local body, and more in touch with the working people of the district. There would not be applicants coming forward every day. They would come by ones and twos in the country districts, and the gentlemen and ladies who formed this committee would be in touch with the applicants and would be much more likely to know their circumstances, being part of the district council, than a committee appointed by the county council which had to deal with the whole of a large county. It would be impossible for the members of such a committee to be in close touch with all the centres and districts of the county. He disagreed with the proposal of the right hon. Gentleman opposite made when he spoke in a previous part of the debate, that the relieving officer would be a more appropriate officer than the Excise officer. The relieving officer was appointed by the local authority, and was in no way responsible to the State. The Excise officer would be directly representative of the State and of the taxes, and therefore seemed the only appropriate officer in existence to whom the work should be given of guiding and directing the local committee. But he thought it became more important, if this Excise officer was to give a really valuable report to the local committee, that the material at his disposal should be in its truest sense of a definite character. Unfortunately, owing to the exigencies of debate, they had been unable to discuss Clause 3, which, in his opinion, was the most important clause of the Bill, especially that subsection of it which dealt with the question of employment. As it at present stood, subsection (3) of Clause 3, in its amended form, was of a very vague character— Who work to the best of their ability and opportunity for those legally dependent upon them. That at best was a very vague definition, and it would, of course, be very difficult for the most competent Excise officer to come to a really definite and clear decision upon it. He would like to see inserted in the Bill an elaboration of that provision, and with that object in view he had himself put down a new clause, providing that, if the Excise officer was to have definite information, it must appear in a written statement of claim prepared by the applicant for the pension. He hoped that this was contemplated by his right hon. friend. He thought it would be much better to have the matter definitely laid down in the schedules of the Bill, so that the statement of claim might show clearly the age and occupation of the applicant, where he had lived, what had been his employment during the previous ten years, and who his employers had been. He would like to see the statement of claim accompanied by two certificates endorsed by responsible people in the locality, thus showing definitely to the Excise officer that what was stated was accurate and could be relied upon. He thought in that way the Excise officer would have more real material to work upon in coming to a decision, and would be able to report to the local pension committee his opinion upon the facts laid before him. There would then be much more likelihood of a definite and clear opinion being come to by the local pension authority. It would be of advantage to both sides. In the first place, a statement of the character he suggested, put down plainly, and with endorsements, would be of advantage in making it quite clear that the conditions defined in the Bill——

THE CHAIRMAN

The hon. Member really cannot go into this new clause to such a large extent.

SIR J. DICKSON-POYNDER

said he would abide by the Chairman's ruling and would not go further into the point. He had only mentioned the idea because he thought the present material on which the Excise officer had to work, to form an opinion, and report to the pension committee, was somewhat vaguely introduced in the Bill, and he would like to have seen the provision framed in a more definite form. He believed the real efficacy of the Excise officer's report would depend upon the definite information which he would be able to obtain, and he hoped something of the character he had suggested would be inserted in the Bill.

MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN (Worcestershire, E.)

said that whether or not the Amendment was accepted, whether or not the decision arrived at was subject to appeal to the Local Government Board, or whether or not the pension committee was retained, it was quite clear that the position of the pension officer was going to be one of great responsibility and importance for the purposes of the Bill. If the committee were retained, it would be only through the eyes of the pension officer that they would see. They would act on information supplied by him of his own motion, or in answer to the pension committee's inquiries, and, as he understood the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the pension committees must, like a jury, act on the facts as presented to them by the pension officer. Under these circumstances it became of great importance to know who the pension officer was to be. It had been generally assumed throughout these discussions that the pension officer would be an Excise officer; but the words "Excise officer" were nowhere used in the Bill; they had only heard of the Excise officer in the speeches of the Prime Minister, and the subsequent speeches of Ministers had been carefully consistent on that subject. What was stated in the Bill was that— A pension officer shall be appointed by the Treasury, and the Treasury might appoint pension officers in such numbers and in such districts as they thought fit. He could conceive that it was the intention of the Government to allow the appointment of none but Excise officers, but he thought they ought to have a definite statement from them on the subject. If that was their intention, then he asked them whether they thought it possible that the Excise officers, in many cases, would be able to do this new work over the whole of their districts, without assistance. If the Government thought the Excise officers would require assistance, how did they propose to give it to them? There was no provision in the Bill for giving them clerks or assistants, but there was power in the Treasury, if they chose, to appoint two men in a district which for Excise purposes was now in the hands of one officer. Another matter of great importance was this. The pension officer would occupy a position of great influence, and his would be a very invidious position. He would be more influential than any other man in the country in exercising the most vast system of patronage which the State had. It was very important that the officer charged with this important duty, however humble his rank and position, should be above suspicion. His appointment should have no partisan origin—nothing about it which had its source in party spirit. The Excise officer had to compete in the Civil Service examinations before he could get his position, and it could not be alleged that he had been put there for a party purpose any more than it could be said of any other Civil servant. But this Bill did not confine the appointment to Excise officers, and the Treasury might appoint whom they thought fit. They could make a series of appointments, not on the recommendation of a permanent official, but on the old patronage system. There might be a party recommendation to the Patronage Secretary to the Treasury, and such recommendations might be made even by Members of that House. Clearly that was not a tolerable situation. It was not a thing which any of them on either side of the House would desire. He asked the Government, when they replied on the Amendment, to state what their intentions were, and at the same time to give an assurance that they would so amend this clause or the next clause as definitely to secure that every man holding one of these appointments, whether he were an Excise officer or not, had entered the Civil Service by competitive examination and not by patronage.

MR. COURTENAY WARNER (Staffordshire, Lichfield)

said the right hon. Gentleman had opened his remarks by saying that the duties of the pension officer would be immensely important because the pension committee would have to act entirely upon his report. That might be true if they had constituted a committee who knew nothing about the local circumstances. But the really important point was that there would be a committee who would know the local details and undoubtedly be in touch with the people. Unless they had a committee who knew all the circumstances, they would have, as had been pointed out by several Members, inquisitorial examinations into the lives of the applicants. When the tribunal consisted of neighbours, and so on, there would be no inquisitorial proceedings, because the committee would know all about the persons in their district. He knew of a gentleman who, when summoned before a County Court Judge for the payment of a debt, pleaded no means. Although the Judge himself knew that that gentleman was in possession of something like £600 a year derived from relatives, there was no documentary evidence of means, and he had to treat the case as if the man had nothing. But the committee would not be compelled to deal in that way. They would know what the man had generally, although there was no documentary evidence to prove it. The Committee would like to know, therefore, what these committees were going to be. It would affect their voting. He thought a local committee would be a great safeguard to the Exchequer, and also a great advantage to the men applying for a pension.

COLONEL LOCKWOOD (Essex, Epping)

said the Secretary to the Local Government Board in the early part of the debate had alluded to the difficulties which crowded on them on this subject as fundamental difficulties that must be encountered. They were fundamental difficulties undoubtedly, but were such as would arise in any Bill of a non-contributory character. Speaking as a Member for a rural constituency, and speaking of what he knew of the rural districts, he believed that the words of the Government would work better than the Amendment, for which he could not possibly vote. The hon. Member for the Blackfriars Division of Glasgow had objected to extending this clause outside the councils because it would make room for faddists on the committees, but faddists would find their way on to any committee. His right hon. friend the Member for the Ilkeston Division had spoken of the suspicion in the rural mind. That was a thing that would never be got rid of, but his opinion was that the people likely to be affected by this Bill were less likely to be suspicious of a local committee than of an extraneous one. There were people in the rural districts who would be suspicious of any committee. He thought the Government plan was best, but he hoped they would give power of appeal to the persons whose applications were rejected. If there was no power of appeal, there would be a sense of soreness which would go far to undo a great deal of the good of the Bill. He agreed that the Government had not inserted the words Excise officer in the Bill as the person who was to do this work, but by common consent he was considered to be, and he did not think the relieving officer was at all the proper person to take charge of the work. His own opinion was that the Government would be forced to create a new class of men for that purpose, and for nothing else. The Government would no doubt see the wisdom of appointing an officer entirely removed from political bias. It would be impossible for the Excise or any other officer who had other duties to perform to perform these as well.

SIR CHARLES W. DILKE (Gloucestershire, Forest of Dean)

said the discussion was wide enough without its being widened by drawing morals as to the advantage of a universal or a contributory scheme. There were certain considerations which seemed to affect the rural districts, but in a sense contrary to what had been stated that day. The hon. Member for Lichfield seemed to think that a local committee would be likely to know the people, but in the rural districts that would not be so, because it would be the county councils. The Bill gave power to appoint sub-committees, but unless the whole authority was delegated to them would they do the work? Unless the whole power was delegated to these subcommittees it would be done by the county councils, who had no local knowledge but paper knowledge, and directly they were driven to paper knowledge it was a matter of indifference where the committee was. Everything must rest with the pension officer. In these cases every district was going to refuse the information required for disqualification and patch up the case so as to present the best case for every applicant. They were not going to incur the unpopularity of keeping people off the pension list. They would report in favour of everybody, and the pension officer would have to bear the whole of the odium. He quite agreed with what had been said as to the appointment of the Excise officer. It was assumed that the Excise officer did not go about his district and would have no knowledge, but he was very much about his district at the present time. He went after the dogs, and inasmuch as he sometimes succeeded in causing the collection of two licences for the same dog, in the opinion of some he was about the district too much. He was not very popular in his district for that reason. But he was now going to cease dealing with dogs and deal with people, and he would have to bear the odium of these odious inquiries. He would therefore naturally try to protect himself as far as possible by the form of certificate he would obtain. The Bill certainly contemplated a written declaration, as would be seen not only from the subsection under discussion but from the whole of Clause 9. It would, of course, depend on the regulations, and they did not know what would be put into those regulations, but certainly the pension officer would go as far as the regulations allowed him in obtaining a written certificate. It was certain that the deficiencies in the claim would be patched up, and that the local committees would strain every point in favour of the applicant. They would say: "It is quite true that nine or ten years ago this man did so and so, but he ought to have a pension." So that in every case the pension officer, and the pension officer alone, would have to do the work. He should support the Government, because he did not see what other scheme they could adopt. It seemed to him the best choice that could be made. The difficulty was enormous, but it was inherent in any scheme that picked and chose in this way, and therefore, while they ought not to attach too much importance to local committees in rural districts, yet on the whole they could not do better under the circumstances than what the Government proposed.

MR. SAMUEL ROBERTS (Sheffield, Ecclesall)

asked whether it was wise from the point of view of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to entrust the administration of these large sums of money to local bodies elected by the ratepayers, whose local interest was to protect the rates. Was it not placing these gentlemen in a very invidious position? Their natural inclination as representing the ratepayers would be to put as many pensioners on the Exchequer fund as they could, because the more they did that the more they would relieve the rates. This was Imperial money and ought to be administered by officials appointed by the Government. He rather agreed with the remarks of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Ilkeston when he said in lieu of the local body he would place the decision in the hands of either a stipendiary or a County Court Judge. There was a precedent for the County Court Judge in the Workmen's Compensation Act. He agreed most thoroughly with the remarks of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcestershire that the pension officer ought to be a man of a very high character who would act independently of party in any way. He suggested the class of men from whom surveyors of income-tax were drawn. He had come across them as a Commissioner of Income-Tax, and they were men quite above suspicion. Did the local authorities want this further duty placed upon them? He understood that some of them at all events did not. The London County Council were making representations at the present moment that they did not want this duty cast upon them.

MR. MASTERMAN

They only suggest that the borough councils would be more appropriate.

MR. SAMUEL ROBERTS

said the hon. Gentleman did not know whether the borough councils wanted it either. In his opinion, and he had had some experience, these bodies had quite enough to do already—more than they could do properly. The last Education Act cast upon them duties which entailed an immense amount of time, and the duties had become so onerous in many localities that they had difficulty in finding to undertake men them. He hoped the Chancellor of the Exchequer would take into consideration the arguments he had placed before him, and also what was said by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Ilkeston, that a committee appointed by a local authority was not altogether a satisfactory body to administer Imperial money.

MR. GEORGE D. FABER (York)

said it seemed to him that so much depended on elaborating the proper machinery to decide who should or should not be entitled to a pension that the discussion was one of the most important that had arisen. The Government had had a very difficult choice before them, because whichever way one looked difficulties met them, but on the whole he thought the machinery the Government had devised was not unsatisfactory in all the circumstances of the case. Let them imagine, however, that the scheme had been established, and an old man of seventy wanted a pension. How would he claim it—orally, or in writing? If he made it in writing, would he lodge it with the local pension committee? Would it have to be in a stereotyped form? The pension committee could look at the claim, as he understood it, but when it was lodged they had nothing to do for the moment. They handed it over to the pension officer, who had to go into all the facts of the case on his own mere notion. Nobody could interfere with him. Would the evidence he took be upon oath? Before an applicant could qualify for a pension this officer had to go into the most inquisitorial examination. They had been told in the earlier discussions that there would be nothing inquisitorial, but there must be a great deal that was inquisitorial or the pension officer would not be performing the statutory obligations which were laid upon him. Where would the inquiry be held—in open Court or in the cottage of the applicant? Would it be with closed doors? Would the local community be allowed to be present? All these were matters which would arise in almost every case. When the inquiry was concluded the officer who had conducted it could do no more, but he handed over the determination to a different body altogether. He doubted whether this part of the machinery was the best that could be devised. They were essentially, cardinally, at the very root, dividing the responsibility. The officer's report went to the committee, who could not go into any evidence at all. The hon. Member for Lichfield had spoken about the pension committee using their local knowledge, but he doubted if they could use it. He doubted if they could look outside the four corners of the report, or ask for any further information that could be given them except what was given by the pension officer. He asked anyone who had listened to him whether that was a satisfactory solution of the difficulty, which he agreed was inherent in the case, whichever way they put it. But his cardinal objection was that they severed the responsibility, that one man took the evidence and another body gave the judgment, and the second body could not go into any evidence at all. They were making the local pension committee practically a court of appeal that could only consider the evidence that was submitted to them by the local officer. He would have thought it much better to have given, in the first instance, fuller power to the pension officer; to let him hear the evidence and come to a conclusion upon it. He was in a much better position to adjudicate upon the matter. He asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer to lend a sympathetic ear to bona fide objections, and even at that hour so to alter the scheme that the local officer should be the judge in the first instance, and then give fuller power to the pension committee on appeal.

SIR MAURICE LEVY (Leicestershire, Loughborough)

said the hon. Member had conjured up all sorts of objections that existed nowhere except in his own imagination. The hon. Member appeared to desire one man only to be the deciding factor as to whether a person ought to have a pension or not. They on that side of the House were anxious that as many as possible should be eligible for and receive pensions, and believed the proposals of the Government to establish pension committees far preferable to the suggestion of the hon. Member for York, who appeared to disapprove of inquiry and yet wanted more. Would hon. Gentlemen opposite support an Amendment to the effect that every person over seventy should be able to walk into the post office and demand their pension? If so he would put an Amendment on the paper to effect that, [Cries of "Move it."] He wished to impress upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer that the pension committee ought not to be elected by the district councils, for after all they were simply Poor Law guardians. They ought, as far as possible, to keep the scheme clear of any idea that it was Poor Law relief. He would rather have a committee than leave the matter in the hands of one individual. It was far better to adopt the Government plan, but he would like it to be made clear and definite that the pension committee should be composed of a majority of elected members to the borough and county councils. He hoped the Chancellor of the Exchequer would not be in a hurry to decide who should be the pension officer. It had been suggested he should be the Excise officer. Many county councils had already expressed the opinion that they did not feel themselves in a position to take over the duties now performed by the Excise officer and which were to be transferred to them in order to give the Excise officers time to act as pension officers. The hon. Member did not trust the Treasury; he appeared to think the appointment of pension officers was too much patronage to be in the hands of the Government and would lead to the appointment of unsuitable men. He did not believe there was justification for any such fears; in the past the appointment of our Civil servants whether by Liberal or Conservative Governments had been satisfactory, and we had a body of Civil servants we were justly proud of; he therefore had no fear the Treasury would appoint unsuitable men.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR (City of London)

said he agreed with what had been said by most of those who had taken part in the debate, that next to the fundamental principles of the Bill its most important aspect was its machinery; and he confessed that the discussion of the Amendment left him in the most depressed state of mind as to the mechanism by which the Government desired to carry out their pension scheme. The Bill professed to give the right to a pension to persons with certain qualifications of age and character. The Labour Members thought it was an inherent right. He did not agree with them; but he thought effective machinery should be provided by which, on the one hand, every man who had the statutory right to the pension should be enabled to get it; and by which, on the other, the taxpayers should be protected against persons obtaining the pension who had no right to it. That was the problem they had to solve. What was the plan of the Government? In the first place, they selected an officer who discharged functions partly inquisitorial and partly judicial, the Excise officer, and made him the Court in the first instance. The Excise officer was not a highly-paid official, and, presumably, he was not a highly-educated official. The duties he had now to carry out required energy and impartiality, concerning, as they did, questions whether dog licences had been paid and gun licences taken out, but they did not carry with them, by implication, any proof that he possessed the qualifications which were necessary for the delicate investigations thrown upon him by the pension scheme. In the first place, the Excise officer had to determine the age of the applicant for a pension. That might be a tolerably easy matter in England, but it would be a difficult task in Ireland, where he understood there was no obligatory registration of births until 1860, and the only evidence as to age before that date was the ecclesiastical registers of baptisms. He did not say that the desire to get the pension at the earliest possible age would be peculiar to the Irish. No doubt it would not be confined to any particular part of the United Kingdom. But, after all, the discovery of the age of the applicant would be an easy task compared with the investigation of his previous life's history to discover his character. This task involved powers of a detective and a Judge rolled into one, and it was proposed to place it upon a man whose previous experience was confined to licences for dogs and guns. So much for the qualifications of the man who was to carry out the investigations in the first instance. Then the county council was to be asked to appoint a committee. This committee was not to be given powers of independent investigation to arrive at the truth. They were to be invited to listen to the report of the Excise officer; and if they did not like his first report, to ask him for a second or supplementary report. They were to form an opinion on the evidence brought forward, in the first instance, by one witness alone; and corrected, in the second instance, by the same witness. If they had some doubt as to the justice of the opinion arrived at by the Excise officer, they could call upon him for further information; and if the Excise officer chose to say he had nothing to add to, or nothing to qualify in, his first report, there was nothing further for them to do. This committee of a great county or borough was left face to face with this "Imperial officer," but were absolutely unable to question him. The whole clause was framed on the idea that the committee were to act on the report of the Excise officer and on any further information that he chose to supply. They could not go outside the report. That was the clause as it was drawn. Would county councils appoint committees to occupy this subordinate and humiliating position in the face of the Excise officer? If they did appoint committees, and the committees could be got to sit, would they be able to supervise effectually? Assuming that the Excise officer committed accidentally an act of gross injustice, how were the committee to deal with it? They could not call the applicant before them. Amazing as it seemed, the Government did not appear to have contemplated that the very man who made this appeal should have au opportunity of appearing anywhere at any time or before anybody at all to see that his rights under the Bill were not improperly denied him. He thought that perfectly astounding. When the question came up to the Local Government Board, what were they to do? They also could only have the report of the Exciseman. They never got in this Bill beyond the Exciseman. It was the Exciseman at the beginning, the Exciseman in the middle, and the Exciseman at the end.

MR. MASTERMAN

said the Local Government Board had full machinery for dealing with things similar to that in full operation.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

asked what was the machinery provided at the Local Government Board for looking into the character, and age, and property of these applicants for pensions? The only machinery he knew of was the Poor Law machinery, and that machinery he thought the Government had intended to keep out of the old-age pension scheme. The man whose right was in question here was never allowed to appear to give evidence before anybody except the Exciseman. That was preposterous and intolerable machinery. There ought, somehow or somewhere, to be brought in an authority for allowing evidence to be taken, as it were, in open Court, where a poor man could show why he should have his pension. They ought not to throw the whole power over these £7,500,000 entirely into the hands of these very subordinate Civil servants, who were made practically the distributors of this gigantic national subvention according to their own views of justice and equity. The machinery for seeing that justice was done, he was confident, could be greatly improved if only the Committee and the Government themselves had the time and the opportunity to improve it.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

said that until the right hon. Gentleman got up they were having a quiet and serviceable discussion on the machinery of the Bill. The right hon. Gentleman had again made a violent attack on the measure. He had shown a great dislike to the Exciseman. That, he thought, must be of Scottish extraction. He had told the Committee that the Exciseman was not a highly-paid and not a highly-educated officer. He did not think a University don would be the best person to discharge these duties. Why were the Excise officers to be considered incompetent? They had to discover the age of a man. Need a man be highly educated, or have great skill, to discover that. They had to make inquiries as to means; and they had to make inquiries as to past character—inquiries made in New Zealand by officials of a very subordinate character. Surely an Excise officer could discover these things or whether a man belonged to a friendly society or trade union. It did not require great scholarship to discover those things. The right hon. Gentleman gave an amusing account of procedure. He had invented his own procedure, and it was naturally a very absurd one. It had nothing to do with the procedure of the Bill. The Government were following the precedent of New Zealand here. They were laying down general principles in outline and leaving the machinery to be developed by regulations. He denied that the Exciseman was at the beginning, the middle, and the end of the Bill. He simply made the preliminary inquiry. The right hon. Gentleman said they could not call the pensioner before them. Of course they could.

LORD R. CECIL (Marylebone, E.)

asked where this was set forth.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

said it would be part of the regulations. If the noble Lord would take the trouble to look at the New Zealand regulations——

LORD R. CECIL

said he did not care about New Zealand.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

But the pensioner would care. All this detail with regard to communications with the pension officer and subsequent appeal to the Local Government Board would be provided for in elaborate regulations to be prepared. Embodied in the regulations would be advice to the local pension committee as to the methods of obtaining information not merely from the pension officer, who, however, would be the man primarily responsible, but from other sources.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

said he might be mistaken in the meaning of subsection (b), but it ran— The pension officer shall inquire and report upon any claim or question so referred to him, and the local pension committee shall, on the receipt of the report of the pension officer, and after obtaining from him if necessary any further information as to the claim or question, consider the case and give their decision upon the claim in question. No regulations could be made repugnant to that.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

said he quite understood the right hon. Gentleman's point. The subsection said that the local pension committee should employ the pension officer to get information, but that did not prevent them getting information from any other source. If they were going to lay down a whole code of procedure in an Act of Parliament of this sort, it would take up thirty pages in order to explain the thing step by step. It was because they had to leave the matter to regulations that the Government did not specify every particular in this clause. If they did that they would have to put in a specimen form of claim, which was very important; and an hon. friend suggested that they should provide here an elaborate schedule as to the sort of questions which should be put to the applicant. That, again, was a matter for the regulations which would be prepared by the Department. Were there any words in the subsection to prevent the local pension committee asking for other information from another source?

MR. LYTTELTON

said that the words "from him" seemed to be specially directed to that point. He believed that they were inserted in order to prevent the local committee from themselves making inquiries which sometimes might be objectionable, and to confine them to the channel of the pension officer.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

said that these words were inserted there for a totally different purpose—to give the local authority the right to demand the services of the pension officer. If the words had not that effect as a matter of drafting, but had the effect which the right hon. Gentleman seemed to imagine they had, he would be perfectly willing to insert other words to make it quite clear that the local pension committee had perfect freedom to obtain information in any quarter. At the same time, he would have to consider whether the cutting out of those words would deprive the local authority of the right to command the services of the pension officer on their behalf.

MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

reminded the right hon. Gentleman of the argument of the Solicitor-General that the inclusion of one person excluded all others, and suggested that unless they put in such words as "and from such other people as they desire" the section would have an excluding effect.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

said that a question of drafting he would leave to his hon. and learned friend. The intention of the Government was, however, identical with that of the Leader of the Opposition and of the right hon. Member for St. George's. Hanover Square. He had fully decided that the pension committee should have the full right to make inquiries on their own authority. Of course, the committee must provide the machinery within the lines laid down by the Bill in order to carry the Bill into effect. He did not want to raise discussion on a subsequent clause, but if the hon. Baronet directed his attention to Clause 10 he would find most ample latitude there for regulations being prepared. He would like to say a few words in reply to the Questions put in the course of the discussion. As his hon. friend had said, the Government were not prepared to accept the Amendment, which would eliminate altogether the local element from the machinery of the Bill. That he did not think would be desirable. He agreed with some hon. Members opposite and certainly with his right hon. friend the Member for Forest of Dean, that undoubtedly the whole influence of the pension committee would be cast in favour of the applicant. It would be their desire in 99 cases out of 100 to see that the application was conceded in order to relieve the local rates and the committee from the obloquy and unpopularity of ruling out the claim of an applicant. Every claim ruled out would add to the rates. But he did not think that the pension committee would not do their duty. At the same time, their inclination would be, in the vast majority of cases, rather to rule in than to rule out. Therefore it was absolutely essential that there should be someone to represent the Treasury in the transaction. The hon. Gentleman opposite had made merry with the designation of "Imperial" officer; but he used the word in the sense of distinguishing Imperial from local, and not in order to give him any status he had not on his merits. It was essential to have some one representing and guarding the interests of the Treasury, for they could not leave it to a local body with no financial responsibility to make these allowances at the expense of another authority. The right hon. Gentleman had criticised the Government for nominating an Excise officer; could he suggest anyone else? The right hon. Member for East Worcestershire had made a suggestion, and he was glad to hear that, on the whole, the right hon. Gentleman approved of an Excise officer; the only stipulation being that he should not be appointed without any qualification or examination and should not be left to the exercise of the unlimited patronage of a political Party.

MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

said he was not so much enamoured of the Excise officer, but he could not find anyone else.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

said that that was a great concession from the right hon. Gentleman, which he would translate into approval, and that on the whole the Government had done their best under the circumstances. He agreed with the right hon. Gentleman that it was important that they should as far as possible utilise the services of men who came in by means of examination, and who had not the slightest degree or taint of political bias or corruption. He was informed that Excise officers were quite well qualified by education and adequate to discharge these functions; that they were sufficient in number and equal to their duties, especially if they were relieved of looking into the wastrel class. There had been one or two suggestions as to making use of relieving officers, but that had been repudiated by Members of all parties, and he did not think that beyond the one or two Members who made the suggestion anyone would go into the division lobby in favour of it. The relieving officer was mixed up with the Poor Law; not only that, he represented the local taxation authority, and was entirely the wrong kind of person to administer this great fund. What other officer was there who could be employed? They had only the Exciseman. He agreed with the hon. Member for the Ecclesall Division of Sheffield that the ideal type of a man they wanted would be such as was found in the higher branches of the Excise service—such as a supervisor, or a surveyor of taxes in the Revenue service. He did not want to draw invidious distinctions or to say that they were quite of the same rank, but they were much too busy to add these functions to those they already discharged so well. They had, therefore, by a process of exhaustion and exclusion been driven back to the Excise officer. He did not take the view of the right hon. Gentleman, the Leader of the Opposition, as to the qualifications of the Excise officer. He believed that they discharged very unpopular, invidious, and disagreeable functions very well.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

said he had never said anything against the Excise officer. What he complained of was that the whole thing was the Excise officer from beginning to end.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

said that inasmuch as he had shown that that was not the case, the right hon. Gentleman's complaint disappeared. He agreed that if it had been the Excise officer first, second, and third, there would have been ground for complaint; but, as a matter of fact, it was the Excise officer first, the pension committee second, and the representative of the Local Government Board third; therefore the solitary objection of the Leader of the Opposition to this machinery completely disappeared. That, therefore, was an answer to the charge. The Excise officer was the only officer available for the purpose. He would report; the pension committee would sit on and examine and sift those reports, and decide upon them, and if necessary they would send for the applicant. In nine cases out of ten they would not send for the applicant, because it would not be necessary. Beyond that, it was the idea of the Government in framing the regulations to provide that where the pension committee decided against the applicant he should have an opportunity of appearing before them and making further representations before a final decision was arrived at. After that there certainly ought to be an appeal to the Local Government Board to vary the order. He agreed that that ought to be made perfectly clear, and if it was not perfectly clear from the words of subsection (c) he was quite prepared to accept the Amendment of the hon. Member for Woodstock which appeared further down on the Paper. In reply to the right hon. Gentleman opposite as to whether the reports of the committee should be published, he should say not. In New Zealand these inquiries were conducted with closed doors, and he thought it would be very undesirable under this Bill that the reports should be published. In certain unpleasantness. He did not think they ought to be published.

MR. KEIR HARDIE (Merthyr-Tydvil)

asked whether the appeal should not be widened so as to include the decision of the pension officer as well as the decision of the pension committee.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

said that that raised a very much larger question, which was raised by a specific Amendment later. He would rather not argue that on this Amendment, upon which it did not quite properly arise. The other Amendment did raise the question of the interpretation of subsection (c).

MR. LYTTELTON

pointed out that in a case where a pension officer made an original report, and was afterwards required to supplement the information, if on that supplementary information the pension committee differed from the original report, there was no machinery for the pension officer to modify his first report. He thought there should be that power.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

agreed; he thought the pension officer should have that power. The report was the report as it stood after it had been decided upon. It was the final report. That was rather a different point, and there was no Amendment with regard to it. But if there was any doubt about the matter it should be made clear in the regulations, if not in the Bill itself. He had now dealt with all the points raised, and suggested that the Committee should now come to a decision on the Amendment. Having disposed of the question of whether they should have local committees or not, they could then proceed with the drafting Amendment.

Mr. BENNETT

asked leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Leave refused, and Amendment negatived.

^*SIR WALTER FOSTER moved an Amendment, the object of which was to substitute for the pension committee the stipendiary magistrate of the district, or, where there is no stipendiary magistrate, the County Court Judge, within whose jurisdiction the claimant or pensioner resides. He felt that in this matter they ought not to trust to any local body. They ought to have some procedure which would give everybody not only an opportunity of appealing but of appearing before a judicial officer and stating his case. It was quite possible that a committee constituted as proposed in the Bill might be a source of danger to the Exchequer. It might also exercise its functions in a way injurious to the locality. If, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer had pointed out, this committee was to have a kind of roving commission to inquire into the character of every applicant for a pension they would have an inquisition of a most odious nature set up in every village and town in the country. It was because he thought that a committee of this kind might lead to a great deal of trouble that he preferred the simpler method embodied in his Amendment. According to his scheme the local pension officer would do the work under similar conditions to those which the Chancellor of the Exchequer had described. After the inquiry had been made the report would go to the official who would sit in court where he could deal with any appeal or statement on behalf of the applicant. There would be no working in camera. The whole thing would be done by an officer who would be in a position to act judicially and impartially, for he would be totally removed from local influences and above suspicion. The whole scheme with reference to the local pension committee was, in his opinion, bound to break down. When he had put this question before large audiences in rural districts they had told him that they did not wish to have these committees, and would not even trust their parish councils to carry out the measure. It was because he knew that feeling to exist that he begged to move his Amendment.

Amendment proposed— In page 4, line 16, to leave out the words 'local pension committee, and the committee,' and to insert the words 'stipendiary magistrate of the district or where there is no stipendiary magistrate to the County Court Judge within whose jurisdiction the claimant or pensioner resides who.'"—(Sir Walter Foster.)

Question proposed, "That the words 'local pension committee and the committee,' stand part of the Clause."

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

said he could not possibly accept the Amendment; to cause a man to appear before a local magistrate to apply for a pension would be open to a good deal of criticism. Neither a magistrate nor a County Court Judge could possibly attend to these thousands of cases in the first place, and, in the second, it would appear too much like litigation. It would be very undesirable to go before either a County Court Judge or a magistrate.

MR. HAROLD COX (Preston)

was surprised to hear from the cheers of hon. Members opposite that they disapproved of this Amendment. If the pension was to be a matter of right, as he understood they claimed it should be, it was a question to be decided in open Court, and not by a committee sitting in secret or a pension officer in secret. That was exactly the difference between the procedure proposed by the Government and the procedure of the Amendment. By the judicial procedure the Court heard all the evidence on either side before arriving at a decision. Hon. Members opposite, in refusing the Amendment, were recording the opinion that these pensions were not a right, but a charity. ["No, no."] If they were a right why did they object to this kind of action being taken? The only way to try rights in this country was by judicial procedure. They would not try this by judicial procedure, but would try it by a secret committee and a department working in secret.

LORD R. CECIL

said he was very much struck by the statement of the right hon. Gentleman who had moved the Amendment that he had found very large audiences objecting to these matters being considered by a committee. He quite agreed with the large audiences. Whether hon. Members below the gangway who assumed omniscience with regard to the opinions of the labouring classes were right, or whether the right hon. Gentleman was right he did not know, but he could understand the objection. The objection was this. The working-men of the country knew perfectly well, if they had considered this Bill at all, that it meant inquiry into their character for years and years past. They were not content that the inquiry should be made by a committee, even in camera, and even with all the astonishing machinery designed by the Government for this clause. He confessed he did not feel sure that an inquiry in open Court would be any more popular; he did not know that those who wished to have the pensions were really so anxious to have their whole character investigated before an open Court.

SIR WALTER FOSTER

said that his scheme would not work in that way at all. The pension officer would inquire into the whole of the case, and having made his report he would send to the magistrate or to the County Court Judge his recommendation. There would be no inquiry in open Court except in the case of an appeal against the decision. If the Judge granted the pension there would be no appearance in open Court. In case the decision was adverse to the applicant, he would have an opportunity of going before the magistrate, whether in open Court or in private Court, and giving evidence on oath in favour of his claim.

LORD R. CECIL

said that the right hon. Gentleman accepted what appeared to him the chief vice of the Government scheme, namely, the enormous power put into the hands of the pension officer; in fact, the right hon. Gentleman said that the pension officer was to decide whether anybody was to have a pension in his district, and if anyone objected the remedy was an appeal in open Court. He could quite understand that a man with some passages in his life which he would not desire to have exposed in open Court would be content to forego his pension rather than appeal against a pension officer, who, in spite of everything the Chancellor of the Exchequer had said, would have an absolute hold over these pensions. That was a matter for very serious consideration, and it seemed to him that the House ought not to give to these men the disposal of that vast patronage which the Government suggested. He certainly believed that no such suggestion had ever been made in any previous Act of Parliament, and he confessed that he should feel very great hesitation in accepting it. Then as to what the hon. Member for Preston had said, there was a great deal, as there always was, in what he had said, but he thought that the hon. Gentleman had forgotten that the German system did not involve inquiry into character.

MR. HAROLD COX

said he hoped that he had not beeen misunderstood. He had not said that he would support the Amendment. He had only said that hon. Gentlemen on the Labour Benches ought to support it.

LORD R. CECIL

said he agreed in the criticism on the Labour Members, who had been misled by the ingenious phrasing of the first clause of the Bill. They really thought that the Government were giving this pension as a matter of right. They believed that that was said in the first clause. They either had not carefully read over the other clauses or they had been deluded by the Celtic eloquence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. But if they once grasped that there was no right conferred by the Bill, if they once grasped that it was a matter entirely within the discretion of the pension officer, without a shadow of control by the local pension committee, then it appeared to him that they could not treat it as a right, and they could not have it discussed in Court at all; and the objection which the large audiences of the right hon. Gentleman felt to a discussion of the matter by a pension committee would be even greater than to a discussion in open Court. Therefore, he was afraid that he would not be able to support the Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman.

MR. SHACKLETON (Lancashire, Clitheroe)

said that Labour Members considered it a very poor argument to have pointed out to them what was done in Germany. They were not built that way. Probably they would not stand a lot of things that were stood in Germany. He wanted the Committee to realise the kind of people they were legislating for. First of all, they were mainly workpeople, men and women, all of the age of seventy, and was it really suggested by the right hon. Gentleman on the other side that these old men and old women had to go before a magistrate with a wig on? ["No, no," and laughter]. Well, he had seen a stipendiary magistrate with a wig on. Were these old people to appear in a criminal court where cases were being tried, to await their turn either after or preceding a "drunk"? Failing a magistrate, they were to go before the County Court Judge—a Court of which many of them had never heard and which might be miles away from the little villages in which they lived. They were going to put all this trouble on those old people, when they got beyond the recommendation of the Excise officer. That was the position. He did not care much about inquiry, and he believed that the Bill would be better without some of it. But on the other hand he would rather put these poor people into the hands of a local committee who had known them nearly all their lives, to settle between their claims and the report of the pension officer. He thought that was the fairest plan. To take these people before a Judge of any description would simply mean that they would not go, but would do without the pension. They might get a few who had the bluff, the courage and effrontery to do it, but those who were really deserving of a pension would not go near the Court. The Bill already put sufficient obstacles in the way of these people getting the pension, and the Amendment if adopted would make the matter impossible.

MR. EUGENE WASON (Clackmannan and Kinross)

pointed out that the Bill applied to Scotland, where they had neither stipendiary magistrate nor County Court Judge, so that the right hon. Gentleman's Amendment would require to be amended if it was to apply to Scotland, and they would have to insert "sheriffs and sheriffs-substitute." He hoped that the House would not proceed with the Amendment, and if the right hon. Gentleman pressed it he should certainly vote against it. The Amendment really made nonsense of the Bill, and if it were carried as it was it could not possibly apply to Scotland.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

said he quite agreed that the Amendment was impracticable, and the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down had pointed out that it would have to be profoundly modified in order to make it read properly in regard to all parts of the Kingdom to which it applied. He thought that the Government ought seriously to consider the point, however. The hon. Member for Clitheroe seemed to think that it would be a great hardship upon those who desired the pension that they should have to go before a magistrate. For his own part, he would like to have the judicial authority brought in if only to protect the people who were refused pensions. Under the Bill as it stood the man who could refuse to grant a pension was the Excise officer, who permeated the whole system up to the Local Government Board. Even with the modifications promised by the Government, it appeared to him that in the case of the Excise officer they would never have any efficient machinery for sifting and examining in favour of the applicant for a pension. The man who was unlucky in his Excise officer, or suspected that the Excise officer had made a mistake, would have no protection under the Bill as it stood, and he confessed that he would like an appeal. It seemed to him that persons who were refused pensions should have the opportunity to go before some judicial authority who would interpret the statutory rates which were now to be given to them.

MR. HUGH LAW (Donegal, W.)

said the hon. Member opposite objected to the Amendment because they had no magistrates in Scotland, but the Amendment was equally objectionable to Ireland, because there they had stipendiary magistrates, sometimes called resident magistrates, and he hoped that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would stand firm in resisting the Amendment. He was rather astonished to hear from the other side of the House, in the case of some hon. Members, the extreme mistrust of local authorities in this country. In Ireland they had confidence in their county councils, and they would have confidence in the committees appointed by them. For these reasons he would be certainly compelled to vote against the Amendment.

MR. STAVELEY-HILL (Staffordshire, Kingswinford)

said he had listened with considerable attention to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Ilkeston, but, whether the County Court Judge with or the stipendiary without a wig, he did not think either would in any way meet the requirements of this particular case. There had been many suggestions as to the formation of the pension committee, but they knew from what had fallen from the Chancellor of the Exchequer that he considered that boards of guardians would not be proper persons to deal with this question of pensions, though these guardians, as private individuals, might have something to do with the question. In his opinion to leave the matter to the country council was to leave it to a body dealing with far too large an area.

THE CHAIRMAN

That question comes upon Clause 8.

MR. STAVELEY-HILL

said he would not pursue that subject any further, but turn to the original point, which surely came within the scope of the Amendment proposed by the right hon. Gentleman. There was one body who would be more efficient to deal with the question than the County Court Judge, and that was the district council. They knew the district, and the people knew them.

THE CHAIRMAN

That should come on Clause 8.

MR. STAVELEY-HILL

said he was entitled to suggest an alternative to the proposal of the right hon, Gentleman. He objected to the stipendiary magistrate and to the County Court Judge, because they were persons who did not know these people, who could not in any way be concerned with their affairs, and would probably terrify them, whereas the rural district councils knew the people and were known by them.

SIR WALTER FOSTER

said he recognised the difficulty under which his hon. friends opposite laboured. He had great sympathy with them, and he also understood the difficulty in connection with Scotland. Under these circumstances he asked leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Leave refused, and Amendment negatived.

MR. HILLS (Durham) moved, as an Amendment, that the word "authority" should be substituted for "committee" where that word first occurs in subsection (a) of the clause. This proposal, he explained, was submitted as a preliminary step towards an Amendment which he wished to make in the next clause by appointing the registrar of births, marriages, and deaths in each district to act as the local pension authority. In his judgment a local committee of the county or district council was the very worst body that could be found to decide questions of this sort. All the investigations was carried on by the Excise officer, and the decision on the facts was in the hands of the local committee, That decision would be of great importance, for these authorities were bound to decide the cases on certain rules, a set of precedents would be set up, and the real decision and the interpretation of the Act in time would come into the hands of the pension authority. The objections to that were very great. The local committee knew the facts, and that was an advantage in certain cases, but it did not apply in the present case, for all the investigations were made by the pension officer and not by the local committee. In the second place, there might be some argument for the employment of a local committee if local funds were being administered, because the local committee would give economy of administration; but here no local funds were being administered, and on that ground there was no advantage in employing a local committee. On the other hand, the objections to a local committee were very great. He did not think the people whose past life was to be looked into cared for an investigation carried on by a local committee. In the case of the income-tax the right was often exercised of being assessed by Commissioners who were not local people. Then if they had these local bodies all over the country there were sure to be large differences between them, and there would be inequalities between different localities. One authority would interpret the Act in a liberal spirit, and another would place a stricter interpretation upon it. But if all pension authorities were officers subject to some sort of central control they would get uniformity of administration. In the country now, they could not get the people to serve on these committees and to do the work there was to do. There was far too much already, and if these committees were appointed they were perfectly certain to be Poor Law guardians, for the simple reason that there was no one else who could do the work. The registrars of births, deaths, and marriages were under the supervision of the superintendent registrar, and he suggested that he should be the central authority and the district registrar should be the local authority. At present they were very badly paid, and he quite agreed that if they were appointed for this work their pay must be increased. But there was the existing local organisation, and with extension and extra assistance they could carry on the work. At any rate, in his opinion, it was a far better scheme than any form of local elected committee, under which they were sure to get all sorts of improper electoral pressure. It was certain to be a test question at the elections, and that would be very unfortunate. As had been said already, the tendency of these committees would be to admit all applicants for pensions. They would not save the rates by refusing applicants, and they would gain a certain sort of reputation for generosity by including them.

Amendment proposed— In page 4, line 16, to leave out the first word 'committee,' and insert the word 'authority.'"—(Mr. Hills.)

Question proposed, "That the word 'committee' stand part of the clause."

MR. MASTERMAN

said he thought the Amendment could be disposed of somewhat rapidly, largely owing to the fact that for the last three hours they had been debating practically the same point. All parts of the House had agreed tacitly when the Amendment of the hon. Member for Wiltshire was withdrawn that whatever criticisms might be advanced against local pension committees (and some of them were substantial criticisms), that this was the method by which they would have to work, reserving, of course, their constitution, and the appeal from them for later discussion. They did not intend after that discussion to sweep away the local pension committee and substitute something else for it. But the particular alternative suggested by the Amendment was an impossible one. They would have one official who technically was an official under the Poor Law paid for by the rates, in close proximity and perhaps in disagreement with another official who was an Imperial official. That surely would not make for the smooth and efficient working of the scheme. The local registrar, except for the fact that he possessed knowledge of births, marriages and deaths, had none of the qualifications which they hoped the local pension authority would have to mitigate or to modify the decision of the Exciseman. He had not the wide local knowledge nor the intimate acquaintance with the conditions of these people, and particularly he would not have the inclination which the pension authority would have to stand for the enlargement of the possibilities of claims as against the demand of the Treasury officer for economy and retrenchment. He hoped, therefore, the hon. Gentleman might see his way to withdraw the Amendment.

LORD R. CECIL

said he shared the difficulty of the Secretary to the Local Government Board as to the proposal of his hon. friend, but it appeared to him there was this to be said, and it had not really been dealt with, that there was a great disadvantage in an elected authority dealing with these pensions. He rather agreed that they must have a local committee, and he trusted the Government would keep an open mind if they could, consistently with their natural affection for the drafting of their own Bill, as to whether the local committee should be ejected or appointed. That appeared to be a matter of very serious concern, because if they had to elect them they would have carried out all over the country very much the same kind of scene as had prevailed according to the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the House during the last two days.

MR. HILLS

I think the sense of the House is against me, therefore I will withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

LORD R. CECIL moved to insert after "and" in line 16 "except where such claim or question has been originated by the pension officer." It was a pure machinery point. The provision of the clause was that any such claim or question should stand referred to the local pension committee, which, should before considering the claim or question refer it for report and inquiry to the pension officer. That might be fair enough when it was started, but when it was a question not of a claim for a new pension but of whether a man was entitled to continue to receive his pension, who was to raise the question? Clearly not the applicant himself. It must be the pension officer. There was nobody else. It was surely rather ridiculous that, if he told the committee that a pensioner was no longer entitled to his pension, the matter should be again referred to him for further report and inquiry, as the Bill provided.

Amendment proposed— In page 4, line 16, after the word 'and,' to insert the words 'except where such claim or question has been originated by the pension officer.'"—(Lord R. Cecil.)

Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

SIR W. ROBSON

said he did not like the words suggested, and he would suggest other words to meet the case on the Report stage. He thought the point might be met by the words "except in cases where the pension officer has already reported thereon."

MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

pointed out that a claim might originate with the pension officer, or come through his hands. If an applicant was an ignorant man who did not know how to draw up or present his claim, naturally he would go to the pension officer who would fill up his form and send in his claim.

MR. BOWLES

thanked the Attorney-General for having met this point, because it was a matter of some importance. As they were all agreed surely the most convenient course would be to insert the words now.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

^*SIR MAURICE LEVY moved an Amendment to insert after the word "question" the words "and within three days of its receipt." If the Government accepted this Amendment he hoped they would accept another Amendment which would compel the pension officer to make his report within fourteen days, and the committee to give their decision within fourteen days after receiving the report from the pension officer. This would give practically one month for decision, which he considered ample. When people reached seventy years of age it was essential there should be no unreasonable delay in deciding whether they were entitled to a pension.

Amendment proposed— In page 4, line 17, after the word 'question,' to insert the words 'and within three days of its receipt.'"—(Sir Maurice Levy.)

Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

said he quite sympathised with the object his hon. friend had in view, and it was very desirable that all the claims should be dealt with as soon as possible. He could not, however, accept the Amendment as it was desirable that a certain Amount of elasticity should be retained.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

^*MR. SMEATON moved an Amendment providing that there might be associated with the pension officer for the purpose of the inquiry "such other person as the committee may appoint." His object was not only to strengthen the machinery for inquiry, but also to provide an adequate check upon the pension officer who had to conduct these inquiries. There were matters he would have to inquire into which might offer temptations, and for the protection of this officer, the public, and the Exchequer, there ought to be some check kept upon the inquiries of the Excise officer. It must be remembered that the Excise officers were by no means highly paid; and the Chancellor of the Exchequer the other day, in another connexion, had warned the House that these officers were to exercise an enormous patronage amounting to £7,000,000 annually. Was it not right to have some kind of check upon their private—for they would be private—inquiries and on their decisions—for they were, in practice, the deciding authorities? And, seeing how intricate were the subjects into which he had to inquire, was it not advisable to give him the assistance of an assessor? He thought it was a very serious matter to place the Excise officer in fall charge of the inquiry, and make him the real responsible authority. They might appoint an assessor who would exercise a check upon this officer's operations. In the debate upon subsection (c) of Clause 4 he had ventured to make some remarks which were somewhat pooh-poohed by the right hon. Gentleman. He had pointed out that a pensioner might even own a house, a horse, or a donkey. The right hon. Gentleman said that had nothing to do with the case, and the only men he had to deal with were stocking-holders whose resources they had to fathom before granting the pension. It was these aged folk who had, the Chancellor said, hidden away a stocking full of pence or silver—it was these poor old folk who disturbed the right hon. Gentleman's sleep! These were his nightmare! Well, if there were any stocking-holders they ought to do their best to find them out. The old man might meet the pension officer at the front door, whilst the wife was taking out the stocking at the back door. In view of the great responsibilities placed upon the pension officer the temptation he was exposed to was enormous and his duties complicated and diffioult. For those reasons he thought this Amendment deserved the serious consideration of the right hon. Gentleman. He begged to move.

Amendment proposed— In page 4, line 18, after the word 'officer,' to insert the words 'with whom may be associated for the purpose of the inquiry such other person as the committee may appoint.'"— (Mr. Smeaton.)

Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

SIR E. CARSON

asked if the hon. Member proposed that all those people should make reports.

MR. SMEATON

No, they should assist the pension officer, and act as assistants to him.

SIR E. CARSON

Suppose they not agree with the pension officer?

MR. SMEATON

said in that case they might report their opinion or their view of the facts to the pension committee.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

thought the cross-examination of the right hon. Gentleman was the best answer to the Amendment which contained an impossible proposition. How could they send an Excise officer to see if there was any stocking? He agreed with what was said by the right hon. Member for St. George's, Hanover Square, as to the necessity for an Amendment of the Bill with reference to the pension officer, but he could not assent to the proposal in the Amendment that that officer should have certain men around him watching to see whether he was doing right or wrong.

LORD R. CECIL

said the Chancellor of the Exchequer had denounced the Leader of the Opposition for having wholly misunderstood the Bill, and for suggesting that the pension officer was realty supreme. Now the right hon. Gentleman admitted that the Bill was defective in drafting, and he was going to introduce an Amendment which would meet the criticism of his right hon. friend.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

To meet the views of the right hon. Member for St. George's, Hanover Square.

LORD R. CECIL

said that if the Chancellor of the Exchequer preferred to give the credit to his right hon. friend the Member for St. George's, Hanover Square, he might do so. It was admitted that the inquiries would be very difficult to carry out. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had said there would be no great difficulty in finding out the age of an applicant. That would be a very difficult thing indeed. The right hon. Gentleman assumed that the applicants would necessarily be resident in country villages, and that everybody would know everything about them. As a matter of fact, a vast number would be people living in towns, of whom even their next door neighbours had little or no personal knowledge. The pension officer would have to find out who the applicant was, where he was born, and he would have to get some information as to his early history. He thought that they should give the pension authority power to appoint men, not to check the Excise officer, but in order to obtain additional information which the Excise officer might not be able to obtain. The Chancellor of the Exchequer seemed to think that the Excise officer would be at the order of the local committee. That was not so. The Excise officer would not be bound to comply with a single direction of the local committee; he was not appointed or paid by them. The essential feature of this machinery was that the Exciseman should be an independent authority with no connection with the local committee at all. If the local committee desired further inquiries to be made and the pension officer did not make them, the committee would have no means of getting it unless the Bill was amended. The committee could not spend a half-penny unless they were authorised by the statute to spend it. Under the Bill they had no power to obtain information of any sort except what they obtained from the pension officer. If the committee were to be given effective power to check the information they got from the pension officer, then power must be given to them in the statute to make inquiries, and, if necessary, to appoint an officer to make the inquiries. He would support the Amendment.

MR. JESSE COLLINGS (Birmingham, Bordesley)

said the Amendment would destroy the whole intention and character of the pension officer. If they gave the local committee power to appoint an officer independent of the pension officer they would cut away the whole principle involved in the matter. He thought the Chancellor of the Exchequer had made a most effective reply in opposing the Amendment.

MR. BOWLES

said it seemed to him that, unless this Amendment or some Amendment having the same effect, was incorporated in the clause, the pension officer would be destroyed physically. He would be hopelessly overcome by the enormous work which would be piled upon him. What provision was there in the clause for giving the pension officer assistance in making the inquiries? There might be thousands of applicants in the area served by one Excise officer or, at any rate, by not very many officers. The labour of inquiring into the lives of all these people would be enormous. [An HON. MEMBER: That is provided for in Clause 8.] Subsection 4 of Clause 8 said— Pension officers shall be appointed by the Treasury, and the Treasury may appoint such number of those officers as they think fit, to act for such areas as they direct. That did not meet his point. The point was that the pension officer was carefully prevented from being assisted, and it appeared to him that duties would be put upon the officer which he could not possibly be expected to perform, and if they were not performed enormous expense would result.

MR. MUNRO FERGUSON (Leith Burghs)

said it was obvious that the duties to be performed in connection with the inquiries must rest upon the pension officer, and it would naturally be absurd to divide his responsibility. Repeated reference had been made in the course of the debate to the pension committee. He had some experience of local authorities, and he was inclined to think that they would go far wrong if they relied on the efficiency of the local committee. Everything would depend on the officer.

MR. MADDISON (Burnley)

hoped his hon. friend would withdraw the Amendment. If the intention was to give the pension officer assistance that was already provided for. The power conferred by subsection (4) of Clause 8 would enable the Treasury to appoint such number of pension officers as they thought fit. There was no specific number stated in the Bill, and surely if an Exciseman had too large a district, provision could be made to meet the requirements of the case. He thought the Treasury might be trusted to provide sufficient men.

MR. SMEATON

said he was sorry the intention of the Amendment had been so completely misinterpreted. The question of responsibility was very important indeed, but he maintained that responsibility would be divided if there were two or three Excise officers in charge of a district in precisely the same way as if they were to associate with each officer such other person as the committee might appoint. He regretted that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the airy way he had got into, had spoken as if this Amendment was brought forward for obstructive purposes. He repudiated that entirely. If this was the way the right hon. Gentleman was going to treat private Members who were at last trying their humble best to improve the Bill, he would be discouraging instead of encouraging private Members to help him; and the day might come when he might regret it. He asked leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave withdrawn.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE moved to insert in subsection (b) words enabling the local pension committee to obtain information not only from the pension officer but "from any other source."

Amendment proposed— In page 4, line 23, after the word 'information,' to insert the words 'from any other source.'"—(Mr. Lloyd-George.)

Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

MR. LYTTELTON

thought those words carried out quite sufficiently the object he had in view, viz., that the pension committee should have power to make inquiries independently of the pension officer, if they thought it necessary.

LORD BALCARRES (Lancashire, Chorley)

said the Amendment authorised the local committee to obtain information from some other source if they were not satisfied with that given by the pension officer. But could they appoint an official through whom that information could be obtained? An immense amount of inquiry would have to be made which would not be of a local character. The pension committee would be obliged to get particulars of a man's past history away from the parish where he now resided. He saw the Attorney-General for Ireland present. That right hon. and learned Gentleman would correct him if he was wrong, but he was certain that seventy years ago there was no organised system of registration of births in Ireland; and it would be practically impossible to ascertain the date of birth of many persons in Ireland of the artisan class. Sources of information of that character other than the pension officer would have to be available to the pensions committee. He thought it would have been simpler and wiser to have authorised, by the Amendment, the pension committee to obtain regular assistance for the purpose of making those outside inquiries. The hon. Member for Burnley rather misapprehended the difficulty of securing a sufficient number of pension officers when he said that if more were required they would be appointed. That did not follow at all.

MR. MADDISON

Why not?

LORD BALCARRES

said that for years the Local Government Board had been pressing upon the Treasury the desirability of appointing a certain particular class of officials to carry out a certain statutory obligation, and the Treasury had refused to appoint them. Again, at present the Home Office had an application for a certain number of officials to carry on work connected wish that Department, but the Treasury refused. He could quite readily see that the Treasury might say to the local pension committee that official assistance to carry out their inquiries would cost too much money and the local pension committee would find themselves thrown overboard.

MR. MADDISON

said that in these cases surely it would be to the interest of the Treasury to appoint the officials.

LORD BALCARRES

said that the answer might be "the more Excise officers the more expense." However, if information was to be obtained from other sources than the pension officer, then somebody ought to be appointed to make the investigations which would not be local. An applicant's history was to be traced back to the time he was twenty years of age and inquiries made as to whether he had worked according to his capacity and need, and he might have worked in many different parishes throughout the country.

LORD R. CECIL

said he would like the Chancellor of the Exchequer to say whether in his judgment the words would authorise the appointment of someone on behalf of the pension committee to make the further inquiries if they thought it necessary. The Excise officer might come to the pension committee and say: "I have done my best to make inquiries, but I have not been able to find out this man's past history, or to trace his character. I have lost trace of him in some particular places, and I should like to know a little more about him before I definitely decide on my report. I should like to know something more locally as to whether he has funds or property." Or the Excise officer might be bad or incompetent, and the local pension committee would have no power to appoint another. He, therefore, wanted to know whether the local pension committee could not put anybody to make inquiries unless they were expressly authorised to pay for them. He knew that there was a subsection of Clause 10 which gave power to pay the expenses of carrying out the Act, but it was essential to know whether that gave power to the local pension committee to do a particular thing not mentioned in the Bill.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

said that, of course, the Treasury would not give sanction to the appointment of any number of officers, but only such officers as were necessary to discharge the functions which came under the purview of the section. He could not see why there should not be the appointment of the officers mentioned by the noble Lord. He thought it was quite clear that the pension committee would have at their disposal sufficient pension officers to make further inquiries. That was the object of the clause. The noble Lord suggested the case of an incompetent local pension officer. He had no doubt that the pension committee might on occasion require an assistant and in that case the Treasury would sanction the expense.

Amendment agreed to.

MR. BOWLES moved to insert the words "providing that the committee should hear the claimant if requested to do so by him or thought desirable by the Committee." The Amendment seemed to him to be very reasonable, indeed absolutely essential unless the whole administration of the Bill after it became an Act was to be handed over to the pension officer. As the Bill stood at present, the only person to whom the applicant could apply, the only person he was to see throughout the proceedings and to whom he could tell his own story, was the Exciseman. He could make no appeal to the pension committee or to the President of the Local Government Board or even to the world outside. One did not want to suggest anything of the kind, but either through incompetency, lack of judgment, or for a thousand other reasons, the pension officer might be unmoved by the statement of the applicant. The man would be absolutely at the mercy of the Exciseman, and there was nothing in the Bill to ensure that the man would have a fair hearing. That might result, and probably would, in considerable injustice being done to the applicant. Further, it involved putting the pension committee in a position entirely false and almost impossible. The pension committee would rely in fact on the reports of the pension officer. The whole point about the pension committee was that it was a local committee. It would very likely have a member or two upon it who would know all the circumstances. But the whole of that advantage would be destroyed if the man was not to be allowed to appear before them, and they were to confine themselves to the paper reports drawn up by the pension officers. It would make an enormous difference in the case of an honest bona fide applicant against whom the pension officer or one of the county council committee had a grudge. It would be of tremendous importance to him to be able to say: "If you doubt what I say I shall claim to appear before the pension committee, and make my case good so far as I can." It would have a great effect on the committee, and certainly obviate cases of real injustice. He did not much like the Bill, but if pensions were to be given it was essential, if they were to be given as a matter of right, that the man should not have that right controlled by a third person, and be prevented from coming before the pension committee and making his case good. The point was clear and appeared to be important, and he hoped the Chancellor of the Exchequer would see his way to concede it.

Amendment proposed— In page 4, line 24, after the word 'question,' to insert the words 'and after hearing the claimant, if requested to do so by him or thought desirable by the Committee.'"—(Mr. Bowles.)

Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

agreed that the applicant ought to have the right to present his case before the committee before the pension was refused, but argued that it was obviously unnecessary for him to come before the committee if his pension was to be granted. All these questions would be dealt with by regulations. As he had explained earlier in the debate it was the intention of the Government by regulations not only to give the committee power to send for the applicant, but also to give the applicant power to go before the committee, if necessary, to establish his claim. The whole matter required great consideration, but he did not think it was a matter which should appear even in rough outline in the Bill itself. He hoped the hon. Gentleman would withdraw the Amendment, which in any case was much too wide. In nine out of ten cases these claims would be decided without difficulty and the pension would be given. He thought before applicants were allowed to go before the committee notice should be given to them that their application had been refused. The applicant should then be allowed to go before the committee in support of his own application.

AN HON. MEMBER

said he agreed with a good deal of what the right hon. Gentleman had said. If this point could be dealt with by regulations that would be the best way of dealing with it. What he felt, however, was that the clause was so drawn that there would be no power to deal with these matters by regulations. Subsection (a) said that the committee, before considering the claim, should refer it for report and inquiry to the pension officer, and subsection (b) said that the local pension committee should, on the receipt of that report, consider the case and give their decision. He did not think they had power to see the applicant.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

said that if the hon. Member looked a little further at Clause 10 he would find that it said that the Treasury might make regulations for prescribing the manner in which claims to pensions might be made, and the procedure to be followed on the consideration and determination of claims and questions by pension officers, local pension committee, or central pension authority.

THE HON. MEMBER

said he could not quite agree with the right hon. Gentleman, because Section 7 had already laid down the procedure and could not be altered by regulation. This body was set up as a kind of judicial body, and was bound to proceed according to its constitution. Regulations could not be made to nullify the procedure specifically stated in an Act of Parliament. Everybody agreed as to the advantage of the Amendment. He only desired to put before the right hon. Gentleman the difficulties.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

said that if there was any doubt at all about it he thought it ought to be made perfectly clear what the intention of Parliament was. In any case he thought these words would not meet the difficulty, and if the Amendment was withdrawn at this stage a form of words might be considered before the Report Stage.

LORD R. CECIL

said that if the right hon. Gentleman only read the wording of the clause he would at once see the difficulty that was felt by the Committee. Subsection (b) was imperative. It said the pension committee "shall," on receipt of the report of the pension officer, and so on, consider the application and give their decision. He quite agreed that the proper way to deal with this matter was by regulations, but he contended that the foundation for those regulations must be laid in this clause. Some words were really essential if they were to have the power taken in Clause 10.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

quite agreed that the matter was one for consideration. He thought it was entirely a matter of drafting, but if words were necessary to make absolutely clear the fact that regulations could be brought in to deal with this point he would be happy to insert some words.

MR. McARTHUR (Liverpool, Kirkdale)

contended that the whole point was that, inasmuch as the applicant himself was the source of all information, the pensions committee had a perfect right to demand his attendance and hear all he had to say; but he thought some words were necessary to enable the applicant to assert his right to go before the committee and state his case before his claim was finally rejected.

MR. BOWLES

said that after the remarks of the right hon. Gentleman opposite he had no desire to put the Committee to the trouble of a division. He, therefore, begged leave to withdraw his Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

LORD R. CECIL

said the House would agree that the Amendment he now proposed to move was of importance, but whether the right hon. Gentleman would accept it was a different matter. He had slightly modified it and it would read as follows: "Provided that a local pension committee may, and if the committee refuse a pension shall, if required, state a case on any question arising as to the claim to a pension for the opinion of the High Court, and the High Court shall accordingly give its opinion thereon, and the local pension committee or central pension authority, as the case may be, shall determine such question in accordance with such opinion." The object of the Amendment was to give an applicant the right to have any question of law raised by his claim determined by a Court of law, and to give the pension committee, if they should be in any doubt as to the meaning of the Act—a not improbable contingency—the right to obtain the guidance of the High Court, and ask their opinion upon any question as to the construction of the Act. If it was thought more desirable to substitute the County Court for the High Court, he saw no great objection to that; but his experience was that proceedings in the High Court were not really more expensive than in the County Court in this kind of matter. It was merely a question of stating a case for the opinion of the High Court. The opinion would be obtained, and the matter would be disposed of in that way. The procedure had been adopted in a large number of cases and had been found to work satisfactorily. He could see no objection to the proposal, except that of expense. He quite agreed there was that objection, but there were only two cases to which the Amendment applied. First, there was the case of refusal of a pension where there might be some great principle involved in the construction of the Act; and that would rule a vast number of others; secondly, there was the case where the local pension committee was genuinely in doubt what was the law, and in which any legal expenses incurred would be borne by the Treasury, no expenditure being thrown upon the applicant. Personally, he would not support a proposal which would give the pension officer the right of appeal against the allowance of a claim. Surely, however, if the pension committee or the central authority felt genuine doubt as to whether they had not gone wrong, it was not unreasonable to give the power of going to the High Court to ascertain what was the real meaning of the statute. At present it appeared to him that under the Bill, as it was drawn, every difficulty would be put in the way of an applicant for a pension. He was frankly against the Bill, and he disapproved of it; but it seemed to him that hon. Members should not pretend to support it and really withdraw it by the machinery imported into it. He, therefore, wished the pension to be a genuine one and that it should not be filched away by any chicanery or departmental red tape. At present, the whole thing was in the hands of the Department. There was no appeal at all from the Department. The pension officer was an officer of the Government, and, if the pension committee disagreed with him and allowed a pension, there was appeal to the central authority, which was the Local Government Board. The whole thing, therefore, was absolutely and entirely in the hands of the Local Government Board. He did not think that that was a satisfactory system; there ought to be some control over the Local Government Board. He very much disapproved of excessive centralisation. It was one of the besetting sins of modern legislation, and the result was that, partly by perversity and partly by folly, the Departments destroyed what was really intended to be done by the statute, and destroyed it privately and secretly. It was not like a Court which went wrong, and where the matter could be put right by a small amending Act. If a Department went wrong, they were faced with two difficulties. First, they did not generally know what the Department had done, and in the second place the very person they wished to set right was on the Treasury bench with all the apparatus of the Whips and with sheep behind him to destroy any attempt to over-rule his decision. They, therefore, placed themselves absolutely in the hands of the politician who happened to be the head of the Department. He knew it was very difficult to convince the Government, but he asked the Committee seriously to consider whether this Amendment should not be adopted. He did not want to embitter the discussion, but he would ask hon. Gentlemen opposite to imagine the time when they would be in Opposition and a wicked and perverse Tory Government in power who would do their best, as hon. Gentlemen believed, to destroy this beneficial Act; and to conceive the hon. Baronet the Member for the City of London holding high office in that Tory Government and having to administer this Act? Would it not be a comfort to them to know then they would have the opportunity of taking the matter to the High Court as to whether his decision on the meaning of the Act was right or wrong? He, therefore, asked the Committee to consider very carefully and impartially the desirability of this Amendment.

Amendment proposed. In page 4, line 25, at the end, to insert the words, 'provided that a local pension committee may, and, if the committee refuse a pension, they shall, if required, state a case on any question of law arising as to the claim to a pension for the opinion of the high court, and the high court shall accordingly give its opinion thereon, and the local pension committee or central pension authority, as the case may be, shall determine such question in accordance with such opinion.'"—(Lord R. Cecil.)

Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

said he was not in agreement with his noble friend. He agreed with him as to the danger which he had pointed out existed in the Bill as it stood, but he had not been able to convince himself, nor had his noble friend's speech convinced him, that the course proposed by him was the best way of meeting the difficulty. Under the Bill as it stood, in the event of disagreeement between the pension officer and the pension committee, there was an appeal to the central authority, which was the Local Government Board. He viewed with great jealousy, and he thought he might say with great anxiety, the attribution to the Local Government Board of such vast powers as were involved in these provisions. His vote would be influenced by what the Government intended under the name of the Local Government Board, and he would ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer to tell them how the Government intended that the Local Government Board should carry out its functions in this matter. If the President of the Local Government Board, a political officer, was to decide on the merits of individual cases, then he thought there was an overwhelming case for some appeal to a Court of law. The Chancellor of the Exchequer agreed with him a little time ago when he suggested that anything which raised the suspicion of political bias on the part of the local pension officer would be most detrimental to the working of the Bill, and he thought it would be so if anything raised the suspicion of political bias on the part of the central authority to whom the appeal must go. If the Government would make it clear that it was the intention that the Local Government Board should appoint an independent officer to judge these questions independently and in a judicial way, though not being actually a judicial officer, then he did not think they need have this appeal to the Court. Did the Government intend to act in that way? He would give an illustration. The Registrar of Friendly Societies, he imagined, was appointed and could be removed from office by the First Lord of the Treasury. Very serious duties had been imposed upon him: for instance, that of certifying under the Workmen's Compensation Act in regard to schemes of contracting out. He was an official of the Government, but in deciding all such cases he acted in a judicial capacity, and it would be an improper and practically, he might say, an impossible thing for any Member of the Government of the day to issue to him instructions as to how he should decide in any particular case. There must be power to issue such general instructions as were contemplated in Clause 10 which would be binding to a certain extent upon an officer in an independent position such as he had described. He would view with the gravest mistrust and alarm the power of the Board of Trade or the practice of the President to interfere in particular cases. It ought not to be left to a political officer. It might be left to an officer appointed by him, but that officer ought to be recognised as holding a judicial position, judging on his own authority, and not directed to find this, that, or the other, or to have his decision in a particular case upset by the Parliamentary officer for the time being. The way in which the Government answered that question would affect his vote on this Amendment.

MR.LLOYD-GEORGE

said his difficulty in answering the right hon. Gentleman's very pertinent and sensible question, which he would have no difficulty in answering to his satisfaction, was that it really arose on the next subsection and the very next Amendment. He was rather afraid from his experience of the noble Lord's methods that if he answered him on this Amendment it would enlarge the whole scope of the discussion, and he did not want to do that. He agreed absolutely with the right hon. Gentleman that this officer must be quite independent. The officers now appointed by the Local Government Board to inquire into local loans and questions of that kind were absolutely independent; there never was the slightest suspicion that they were influenced by political considerations. That was the kind of officer they proposed to appoint here.

MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

asked whether the officer's decision would require approval in particular cases by the President.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

thought the right hon. Gentleman would be the very last to say that the President of the Local Government Board should never intervene. He was very anxious that the Bill should be drafted in a way which would make litigation impossible. There was a Court of Appeal, viz., Parliament. The noble Lord had tried to rush them into millions of expenditure and had succeeded to the extent of £200,000 or £300,000 and was delighted with it, he was sure.

LORD R. CECIL

said the right hon. Gentleman had made that charge several times, and it was quite inaccurate. He had made no speech in favour of any of the extending Amendments except the one as to right, nor had he voted in favour of any of them.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

said he was under the impression that the noble Lord had spoken in favour of almost every extending Amendment. If the Local Government Board and the Treasury interpreted the Act in a narrow, near, shabby, restricted sense, there was always Parliament, and it was far and away better to depend on Parliament than to go up to a Divisional Court to interpret the provisions of the Act. Nothing would suit the Treasury better than to be able to say: "We are very sorry. We cannot grant it. The Courts will not allow us." Whenever there was any difficulty at all it would be referred to the Judges, and they would say that it did not come within the four corners of a particular section. But when they came to deal with Parliament, they had to deal with merits. He trusted the right hon. Gentleman would see that it was very much better that they should trust to an independent officer of the Local Government Board as a Court of Appeal rather than go to a Court of law.

MR. BOWLES

said the answer of the right hon. Gentleman was altogether in adequate to the Amendment. His noble friend suggested that the applicant should be able to require the committee refusing a pension to state a case for the High Court. The right hon. Gentleman said that that was quite unnecessary; it would be settled in a back room at Whitehall, and if anybody disliked the settlement there would be no need to complain, because the whole thing could be re-tried and re-heard right through—where? In that House. No injustice, no doubt, no trouble, no inconvenience, need be feared in leaving the whole determination of the question to officials in back rooms in the Treasury and the Local Government Board, because, said the right hon. Gentleman, behind them there was the House of Commons. The right hon. Gentleman knew as they all did that the decision of the Local Government Board upon these matters, however wrong in law, could not, in fact, be effectively questioned in that House or anywhere else than in open Court. It really seemed to him that more nonsense, if one might say so in a Parliamentary sense, was talked about the power and capabilities of the House in matters of this kind than about almost any other subject. Everyone knew it was perfectly illusory to suggest that where a poor old man had been refused a pension upon some ground of law which was in extreme doubt, it could be dealt with by any proceeding possible to any Member of the House. The truth was, as all of them had seen and many of them had said, that the increasing tendency in these days was to go on piling up powers in the back rooms of the Department in Whitehall, and to pretend to the people and to the House that it was all right, because the House existed to carry out functions which it could not discharge. It had been said that democracy was merely another word for bureaucracy, and they were seeing every day enormous extensions of the pretensions and powers of the bureaucrat. He entirely objected to that, particularly when, as in this case, and in almost every case, that extraordinary extension of bureaucratic powers was defended as being really quite harmless. There could be no doubt that this Amendment really ought to be added to the Bill, and he hoped some friend of liberty and enemy of mere bureaucratic government in matters of this kind, untempered in any way, would rise to support the Amendment.

MR. McARTHUR

said that this was a matter on which he had felt for some time very strongly, though he had been a silent listener to the proceedings on the Bill. It appeared to him to be one which pre-eminently demanded that there should be arranged some way of invoking the authority of a Court of law in respect to it. He had never witnessed a Bill which had been so hastily drawn and so full of ambiguities. There was not a line, hardly a word in the Bill which was not full of ambiguity. Of course that remark applied to some clauses more than others. Clause 3 was full of ambiguity which would lead to diversity of treatment by different authorities. He could not help feeling that the Bill, in its present form, would have the most demoralising effect on the public mind. It was eminently necessary to have an impartial authority to which anyone might appeal to consider the clauses of the Bill and determine any point of difficulty. There was the central authority and the pension committee, and neither of them would be able to take a legal view of the Bill. It was most desirable that a ruling should be obtained on any doubtful point.

MR. PIKE PEASE (Darlington)

asked if the Chancellor of the Exchequer was going to proceed with the Amendment he had referred to.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

said he Could not make any statement then.

Question put.

The Committee divided:—Ayes, 46; Noes, 267. (Division No. 155)

AYES.
Anstruther-Gray, Major	Forster, Henry William	Parkes, Ebenezer
Ashley, W. W.	Gardner, Ernest	Rawlinson, John, Frederick Peel
Balcarres, Lord	Gooch, Henry Cubitt (Peckham)	Renton, Leslie
Baldwin, Stanley	Guinness, Walter Edward	Ronaldshay, Earl of
Banbury, Sir Frederick George	Hardy, Laurence (Kent, Ashford	Ropner, Colonel Sir Robert
Baring, Capt. Hn. G (Winchester	Harrison-Broadley, H. B.	Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool
Beach, Hn. Michael Hugh Hicks	Helmsley, Viscount	Stanier, Beville
Bignold, Sir Arthur	Hill, Sir Clement	Staveley-Hill, Henry (Staff'sh.
Bowles, G. Stewart	Hills, J. W.	Stone, Sir Benjamin
Butcher, Samuel Henry	Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)	Thomson, W. Mitchell-(Lanark
Carlile, E. Hildred	Houston, Robert Paterson	Valentia Viscount
Cecil, Lord. R. (Marylebone, E.	Lockwood, Rt, Hn. Lt.-Col. A. R.	Walrond, Hon. Lionel
Craig, Captain James (Down, E.)	Lowe, Sir Francis William
Craik, Sir Henry	MacCaw, William J. MacGeagh	TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Mr.
Du Cros, Arthur Philip	M'Calmont, Colonel James	M'Arthur and Mr. Bridge-
Duncan, Robert (Lanark, Govan	Meysey-Thompson, E. C.	man.
Fell, Arthur	Morrison-Bell, Captain
NOES.
Abraham, William (Cork, N. E.)	Cobbold, Felix Thornley	Harcourt, Rt. Hn. L (Rossendale
Adkins, W. Ryland D.	Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)	Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose
Allen, A. Acland (Christchurch)	Condon, Thomas Joseph	Hardie, J. Keir (Merthyr Tydvil)
Allen, Charles P.(Stroud)	Corbett, A. Cameron (Glasgow)	Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Wore'r
Armstrong, W. C. Heaton	Corbett, C. H. (Sussex, E. Grinstd	Harmsworth, R. L. (Caithn'ss-sh
Astbury, John Meir	Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.	Hart-Davies, T.
Balfour, Robert (Lanark)	Cotton, Sir H. J. S.	Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)
Barker, John	Cox, Harold	Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N. E
Barlow, Percy (Bedford)	Crean, Eugene	Haslam, James (Derbyshire)
Barnard, E. B.	Cremer, Sir William Randal	Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)
Barnes, G. N.	Crooks, William	Haworth, Arthur A.
Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N.	Crosfield, A. H.	Hayden, John Patrick
Beck, A. Cecil	Crossley, William J.	Healy, Timothy Michael
Bell, Richard	Cullinan, J.	Hedges, A. Paget
Benn, W. (T'w'r Hamlets, S. Geo	Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)	Helme, Norval Wason
Bennett, E. N.	Davies, Timothy (Fulham)	Henderson, Arthur (Durham)
Berridge, T. H. D.	Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.)	Henderson, J. M. (Aberdeen, W
Bethell, Sir J. H (Essex, Romf'rd	Dickinson, W. H. (St. Pancras, N.	Henry, Charles S.
Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Maldon	Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles	Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe)
Black, Arthur W.	Dobson, Thomas W.	Higham, John Sharp
Boland, John	Duckworth, James	Hobart, Sir Robert
Boulton, A. C. F.	Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness	Hobhouse, Charles E. H.
Bowerman, C. W.	Dunn, A. Edward (Camborne)	Hodge, John
Bramsdon, T. A.	Dunne, Major E. Martin (Walsall	Holland, Sir William Henry
Branch, James	Edwards, Enoch (Hanley)	Hooper, A. G.
Brigg, John	Essex, R. W.	Horniman, Emslie John
Bright, J. A.	Esslemont, George Birnie	Horridge, Thomas Gardner
Brocklehurst, W. B.	Everett, R. Lacey	Hudson, Walter
Brodie, H. C.	Ffrench, Peter	Hutton, Alfred Eddison
Brooke, Stopford	Findlay, Alexander	Hyde, Clarendon
Brunner, J. F. L. (Lancs., Leigh)	Flynn, James Christopher	Idris, T. H. W.
Bryce, J. Annan	Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter	Isaacs, Rufus Daniel
Burnyeat, W. J. D.	Freeman-Thomas, Freeman	Jacoby, Sir James Alfred
Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas	Fuller, John Michael F.	Johnson, John (Gateshead)
Buxton, Rt. Hn. Sydney Charles	Fullerton, Hugh	Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)
Byles, William Pollard	Furness, Sir Christopher	Jones, Leif (Appleby)
Cameron, Robert	Gibb, James (Harrow)	Kekewich, Sir George
Carr-Gomm, H. W.	Gill, A. H.	King, Alfred John (Knutsford)
Cawley, Sir Frederick	Glover, Thomas	Laidlaw, Robert
Channing, Sir Francis Allston	Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford	Lambert, George
Cheetham, John Frederick	Gooch, George Peabody (Bath)	Lamont, Norman
Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.	Greenwood, G. (Peterborough)	Law, Hugh A. (Donegal, W.)
Clancy, John Joseph	Gulland, John W.	Layland-Barratt, Francis
Cleland, J. W.	Gurdon Rt Hn. Sir W. Brampton	Lea, Hugh Cecil (St, Pancras, E
Clough, William	Hall, Frederick	Levy, Sir Maurice
Clynes, J. R.	Halpin, J.	Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David
Lundon, W.	O'Doherty, Philip	Soares, Ernest J.
Luttrell, Hugh Fownes	O'Dowd, John	Spicer, Sir Albert
Lyell, Charles Henry	O'Malley, William	Stanley, Albert (Staffs, N. W.)
Lynch, H. B.	O'Shaughnessy, J. P.	Steadman, W. C.
Macdonald, J, R. (Leicester)	O'Shee, James John	Stewart, Halley (Greenock)
Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk B'ghs	Parker, James (Halifax)	Straus, B. S. (Mile End)
Maclean, Donald	Pearce, William (Limehouse)	Stuart, James (Sunderland)
Macpherson, J. T.	Phillips, John (Longford, S.)	Summerbell, T.
MacVeagh, Jeremiah (Down, S.)	Pirie, Duncan V.	Sutherland, J. E.
MacVeigh, Charles (Donegal, E.)	Pollard, Dr.	Taylor, John W. (Durham)
McCrae, George	Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.	Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe
McLaren, H. D. (Stafford, W.)	Power, Patrick Joseph	Thomas, David Alfred (Merthyr
Maddison, Frederick	Price, C. E. (Edinb'gh, Central)	Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton
Mallet, Charles E.	Price, Robert John (Norfolk, E.)	Thorne, William (West Ham)
Markham, Arthur Basil	Priestley, Arthur (Grantham)	Tillett, Louis John
Marks, G. Croydon (Launceston)	Priestley, W. E. B. (Bradford, E	Torrance, Sir A. M.
Marnham, F. J.	Pullar, Sir Robert	Toulmin, George
Mason, A. E. W. (Coventry)	Radford, G. H.	Walsh, Stephen
Masterman, C. F. G.	Raphael, Herbert H.	Walton, Joseph
Meagher, Michael	Rea, Russell (Gloucester)	Wardle, George J.
Meehan, Patrick A. (Queen's Co.	Rea, Walter Russell (Scarboro'	Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney
Micklem, Nathanial	Redmond, John E. (Waterford	Waterlow, D. S.
Molteno, Percy Alport	Redmond William (Clare)	Watt, Henry A.
Mond, A.	Rendall, Athelstan	Wedgwood, Josiah C.
Money, L. G. Chiozza	Richardson, A.	Weir, James Galloway
Montague, Hon. E. S.	Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)	White, J. D. (Dumbartonshire)
Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)	Roberts, John H. (Denbighs.)	White, Luke (York, E. R.)
Morse, L. L.	Roberston, Sir G. Scott (Bradf'rd	Whitehead, Rowland
Morton, Alpheus Cleophas	Robinson, S.	Whitley, John Henry (Halifax
Murnaghan, George	Roche, Augustine (Cork)	Wiles, Thomas
Murphy, John (Kerry, East)	Roche, John (Galway, East)	Williams, J. (Glamorgan)
Myer, Horatio	Rogers, F. E. Newman	Wills, Arthur Walters
Nannetti, Joseph P.	Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford)	Wilson, Henry J. (York, W. R.
Napier, T. B.	Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel)	Wilson, John (Durham, Mid)
Newnes, F. (Notts, Bassetlaw)	Schwann, C. Duncan (Hyde)	Wilson, J. W. (Worcestersh. N.
Nicholls, George	Schwann, Sir C. E. (Manchester)	Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.
Nicholson, Charles N. (Doncast'r	Scott, A. H. (Ashton under Lyne	Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)
Nolan, Joseph	Seely, Colonel	Wood, T. M'Kinnon
Norton, Capt. Cecil William	Shackleton, David James	Yoxall, James Henry
Nugent, Sir Walter Richard	Shaw, Charles Edw. (Stafford)
Nussey, Thomas Willans	Shipman, Dr. John G.	TELLERS FOR THE NOES—
Nuttall, Harry	Silcock, Thomas Ball	Mr. Joseph Pease and Master
O'Brien, Kendal (Tipperary Mid	Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie	of Elibank.
O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)	Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim, S.
O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)	Snowden, P.

^*MR. DICKINSON (St. Pancras, N.) moved to leave out subsection (c) and insert: "The decision of the local pension committee allowing or refusing a claim for pension or determining any question referred to them shall, on the application of any person aggrieved or the pension officer be referred to the central pension authority, and shall be considered and determined by them." He submitted that under the Bill as drafted both the pension officer and the committee would be placed in a somewhat novel and unsatisfactory relationship to one another. The proposal in the Bill was not expedient from the point of view of either party. He did not think it was right to make by statutory enactment the position of the pension officer himself so absolutely independent of the committee, and further he thought it was very inadvisable to deprive the committee of the responsibility which ought to be on their shoulders rather than on those of a Government official. If they wished, as he believed they did, to obtain the services of good and responsible men on the pension committees, he felt certain that Parliament ought not to place them in that position. There were many men who would say they would not serve on the committee under such conditions. He proposed, therefore, to achieve the same object as the Government intended, but by different means. The principle of his proposal was that the Excise officer should be first, the committee second, and the Local Government Board third. The aggrieved person could then appeal from the pensions committee to the Local Government Board. The procedure would thus be, first, a report would be made to the committee by the officer; then the committee would deal with the officer's report; then, in case of a dispute, there would be an appeal to the Local Government Board by the claimant or by the pensions officer as the case might be.

Amendment proposed— In page 4, line 26, to leave out subsection (c), and to insert the words '(c) The decision of the local pension committee allowing or refusing a claim for pension or determining any question referred to them shall, on the application of any person aggrieved, or the pension officer, be referred to the central pension authority, and shall be considered and determined by them.'"—(Mr. Dickinson.)

Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out, down to the end of line 26, stand part of the clause."

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

said that in the debate which took place at the beginning of the proceedings that afternoon hon. Members impressed on the Government the desirability of giving an appeal to the person aggrieved in addition to the appeals already provided for in the Bill. A good deal of pressure was brought to bear on the Government to concede that appeal, and he desired to assent to the Amendment of his hon. friend. There was a good deal to be said for it. His hon. friend had put the case very lucidly, and it was not necessary for him to say anything further. He did not know whether it would involve much more expense, but it would give a sense of confidence to the people of the country. Practically there would be three different authorities to deal with the cases. First of all, there was the Excise officer. If they were entirely dependent upon him, there would always be the fear that on account of personal or social considerations a case might not be properly considered. Then there was the local committee, and in their case there would be the suspicion that political prejudices would affect their judgment. Under the Amendment of his hon. friend an aggrieved person would be able to come to the Local Government Board, which would appoint an officer who knew nothing of the local trouble and prejudices to go down and inquire. That officer would sit like a revising barrister and consider the appeals that came up for decision. He thought that would give a greater sense of security and confidence, and what was more, a greater sense of independence. The local workman, artisan, or labourer would feel that he was not altogether dependent on the caprice, prejudice, or predilection of any persons, great or small, in his district when he could appeal and go beyond them. Even if there was the conspiracy of the local parson and squire against an applicant, as his hon. friend feared there might be in some cases, the applicant would know that he could go beyond them and have his case considered.

SIR E. CARSON,

while agreeing with the Government, wished to make sure that the expression "person aggrieved" applied to the claimant, and would not give an aggrieved taxpayer, who objected to pensions as likely to increase his taxes, the right of appeal.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

said that that was not the intention, and if the Committee would accept the words of the Amendment in the meantime, he would undertake that on report any alteration which the draughtsman considered necessary to make the intention clear should be made.

MR. BRIDGEMAN (Shropshire, Oswestry)

said he could not understand why the words "person aggrieved" should be used at all. Why not use the word "claimant"? It would be better to settle this matter now than at a future time.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

said that a man who had had a pension might have been struck off. He might be an aggrieved person, and the right of appeal should extend to cases of that kind.

SIR F. BANBURY

said the words "any person aggrieved" must include every person who had a grievance. He hoped one of the law officers would state whether the words in the Amendment would include a taxpayer who might be aggrieved. A taxpayer might claim the right to go before the Local Government Board and say: "I am an aggrieved person, because I believe this pension has been granted in error, that the facts of the case as stated by the applicant are not true, and that he has not fulfilled all the statutory duties." He was in favour of the Amendment as explained by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but he thought the word "claimant" should be put in to meet the point which had been raised.

MR. GEORGE ROBERTS (Norwich)

said that the Labour Members were obliged to the Chancellor of the Exchequer for accepting this Amendment. It embodied the principle of an Amendment which stood in his own name. It was desirable that the claimant should have an appeal. At present they did not know whether the local pension committee was to consist of elected people, or of people entirely outside the local governing bodies. He wished to know whether in these cases a taxpayer who desired to protect the public purse would have the right of appeal against the granting of a particular pension.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

said that that was not intended, and, if necessary, words would be introduced to make that clear.

MR. GEORGE ROBERTS

asked whether these words covered the right hon. Gentleman's intention or not.

MR. ADKINS (Lancashire, Middleton)

said they were all agreed that those interested in the question should have a right of appeal. It had been conceded that the pension officer and the pension committee should have a right of appeal; but he could conceive circumstances in which it might be desirable that a member of the pension committee, who felt himself aggrieved, should also have a right of appeal.

Question put, and negatived.

Proposed words there inserted.

Question proposed, "That the Clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill."

MR. WALTER LONG

said he did not wish to say anything as to the position in which the clause stood now in relation to the Amendment, for he was not quite clear on the matter. While they, on that side of the House, fully acknowledged that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had done his best to meet some points, they thought that the right hon. Gentleman had left the clause in an extremely unsatisfactory position. He believed that the clause was left in an impossible condition. The duties and powers thrown on the pension committee were still undefined. Generally he thought the Committee had tried to make the clause workable. He spoke in no sense as a Party man, but as one who had been for many years at the Local Government Board, and he did not believe that the machinery devised through the committee and pension officer would be workable. He could not understand how the Local Government Board would act as a Court of Appeal. While he was not in the House he was told that the right hon. Gentleman had said that these appeals would be dealt with by the general inspectors, and that they would decide them in the same way in which they decided other cases. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman would tell him by whom these cases would be dealt with.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

said that what he had stated was that machinery would be constructed for the purpose.

MR. WALTER LONG

said that he had served at the Local Government Board for eleven years and, therefore, he knew the work probably better than anyone now in the House. It was of no use talking to him about machinery. Machinery could easily be provided by the permanent officials for anything. What he wanted to know was who were the officials in the Department to whom these matters were to be referred? The Secretary to the Local Government Board said the work was to be done by machinery that was to be devised. That made the matter all the more unsatisfactory. The Committee ought to know what was the method by which these cases were to be decided in the future. They had, first of all, the application to the pension committee; secondly, the investigation by the pension officer; and thirdly, if there was disagreement, there was to be a reference to the central pension authority, which was defined as the President of the Local Government Board. The case could then only be dealt with in one of two ways. First, that the President of the Local Government Board for the time being would have the right to give his decision in every case. Did the Committee realise what was meant by that? The President of the Local Government Board had at present more work to do in the way of administration than the head of any other Department in the Government. More cases came before him for his personal decision than before the head of any other Department. It might be that there would be very few cases of appeal. He agreed that the general tendency would be to grant the pensions and not to refuse them; but supposing there were a great number of appeals, how were they going to be decided? Were they to be decided by reference to one of the sub-departments of the Board which would advise on the general law; or were they to be referred to the legal department? The President of the Local Government Board would be compelled to say: "Here is a statute which gives the right to a pension and imposes certain limitations. My business is to refer the case to the legal adviser of the Board to see whether the statute has been complied with or not." Was that the position which the President of the Local Government Board was to take up? It was not unreasonable that they on that side of the House should ask what procedure the Government proposed to adopt when they talked of referring to the head of a Government Department this extremely difficult and unpopular duty. Everybody knew how difficult it was for the head of the Department at present to control local authorities, even where he had a right to sanction or refuse expenditure by them. But here the whole of the money was coming from the State, and if differences arose between the pension officer and the local committee, and these were referred to the head of the Local Government Board, surely the Committee and the country ought to know how the power of deciding these differences was going to be exercised. They had been informed that the appeal cases were to be referred to the general inspectors; but he ventured to say that these general inspectors were not charged with any duties which would enable them to come to a decision. Their business would be to report to the head of the Department with whom the decision would ultimately rest. He was driven to the conclusion that when these differences occurred, and it was left in the hands of the head of the Board to decide them and to exercise all this patronage, not even an angel from Heaven would discharge the duty without a great deal of adverse criticism, or with any possible hope of doing justice to the case. He could not know the facts, or have the knowledge possessed by the local committee. It would, he insisted, be wise, even now, at the eleventh hour to get rid of this appeal. If there was to be an appeal at all, let it be to a Court of law; but it would be better still to leave it to the Excise officer or the local committee and absolve the head of the Local Government Department from a duty which he could not possibly perform. Believing, as he did, that the clause was a thoroughly bad clause, and would operate unjustly, he should certainly vote against it.

SIR F. BANBURY

said it could not be denied that this was the most important part of the Bill. The Committee must remember that this clause gave most extraordinary powers to people who in his opinion were not fit to exercise them. The real person who under this clause would exercise the patronage of giving old-age pensions to certain people was the Excise officer. He would have to inquire into any number of circumstances and considerations with regard to the lives of the persons claiming the pensions, and, as had been pointed out by the hon. Member for Norwood, an extraordinary number of inquiries would have to be made before he would recommend the pension. Excise officers, whose salary by the way was £100 to £150 a year, were excellent men in their way, but he did not think they were fitted by their training to exercise the very difficult duties that would be put upon them under this Bill, especially after a few years of Radical Government. The right hon. Gentleman had himself admitted that, because he had said the duties were duties which should be performed by Inland Revenue supervisors. The next point to which he would draw attention was the local pension committee.

Mr. CROOKS (Woolwich),

on a point of order, asked whether the hon. Member was in order in discussing the local pension committee on this clause, and so preventing the House from getting on to Clause 8, which dealt with these committees.

THE CHAIRMAN

said that in discussing the duties of these committees, with which Clause 7 dealt, the hon. Baronet was quite in order, but he could not discuss the constitution of those committees.

SIR F. BANBURY

said the duties of the committees would be to inquire into all the circumstances of the case and investigate the report of the pension officer with regard to the person claiming a pension, but they could not decide the matter; they could only report to the Local Government Board. The real dictator was the President of the Local Government Board. As a matter of fact, this was going back to the old practice of the Star Chamber. An official appointed theoretically by the King was to have the power to say whether 500,000 people in the country should or should not have pensions. [Cries of "Divide, divide," and counter cries of "Order, order."]

MR. CROOKS

You make more speeches than all the other Members of the House put together.

SIR F. BANBURY

That is no reason for dividing. [Cries of "It is an absolute waste of time" and "Let him talk."]

THE CHAIRMAN

I must appeal to hon. Members below the gangway to allow the hon. Baronet to speak.

AN HON. MEMBER

He is always at it.

MR. CROOKS

May I ask you, Sir, whether this painful repetition is to go on and keep us from Clause 8 until the closure? It is abominable.

SIR F. BANBURY

made repeated attempts to proceed, amid renewed cries of "Divide." He declared that hon. Gentlemen were mistaken if they supposed he was to be browbeaten. However much noise they made, they could not prevent him standing there. He believed in free speech.

AN HON. MEMBER

And plenty of it.

MR. CROOKS

All your own.

THE CHAIRMAN

I really must appeal to hon. Members below the gangway. Our proceedings must perforce stop at half-past ten o'clock. There is no possible use in interfering with the hon. Baronet.

MR. CROOKS

That is just our position. If the time is to be wasted we may as well waste it like this.

SIR F. BANBURY

said he would conclude his remarks by expressing the wish that the right hon. Gentleman would give them some information upon the point raised by his right hon. friend.

MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

said the point raised by his right hon. friend was really one of great importance. During the dinner hour he addressed the same question to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The central authority was the Local Government Board of somebody whom they might appoint. What did the Government intend to be the practice in deciding these cases? The Government by the acceptance—quite rightly—of the Amendment just moved had widened the scope of the appeal to the central authority, making that authority even more important than it was under the original Bill. He wanted to know what was the Local Government Board for this purpose. When he put the question to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he replied that the questions would be referred to gentlemen in a position similar to that of the general inspectors, under the Board. He was not conversant with the working of the Board, and he did not know exactly what that meant, but he learned from his right hon. friend that these inspectors did not decide anything in the matters confided to them. They occasionally advised the local authority, and they constantly reported to the President, but in no cases did they themselves give a decision. Therefore, if that analogy was followed, the inspectors might report to the President of the Local Government Board, but it was the President himself who would have to determine in every individual case that came before him whether on the facts A. B. should have a pension or not. He submitted with all the seriousness and gravity which so big an issue demanded that a party official, temporarily at the head of a great public office, ought not to have the ultimate distribution among individuals of a sum of £7,000,000 or probably something like £9,000,000 or £10,000,000 a year. For the sake of the success of the Bill, for the sake of guarding the Government of the day against undue pressure in particular cases, and for the sake of guarding it against suspicion of acting unfairly and from improper motives, it was most important that this very delicate and semi-judicial task should be discharged by some independent and non-party authority. He would be quite content if they could find some official acting under the nominal authority of the Local Government Board as independent of any control by any executive office, as, for instance, the Registrar of Friendly Societies was in his semi-judicial functions. It would not redound to the success of the Bill, or to the satisfaction, contentment, and respect of the persons concerned, or to the safe conduct of proceedings in the House, if the President of the Local Government Board was made personally responsible for each individual decision and liable to be called in question by any Member or section of Members over his decision in any individual case. Of course, in Clause 11, in the case of Ireland and Scotland the Chief Secretary and the Secretary for Scotland were respectively named, and his remarks, therefore, equally applied to them. He was not speaking in any spirit of unfriendliness to the Bill, but with a desire to preserve the holders of these offices from a very invidious duty which he thought it would be most difficult for them to discharge, and the House from being in each individual case the Court of Appeal against the decision of the Local Government Board. The House must retain its right to vary the conditions under which pensions were given, and to make general rules; but nobody would contend that the House sitting in Committee of Supply on the Vote for the salary of the Secretary for Scotland, or of the Chief Secretary, or of the President of the Local Government Board, was capable of judicially determining whether a particular claim was really fair. He therefore strongly urged that they should have a really independent officer to decide individual cases, leaving the Local Government Board to lay down general regulations. He appealed to the Government to adopt that solution. He begged that they would at any rate tell them before they proceeded to a division, quite clearly and specifically, what was their intention in the matter. Did they mean each individual case to be subject to the review of the President of the Local Government Board, and the action of the President of the Local Government Board to be subject to the review of the House in each individual case, or did they not?

MR. MASTERMAN

said that he was unable to give an outline of the machinery through which this pension authority would act, but no one would imagine that the President of the Local Government Board personally could review every one of many thousands of cases. Some officers would be chosen to deal specifically with the work of these appeals, but ultimately the responsibility of the Local Government Board must be recognised.

LORD R. CECIL

said that the Committee were still in the dark as to what the Government really intended. Was it to be an administrative or a judicial appeal? If it was to be a judicial appeal, it was true they ran the risk of establishing a bureaucracy and removing the matter entirely from the control of Parliament. It was desirable, in his judgment, that the decision of these individual cases should be removed from the control of Parliament, for the House was incapable of formulating a judicial decision in any form. If the idea was to establish an administrative appeal it would still have to come before the House, and that, in his opinion, was the worst possible solution that could be desired. He still thought the practical control of the pension would be in the

hands, not of the local committee, but of the Excise officer himself. He would be supreme. They were going to put into the hands of thousands of officers this power, knowing perfectly well that the action of subordinate local officials was one of the great difficulties of country life. Every one who lived in the country knew the kind of charges of corruption that were made against smaller officials in the country, and here they were going to put into the hands of men of very much the same position this enormous patronage, this enormous temptation to corruption, without any real supervision. In his opinion, the Committee was acting very unwisely in entrusting to these men this vast patronage and putting them in a dangerous and, he feared, fatal position of temptation.

Question put.

The Committee divided:—Ayes, 343; Noes, 92. (Division List No. 156.)

AYES.
Abraham, William (Cork, N. E.)	Branch, James	Cowan, W. H.
Agnew, George William	Brigg, John	Cox, Harold
Allen, A. Acland (Christchurch)	Bright, J. A.	Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth)
Allen, Charles P. (Stroud)	Brocklehurst, W. B.	Crean, Eugene
Armstrong, W. C. Heaton	Brodie, H. C.	Cremer, Sir William Randal
Ashton, Thomas Gair	Brooke, Stopford	Crooks, William
Asquith, Rt. Hn. Herbert Henry	Bruuner, J. F. L. (Lancs., Leigh)	Crosfield, A. H.
Astbury, John Meir	Bryce, J. Annan	Crossley, William J.
Balfour, Robert (Lanark)	Buchanan, Thomas Ryburn	Cullinan, J.
Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight)	Burke, E. Haviland-	Davies, David (Montgomery, Co.
Barker, John	Burnyeat, W. J. D.	Davies, Ellis Williom (Eifion)
Barlow, Sir John E. (Somerset)	Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas	Davies, M. Vaughan-(Cardigan
Barlow, Percy (Bedford)	Buxton, Rt. Hn. Sydney Charles	Davies, Timothy (Fulham)
Barnard, E. B.	Byles, William Pollard	Devlin, Joseph
Barnes, G. N.	Cameron, Robert	Dewar, Sir J. A. (Inverness-sh.)
Barry, E. (Cork, S.)	Carr-Gomm, H. W.	Dickinson, W. H. (St. Pancras, N.
Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N.)	Causton, Rt. Hn. Richard Knight	Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles
Beale, W. P.	Cawley, Sir Frederick	Dillon, John
Beauchamp, E.	Chance, Frederick William	Dobson, Thomas W.
Beck, A. Cecil	Channing, Sir Francis Allston	Duckworth, James
Bell, Richard	Cheetham, John Frederick	Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness
Bollairs, Carlyon	Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.	Dunn, A. Edward (Camborne)
Benn, Sir J. Williams (Devonp'rt	Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston S.	Dunne, Major E. Martin (Walsall
Benn, W. (T'w'r Hamlets, S. Geo.	Clancy, John Joseph	Edwards, Enoch (Hanley)
Bennett, E. N.	Cleland, J. W.	Erskine, David C.
Berridge, T. H. D.	Clough, William	Essex, R. W.
Bethell, Sir J. H. (Essex, Romf'rd	Clynes, J. R.	Esslemont, George Birnie
Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Maldon)	Cobbold, Felix (Thornley	Evans, Sir Samuel T.
Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine	Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)	Everett, R. Lacey
Black, Arthur W.	Condon, Thomas Joseph	Ffrench, Peter
Boland, John	Cooper, G. J.	Findlay, Alexander
Boulton, A. C. F.	Corbett, C H (Sussex, E. Grinst'd	Flynn, James Christopher
Bowerman, C. W.	Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.	Freeman-Thomas, Freeman
Bramsdon, T. A.	Cotton, Sir H. J. S.	Fuller, John Michael F.
Fullerton, Hugh	Lough, Rt. Hon. Thomas	Price, Robert John (Norfolk, E.
Furness, Sir Christopher	Lupton, Arnold	Priestley, Arthur (Grantham)
Gibb, James (Harrow)	Luttrell, Hugh Fownes	Priestley, W. E. B. (Bradford, E.)
Gill, A. H.	Lyell, Charles Henry	Radford, G. H.
Gladstone, Rt. Hn. Herbert John	Lynch, H. B.	Rainy, A. Rolland
Glover, Thomas	Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)	Raphael, Herbert H.
Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford	Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk B'ghs	Rea, Russell (Gloucester)
Gooch, George Peabody (Bath)	Mackarness, Frederic C.	Rea, Walter Russell (Searboro'
Greenwood, G. (Peterborough	Maclean, Donald	Reddy, M.
Greenwood, Hamar (York)	Macpherson, J. T.	Redmond, John E. (Waterford)
Guest, Hon. Ivor Churchill	MacVeagh, Jeremiah (Down, S.	Redmond, William Clare
Gulland, John W.	MacVeigh, Charles (Donegal, E.	Rendall, Athelstan
Gurdon, Rt Hn Sir W. Brampton	McCallum, John M.	Richardson, A.
Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard B.	McCrae, George	Ridsdale, E. A.
Hall, Frederick	McKillop, W.	Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)
Halpin, J.	McLaren, H. D. (Stafford, W.)	Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)
Harcourt, Rt. Hn. L. (Rossendale	McMicking, Major G.	Roberts, John H. (Denbighs.)
Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)	Maddison, Frederick	Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradf'rd
Hardie, J. Keir (Merthyr Tydvil	Mallet, Charles E.	Robinson, S.
Hardy, George A. (Suffolk)	Markham, Arthur Basil	Robson, Sir William Snowdon
Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worc'r.)	Marks, G. Croydon (Launceston)	Roche, Augustine (Cork)
Harmsworth, R L. (Caithn'ss-sh	Marnham, F. J.	Roche, John (Galway, East)
Hart-Davies, T.	Mason, A. E. W. (Coventry)	Roe, Sir Thomas
Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)	Masterman, C. F. G.	Rogers, F. E. Newman
Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N. E.	Meagher, Michael	Runciman, Rt. Hon. Walter
Harwood, George	Meehan, Patrick A. (Queen's Co.	Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford)
Haslam, James (Derbyshire)	Menzies, Walter	Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel)
Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)	Micklem, Nathaniel	Scarisbrick, T. T. L.
Haworth, Arthur A.	Middlebrook, William	Schwann, C. Duncan (Hyde)
Healy, Timothy Michael	Molteno, Percy Alport	Schwann, Sir C. E. (Manchester)
Hedges, A. Paget	Mond, A.	Soott, A. H. (Ashton-under-Lyne
Helme, Norval Watson	Montagu, Hon. E. S.	Seaverns, J. H.
Henderson, Arthur (Durham)	Montgomery, H. G.	Seely, Colonel
Henderson, J. M. (Aberdeen, W.)	Mooney, J. J.	Shackleton, David James
Henry, Charles S.	Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)	Shaw, Charles Edw. (Stafford)
Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe)	Morse, L. L.	Sherwell, Arthur James
Higham, John Sharp	Morton, Alpheus Cleophas	Shipman, Dr. John G.
Hobart, Sir Robert	Muldoon, John	Silcock, Thomas Ball
Hobhouse, Charles E. H.	Murnaghan, George	Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie
Hodge, John	Murphy, John (Kerry, East)	Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim, S.
Hogan, Michael	Murray, Capt Hn A. C. (Kincard.	Snowden, P.
Hooper, A. G.	Myer, Horatio	Spicer, Sir Albert
Hope, John Deans (Fife, West)	Nannetti, Joseph P.	Stanley, Albert (Staffs, N. W.)
Horniman, Emslie John	Napier, T. B.	Stanley, Hn. A. Lyulph (Chesh.
Horridge, Thomas Gardner	Newnes, F. (Notts, Bassetlaw)	Steadman, W. C.
Howard, Hon. Geoffrey	Nicholls, George	Stewart, Halley (Greenock)
Hudson, Walter	Nieholson, Charles N. (Doncast'r	Strachey, Sir Edward
Hutton, Alfred Eddison	Nolan, Joseph	Straus, B. S. (Mile End)
Hyde, Clarendon	Norton, Capt. Cecil William	Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon)
Idris, T. H. W.	Nugent, Sir Walter Richard	Stuart, James (Sunderland)
Illingworth, Percy H.	Nussey, Thomas Willans	Summerbell, T.
Isaacs, Rufus Daniel	Nuttall, Harry	Sutherland, J. E.
Jacoby, Sir James (Alfred	O'Brien, Kendal (Tipperary Mid	Taylor, John W. (Durham)
Jardine, Sir J.	O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)	Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)
Johnson, John (Gateshead)	O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)	Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire)
Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)	O'Doherty, Philip	Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.)
Jones, Leif (Appleby)	O'Donnell, C. J. (Walworth)	Thomas, David Alfred (Merthyr
Jowett, F. W.	O'Donnell, T. (Kerry, W.)	Thomasson, Franklin
Joyce, Michael	O'Malley, William	Thompson. J. W. H. (Somerset, E
Kekewich, Sir George	O'Shaughnessy, P. J.	Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampt'n
Kilbride, Denis	O'Shee, James John	Tomkinson, James
Kincaid-Smith, Captain	Parker, James (Halifax)	Torrance, Sir A. M.
King, Alfred John (Knutsford	Partington, Oswald	Toulmin, George
Laidlaw, Robert	Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek)	Trevelyan, Charles Philips
Lambert, George	Pearce, William (Limehouse)	Verney, F. W.
Lamont, Norman	Pearson, Sir W. D. (Colchester)	Walker, H. De R. (Leicester)
Law Hugh A. (Donegal, W.)	Philipps, Col. Ivor (S'thampton	Walsh, Stephen
Layland-Barratt, Francis	Phillips, John (Longford, S.)	Walters, John Tudor
Leese, Sir Joseph S. (Accrington	Pickersgill, Edward Hare	Walton, Joseph
Lehmann, R. C.	Pirie, Duncan V.	Wardle, George J.
Lever, W. H. (Cheshire, Wirral	Pollard, Dr.	Wason, Rt. Hn. E. (Clackmann'n
Levy, Sir Maurice	Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.	Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)
Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David	Price, C. E. (Edinb'gh, Central	Waterlow, D. S.

Watt, Henry A.	Wiles, Thomas	Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.)
Wedgwood, Josiah C.	Williams, J. (Glamorgan)	Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)
Weir, James Galloway	Williams, Osmond (Merioneth)	Wood. T. M'Kinnon
White, J. D. (Dumbartonshire)	Wills, Arthur Walters	Yoxall, James Henry
White, Luke (York, E.R.)	Wilson, Hon. G. G. (Hull, W.)
White, Patrick (Meath, North)	Wilson, Henry J. (York, W.R.)	TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Mr.
Whitehead, Rowland	Wilson, John (Durham, Mid)	Joseph Pease and Master of
Whitley, John Henry (Halifax)	Wilson, J. H. (Middlesbrough)	Elibank.
Whittaker, Sir Thomas Palmer	Wilson, J. W. (Worcestersh. N.
NOES.
Acland-Hood, Rt Hon Sir Alex. F	Du Cros, Arthur Philip	Moore, William
Anstruther-Gray, Major	Duncan, Robert (Lanark, Govan	Morrison-Bell, Captain
Arkwright, John Stanhope	Faber, George Denison (York)	Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield
Ashley, W. W.	Faber, Capt. W. V. (Hants, W.	O'Neill, Hon. Robert Torrens
Aubrey-Fletcher, Rt. Hn. Sir H.	Fell, Arthur	Parkes, Ebenezer
Balcarres, Lord	Forster, Henry William	Pease, Herbert Pike-Darlington
Baldwin, Stanley	Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter	Ratcliff, Major R. F.
Baring, Capt. Hn. G (Winchester	Gardner, Earnest	Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel
Barrie, H. T. (Londonderry, N.)	Gooch, Henry Cubitt (Peckh'm	Renton, Leslie
Beach, Hn. Michael Hugh Hicks	Gretton, John	Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall)
Beckett, Hon. Gervase	Guinness, Walter Edward	Ronaldshay, Earl of
Bignold, Sir Arthur	Hardy, Laurence (Kent, Ashford	Ropner, Colonel Sir Robert
Bowles, G. Stuart	Harrison-Broadley, H. B.	Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool)
Bridgeman, W. Clive	Hay, Hon. Claude George	Sheffield, Sir Berkeley George D.
Bull, Sir William James	Helmsley, Viscount	Stanier, Beville
Burdett-Coutts, W.	Hill, Sir Clement	Starkey, John R.
Butcher, Samuel Henry	Hills, J. W.	Staveley-Hill, Henry (Staff'sh.
Campbell, Rt. Hon. J. H. M.	Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield	Stone, Sir Benjamin
Carlile, E. Hildred	Houston, Robert Paterson	Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)
Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edw. H.	Kerry, Earl of	Thomson, W. Mitchell- (Lanark
Cave, George	Keswick, William	Thornton, Percy M.
Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.)	Lane-Fox, G. R.	Tuke, Sir John Batty
Chamberlain, Rt Hn. J. A.(Worc	Law, Andrew Bonar (Dulwich)	Valentia, Viscount
Coates, Major E. F. (Lewisham	Lee, Arthur H.(Hants, Fareham	Walrond, Hon. Lionel
Cochrane, Hon. Thos. H. A. E.	Long, Rt. Hn. Walter (Dublin, S.	Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid)
Collings, Rt. Hn. J. (Birmingh'm	Lowe, Sir Francis William	Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E, R.)
Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim, S.	MacCaw, William J. MacGeagh	Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm
Craig, Captain James-Down, E.)	Mc Arthur, Charles	Younger, George
Craik, Sir Henry	McCalmont, Colonel James
Dalrymple, Viscount	Meysey-Thompson, E. C.	TELLERS FOR THE NOES—Sir
Doughty, Sir George	Middlemore, John Throgmorton	Frederick Banbury and Mr. Hunt.
Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-	Mildmay, Francis Bingham

And, it being after half-past Ten of the Clock, the CHAIRMAN proceeded, pursuant to the Order of the House of 17th June, successively to put forthwith the Question, on any Amendments moved by the Government, of which notice had been given, and on any Questions necessary to dispose of the Business to be concluded this day.

Question put, "That Clauses 8 and 9 stand part of the Bill."

MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

On the point of order, are we not entitled to vote separately on Clauses 8 and 9?

THE CHAIRMAN

No, the instruction under which I am putting this Question is— In the case of a series of clauses to which no notice of Amendment has been given by the Government, (the Chairman) shall put the Question that those clauses stand part of the Bill without putting the Question separately as respects each clause.'

The Committee divied:—Ayes, 330; Noes,127. (Division List No. 157.)

AYES.
Abraham, William (Cork, N. E.)	Cory, Sir Clifford John	Hobart, Sir Robert
Agnew, George William	Cotton, Sir H. J. S.	Hobhouse, Charles E. H.
Allen, A. Acland (Christchurch)	Cowan, W. H.	Hogan, Michael
Allen, Charles P. (Stroud)	Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth)	Hooper, A. G.
Armstrong, W. C. Heaton	Crean, Eugene	Horniman, Emslie John
Ashton, Thomas Gair	Cremer, Sir William Randal	Horridge, Thomas Gardner
Asquith, Rt. Hn. Herbert Henry	Crosfield, A. H.	Howard, Hon. Geoffrey
Astbury, John Meir	Crossley, William J.	Hutton, Alfred Edison
Balfour, Robert (Lanark)	Cullinan, J.	Hyde, Clarendon
Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight	Davies, David (Montgomery Co.	Idris, T. H. W.
Barker, John	Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)	Illingworth, Percy H.
Barlow, Sir John E. (Somerset	Davies, M. Vaughan-(Cardigan)	Isaacs, Rufus Daniel
Barlow, Percy (Bedford)	Davies, Timothy (Fulham)	Jacoby, Sir James Alfred
Barnard, E. B.	Devlin, Joseph	Jardine, Sir J.
Barran, Rowland Hirst	Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.)	Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)
Barry, E. (Cork, S.)	Dewar, Sir J. A. (Inverness-sh.)	Jones, Leif (Appleby)
Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N.)	Dickinson, W. H. (St. Pancras, N	Joyce, Michael
Beale, W. P.	Dillon, John	Kekewich, Sir George
Beauchamp, E.	Dobson, Thomas W.	Kettle, Thomas Michael
Beck, A. Cecil	Duckworth, James	Kincaid-Smith, Captain
Bell, Richard	Dunn, A. Edward (Camborne)	King, Alfred John (Knutsford)
Bellairs, Carlyon	Dunne, Major E. Martin (Walsall	Laidlaw, Robert
Benn, Sir J. Williams (Devonp'rt	Edwards, Enoch (Hanley)	Lamb, Ernest H. (Rochester)
Tienn,W.(T'w'r Hamlets, S. Geo.	Erskine, David C.	Lambert, George
Bennett, E. N.	Essex, R. W.	Lamont, Norman
Berridge, T. H. D.	Esslemont, George Birnie	Law, Hugh A. (Lonegal, W.)
Bertram, Julius	Evans, Sir Samuel T.	Layland-Barratt, Francis
Bethell, Sir J. H. (Essex, Romf'd	Everett, R. Lacey	Leese, Sir Joseph F. (Accrington
Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Maldon)	Ffrench, Peter	Lehmann, R. C.
Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine	Findlay, Alexander	Lever, W. H. (Cheshire, Wirral
Black. Arthur W.	Flynn, James Christopher	Levy, Sir Maurice
Boland, John	Freeman-Thomas, Freeman	Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David
Boulton, A. C. F.	Fuller, John Michael F.	Lough, Rt. Hon. Thomas
Bowerman, C. W.	Fullerton, Hugh	Lupton, Arnold
Bramsdon, T. A.	Furness, Sir Christopher	Luttrell, Hugh Fownes
Branch, James	Gibb, James (Harrow)	Lyell, Charles Henry
Brigg, John	Gladstone, Rt. Hn. Herbert John	Lynch, B. H.
Bright, J. A.	Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford	Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk B'ghs)
Brocklehurst, W. B.	Gooch, George Peabody (Bath)	Mackarness, Frederic C.
Brodie, H. C.	Greenwood, G. (Peterborough)	Maclean, Donald
Brooke, Stopford	Greenwod, Hamar (York)	MacVeagh, Jeremiah (Down, S.
Brunner, J.F.L. (Lanes., Leigh)	Grey, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward	Mac Veigh, Charles (Donegal, E.
Brunner, Rt Hn Sir J. T (Cheshire	Guest, Hon. Ivor Churchill	McCallum, John M.
Bryce, J. Annan	Gulland, John W.	M'Crae, George
Buchanan, Thomas Ryburn	Gurdon, Rt Hn Sir W. Brampton	M'Killop, W.
Burke, E. Haviland-	Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard B.	M'Laren, Sir C. B. (Leicester)
Burnyeat, W. J. D.	Hall, Frederick	M'Laren, H. D. (Stafford, W.)
Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas	Halpin, J.	Mc Micking, Major G.
Buxton, Rt. Hn. Sydney Charles	Harcourt, Rt. Hn. L. (Rossendale	Maddison, Frederick
Byles, William Pollard	Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose,	Mallet, Charles E.
Cameron, Robert	Hardy, George A. (Suffolk)	Markham, Arthur Basil
Carr-Gomm, H. W.	Harmsworth, Cecil G. (Worc'r)	Marks, G. Croydon (Launceston)
Causton, Rt. Hn. Richard Knight	Harmsworth, R.L.(Caithn'ss-sh	Marnham, F. J.
Cawley, Sir Frederick	Hart-Davies, T.	Mason, A. E. W. (Coventry)
Chance, Frederick William	Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)	Massie, J.
Channing, Sir Francis Allston	Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N, E.	Masterman, C. F. G.
Cheetham, John Frederick	Harwood, George	Meagher, Michael
Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.	Haslam, James (Derbyshire)	Meehan, Patrick A.(Queen's Co.
Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston S.	Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)	Menzies, Walter
Cleland, J. W.	Haworth, Arthur A.	Micklem, Nathaniel
Clough, William	Healy, Timothy Michael	Middlebrook, William
Cobbold, Felix Thornley	Hedges, A. Paget	Molteno, Percy Alport
Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)	Helme, Norval Watson	Mond, A.
Collins, Sir Wm. J. (S. Pancras, W	Henderson, J. M. (Aberdeen, W.)	Montagu, Hon. S. E.
Condon, Thomas Joseph	Henry, Charles S	Montgomery, H. G.
Corbett, CH (Sussex, E. Grinst'd	Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe)	Mooney, J. J.
Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.	Higham, John Sharp	Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)

Morrell, Philip	Raphael, Herbert H.	Tennant, H. J (Berwickshire)
Morse L. L.	Rea, Russell (Gloucester)	Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E
Morton, Alpheus Cleophas	Rea, Walter Russell (Scarboro'	Thomasson, Franklin
Muldoon, John	Reddy, M.	Thompson, J. W. H. (Somerset, E
Murnaghan, George	Redmond, John E. (Waterford)	Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton
Murphy, John (Kerry, East)	Redmond, William (Clare)	Tomkinson James
Murray, Capt Hn A.C. (Kincard.	Rendall, Athelstan	Torrance, Sir A. M.
Myer, Horatio	Ridsdale, E. A.	Toulmin, George
Nannetti Joseph P.	Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)	Trevelyan, Charles Philips
Napier T. B.	Roberts, John H. (Denbighs.)	Verney, F.W.
Newnes F. (Notts, Bassetlaw)	Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradf'rd	Walker, H. De R. (Leicester)
Nicholson, Charles N. (Doncast'r	Robinson, S.	Walters, John Tudor
Nolan, Joseph	Robson, Sir William Snowdon	Walton, Joseph
Norman, Sir Henry	Roche, Augustine (Cork)	Waring, Walter
Norton, Capt. Cecil William	Roche, John (Galway, East)	Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.
Nugent Sir Walter Richard	Roe, Sir Thomas	Wason, Rt. Hn. E.(Clackmann'n
Nussey, Thomas Willans	Rogers, F. E. Newman	Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney
Nuttall, Harry	Runciman, Rt. Hon. Walter	Waterlow D. S.
O'Brien, Kendal (Tipperary Mid	Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford)	Wedgwood, Josiah C.
O'Brien Patrick (Kilkenny)	Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel)	Weir, James Galloway
O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)	Scaris brick, T. T. L.	White, J. D. (Dumbartonshire)
O'Doherty, Philip	Schwann, C. Duncan (Hyde)	White, Luke (York, E. R.)
O'Donnell, C. J. (Walworth)	Schwann, Sir C. E. (Manchester)	White, Patrick (Meath, North)
O'Donnell. T. (Kerry, W.)	Scott, A.H.(Ashton under Lyne	Whitehead Rowland
O'Dowd, John	Seaverns, J. H.	Whitley, John Henry (Halifax)
O'Malley William	Seely, Colonel	Whittaker, Sir Thomas Palmer
O'Shaushnessy, P. J	Shaw, Charles Edw. (Stafford	Wiles, Thomas
O'Shee James John	Sherwell, Arthuer James	Williams, Osmond (Merioneth)
Partington, Oswald	Shipman, Dr. John G.	Williamson, A.
Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek)	Silcock, Thomas Ball	Wills, Arthur Walters
Pearce William (Limehouse)	Sinclair, Rt. Hon John	Wilson, Hon. G. G. (Hull, W.)
Pearson, Sir W. D. (Colchester)	Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie	Henry J. (York, W.R.)
Pearson W. H. M. (Suffolk, Eye)	Smyth Thomas F. (Leitrim, S.)	Wilson, John (Durham, Mid)
Philipps, Col. Ivor (S'thampton	Snowden, P.	Wilson, J. H. (Middlesbrough)
Philipps, Owen C. (Pembroke)	Soares, Ernest J.	Wilson, J. W. (Worcestersh. N.)
Phillips, John (Longford, S.)	Spicer, Sir Albert	Wilson, P. W. (St. pancras, S.)
Pickersgill Edward Hare	Stanley, Albert (Staffs, N.W.)	Wodehouse, Lord
Pirie Duncan V	Stanley, Hn. A. Lyulph (Chesh.)	Wood, T. M Kinnon
Pollard, Dr	Stewart, Halley (Greenock)	Yoxall, James Henry
Ponsonby Arthur A. W. H.	Stewart-Smith, D. (Kendal)
Price, C. E.(Edinb'gh, Central)	Strachey, Sir Edward	TELLERS FOR THE AYES—
Price, Robert John (Norfolk, E.	Straus, B. S. (Mile End)	Mr. Joseph Pease, and the
Priestley W. E. B. (Bradford, E.)	Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon)	Master of Elibank.
Radford, G. H.	Stuart, James (Sunderland)
Rainy, A. Rolland	Sutherland, J. E.

NOES.
Acland-Hood, Rt. Hn Sir Alex. F	Carson Rt. Hon. Sir Edw. H.	Fell, Arthur
Anson, Sir William Reynell	Cave, George	Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter
Anstruther-Gray, Major	Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.)	Gardner, Ernest
Arkwright, John Stanhope	Chamberlain, Rt. Hn J. A. (Worc.	Gill. A. H.
Ashley, W. W.	Clive, Percy Archer	Glover, Thomas
Aubrey-Fletcher, Rt. Hn. Sir H	Clynes, J. R	Gooch, Henry Cubitt (Peckham)
Balcarres, Lord	Coates, Major E. F (Lewisham)	Gretton, John
Baldwin, Stanley	Cochrane, Hon. Thos. H. A. E.	Guinness, Walter Edward
Banbury, Sir Frederick George	Collings, Rt. Hn. J. (Birmingh'm	Hardie, J. Keir (Mertyr Tydvil
Baring, Cap. Hn. G (Winchester	Cooper, G. J.	Hardy, Laurence (Kent, Ashf'rd
Barnes, G. N.	Craig, Captain James (Down, E.)	Hay, Hon. Claude George
Beach, Hn. Michael Hugh Hicks	Craik, Sir Henry	Helmsley, Viscount
Beckett, Hon. Gervase	Crooks, William	Henderson, Arthur (Durham)
Bignold, Sir Arthur	Dalrymple, Viscount	Hill, Sir Clement
Bowles, G. Stewart	Doughty, Sir George	Hills, J. W.
Bridgeman, W. Clive	Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-	Hodge, John
Bull, Sir William James	Du Cros, Arthur Philip	Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)
Burdett-Coutts, W.	Duncan, Robert(Lanark, Govan	Houston, Robert Paterson
Butcher, Samuel Henry	Faber, George Denison(York)	Hudson, Walter
Carllile, E. Hildred	Faber, Capt. W. V. (Hants, W.)	Hunt, Rowland

Johnson, John (Gateshead)	Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield)	Summerbell, T.
Jowett, F. W.	O'Neill, Hon. Robert Torrens	Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)
Kerry, Earl of	Parker, James (Halifax)	Taylor, John W. (Durham)
Keswick, William	Parkes, Ebenezer	Thomas, David Alfred (Merthyr
Lane-Fox, G. R.	Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington	Thomson, W. Mitchell- (Lanark)
Law, Andrew Bonar (Dulwich)	Priestley, Arthur (Grantham)	Thornton, Percy M.
Lee, Arthur H.(Hants, Fareham	Ratcliff, Major R. F.	Tuke, Sir John Batty
Lockwood, Rt. Hn. Lt.-Col. A. R.	Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel	Walrond, Hon. Lionel
Long, Rt. Hn. Walter (Dublin, S)	Renton, Leslie	Walsh, Stephen
Lowe, Sir Francis William	Richardson, A.	Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid).
Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred	Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)	Wardle, George J.
MacCaw, William J. MacGeagh	Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall)	Williams, J. (Glamorgan)
Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)	Ronaldshay, Earl of	Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E. R.)
Macpherson, J. T.	Ropner, Colonel Sir Robert	Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)
M'Arthur, Charles	Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool)	Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm
M'Calmont, Colonel James	Shackleton, David James	Wortley, Rt. Hn. C. B. Stuart-
Meysey-Thompson, E. C.	Sheffield, Sir Berkeley George D	Younger, George
Middlemore, John Throgmorton	Stanier, Beville
Mildmay, Francis Bingham	Starkey, John R.	TELLERS FOR THE NOES—
Moore, William	Staveley-Hill, Henry (Staff'sh.)	Viscount Valentia and Mr. Forster.
Morrison-Bell, Captain	Steadman, W. C.
Nicholls, George	Stone, Sir Benjamin

Clause 10:

Amendment Proposed— In page 5, line 31, after the word 'Board' to insert the word 'and with the postmaster-General (so far as relates to the Post Office).'"—(Mr. Lloyd-George.)

Question Put, "That the Amendment be made."

The committee divided:—Ayes, 363; Noes, 101. (Division List No. 158.)

AYES.
Abraham, William (Cork, N. E.)	Bramsdon, T. A.	Cory, Sir Clifford John
Agnew, George William	Branch, James	Cotton, Sir H. J. S.
Allen, A. Acland (Christchurch)	Brigg, John	Cowan, W. H.
Allen, Charles P. (Stroud)	Bright, J. A.	Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth)
Armstrong, W. C. Heaton	Brocklehurst, W. B.	Crean, Eugene
Ashton, Thomas Gair	Brodie, H. C.	Cremer, Sir William Randal
Asquith, Rt. Hn. Herbert Henry	Brooke, Stopford	Crooks, William
Astbury, John Meir	Brunner, J. T. L. (Lancs., Leigh)	Crosfield, A. H.
Balfour, Robert (Lanark)	Brunner, Rt Hn SirJ. T (Cheshire	Crossley, William J.
Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight)	Bryce, J. Annan	Cullinan, J.
Barker, John	Buchanan, Thomas Ryburn	Davies, David (Montgomery Co)
Barlow, Sir John E. (Somerset)	Burke, E. Haviland-	Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)
Barlow, Percy (Bedford)	Burnyeat, W. J. D.	Davies, M. Vaughan- (Cardigan)
Barnard, E. B.	Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas	Davies, Timothy (Fulham)
Barnes, G. D.	Buxton, Rt. Hn. Sydney Charles	Davies, W. Howell (Bristol, S.)
Barran, Rowland Hirst	Byles, William Pollard	Devlin, Joseph
Barry, E. (Cork, S.)	Cameron, Robert	Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.)
Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N.)	Carr-Gomm, H. W.	Dewar, Sir J. A. (Inverness-sh.)
Beale, W. P.	Causton, Rt. Hn. Richard Knight	Dickinson, W. H.(St. Pancras, N
Beauchamp, E.	Cawley, Sir Frederick	Dickson-Poynder, Sir John P.
Beck, A. Cecil	Chance, Frederick William	Dillon, John
Bell, Richard	Channing, Sir Francis Allston	Dobson, Thomas W.
Bellairs, Carlyon	Cheetham, John Frederick	Duckworth, James
Benn, Sir J. Williams (Devonp'rt	Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.	Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness
Benn, W. (T'w'r Hamlets, S. Geo)	Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston S.	Dunn, A. Edward (Camborne)
Bennett, E. N.	Cleland, J. W.	Dunne, Major E. Martin (Walsall
Berridge, T. H. D.	Clough, William	Edwards, Enoch (Hanley)
Bertram, Julius	Clynes, J. R.	Erskine, David C.
Bethell, Sir J H.(Essex, Romf'rd	Cobbold, Felix Thornley	Essex, R. W.
Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Maldon)	Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)	Esslemont, George Birnie
Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine	Collins, Sir Wm. J. (S. Pancras, W	Evans, Sir Samuel T.
Black, Arthur W	Condon, Thomas Joseph	Everett, R. Lacey
Boland, John	Cooper, G. J.	Ffrench, Peter
Boulton, A. C. F.	Corbett, C H (Sussex, E. Grinst'd	Findlay, Alexander
Bowerman, C. W.	Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.	Flynn, James Christopher

Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter	Lehmann, R. C.	Pearce, William (Limehouse)
Freeman-Thomas, Freeman	Lever, W.H. (Cheshire, Wirral)	Peason, Sir W. D. (Colchester)
Fuller, John Michael F.	Levy, Sir Maurice	Pearson, W.H.M. (Suffolk, Eye)
Fullerton, Hugh	Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David	Philipps, Col. Ivor (S'thampton)
Furness, Sir Christopher	Lough, Rt. Hon. Thomas	Philipps, Owen C. (Pembroke)
Gibb, James (Harrow)	Lupton, Arnold	Phillips, John (Longford, S.)
Gill, A. H.	Luttrell, Hugh Fownes	Pickersgill, Edward Hare
Gladstone, Rt. Hn Herbert John	Lyell, Charles Henry	Pirie, Duncan V.
Glover, Thomas	Lynch, H. B.	Pollard, Dr.
Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford	Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)	Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.
Gooch, George Peabody (Bath)	Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk Bg'hs	Price, C. E. (Edinb'gh Central)
Greenwood, G. (Peterborough)	Mackarness, Frederic C.	Price, Robert John (Norfolk, E)
Greenwood, Hamar (York)	Maclean, Donald	Priestley, Arthur (Grantham)
Grey, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward	Macpherson, J. T.	Priestley, W. E. B. (Bradford, E.)
Guest, Hon. Ivor Churchill	Mac Veigh, Charles (Donegal, E.)	Radford, G. H.
Gulland, John W.	M'Callum, John M.	Rainy, A. Rolland
Gurdon, Rt Hn Sir W. Brampton	M'Crae, George	Raphael, Herbert H.
Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard B.	M'Killop, W.	Rea, Russell (Gloucester)
Hall, Frederick	M'Laren, Sir C. B. (Leicester)	Rea, Walter Russell (Scarboro'
Halpin, J.	M'Laren, H. D. (Stafford, W.)	Reddy, M.
Harcourt, Rt Hn. L. (Rossendale	M'Micking, Major G.	Redmond, John E. (Waterford
Harcourt, Robert V.(Montrose)	Maddison, Frederick	Redmond, William (Clare)
Hardie. J. Keir (Merthyr Tydvil	Mallet, Charles E.	Rendall, Athelstan
Hardy, George A. (Suffolk)	Markham, Arthur Basil	Richardson, A.
Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worc'r.)	Marks, G. Croydon (Launceston)	Ridsdale, E. A.
Harmsworth, R L. (Caithn'ss-sh	Marnham, F. J.	Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)
Hart-Davies, T.	Mason, A. E. W. (Coventry)	Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)
Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N. E.	Massie, J.	Roberts, John H. (Denbighs.)
Harwood, George	Masterman, C. F. G.	Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradf'rd
Haslam, James (Derbyshire)	Meagher, Michael	Robinson, S.
Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)	Meehan, Patrick A.(Queen's Co.	Robson, Sir William Snowdon
Haworth, Arthur A.	Menzies, Walter	Roche, Augustine (Cork)
Healy, Timothy Michael	Micklem, Nathaniel	Roche, John (Galway, East)
Hedges, A. Paget	Middlebrook, William	Roe, Sir Thomas
Helme, Norval Watson	Molteno, Percy Alport	Rogers, F. E. Newman
Henderson, Arthur (Durham)	Mond, A.	Runciman, Rt. Hn. Walter
Henderson, J. M. (Aberdeen, W.)	Montague, Hon. E. S.	Rutherford, V. H. (Bentford)
Henry, Charles S.	Montgomery, H. G.	Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel)
Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe	Mooney, J. J.	Scarisbrick, T. T. L.
Higham, John Sharpe	Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)	Schwann, C. Duncan (Hyde)
Hobart, Sir Robert	Morrell, Philip	Schwann, Sir C. E. (Manchester)
Hobhouse, Charles E. H.	Morse, L. L.	Scott, A.H.(Ashton-under-Lyne
Hodge, John	Morton, Alpheus Cleophas	Seaverns, J. H.
Hogan, Michael	Muldoon, John	Seely, Colonel
Hooper, A. G.	Murnaghan, George	Shackleton, David James
Hope, John Deans (Fife, West)	Murphy, John (Kerry, East)	Shaw, Charles Edw. (Stafford)
Horniman, Emslie John	Murray, Capt Hn A.C.(Kincard.	Sherwell, Arthur James
Horridge, Thomas Gardner	Murray, James-(Aberdeen, E.)	Shipman, Dr. John G.
Howard, Hon. Geoffrey	Myer, Horatio	Silcock, Thomas Ball
Hudson, Walter	Nannetti, Joseph P.	Sinclair, Rt. Hon. John
Hutton, Alfred Eddison	Napier, T. B.	Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie
Hyde, Clarendon	Newnes, F. (Notts, Bassetlaw)	Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim, S.)
Idris, T. H. W.	Nicholls, George	Snowden, P.
Illingworth, Percy H.	Nicholson, Charles N.(Doncast'r	Scares, Ernest J.
Isaacs, Rufus Daniel	Nolan, Joseph	Spicer, Sir Albert
Jacoby, Sir James Alfred	Norman, Sir Henry	Stanley, Albert (Staffs, N.W.)
Jardine, Sir J.	Norton, Capt. Cecil William	Stanley, Hn. A. Lyulph(Chesh.)
Johnson, John (Gateshead)	Nugent, Sir Walter Richard	Steadman, W, C.
Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)	Nussey, Thomas Willans	Stewart, Halley (Greenock)
Jones, Leif (Appleby)	Nuttall, Harry	Stewart-Smith, D. (Kendal)
Jowett, F. W.	O'Brien, Kendal(Tipperary Mid	Strachey, Sir Edward
Joyce, Michael	O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)	Straus, B. S. (Mile End)
Kekewich, Sir George	O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)	Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon)
Kilbride, Denis	O'Doherty, Philip	Stuart, James (Sunderland)
Kincaid-Smith, Captain	O'Donnell, C. J. (Walworth)	Summerbell, T.
King, Alfred John (Knutsford)	O'Donnell, T. (Kerry. W.)	Sutherland, J. E.
Laidlaw, Robert	O'Dowd, John	Taylor, John W. (Durham)
Lamb, Ernest H. (Rochester)	O'Malley, William	Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)
Lambert, George	O'Shaughnessy, P. J.	Tennant, H. J.(Berwickshire)
Lamont, Norman	O'Shee, James John	Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E
Law, Hugh A. (Donegal, W.)	Parker, James (Halifax)	Thomas, David Alfred (Merthyr
Layland-Barratt, Francis	Partington, Oswald	Thomasson, Franklin
Leese, Sir Joseph F. (Accrington	Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek)	Thompson, J. W. H. (Somerset. E

Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton)	Watt, Henry A.	Wilson, Henry J. (York, W. R)
Tomkinson, James	Wedgwood, Josiah C.	Wilson, John (Durham, Mid)
Toulmin, George	Weir, James Galloway	Wilson, J. H. (Middlesbrough)
Trevelyan, Charles Philips	White, J. D. (Dumbartonshire)	Wilson, J. W. (Worcestersh. N)
Verney, F. W.	White, Luke (York, E. R.)	Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.
Walker, H. De R. (Leicester)	White, Patrick (Meath, North)	Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)
Walsh, Stephen	Whitehead, Rowland	Wodehouse, Lord
Walters, John Tudor	Whitley, John Henry (Halifax)	Wood, T. M'Kinnon
Walton, Joseph	Whittaker, Sir Thomas Palmer	Yoxall, James Henry
Wardle, George J.	Wiles, Thomas
Waring, Walter	Williams, J. (Glamorgan)	TELLERS FOR THE AYES—
Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.	Williams, Osmond (Merioneth)	Mr. Joseph Pease and Master of Elibank.
Wason, Rt. Hn. E. (Clackmannan	Williamson, A.
Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)	Wills, Arthur Walters
Waterlow, D. S.	Wilson, Hon. G. G. (Hull, W.)

NOES.
Acland-Hood, Rt Hn. Sir Alex. F	Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-	Middlemore, John Throgmorton
Anson, Sir William Reynell	Du Cros, Arthur Philip	Mildmay, Francis Bingham
Anstruther-Gray, Major	Duncan, Robert (Lanark, Govan	Moore, William
Arkwright, John Stanhope	Faber George Denison (York)	Morpeth, Viscount
Ashley, W. W.	Faber, Capt. W. V. (Hants, W.)	Morrison-Bell, Captain
Aubrey-Fletcher, Rt Hon. Sir H.	Fell, Arthur	Nicholson, Wm. G.(Petersfield)
Balcarres, Lord	Gardner, Ernest	O'Neill, Hon. Robert Torrens
Baldwin, Stanley	Gooch, Henry Cubitt (Peckham)	Parkes, Ebenezer
Banbury, Sir Frederick George	Gretton, John	Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington
Baring, Capt. Hn. G (Winchester	Guinness, Walter Edward	Ratcliffe, Major R. F.
Barrie, H. T. (Londonderry.N.)	Hardy, Laurence (Kent,Ashford	Rawlinson, John Fredrick Peel
Beach, Hn. Michael Hugh Hicks	Harrison-Broadley, H. B.	Renton, Leslie
Beckett, Hon. Gervase	Hay, Hon. Claude George	Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall
Bignold, Sir Arthur	Helmsley, Viscount	Ronaldshay, Earl of
Bowles, G. Stewart	Hill, Sir Clement	Ropner, Colonel Sir Robart
Bridgeman, W. Clive	Hills, J. W.	Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool)
Bull, Sir William James	Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield	Sheffield, Sir Berkeley George D.
Burdett-Coutts, W.	Houston, Robert Paterson	Stanier, Beville
Butcher, Samuel Henry	Hunt, Rowland	Starkey, John R.
Campbell, Rt. Hon. J. H. M.	Joynson-Hicks, William	Staveley-Hill, Henry (Staff'sh.
Carlile, E. Hildred	Kennaway, Rt. Hon. Sir John H.	Stone, Sir Benjamin
Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edw. H.	Kerry, Earl of	Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)
Cave, George	Keswick, William	Thomson, W. Mitchell-(Lanark)
Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.)	Lane-Fox, G. R.	Thornton, Percy M.
Chamberlain, Rt. Hn. J. A. (Wore.	Law, Andrew Bonar (Dulwich)	Tuke, Sir John Batty
Clive, Percy Archer	Lee, Arthur H. (Hants, Fareham)	Walrond, Hon. Lionel
Coates, Major E. F. (Lewisham)	Lockwood, Rt. Hn. Lt.-Col. A.R.	Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid)
Cochrane, Hon. Thos. H. A. E.	Long, Rt. Hn. Walter (Dublin, S.	Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E.R.)
Collings,Rt. Hn. J. (Birmingh'm	Lowe, Sir Francis William	Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm
Courthope, G. Loyd	Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred	Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart-
Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim, S.	MacCaw, William J. MacGeagh	Younger, George
Craig, Captain James (Down, E.)	McArthur, Charles
Craik, Sir Henry	McCalmont, Colonel James	TELLERS FOR THE NOES—
Dalrymple, Viscount	Magnus Sir Philip	Viscount Valentia and Mr. Forster.
Doughty, Sir George	Meysey-Thompson, E. C.

Question put, "That the Clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill."

The Committee divided:—Ayes, 360 Noes, 99. (Division List No. 159.)

AYES.
Abraham, William (Cork, N.E.)	Astbury, John Meir	Barnes, G. N.
Agnew, George William	Balfour, Robert (Lanark)	Barran, Rowland Hirst
Allen, A. Acland (Christchurch)	Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight)	Barry, E. (Cork. S.)
Allen, Charles P. (Stroud)	Barker, John	Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N
Armstrong, W. C. Heaton	Barlow, Sir John E. (Somerset)	Beale, W. P.
Ashton, Thomas Gair	Barlow, Percy (Bedford)	Beauchamp, E.
Asquith, Rt. Hn. Herbert Henry	Barnard, E. B	Beck, A. Cecil
Bell, Richard	Dunn, A. Edward (Camborne)	Kettle, Thomas Michael
Bellairs, Carlyon	Dunne, Major E. Martin (Walsall	Kincaid-Smith, Captain
Benn, Sir J. Williams (Devonp'rt	Edwards, Enoch (Hanley)	King, Alfred John (Knutsford)
Benn, W. (T'w'rHamlets, S. Geo.	Erakine, David C.	Laidlaw, Robert
Bennett, E. N.	Essex, R. W.	Lamb, Ernest H. (Rochester)
Berridge, T. H. D.	Evans, Sir Samuel T.	Lambert, George
Bertram, Julius	Everett, R. Lacey	Lamont, Norman
Bethell, Sir J. H. (Essex, Romf'd	Ferguson, R. C. Munro	Law, Hugh A. (Donegal, W.)
Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Maldon)	Ffrench, Peter	Layland-Barratt, Francis
Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine	Findlay, Alexander	Leese, Sir Joseph F.(Accrington
Black, Arthur W.	Flynn, James Christopher	Lehmann, R. C.
Boland, John	Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter	Lever, W. H. (Cheshire, Wirral).
Boulton, A. C. F.	Freeman-Thomas, Freeman	Levy, Sir Maurice
Bowerman, C. W.	Fuller, John Michael F.	Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David
Bramsdon, T. A.	Fullerton, Hugh	Lough, Rt. Hon. Thomas
Branch, James	Furness, Sir Christopher	Lupton, Arnold
Brigg, John	Gibb, James Harrow	Luttrell, Hugh Fownes
Bright, J. A.	Gill, A. H.	Lyell, Charles Henry
Brocklehurst, W. B.	Gladstone, Rt. Hn. Herbert John	Lynch, H. B.
Brodie, H. C.	Glover, Thomas	Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)
Brooke, Stopford	Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford	Macdonald, J.M.(Falkirk B'ghs
Brunner, J. F. L. (Lancs., Leigh)	Gooch, George Peabody (Bath)	Mackarness, Frederic C.
Brunner, Rt. Hn Sir J. T (Cheshire	Greenwood, G. (Peterborough)	Maclean, Donald
Bryce, J. Annan	Greenwood, Hamar (York)	Macpherson. J. T.
Buchanan, Thomas Ryburn	Grey, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward	MacVeigh, Charles (Donegal, E.)
Burke, E. Haviland-	Guest, Hon. Ivor Churchill	McCrae,'George
Burnyeat, W. J. D.	Gulland, John W.	McKillop, W.
Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas	Gurdon, Rt. Hn Sir W. Brampton	McLaren, Sir C. B. (Leicester)
Buxton, Rt. Hn. Sydney Charles	Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard B.	McLaren, H. D. (Stafford, W.)
Byles, William Pollard	Hall, Frederick	McMicking, Major G.
Cameron, Robert	Halpin, J.	Maddison, Frederick
Carr-Gomm, H. W.	Harcourt, Rt. Hn. L. (Rossendale	Mallet, Charles E.
Causton, Rt. Hn. Richard Knight	Harcourt, Robert V.(Montrose)	Markham, Arthur Basil
Cawley, Sir Frederick	Hardie, J. Keir (Merthyr Tydvil)	Marks, G. Croydon (Launceston)
Chance, Frederick William	Hardy, George A. (Suffolk)	Marnham, F. J.
Channing, Sir Francis Allston	Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worc'r)	Mason, A. E. W. (Coventry)
Cheetham, John Frederick	Harmsworth, R. L. (Caithn'ss-sh	Massie, J.
Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.	Hart-Davies, T.	Masterman, C. F. G.
Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston S.	Harvey, W.E.(Derbyshire, N. E.	Meagher, Michael
Cleland, J. W.	Harwood, George	Meehan, Patrick A.(Queen's Co.
Clough, William	Haslam, James (Derbyshire)	Menzies, Walter
Clynes, J. R.	Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)	Micklem, Nathaniel
Cobbold, Felix Thornley	Haworth, Arthur A.	Middlebrook, William
Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)	Healy, Timothy Michael	Molteno, Percy Alport
Collins, Sir Wm. J. (S. Pancras, W	Hedges, A. Paget	Mond, A.
Condon, Thomas Joseph	Helme, Norval Watson	Montagu, Hon. E. S.
Cooper, G. J.	Henderson, Arthur (Durham	Montgomery, H. G.
Corbett, C H (Sussex, E. Grinst'd	Henderson, J. M. (Aberdeen, W.)	Mooney, J. J.
Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.	Henry, Charles S.	Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)
Cory, Sir Clifford John	Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe)	Morrell, Philip
Cotton, Sir H. J. S.	Higham, John Sharp	Morse, L. L.
Cowan, W. H.	Hobart, Sir Robert	Morton, Alpheus Cleophas
Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth)	Hobhouse, Charles E. H.	Muldoon, John
Crean, Eugene	Hodge, John	Murnaghan, George
Cremer, Sir William Randal	Hogan, Michael	Murphy, John (Kerry, East)
Crooks, William	Hooper, A. G.	Murray, Capt. Hn A. C. (Kincard
Crosfield, A. H.	Horniman, Emslie John	Murray, James (Aberdeen, E.)
Crossley, William J.	Horridge, Thomas Gardner	Myer, Horatio
Cullinan, J.	Howard, Hon. Geoffrey	Nannetti, Joseph P.
Davies, David (Montgomery Co.	Hudson, Walter	Napier, T. B.
Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)	Hutton, Alfred Eddison	Newnes, F. (Notts, Bassetlaw)
Davies, M. Vaughan- (Cardigan)	Hyde, Clarendon	Nicholls, George
Davies, Timothy (Fulham)	Idris, T. H. W.	Nicholson, Charles N. (Doncast'r
Davies, W. Howell (Bristol, S.)	Illingworth, Percy H.	Nolan, Joseph
Devlin, Joseph	Isaacs, Rufus Daniel	Norman, Sir Henry
Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.)	Jacoby, Sir James Alfred	Norton, Capt. Cecil William
Dewar, Sir J. A. (Inverness-sh.)	Jardine, Sir J,	Nugent, Sir Walter Richard
Dickinson, W. H. (St. Pancras, N	Johnson, John (Gateshead)	Nussey, Thomas Willans
Dickson-Poynder, Sir John P.	Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)	Nuttall, Harry
Dillon, John	Jones, Leif (Appleby',	O'Brien, Kendal (TipperaryMid
Dobson, Thomas W.	Jowett, F. W.	O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)
Duckworth, James	Joyce, Michael	O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)
Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness)	Kekewich, Sir George	O'Doherty, Philip

O'Donnell, C. J. (Walworth)	Roe, Sir Thomas	Toulmin, George
O'Donnell, T. (Kerry, W.)	Rogers, F. E. Newman	Verney, F. W.
O'Dowd, John	Runciman, Rt. Hon. Walter	Walker, H. De R. (Leicester)
O'Malley, William	Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford)	Walsh, Stephen
O'Shaughnessy, P. J.	Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel)	Walters, John Tudor
O'Shee, James John	Scarisbrick, T. T. L..	Walton, Joseph
Parker, James (Halifax)	Schwann, C. Duncan (Hyde)	Wardle, George J.
Partington, Oswald	Schwann, Sir C. E. (Manchester)	Waring, Walter
Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek)	Scott, A. H. (Ashton-under-Lyne	Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.
Pearce, William (Limehouse)	Seaverns, J. H.	Wason, Rt. Hn. E. (Clackmann'n
Pearson, Sir W. D. (Colchester)	Seely, Colonel	Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)
Pearson, H. W. M. (Suffolk, Eye)	Shackleton, David James	Waterlow, D. S.
Philipps, Col. Ivor (S'thampton	Shaw, Charles Edw. (Stafford)	Watt, Henry A.
Philipps, Owen C. (Pembroke)	Sherwell, Arthur James	Wedgwood, Josiah C.
Phillips, John (Longford, S.)	Shipman, Dr. John G.	Weir, James Galloway
Pickersgill, Edward Hare	Silcock, Thomas Ball	White, J. D. (Dumbartonshire)
Pirie, Duncan V.	Sinclair, Rt. Hon. John	White, Luke (York. E.R.)
Pollard, Dr.	Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie	White, Patrick (Meath, North)
Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.	Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim, S.	Whitehead, Rowland
Price, C. E. (Edinburgh, Central	Snowden, J.	Whitley, John Henry (Halifax)
Price, Robert John (Norfolk, E.	Soares, Ernest J.	Whittaker, Sir Thomas Palmer
Priestley, Arthur (Grantham)	Spicer, Sir Albert	Wiles, Thomas
Priestley, W. E. B. (Bradford, E.)	Stanley, Albert (Staffs, N.W.)	Williams, J. (Glamorgan)
Radford, G. H.	Stanley, Hn. A. Lyulph (Chesh.)	Williams, Osmond (Merioneth)
Rainy, A. Rolland	Steadman, W. G.	Williamson, A.
Raphael, Herbert H.	Stewart, Halley (Greenock)	Wills, Arthur Walters
Rea, Russell (Gloucester)	Stewart-Smith D. (Kendal)	Wilson, Hon. G. G. (Hull, W.)
Rea, Walter Russell (Scarboro'	Strachey, Sir Edward	Wilson, Henry J. (.York, W. R.)
Reddy, M.	Straus, B. S. (Mile End)	Wilson, John (Durham, Mid)
Redmond, John E. (Wateford)	Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon)	Wilson, J. H. (Middlesbrough)
Redmond, William (Clare)	Stuart, James (Sunderland)	Wilson, J. W. (Worcestersh. N.)
Rendall, Athelstan	Summerbell, T.	Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.)
Richardson, A.	Sutherland, J. E.	Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)
Ridsdale, E. A.	Taylor, John W. (Durham)	Wodehouse, Lord
Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)	Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)	Wood, T. M'Kinnon
Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)	Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire)	Yoxall, James Henry
Roberts, John H. (Denbighs.)	Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.)
Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradf'd	Thomas, David Alfred (Merthyr	TELLERS FOR THE AYES—
Robinson, S.	Thomasson, Franklin	Mr. Joseph Pease and Master of Elibank.
Robson, Sir William Snowdon	Thompson, J. W. H. (Somerset, E
Roche, Augustine (Cork)	Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton
Roche, John (Galway, East)	Tomkinson, James
NOES.
Acland-Hood, Rt. Hn Sir Alex. F.	Coates, Major E. F.(Lewisham)	Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)
Anstruther-Gray, Major	Cochrane, Hon. Thos. H. A. E.	Houston, Robert Paterson
Arkwright, John Stanhope	Collings, Rt. Hn. J. (Birm'gham)	Hunt, Rowland
Ashley, W. W.	Courthope, G. Loyd	Joynson-Hicks, William
Aubrey-Fletcher, Rt. Hn. Sir H.	Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim, S.)	Kennaway, Rt. Hn. Sir John H.
Balcarres, Lord	Craig, Captain James (Down, E.	Kerry, Earl of
Baldwin, Stanley	Craik, Sir Henry	Keswick, William
Banbury, Sir Frederick George	Dalrymple, Viscount	Lane-Fox, G. R.
Baring, Capt. Hn. G. (Winchester	Doughty, Sir George	Law, Andrew Bonar (Dulwich)
Barrie, H. T. (Londonderry,N.)	Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-	Lee, Arthur H. (Hants, Fareham
Beach, Hn. Michael Hugh Hicks	Du Cros, Arthur Philip	Lockwood, Rt. Hn. Lt. -Col. A. R.
Beckett, Hon. Gervase	Duncan. Robert (Lanark, Govan	Long. Rt. Hn. Walter (Dublin, S)
Bignold, Sir Arthur	Faber, George Denison (York)	Lowe, Sir Francis William
Bowles, G. Stewart	Faber, Capt. W. V. (Hants, W.,	Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred
Bridgeman, W. Clive	Fell, Arthur	MacCaw, William J. MacGeagh
Bull, Sir William James	Gardner, Ernest	McArthur, charles
Burdett-Coutts, W.	Gooch, Henry Cubitt (Peckham)	McCalmont, Colonel James
Butcher, Samuel Henry	Gretton, John	Magnus, Sir Philip
Campbell, Rt. Hon. J. H. M.	Guinness, Walter Edward	Meysey-Thompson, E. C.
Carlile, E. Hildred	Hardy, Laurence (Kent, Ashf'rd	Middlemore, John Throgmorton
Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edw. H.	Harrison-Broadley, H. B.	Mildmay, Francis Bingham
Cave, George	Hay, Hon. Claude George	Moore, William
Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.)	Helmsley, Viscount	Morpeth, Viscount
Chamberlain, Rt. Hn J. A. (Worc.	Hill, Sir Clement	Morrison-Bell, Captain
Clive, Percy Archer	Hills, J. W.	Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield)

O'Neill, Hon. Robert Torrens	Stanier, Beville	Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E. R
Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington	Starkey, John R.	Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm
Ratcliff, Major R. F.	Staveley-Hill, Henry (Staff'sh	Wortley, Rt. Hn. C. B. Stuart
Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel	Stone, Sir Benjamin	Younger, George
Renton, Leslie	Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)
Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall)	Thomson, W. Mitchell- (Lanark)	TELLERS FOR THE NOES—
Ronaldshay, Earl of	Thornton, Percy M.	Viscount Valentia and Mr. Forster.
Ropner, Colonel Sir Robert	Tuke, Sir John Batty
Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool)	Walrond, Hon. Lionel
Sheffield, Sir Berkeley George D.	Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid)

Clause 11:

Amendment proposed— In page 6, line 30, to leave out the word 'municipal'"—(Mr. Lloyd-George. )

Question put, "That the Amendment be made".

The Committee divided:—Ayes, 358; Noes, 90. (Division List No. 160)

AYES.
Abraham, William(Cork, N. E.)	Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas	Duncan, Robert(Lanark, Govan
Agnew, George William	Buxton. Rt. Hn. Sydney Charles	Dunn, A. Edward(Camborne)
Allen, A. Acland(Christchurch)	Byles, William Pollard	Dunne, Major E. Martin(Walsall
Allen, Charles P. (Stroud)	Cameron, Robert	Edwards, Enoch(Hanley)
Anstruther-Gray, Major	Carr-Gomm, H. W.	Erskine, David C.
Armstrong, W. C. Heaton	Causton, Rt. Hn. Richard Knight	Essex, R. W.
Ashton, Thomas Gair	Cawley, Sir Frederick	Esslemont, George Birnie
Asquith. Rt. Hn. Herbert Henry	Chance, Frederick William	Evans, Sir Samuel T.
Astbury, John Meir	Channing, Sir Francis Allston	Everett, R. Lacey
Balfour, Robert(Lanark)	Cheetham John Frederick	Ferguson, R. C. Munro
Baring, Godfrey(Isle of Wight)	Cherry. Rt. Hon. R. R.	Ffrench, Peter
Barker, John	Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston S.	Findlay, Alexander
Barlow, Sir John E. (Somerset)	Cleland, J. W.	Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter
Barlow, Percy(Bedford)	Clough, William	Freeman-Thomas, Freeman
Barnard, E. B.	Clynes, J. R.	Fuller, John Michael F.
Barnes, G. N.	Cobbold, Felix Thornley	Fullerton, Hugh
Barran, Rowland Hirst	Cochrane, Hon. Thos. H. A. E.	Furness, Sir Christopher
Barry, E. (Cork, S.)	Collins, Stephen(Lambeth)	Gibb, James(Harrow)
Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N.)	Collins. Sir Wm. J. (S. Pancras, W	Gill, A. H.
Beauchamp, E.	Condon, Thomas Joseph	Gladstone, Rt. Hn Herbert John
Beck, A. Cecil	Cooper, G. J.	Glover, Thomas
Bell, Richard	Corbett. CH(Sussex. E. Grinst'd	Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford
Bellairs, Carlyon	Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.	Gooch, George Peabody(Bath)
Benn, Sir J. Williams(Dovonp'rt	Cory, Sir Clifford John	Greenwood, G. (Peterborough)
Benn, W. (T'w'r Hamlets. S. Geo)	Cotton, Sir H. J. S.	Greenwood, Hamar(York)
Bennett, E. N.	Cowan, W. H.	Grey, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward
Borridge, T. H. D.	Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth)	Gulland, John W.
Bertram, Julius	Crean, Eugene	Gurdon, Rt Hn Sir W. Brampton
Bethell, Sir JH. (Essex, Romf'rd	Cremer, Sir William Randal	Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard B.
Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Maldon)	Crooks, William	Hall, Frederick
Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine	Crosfield, A. H.	Halpin, J.
Black, Arthur W.	Crossley, William J.	Harcourt, Rt. Hn. L. (Rossendale
Boulton, A. C. F.	Cullinan, J.	Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)
Bowerman, C. W.	Davies, David(Montgomery Co)	Hardie, J. Keir(Merthyr Tydvil
Bramsdon, T. A.	Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)	Hardy, George A. (Suffolk)
Branch, James	Davies. M. Vaughan-(Cardigan)	Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worc'r
Brigg, John	Davies, Timothy(Fulham)	Harmsworth, R L. (Caithn'ss-sh
Bright, J. A.	Davies, W. Howell(Bristol, S.)	Hart-Davies, T.
Brocklehurst, W. B.	Devlin, Joseph	Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N. E.
Brodie, H. C.	Dewar, Arthur(Edinburgh, S.)	Harwood, George
Brooke, Stopford	Dewar, Sir J. A. (Inverness-sh.)	Haslam, James(Derbyshire)
Brunner, J. F. L. (Lancs., Leigh)	Dickinson, W. H. (St. Pancras, N	Haslam, Lewis(Monmouth)
Brunner, Rt Hn Sir J. T(Cheshire	Dickson-Poynder, Sir John P.	Haworth, Arthur A.
Bryce, J. Annan	Dillon, John	Healy, Timothy Michael
Buchanan, Thomas Ryburn	Dobson, Thomas W.	Hedges, A. Paget
Burke, E. Haviland-	Duckworth, James	Helme, Norval Watson
Burnyeat, W. J. D.	Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness	Henderson, Arthur(Durham)
Henderson, J. M. (Aberdeen, W.)	Mond, A.	Runciman, Rt. Hon. Walter
Henry, Charles S.	Montagu, Hon. E. S.	Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford)
Herbert, T. Arnold(Wycombe)	Montgomery, H. G.	Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel)
Higham, John Sharp	Mooney, J. J.	Scarisbrick, T. T. L.
Hobart, Sir Robert	Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)	Schwann, C. Duncan (Hyde)
Hobhouse, Charles E. H.	Morrell, Philip	Schwann, Sir C. E. (Manchester)
Hodge, John	Morse, L. L.	Scott,A. H. (Ashton-under-Lyne
Hogan, Michael	Morton, Alpheus Cleophas	Seaverns, J. H.
Hooper, A. G.	Muldoon, John	Seely, Colonel
Horniman, Emslie John	Murnaghan, George	Shackleton, David James
Horridge, Thomas Gardner	Murphy, John (Kerry, East)	Shaw, Charles Edw. (Stafford)
Howard, Hon. Geoffrey	Murray,Capt. Hn A. C. (Kincard.	Sherwell, Arthur James
Hudson, Walter	Murray, James (Aberdeen, E.)	Shipman, Dr. John G.
Hutton, Alfred Eddison	Myer, Horatio	Silcock, Thomas Ball
Hyde, Clarendon	Nannetti, Joseph P.	Sinclair, Rt. Hon. John
Idris, T. H. W.	Napier, T. B.	Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie
Illingworth, Percy H.	Newnes, F. (Notts, Bassetlaw)	Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim, S.)
Isaacs, Rufus Daniel	Nicholls, George	Snowden. P.
Jacoby, Sir James Alfred	Nicholson, Charles N. (Doncast'r	Soares, Ernest J.
Jardine, Sir J.	Nolan, Joseph	Spicer, Sir Albert
Johnson, John (Gateshead)	Norman, Sir Henry	Stanley, Albert (Staffs, N. W.)
Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)	Norton, Capt. Cecil William	Stanley. Hn. A. Lyulph(Chesh.)
Jones, Leif (Appleby)	Nugent. Sir Walter Richard	Steadman. W. C.
Jowett, F. W.	Nussey Thcmas Willans	Stewart, Halley (Greenock)
Joyce, Michael	Nut tall, Harry	Stewart-Smith, D. (Kendal)
Kekewich, Sir George	O'Brien,Kcndal(Tipperary Mid	Strachey, Sir Edward
Kelley, George D.	O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)	Straus, B. S. (Mile End)
Kettle, Thomas Michael	O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)	Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon)
Kincaid-Smith, Captain	O'Doherty, Philip	Stuart, James (Sunderland)
King, Alfred John (Knutsford)	O'Donnell, C. J. (Walworth)	Summerbell. T.
Laidlaw, Robert	O'Donnell, T. (Kerry, W.)	Sutherland, J. E.
Lamb, Ernest H. (Rochester)	O'Dowd, John	Taylor, John W. (Durham)
Lambert, George	O'Malley, William	Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)
Lamont, Norman	Parker, James (Halifax)	Tennant, H. J (Berwickshire)
Law, Hugh A. (Donegal, W.)	Partington, Oswald	Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen E.)
Layland-Barratt, Francis	Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek)	Thomas, David Alfred(Merthyr
Leese, Sir Joseph F. (Accrington	Pearce, William (Limehouse)	Thomasson, Franklin
Lehmann, R. C.	Pearson, Sir W. D. (Colchester)	Thompson, J. W. H. (Somerset,E
Levy, Sir Maurice	Pearson. W. H. M. (Suffolk, Eye)	Thomson,W. Mitchell-(Lanark)
Lewis, John Herbert	Philipps, Col. Ivor (S'thampton)	Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton
Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David	Philipps, Owen C. (Pembroke)	Tomkinson. James
Lough, Rt. Hon. Thomas	Phillips, John (Longford, S.)	Toulmin, George
Lupton, Arnold	Pickersgill, Edward Hare	Verney, F. W.
Luttrell, Hugh Fownes	Pirie, Duncan V.	Walker, H. De R. (Leicester)
Lyell, Charles Henry	Pollard, Dr.	Walsh, Stephen
Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)	Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.	Walters, John Tudor
Mackarness, Frederic C.	Price, Robert John(Norfolk,E.)	Walton, Joseph
Maclean, Donald	Priestley, Arthur (Grantham)	Wardle, George J.
Macpherson, J. T.	Priestley,W. E. B. (Bradford,E.)	Waring, Walter
MacVeigh, Charles(Donegal,E.)	Radford, G. H.	Warner. Thomas Courtenay T.
M'Callum, John M.	Rainy, A. Rolland	Wason,Rt. Hn. E (Clackmannan
M'Crae, George	Raphael, Herbert H.	Wason, John Cathcart(Orkney)
M'Killop, W.	Rea, Russell (Gloucester)	Waterlow, D. S.
M'Laren, Sir C. B. (Leicester)	Rea, Walter Russell (Scarboro'	Watt, Henry A.
M'Laren, H. D. (Stafford, W.)	Reddy, M.	Wedgwood, Josiah C.
M'Micking, Major G.	Redmond, John E. (Waterford)	Weir, James Galloway
Maddison, Frederick	Redmond, William (Clare)	White, J. D. (Dumbartonshire)
Mallet, Charles E.	Rendall, Athelstan	White, Luke (York, E. R.)
Markham, Arthur Basil	Richardson, A.	White Patrick (Meath, North)
Marks, G. Croydon(Launceston)	Ridsdale, E. A.	Whitehead, Rowland
Marnham, F. J.	Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)	Whitley, John Henry (Halifax)
Mason, A, E. W. (Coventry)	Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)	Whittaker, Sir Thomas Palmer
Massie, J.	Roberts, John H. (Denbighs.)	Wiles, Thomas
Masterman, C. F. G.	Robertson. Sir G. Scott(Bradf'rd	Williams, J. (Glamorgan)
Meagher, Michael	Robinson, S.	Williams, Osmond (Merioneth)
Meehan. Patrick A. (Queen's Co.	Robson, Sir William Snowdon	Williamson, A.
Menzies, Walter	Roche, Augustine (Cork)	Wills, Arthur Walters
Micklem, Nathaniel	Roche, John (Galway, East)	Wilson, Hon. G. G. (Hull, W.)
Middlebrook, William	Roe, Sir Thomas	Wilson, Henry J. (York, W. R.)
Molteno, Percy Alport	Rogers, F. E. Newman	Wilson, John (Durham, Mid)

Wilson, J. W. (Worcestersh. N.)	Wood, T. Mckinnon	TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Mr.
Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.)	Younger, George	Joseph Pease and Master of Elibank.
Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)	Yoxall, James Henry
NOES.
Acland-HoodRt. Hn. SirAlexF	Faber, Capt, W. V. (Hants, W.)	Morpeth, Viscount
Arkwright, John Stanhope	Fell, Arthur	Morrison-Bell, Captain
Ashley, W. W	Forster, Henry William	Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfied)
Aubrey-Fletcher, Rt. Hn. Sir H.	Gardner, Ernest	O'Neill, Hon. Robert Torrens
Balcarres, Lord	Gooch,Henry Cubitt(Peckham	Parkes, Ebenezer
Baldwin, Stanley	Cretton, John	Pease, Herbert Pike(Darlington
Banbury Sir Frederick George	Guinness, Walter Edward	Ratcliff, Major R. F.
Baring, Capt. Hn. G (Winchester	Harrison-Broadley, H. B.	Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel
Barrie, H. T, (Londonderry,N.	Hay, Hon. (Claude George	Renton, Leslie
Beach, Hn. Michael Hugh Hicks	Helmsley, Viscount	Roberts, S. (Sheffield. Ecclesall
Beckett, Hon. Gervase	Hill, Sir Clement	Ronaldshay, Earl of
Bignold, Sir Arthur	Hills, J. W.	Ropner, Colonel Sir Robert
Bowles, G. Stewart	Hope, James Fitzalan(Sheffield) j	Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool
Bridgeman, W. Clive	Houston, Robert Paterson	Sheffield, Sir Berkeley George D.
Burdett-Coutts, W.	Hunt, Rowland	Stanier, Beville
Butcher, Samuel Henry	Kennaway, Rt. Hon. Sir John H.	Starkey, John R.
Campbell, Rt, Hon. J. H. M.	Kerry, Earl of	Staveley-Hill, Henry (Staff'sh.
Carlile, E. Hildred	Keswick, William	Stone, Sir Benjamin
Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edw. H.	Lane-Fox, G. R.	Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)
Cave, George	Lee, Arthur H. (Hants, Farcham	Thornton, Percy M.
Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.)	Lockwood, Rt. Hn. Lt. Col. A. R.	Valentia, Viscount
Clive, Percy Archer	Long, Rt. Hn. Walter(Dublin,S)	Walrond, HOD. Lionel
Coates, Major E. F. (Lewisham)	Lowe, Sir Frames William	Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid)
Collings, Rt. Hn. J. (Birm'gham)	Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred	Wilson, A. Stanley(York. E. R.)
Courthope, G. Loyd	MacCaw, William J. MacGeagh	Wolff Gustav Wilhelm
Craig, Charles Curtis(Antrim,S.	McArthur, Charles	Wortley Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart-
Craig, Captain James(Down, E.)	McCalmont, Colonel James
Craik, Sir Henry	Magnus, Sir Philip	TELLERS FOR THE NOES—Mr.
Dalrymple, Viscount	Meysey-Thompson, E. C.	George D. Faber and Sir William Bull.
Doughty, Sir George	Middlemore, John Throgmorton
Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-	Mildmay, Francis Bingham
Du Cros, Arthur Philip	Moore, William

SIR BRAMPTON GURDON (Norfolk, N.)

On a point of order, is it not contrary to all rules of tie House that a teller should receive the bows of all Members in passing without removing his own hat?

MR. CHAIRMAN

I daresay in future the tellers will take the hint.

Amendment proposed— In page 6, line 41, to add at the end the words '(3) In the application of this Act to the Isles of Scilly, those isles shall be deemed to be a county and the council of those isles the council of a county."—(Mr. Lloyd-George. )

Question put, "That those words be there added."

Amendment agreed to.

Clause, as amended, agreed to.

Clause 12 agreed to.

New Schedule:
Means of Pensioner.	Rate of Pension.
Where the yearly means of the pensioner as calculated under this Act—	S.	d.
Do not exceed £21	5	0
Exceed £21, but do not exceed £23 12s. 6d.	4	0
Exceed £23 12s. 6d., but do not exceed £26 5s.	3	0
Exceed £28 5s., but do not exceed £28 17s. 6d.	2	0
Exceed £28 17s. 6d., but do not exceed £31 10s,	1	0
Exceed £3110s.	No pension.

—(Mr. Lloyd-George.)

Question put, "That the Schedule be added to the Bill."

AYES.
Abraham, William (Cork, N. E.)	Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine	Clough, William
Acland-Hood,Rt. Hn Sir Alex. F	Black, Arthur W.	Coates, Major E. F. (Lewisham)
Agnew, George William	Boland, John	Cobbold, Felix Thornley
Allen, A. Acland (Christchurch)	Boulton, A. C. F.	Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)
Allen, Charles P. (Stroud)	Bramsdon, T. A.	Collins. Sir Wm. J. (S. Pancras,W
Armstrong, W. C. Heaton	Branch, James	Condon, Thomas Joseph
Ashley, W. W.	Brigg, John	Corbett, C H (Sussex, E. Grinst'd
Ashton, Thomas Gair	Bright, J. A.	Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.
Asquith. Rt. Hn. Herbert Henry	Brocklehurst, W. B.	Cory, Sir Clifford John
Astbury, John Meir	Brodie, H. C.	Cotton, Sir H. J. S.
Balfour, Robert (Lanark)	Brooke, Stopford	Cowan, W. H.
Banbury, Sir Frederick George	Brunner, J. F. L. (Lancs.,Leigh)	Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth)
Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight)	Brunner, Rt Hn Sir J. T(Cheshire	Crean, Eugene
Barker, John	Bryce, J. Annan	Cremer, Sir William Randal
Barlow, Sir John E. (Somerset)	Burke, E. Haviland-	Crooks, William-
Barlow, Percy (Bedford)	Burnyeat, W. J. D.	Crosfield, A. H.
Barnard, E. B.	Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas	Cullinan, J.
Barran, Rowland Hirst	Buxton. Rt. Hn. Sydney Charles	Davies, David(Montgomery Co)
Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N.)	Byles, William Pollard	Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)
Beauchamp, E.	Cameron, Robert	Davies, M. Vaughan-(Cardigan)
Beck, A. Cecil	Carlile, E. Hildred	Davies, Timothy (Fulham)
Beckett, Hon. Gervase	Carr-Gomm, H. W.	Davies, W. Howell (Bristol, S.)
Bellairs, Carlyon	Causton. Rt. Hn. RichardKnight	Devlin, Joseph
Benn. Sir J. Williams (Devonp'rt	Cawley, Sir Frederick	Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.)
Benn, W. (T'w'r Hamlets. S. Geo)	Chance, Frederick William	Dewar, Sir J. A. (Inverness-sh.)
Bennett, E. N.	Cheetham, John Frederick	Dickinson, W. H. (St. Pancras, N
Berridge, T. H. D.	Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.	Dillon, John
Bertram, Julius	Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston S.	Dobson, Thomas W.
Bignold, Sir Arthur	Clive, Percy Archer	Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

Duckworth, James	Illingworth, Percy H.	Morpeth, Viscount
Du Cros, Arthur Philip	Jacoby, Sir James Alfred	Morrell, Philip
Dunn, A. Edward (Camborne)	Jardine, Sir J.	Morse, L. L.
Dunne, Major E. Martin Walsall	Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)	Morton Alpheus Cleophas
Erskine, David C	Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)	Morton, Alpheus Cleophas
Essex R. W.	Jones, Leif (Appleby)	Muldoon, John
Esslemont, George Birnie	Kekewich, Sir George	Murnaghan, George
Evans, Sir Samuel T.	Keswick, William	Murphy, John (Kerry, East)
Everett, R. Lacey	Kincaid-Smith, Captain	Murray Capt. Hn A C. (Kincard)
Ffrenoh Peter	King, Alfred John (Knutsford)	Murray, James (Aberdeen, E.)
Findlay Alexander	Laidlaw, Robert	Myer, Horatio
Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter	Lambert, George	Nannetti, Joseph P.
Freeman-Thomas, Freeman	Lament, Norman	Napier, T. B.
Fuller, John Michael F.	Lane-Fox, G. R,	Newnes, F. (Notts, Bassetlaw)
Fullerton, Hugh	Law Hugh A (Donegal, W.)	Nicholls, George
Gibb, James (Harrow)	Layland-Barratt, Francis	Nicholson. Charles N. (Doncast'r
Gladstone. Rt. Hn Herbert John	Leese, Sir Joseph F. (Accrington	Nieholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield)
Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford	Levy, Sir Maurice	Nolan, Joseph
Gooch, George Peabody (Bath)	Lewis, John Herbert	Norman, Sir Henry
Greenwood, G. (Peterborough)	Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David	Norton, Capt, Cecil William
Greenwood, Hamar (York)	Lockwood, Rt. Hn. Lt. -Col. A. R.	Nugent, Sir Walter Richard
Grey, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward	Lupton, Arnold	Nussey, Thomas Willans
Gulland, John W.	Luttrell, Hugh Fownes	Nuttal, Harry
Gurdon, Rt Hn Sir W. Brampton	Lyell, Charles Henry	O'Brien Patrick (Kilkenny)
Gwynn, Stephen Lucius	MacCaw, William J. MacGeagh	O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)
Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard B.	Mackarness, Frederic C.	O'Doherty, Philip
Harcourt, Rt. Hn. L. (Rossendale	Maclean Donald	O'Donnell, C. J. (Walworth)
Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)	MacVeigh. Charles (Donegal. E.)	O'Dowd, John
Hardy, George A. (Suffolk) i	M'Arthur, Charles	O'Malley, William
Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worc'r.)	M'Callum, John M.	O'Shee, James John
Harmsworth, R L. (Caithn'ss-sh	M'Crae, George	Parkes, Ebenezer
Harrison-Broadley, H. B.	M'Killop, W.	Partington, Oswald
Hart-Davies, T.	M'Laren, Sir C. B. (Leicester)	Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek)
Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire,N. E.	M'Laren, H. D. (Stafford, W.)	Pearson, Sir W. D. (Colchester)
Harwood, George	M'Micking, Major G.	Pearson, W. H. M. (Suffolk, Eye)
Haslam, Lewis(Monmouth)	Mallet, Charles E.	Pease, Herbert Pike(Darlington
Haworth, Arthur A.	Markham, Arthur Basil	Philipps, Col. Ivor (S'thampton
Healy, Timothy Michael	Marks. G. Croydon (Launceston)	Philipps, Owen C. (Pembroke)
Hedges, A. Paget	Marnham, F. J.	Pickersgill, Edward Hare
Helme, Norval Watson	Mason, A. E. W. (Coventry)	Pirie, Duncan V.
Helmsley, Viscount	Massie, J.	Pollard, Dr.
Henderson, J. M. (Aberdeen,W.)	Masterman, C. F. G.	Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.
Henry, Charles S.	Meagher, Michael	Price, Robert John (Norfolk. E)
Higham, John Sharp	Meehan, Patrick A. (Qneen's Co	Priestley, Arthur (Grantham)
Hill, Sir Clement	Menzies, Walter	Priestley, W. E. B. (Bradford, E.)
Hobart, Sir Robert	Micklem, Nathaniel	Radford, G. H.
Hobhouse, Charles E. H.	Middlebrook, William	Rainy, A. Rolland
Hooper, A. G.	Mildmay, Francis Bingham	Raphael, Herbert H.
Horniman, Emslie John	Molteno, Percy Alport	Ratcliff, Major R. F.
Horridge, Thomas Gardner	Mond, A.	Rea, Russell (Gloucester)
Howard, Hon. Geoffrey	Montagu, Hon. E. S.	Rea, Walter Russell (Scarboro')
Hutton, Alfred Eddison	Montgomery, H. G.	Reddy, M.
Hyde, Clarendon	Mooney, J. J.	Redmond, John E. (Waterfords
Idris, T. H. W.	Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)	Redmond, William (Clare)

Rendall, Athelstan	Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie	Waring, Walter
Renton, Leslie	Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim, S.)	Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.
Ridsdale, E. A.	Spicer, Sir Albert	Wason. Rt. Hn. E (Clackmannan
Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)	Stanier, Beville	Wason, John Catheart (Orkney)
Roberts, John H. (Denbighs.)	Stanley. Hn. A. Lyulph (Chesh.)	Waterlow, D. S.
Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall)	Starkey, John R.	Watt, Henry A.
Robertson. Sir G. Scott (Bradf'rd	Staveley-Hill, Henry (Staff'sh.)	Weir, James Galloway
Robinson, S.	Stewart-Smith, D. (Kendal)	White, J. D. (Dumbartonshire)
Robson, Sir William Snowdon	Strachey, Sir Edward	White, Luke (York, E. R.)
Roche, Augustine (Cork)	Straus, B. S. (Mile End)	White, Patrick (Meath, North)
Roche, John (Galway, East)	Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon)	Whitehead, Rowland
Roe, Sir Thomas	Stuart, James (Sunderland)	Whitley, John Henry (Halifax)
Ronaldshay, Earl of	Sutherland, J. E.	Whittaker, Sir Thomas Palmer
Ropner, Colonel Sir Robert	Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)	Wiles, Thomas
Runciman, Rt. Hon. Walter	Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)	Williams, Osmond (Merioneth)
Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford)	Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire)	Wills, Arthur Walters
Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel)	Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.)	Wilson, A. Stanley (York, W. R.)
Scarisbrick, T. T. L.	Thompson, J. W. H. (Somerset, E	Wilson, Hon. G. G. (Hull, W.)
Schwann, C. Duncan (Hyde)	Thomson, W. Mitchell (Lanark)	Wilson, Henry J. (York, W. R.)
Scott, A. H. (Ashton-under-Lyne	Thome, G. R. (Wolverhampton	Wilson, J. H. (Middlesbrough)
Seaverns, J. H.	Thornton, Percy M.	Wilson, J. W. (Worcestersh. N)
Seely, Colonel	Tomkinson, James	Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras,S.)
Shaw, Charles Edw. (Stafford)	Toulmin, George	Wood, T. M'Kinnon
Sheffield, Sir Berkeley George D.	Verney, F. W.	Younger, George
Sherwell, Arthur James	Walker, H. De R. (Leicester)	Yoxall, James Henry
Shipman, Dr. John G.	Walrond, Hon. Lionel	TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Mr.
Silcock, Thomas Ball	Walters, John Tudor	Joseph Pease and Master of Elibank.
Sinclair, Rt. Hon. John	Walton, Joseph

NOES.
Anstruther-Gray, Major	Guinness, Walter Edward	Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel
Barnes, G. N.	Hall, Frederick	Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool)
Barrie, H. T. (Londonderry, N.)	Hardie, J. Keir(MerthyrTydvil)	Shackleton, David James
Bowerman, C. W.	Hay, Hon. Claude George	Snowden, P.
Bridgeman, W. Clive	Henderson, Arthur (Durham)	Stanley, Albert (Staffs, N. W.)
Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edw. H.	Hills, J. W.	Steadman, W, C.
Cecil. Lord R. (Marylebone, E.)	Hodge, John	Summerbell, T.
Charming, Sir Francis Allston	Hudson, Walter	Taylor, John W. (Durham)
Clynes, J. R.	Hunt, Rowland	Thomas, David Alfred(Merthyr)
Cochrane, Hon. Thos. H. A. E.	Johnson, John (Gateshead)	Walsh, Stephen
Cooper, G. J.	Jowett, F. W.	Wardle, George J.
Courthope, G. Loyd	Kelley, George D.	Williams, J. (Glamorgan)
Craik, Sir Henry	Lamb, Ernest H. (Rochester)	Wilson, John, (Durham, Mid)
Dalrymple, Viscount	Lowe, Sir Francis William	Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)
Doughty, Sir George	Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)	Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm
Duncan, Robert (Lanark, Govan	Macpherson, J. T.	TELLERS FOR THE NOES—Mr.
Gill, A. H.	O'Neill, Hon. Robert Torrens	George Roberts and Mr.Charles Duncan.
Glover, Thomas	Parker, James (Halifax)

Bill reported, as amended, to be considered upon Monday next, and to be printed. [Bill 290.]