OLD-AGE PENSIONS BILL.

HC Deb 06 July 1908 vol 191 cc1343-415

Order for Consideration, as amended, read.

THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE, Carnarvon Boroughs) moved that the Bill be recommitted in respect of the schedule and in respect of the Amendments to paragraphs (i.) and (ii.) of the proviso in paragraph (a) of Clause 3, standing on the Notice taper in his name as Amendments to be moved on recommittal. He said that he made this Motion as the result of a general demand made by all sections of the House. The sliding scale was moved from the other side of the House and finally the Government recommended its adoption, and it was carried by a very great majority. But a minority ob- jected that it was not liberal enough, and pressed for an opportunity to discuss it, which the Government could not very well resist. The other points dealt with the medical relief clauses, and whether they included provision for food and necessaries in the case of childbirth. He assumed there would be no necessity for any prolonged discussion at any rate on those points.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be re-committed in respect of the Schedule and in respect of the Amendments to paragraphs (i.) and (ii.) of the proviso to paragraph (a) of Clause 3, standing on the Notice Paper in the name of Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer as Amendments to be moved on recommittal."—(Mr, Lloyd-George.)

^*MR. CARLILE (Hertfordshire, St. Albans) moved an Amendment asking that Clause 2 be recommitted together with the other provisions to which the Motion referred. Clause 2 contained one of the most vital provisions of the Bill, and it had had no discussion at all. It was most unreasonable to pass such a clause without any opportunity being allowed for proper debate upon it. The clause dealt with the question of age. The age could be raised above seventy even on Report, and while there might be some in the House who would desire to raise it from an economical point of view there would not be many of that opinion. But there would certainly be a very strong Party who would be disposed to reduce the age, and that they should not have an opportunity of discussing the point seemed to be highly undesirable. There was clearly neither in the House nor in the country any unanimity as to the age, and that constituted a ground for its consideration. There was also no question under the Bill of providing for infirmity, and as the age was fixed so very high that some of their friends in the country were telling them it was no good to them because it was only "five bob a week when they were dead," that also seemed a sufficient ground for giving the House an opportunity of really considering whether seventy was the right age.

MR. GRETTON (Rutland)

seconded.

Amendment proposed— In line 2, after the first word 'of,' to insert the words 'Clause 2 and.' "—(Mr. Carlile.)

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

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

said he would not like to say it was not fair that they should be pressed at this stage, but, at any rate, he did not gather that the hon. Gentleman himself was in favour of reducing the age. At least he did not vote for it.

MR. CARLILE

I did not get a chance.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

I beg his pardon. He did. A Vote was challenged on it by the Labour Members.

MR. CARLILE

That was against the whole clause.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

said it was understood to be a challenge upon the age-limit and the hon. Member had not himself expressed an opinion in favour of reducing the age. They clearly could not recommit the Bill to raise a point of that kind.

MR. HICKS BEACH (Gloucestershire Tewkesbury)

said it was a pity the right hon. Gentleman could not show a little grace to the House and have the Bill recommitted in respect of Clause 2 which had never been discussed at all. It was true that Members below the gangway challenged a division on the whole clause, but though their intention might have been most excellent they never gave any information as to the particular grounds on which they were challenging a division. To say that his hon. friend had indirectly expressed an opinion about the age-limit because he did or did not vote in the division challenged by hon. Members below the gangway, who never explained the reason they were challenging it, appeared to be a quibble hardly worthy of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He did not mind telling him he himself would certainly not vote for the reduction of the age-limit. He quite agreed that the right hon. Gentleman had no money at all at his disposal to meet the increased cost that would be entailed, but they ought to have an opportunity of discovering what was the general opinion in the House itself about the age-limit. It was a very important part of the Government Bill, and if it was worth anything at all it surely was worth an hour or two's discussion in Committee. It was the duty of Members to try to find out what was the general feeling of the House upon the age-limit, and what demands were likely to be made in future upon the Exchequer as a result of the change which would undoubtedly be made. He thought if the opinion of the House was taken upon the age-limit, the right hon. Gentleman would find there were few Members who were satisfied with it. Many hon. Members were pledged to get the age limit reduced below seventy, and therefore the Government ought to be prepared to pay not only all demands up to seventy years of age, but even up to the age of sixty-five if the country demanded it, and they should not have brought this Bill in at all unless they were prepared to find the money in years to come. There was another point which might have been brought up under this Clause, but which had not yet been touched upon. On the Second Reading they had a discussion upon the merits of a contributory scheme, but no discussion took place as to whether it would not have been possible for the State to give a sum of money to the various friendly societies in proportion to the amount held to the credit of their members. Men and women insured themselves in those societies against sickness and they had a certain sum placed to their credit, and at the age of sixty-five that sum was handed over to them. Surely it would have been possible to have assisted these societies by giving them some additional grant in proportion to the amount which the members had placed to their credit.

MR. DEPUTY-SPEAKER

I do not think this question arises now.

MR. HICKS BEACH

submitted that if the clause had been dealt with at all it would have been possible to have dealt with that question. As no opportunity had been afforded them of raising that subject in the discussion he thought it was very desirable, from the point of view both of the Government and of the House at large, that the subject should be considered. Unless the Government intended to make the House of Lords undertake the Committee stages of all their Bills it was desirable that the Government should reconsider their decision in regard to the recommittal of this clause.

MR. WALTER LONG (Dublin, S.)

said the action of his hon. friend on this point was not only justifiable but inevitable. Why was the Motion to recommit the Bill made? They were told that it had been made in deference to the wishes of the Opposition and in consequence of the schedule not having been discussed. The real reason for recommitting the Bill was that the Government thought fit to move the closure by compartments Resolution before they had fully realised the main difficulties of the Bill, with the result that they had been obliged to abandon the fixed standard and adopt the sliding scale. Their own Resolution had operated so harshly upon themselves that the Government had found it impossible to listen to comments upon their new proposals. Therefore this Motion had been made to enable the House to discuss Government Amendments on the paper, and it was most improper to condemn the action of his hon. friend as unfair when that was the only opportunity they would have of raising the general question. It was the only opportunity of raising a debate on the question of the age-limit. He could not vote for a wholesale reduction of the ago from seventy to sixty-five, but some opportunity ought to be afforded for stating the counter-proposition which, while not hostile to the Bill, would have lessened the burden on the State.

THE POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Mr. SYDNEY BUXTON,) Tower Hamlets, Poplar

That is not relevant on this clause.

MR. WALTER LONG

said he was dealing for the moment with the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. A scheme had been discussed amongst friendly societies which had for its object that very result, namely, to establish by a dual system a pension for those who had attained a certain age. This was the clause upon which the subject could be raised, and the House was afforded an illustration in this case of the extraordinary hardship caused by the operation of the closure by compartments Motion, which had shut out many questions in which hon. Members in all quarters of the House were interested. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had told them that they had had a chance of voting for or against the age-limit of seventy. When a division was taken under the Closure upon the whole clause it did not rest with those on the opposite side to define the reason for action on the part of those in whose counsels they took no share. That division was against the clause as a whole, and they were thus prevented from advocating a middle course. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said they ought to have voted with those who were entirely opposed root and branch to the Government proposal, but surely that would have been an unreasonable attitude to take up. Personally, he could not vote for a reduction of the age-limit from seventy to sixty-five, because it would inflict a monstrous injustice upon the country. He ventured to say emphatically that the action of his hon. friend and the Opposition in asking for an opportunity to discuss this clause was a course of which the Government could not fairly complain.

THE PRIME MINISTER AND FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. ASQUITH,) Fifeshire. E.

said the right hon. Gentleman and his friends must make up their minds as to the best way of spending the limited amount of time at their disposal. [HON. MEMBERS: Why limited?] There was no intention of having a late sitting that night, and the Report stage came on to-morrow. The Sole object of the Government in recommitting the Bill had been already explained. It was a matter of perfect indifference to them whether the Bill was recommitted or not. He thought it was well that that should be clearly understood. In regard to the particular Amendment, it was an extraordinary thing that its supporters disclaimed any desire to alter the age-limit.

MR. CARLILE

denied that as far as he was concerned.

MR. ASQUITH

said that perhaps he went too far; certainly they abstained from expressing any desire for alteration. As regarded the time spent in Committee that was determined by the House itself. It always happened under a closure Motion that some points necessarily were shut out from discussion, which many hon. Gentlemen would like to discuss, but that very often was not the fault of the closure Resolution, but the fault of the way in which the time allotted was occupied. What they were anxious that the House should have the opportunity of doing was going into the question of the scale—the scale which the Government accepted from the other side of the House after considerable discussion, in order that they might have a further opportunity in Committee of considering whether the various steps of that scale were in accordance with fairness and justice. He earnestly appealed to the House to use the time now before them mainly for that purpose.

MR. WALTER LONG

said the Prime Minister had suggested that his action was unfair. He did not think that charge ought to have been made. Unless some such words as "hereinafter provided" had been introduced, it would have been impossible to make the changes in regard to which there were Amendments on the Paper.

MR. ASQUITH

said he would withdraw what he said, if the right hon. Gentleman understood him to charge him with unfairness.

MR. CURRAN (Durham, Jarrow)

said he was a new Member, and he did not understand the tactics of hon. Gentlemen above the gangway. It would be in the recollection of the House that his colleagues of the Labour Party challenged a division on the question of the age-limit. Hon. and right hon. Gentlemen who had spoken that day were in the same lobby with the Government. Did the hon. Gentleman who moved the Amendment want the age-limit to be raised? [Cries of "No."]

MR. CARLILE

said he expressed no opinion as to raising or lowering the limit. He hoped that the Prime Minister would not put words in his mouth.

MR. CURRAN

said he did not think there were many Members who would wish to increase the age-limit, although the hon. Member for St. Albans seemed to suggest that there were some. If another division could be obtained on the age-limit would hon. and right hon. Gentlemen above the gangway vote in favour of a reduction? [Cries of "No."] If not, what was the purpose of the Amendment? The Labour Party did not wish to waste the time of the House with useless Amendments.

MR. GOULDING (Worcester)

repudiated the statement that no objection was raised to the age-limit from that side of the House. He referred to that himself, and said that unless they recommitted the Bill in regard to that clause in order to have an opportunity of reducing the age-limit the Bill would be practically a dead letter in the towns.

MR. JAMES HOPE (Sheffield, Central)

said he had listened with amazement to the Prime Minister when he said the Government were perfectly indifferent whether the Bill were recommitted or not. Then the Prime Minister must be indifferent to the public opinion of the country, for the country wished this Bill to be properly discussed. He was amazed to hear the Chancellor of the Exchequer say that it was impossible to raise the principle of the scheme on Clause 2. What was to prevent there being added to the third condition another—that the claimant for a pension should prove that he had made a contribution during so many years of his life towards the pension? However, he passed that point. Nor could he understand the Chancellor of the Exchequer's saying that it could not be raised on the Amendment moved by the hon. Member for Preston. That hon. Member would have liked to raise it last week and probably would like to raise it yet. He was also amazed at the remarks of the Prime Minister, who said he was perfectly indifferent as to whether the Bill was recommitted or not and that he was indifferent to the public opinion of the country. The public opinion of the country was not indifferent. Public opinion wished to see the Bill thoroughly thrashed out, so that the interests of the aged poor should not be sacrificed.

LORD R. CECIL (Marylebone, E.)

said he would support the Amendment. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had scarcely concealed his opinion that this was an unfair method of procedure. The Opposition had protested all along that the Bill had not been properly discussed, and the Government now, by their own action, gave them an opportunity of discussing it, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer said that it was very unfair of them to take advantage of that opportunity. He thought they would be grossly wanting in their duty to their constituents if they did not on that, and every other occasion, take the opportunity of showing how the business of the House was conducted under a Liberal Administration. The Prime Minister had done nothing except to show contempt for the Opposition. The right hon. Gentleman said that the Government did not intend anything to be discussed except the schedules and the Amendment of the right hon. Baronet the Member for the Forest of Dean; and that therefore any discussion was improper unless the Government wished it to be discussed. The Prime Minister when asked the other day about this Motion said that unless the House confined itself to the lines of discussion marked out for it, he would take care that there was no prolonged discussion. He protested against the suggestion of the right hon. Gentleman that it was through the delay caused by the Opposition that the question had not been discussed. He did not believe that for a moment; and if the right hon. Gentleman had had an opportunity of listening to the debates he would not have made that suggestion. The hon. Member for Jarrow, who had made a speech on similar lines, was a Socialist. He had always observed that the feeling of Socialists was closely allied to tyranny. The hon. Member's position was that whatever the Labour Party did not approve of should not be discussed at all. As to the merits of the Amendment, he did not believe that anyone denied that Clause 2 ought to be discussed in Committee; and as it had not been discussed in Committee it was thoroughly right and imperative that they should ask for and have a discussion on it. The important and vital question whether pensions should not be given for age alone, but also for infirmity, had not been discussed in Committee at all, and it ought to be discussed.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

It was ruled out of order by the Chairman.

LORD R. CECIL

Certainly; because the hon. Member had not had an opportunity of raising the question at the proper moment. But there was another question on which the Opposition and the country required some explanation from the Government. The Government said that pensions were going to be given at seventy, but how were they to prove that the claimant was seventy years of age? Was the pension officer or the recipient to prove it? A man who had been only three or four years in a town might demand a pension because he was seventy years of age; but who was to prove it? Were they going to say to the claimant: "You must produce the registration of your birth before you can get a pension?" If that were the case, there were very few old people who would be able to produce a copy of their birth registration, even if they had money to pay for it. A very large proportion of the people of England were not registered at all. He thought the Compulsory Registration Act was only introduced about the year 1860. No suggestion had been made from any member of the majority opposite, who were living under servile conditions, as to how the age was to be proved. It was left for those on that side of the House to argue for the rights and liberties of the House of Commons. The suggestion of the Prime Minister had made all discussion im- possible. He did not believe there would have been the least obstruction. This action of the Government was an attempt to drive into five days the discussion of a Bill which was the greatest departure in legislation on the condition of the poor since the Poor Law Act of 1834. He maintained that the way the Government had burked discussion in the House was grossly unjust.

MR. MIDDLEMORE (Birmingham, N.)

said that the Prime Minister had missed the point which was in the minds of the Opposition. He thought that the honour and dignity of the House were being sacrificed by this rabid use of the closure. The most vital clause in the whole Bill was to be closured without a single word of discussion as to the age of the recipient of a pension. The whole thing was to be relegated to one did not know when. They were told that the fate of the Bill was hanging on a thread. In all probability new points would be discovered in this clause. Some hidden points always turned up in full and free discussion. In the Education Bill of 1870 they would not have had the Cowper-Temple Clause if discussion had been closured.

MR. DEPUTY-SPEAKER

The hon. Member cannot discuss the closure at large; but only the Amendment before the House.

MR. MIDDLEMORE

said he considered this clause the most important in the Bill and he thought that the procedure of the Government was a scandal.

SIR JOHN RANDLES (Cumberland, Cockermouth)

thought that it was almost unprecedented when a Motion was presented from the Opposition benches relating to one of the clauses of the most important Bill of the whole session, a Bill which was engaging the profound interest of the whole country, and when a Motion for the re-committal of the Bill was made, that the Prime Minister should get up in his place and tell the House that it was a matter of perfect indifference to the Government and that he did not care two straws what happened in the course of the debate. He did not think that the indifference of the Prime Minister would quite find the echo in the country which the right hon. Gentleman expected. If there was one thing which the country liked to see in the debates in the House it was that questions in which it took a profound interest were carefully and properly discussed. Such questions were those relating to the age at which pensions were to be distributed, whether at seventy or at an earlier period in the life of the recipient, or where the money was to be found for an extension of the age limit; and until these were made quite clear in the House of Commons there would be very great reason for dissatisfaction in the country. If these matters were fairly debated and shown to be impracticable or impossible he did not think that the Bill would be received with the gratitude the supporters of the Government anticipated.

MR. R. DUNCAN (Lanarkshire, Govan)

said that they on the Opposition side of the House had a very strong opinion that the Prime Minister had not shown any fairness in the manner in which he was acting. There were some pathetic cases of men who were willing to work, and of men who could not find work, but one of the most pathetic figures in public life just now was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who had been loaded by his predecessor with this measure, and who had withheld from the House the information necessary for its discussion. They did not speak vainly. They knew of what they were speaking, and they knew that both the right hon. Gentlemen did, in fact, hold back the information to which the House was entitled—

MR. DEPUTY-SPEAKER

asked what bearing this had on the question.

MR. R. DUNCAN

said the real discussion on the particular clause which the Committee was now engaged in considering depended on the information they got from those who knew this subject from actual experience in life, the friendly societies, and that the Government withheld. The country was watching the right hon. Gentlemen, and the eye turned upon them was none too friendly. If they persisted in their present course what would be the result? It would be said that they were rushing into this matter without waiting for the Report of the Commission now investigating the Poor Law of the country, for the sake of getting votes at the next elections. That course would justly affect the treatment of this measure in another place.

MR. REMNANT (Finsbury, Holborn)

, as one who represented a London constituency, and who had sat on a Committee with the present Chancellor of the Exchequer to consider the old-age pension scheme of the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Worcester, where the age-limit was sixty-five, appealed to the Prime Minister to allow this clause to be recommitted. If he were allowed to do so he could satisfy the House that at all events in London the situation was a very serious one. The age of seventy was practically of no use to the working classes of London. If the Bill was to be given a fair test, and everybody wished it to be, it ought, at all events, to have an old-age limit which would provide for the needs of our great industrial centres. Then again, who was going to prove the age of the applicants for these pensions? Were there to be pension agents such as were in existence in other countries with all the accompanying disadvantages of that detestable system? We were laying up for ourselves a great store of difficulties under subsection (2) of Section 2. That subsection applied with great force to London with its dock labourers constantly going abroad for periods short or long. They were men who worked hard, and were they to be precluded from the pension that Parliament was anxious to give them? Those two points alone as affecting London justified him in asking the Prime Minister to reconsider this, and therefore he asked him to allow the clause to be recommitted for the purpose of considering them. The right hon. Gentleman said that time was limited, but he had suspended the Eleven o'clock Rule which would give them time to debate upon two points. If the right hon. Gentleman said he was indifferent but that time was limited, it could only mean that he intended to closure discussion. If the right hon. Gentleman did that then he must take the responsibility of it in the country.

MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN (Worcestershire, E.)

said he was not one of those who were prepared to lower the age-limit beyond that contained in the Bill, and he would not have risen in this discussion had it not been for the speeches of the two right hon. Gentlemen opposite. Each made it a complaint that a clause which was not discussed in Committee should be recommitted. He was one of those who not only did not divide against the clause, but was foolish enough to support the right hon. Gentleman and the Government in the division. He never thought the right hon. Gentleman would make that a complaint for not discussing the clause at some future time if an opportunity was given. He did not vote against the clause when hon. Gentlemen below the gangway challenged it, because there had been no opportunity for him or hon. Gentlemen below the gangway to say what they thought of it. He voted for the Government, but he was as anxious as anybody for a discussion as to whether, in accepting the Government Bill of a non-contributory scheme of a pension at the age of seventy, under certain conditions a contributory scheme should not be run supplementary to it with a pension beginning at an earlier age. There was one question particularly which he desired to raise on the clause, the question which the noble Lord the Member for Marylebone and others had raised, as to residence. They had had a little discussion on that matter on Clause 1, and they were then met, quite reasonably, by the Chancellor of the Exchequer with the statement that the proper place to raise that question was on Clause 2. He raised the question of the interpretation of Clause 2, as to whether it carried out the intention of the Government, and as to what the intentions of the Government were, and the right hon. Gentleman said he could not discuss the intentions of the Government as embodied in Clause 2 before that clause was reached. He waited for Clause 2 and waited in vain, and now when the necessities of the Government forced them to come to the House and recommit the Bill in certain respects, he certainly supported his hon. and gallant friend in his appeal that they should recommit it in regard to a clause that had not been discussed. When the Prime Minister said it was a matter of indifference to him whether the Bill was discussed or not, he could quite imagine it was. It was a matter of indifference to the right hon. Gentleman whether any Bill was discussed. So long as his majority was ready to register his decrees he was content. The Bill was not being recommitted because hon. Gentlemen on the Opposition side wished to discuss it. The right hon. Gentleman would never recommit a Bill under those circumstances. It was recommitted because of the demand of Members behind the right hon. Gentleman.

MR. NIELD (Middlesex, Ealing)

, who was received with cries of "Divide," said he welcomed the cries of "Divide," because it showed the position of the party opposite at the present time. It showed that the Opposition were not to be allowed to discuss a crucial portion of the Bill. They were to be shut out by that offensive weapon the guillotine which had been used by the party in power in a manner in which it had never been used before in Parliamentary history. The Unionist Party was to be dragooned into anything which the Prime Minister chose to place before them. From his point of view this clause was the most crucial part of the Bill. When the contributory scheme was rejected it only remained to him to do his duty by his constituency, a constituency of between 23,000 and 24,000 people a very large number of whom belonged to a class that never lived until seventy years of age. [MINISTERIAL Laughter.] He did not know whether the merriment of hon. Gentlemen opposite was caused by that fact or the fact that he represented them. It remained for him to do his duty by his constituents and to endeavour to make this a real measure, which it was not and could not be whilst seventy years remained the qualifying age for the pension. Either the Bill was intended to be a genuine one or it was not; much could be done to make it effective in such a division as he repre- sented by the reduction of the age limit to sixty-five—for they could not put the London artisan on the same footing as the agricultural labourer when dealing with what was a fair pensionable age, for his work was such as to prevent equality of treatment. He (Mr. Nield) did not hesitate to describe the Bill as at present drawn as an electioneering device, flashed on to the electoral screen of the party opposite; but it would deceive nobody when the proceedings in Parliament in connection with it were appreciated in the country. Electioneering methods might well puzzle hon. Gentlemen opposite, and no doubt this was considered a desirable measure to dangle before the electors at the next election. If this scheme was to be regarded as an honest one, it should apply to those to whom it ought to apply. It might be very well to have seventy as the age-limit in the country. He wanted this question of the age to be discussed. They wanted to see whether the Bill was to be a real Bill, of benefit to the great mass of the industrial inhabitants of the suburbs of this great city, or whether it was to be a sham Bill. That was what they wanted discussed, and it was what had not been discussed yet because of the guillotine. [Cries of "Order."] Really, Mr. Deputy-Speaker had a truly remarkable number of auxiliaries to keep order. He entered his most emphatic protest against the conditions under which work was done in that House, and against the refusal to recommit the Bill in respect of so important a question as that of Clause 2.

MR. FELL (Great Yarmouth)

said there was a point he would like to raise, and which he had desired to present in the Committee stage of this Bill. He had put down an Amendment to Clause 2 for the purpose of confining

the benefits of the Bill to British-born subjects. There was no one in that House or in the country who would not agree with him that the benefits of the Bill should be so limited. He asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, if they passed the Bill without discussion, British-born subjects were to be alone benefited by the measure. If the Bill were recommitted he had an Amendment down which would raise the question. They had not heard as to the people who were to be benefited by the Bill. What of the British subjects in India: were those who were here now to be entitled to the pension? It might be that crowds of foreigners of the age of forty-five or fifty might come over here in the hope that, having resided in this country for the required time, they might get a pension. He did not believe that the country desired that it should be so. He believed that most of the people wished that the benefits of the Bill should be confined to British-born subjects. With regard to the question of the age of seventy years, that was a point which depended on the money they had; there was no doubt about that. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer's schedule were adopted, he granted that they could not hope to alter the clause so as to provide for a younger age. There had been a case before the War Office in which a discharged man from Woolwich, who was broken-hearted, had committed suicide.

MR. DEPUTY-SPEAKER

The hon. Member is discussing his Amendment.

Question put.

The House divided:—Ayes, 50; Noes, 302. (Division List No. 168.)

AYES.
Arkwright, John Stanhope	Chamberlain, Rt. Hn J.A.(Worc.	Goulding, Edward Alfred
Balcarres, Lord	Clive, Percy Archer	Gretton, John
Barrie, H. T. (Londonderry, N.)	Coates, Major E. F. (Lewisham)	Haddock, George B.
Beach, Hn. Michael Hugh Hicks	Courthope, G. Loyd	Hill, Sir Clement
Bowles, G. Stewart	Craig, Captain James (Down, E.)	Hills, J. W.
Bridgeman, W. Clive	Cross, Alexander	Hope,James Fitzalan (Sheffield
Bull, Sir William James	Doughty, Sir George	Houston, Robert Paterson
Cave, George	Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-	Hunt, Rowland
Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)	Fell, Arthur	King, Sir Henry Seymour (Hull)
Cecil, Lord John P. Joicey-	Gardner, Ernest	Law, Andrew Bonar (Dulwich)
Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.)	Gordon, J.	Lockwood, Rt. Hn. Lt.-Col. A. R.
Long, Rt. Hn. Walter (Dublin,)	Morrison-Bell, Captain	Stanley, Hn. Arthur (Ormskirk)
Lowe, Sir Francis William	Nield, Herbert	Thomson, W. Mitchell (Lanark)
Mac Caw, William J. Mac Geagh	Randles, Sir John Scurrah	Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George
Magnus, Sir Philip	Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel
Middlemore, John Throgmorton	Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall)	TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Mr.
Mildmay, Francis Bingham	Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool)	Carlile and Mr. Remnant.
Moore, William	Salter, Arthur Clavell
NOES.
Acland, Francis Dyke	Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)	Hope, W. Bateman (Somerset, N
Agnew, George William	Davies, M. Vaughan (Cardigan	Horniman, Emslie John
Ainsworth, John Stirling	Davies, Timothy (Fulham)	Howard, Hon. Geoffrey
Allen, A. Acland (Christchurch)	Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.)	Hudson, Walter
Allen, Charles P. (Stroud)	Dickinson, W. H.(St. Pancras, N	Hutton, Alfred Eddison
Ashton, Thomas Gair	Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles	Hyde, Clarendon
Asquith, Rt. Hn. Herbert Henry	Dobson, Thomas W.	Idris, T. H. W.
Astbury, John Meir	Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness	Illingworth, Percy H.
Balfour, Robert (Lanark)	Duncan, J. H. (York, Otley)	Jackson, R. S.
Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight)	Dunne, Major E. Martin (Walsall	Jacoby, Sir James Alfred
Barker, John	Edwards, Clement (Denbigh)	Jenkins, J.
Barlow, Percy (Bedford)	Edwards, Enoch (Hanley)	Johnson, John (Gateshead)
Barnard, E. B.	Edwards, Sir Francis (Radnor	Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)
Barnes, G. N.	Essex, R, W.	Jowett, F. W.
Barry, Redmond J.(Tyrone, N.)	Esslemont, George Birnie	Joyce, Michael
Beale, W. P.	Evans, Sir Samuel T.	Kearley, Sir Hudson E.
Beauchamp, E.	Everett, R. Lacey	Kekewich, Sir George
Bellairs, Carlyon	Faber, G. H. (Boston)	Kincaid-Smith, Captain
Benn, Sir J. Williams (Devonp'rt	Fenwick, Charles	King, Alfred John (Knutsford
Benn, W. (T' w' r Hamlets, S. Geo)	Ferens, T. R.	Laidlaw, Robert
Bennett, E. N.	Ffrench, Peter	Lamb, Edmund G. (Leominster
Berridge, T. H. D.	Fiennes, Hon. Eustace	Lamb, Ernest H. (Rochester)
Bethell, Sir J H.(Essex, Romf' rd	Findlay, Alexander	Lambert, George
Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Maldon)	Flynn, James Christopher	Layland-Barratt, Sir Francis
Black, Arthur W.	Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter	Lea, Hugh Cecil (St. Pancras, E
Boulton, A. C. F.	Fuller, John Michael F.	Leese, Sir Joseph F.(Accrington
Bowerman, C. W.	Fullerton, Hugh	Lehmann, R. C.
Brace, William	Furness, Sir Christopher	Lever, A. Levy (Essex, Harwich)
Bramsdon, T. A.	Gibb, James (Harrow)	Lever, W. H. (Cheshire, Wirral)
Brigg, John	Gill, A. H.	Levy, Sir Maurice
Bright, J. A.	Glen-Coats, Sir T.(Renfrew, W.)	Lewis, John Herbert
Brocklehurst, W. B.	Glendinning, R. G.	Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David
Brooke, Stopford	Glover, Thomas	Lupton, Arnold
Brunner, J. F. L.(Lancs, Leigh)	Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford	Luttrell, Hugh Fownes
Brunner, Rt. Hn Sir J. T (Cheshire	Gooch, George Peabody (Bath)	Lynch, H. B.
Burnyeat, W. J. D.	Greenwood, G. (Peterborough)	Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)
Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas	Grey, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward	Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk B' ghs)
Buxton, Rt. Hn. Sydney Charles	Griffith, Ellis J.	Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.
Byles, William Pollard	Gurdon, Rt Hn Sir W. Brampton	Macpherson, J. T.
Cawley, Sir Frederick	Hall, Frederick	Mac Veagh, Jeremiah (Down, S)
Channing, Sir Francis Allston	Halpin, J.	M' Callum, John M.
Cheetham, John Frederick	Harcourt, Rt. Hn. L.(Rossendale	M' Crae, Sir George
Cherry Rt. Hon R. R.	Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)	M' Laren, Sir C. B. (Leicester)
Cleland, J. W.	Hardie, J. Keir (Merthyr Tydvil	M' Laren, H. D. (Stafford, W.)
Clough William	Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worc'r.)	Maddison, Frederick
Clynes, J. R.	Hart-Davies, T.	Mallet, Charles E.
Cobbold, Felix Thornley	Harwood, George	Manfield, Harry (Northants
Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)	Haslam, James (Derbyshire)	Markham, Arthur Basil
Collins, Sir Wm. J. (S. Pancras, W	Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)	Marks, G. Croydon (Launceston)
Corbett, C H (Sussex, E. Grinst'd	Haworth, Arthur A.	Marnham, F. J.
Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.	Hazleton, Richard	Masterman, C. F. G.
Cory, Sir Clifford John	Hedges, A. Paget	Meehan, Francis E. (Leitrim, N)
Cotton Sir H. J. S.	Hemmerde, Edward George	Menzies, Walter
Cowan, W. H.	Henderson, Arthur (Durham)	Micklem, Nathaniel
Crean Eugene	Henry, Charles S,	Molteno, Percy Alport
Cremer, Sir William Randal	Herbert, Col. Sir Ivor (Mon., S.	Morrell, Philip
Crooks, William	Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe)	Morse, L. T.
Crosfield A. H.	Highum, John Sharp	Morton, Alpheus Cleophas
Crossley, William J.	Hodge, John	Murnaghan George
Cullinan, J.	Hogan, Michael	Murphy, John (Kerry, East)
Curran, Peter Francis	Holland, Sir William Henry	Myer, Horatio
Dalziel, James Henry	Holt, Richard Durning	Nannetti, Joseph P.
Napier, T. B.	Robertson, Sir G Scott (Bradf' rd	Thomas, David Alfred (Merthyr
Nicholls, George	Robertson, J. M. (Tyneside)	Thomasson, Franklin
Nicholson, Charles N. (Doncast'r	Robinson, S.	Thompson, J W. H. (Somerset, E.
Nolan, Joseph	Robson, Sir William Snowdon	Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton
Norman, Sir Henry	Roche, Augustine (Cork)	Thorne, William (West Ham)
Norton, Capt. Cecil William	Roe, Sir Thomas	Tomkinson, James
Nussey, Thomas Willans	Rogers, F. E. Newman	Torrance, Sir A. M.
Nuttall, Harry	Rowlands, J.	Toulmin, George
O' Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)	Russell, T. W.	Verney, F. W.
O' Connor, John (Kildare, N.)	Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford)	Vivian, Henry
O' Doherty, Philip	Samuel, Herbert L. (Cleveland)	Wadsworth, J.
O' Donnell, John (Mayo, S.)	Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel)	Walker, H. De R. (Leicester)
O' Dowd, John	Scott, A. H. (Ashton under Lyne	Walsh, Stephen
O' Grady, J.	Sears, J. E.	Walton, Joseph
O' Kelly, Conor (Mayo, N.)	Seaverns, J. H.	Ward, John (Stoke-upon-Trent
O' Shaughnessy, P. J.	Seddon, J.	Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)
Parker James (Halifax)	Shackleton, David James	Waterlow, D. S.
Partington, Oswald	Shaw, Charles Edw. (Stafford)	Watt, Henry A.
Pearce, William (Limehouse)	Shaw, Rt. Hon. T. (Hawick, B.)	White, Sir George (Norfolk)
Pearson, W. H. M. (Suffolk, Eye)	Sherwell, Arthur James	White, J. D. (Dumbartonshire)
Perks, Sir Robert William	Shipman, Dr. John G.	White, Luke (York, E. R.)
Philipps, Col. Ivor (S'thampton	Silcock, Thomas Ball	White, Patrick (Meath, North)
Philipps, Owen C. (Pembroke)	Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie	Whitehead, Rowland
Pickersgill, Edward Hare	Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim, S.)	Whitley, John Henry (Halifax)
Pirie, Duncan V.	Snowden, P.	Whittaker, Rt. Hn Sir Thomas P
Pollard, Dr.	Soares, Ernest J.	Wiles, Thomas
Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.	Spicer, Sir Albert	Wilkie, Alexander
Price, C. E. (Edinb' gh, Central)	Stanley, Albert (Staff's, N. W.)	Williams, Llewelyn (Carmarth'n
Price, Sir Robert J.(Norfolk, E.)	Stanley, Hn. A. Lyulph (Chesh.)	Williamson, A.
Radford, G. H.	Steadman, W. C.	Wills, Arthur Walters
Raphael, Herbert H.	Stewart, Halley (Greenock)	Wilson, Henry J. (York, W. R.)
Rea, Walter Russell (Scarboro')	Stewart-Smith, D. (Kendal)	Wilson, John (Durham, Mid)
Redmond, William (Clare)	Strachey, Sir Edward	Wilson, J. H. (Middlesbrough)
Kendall, Athelstan	Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon)	Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.)
Richards, T. F.(Wolverh'mpt'n	Summerbell, T.	Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)
Richardson, A.	Sutherland, J. E.	Winfrey, R.
Ridsdale, E. A.	Taylor, Austin (East Toxteth)
Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)	Taylor, John W. (Durham)	TELLERS FOR THE NOES—Mr.
Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)	Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)	Joseph Pease and Master of
Roberts, Sir John H. (Denbighs)	Thomas, Sir A. (Glamorgan, E.)	Elibank.

MR. JAMES HOPE (Sheffield, Central)

said he had an Amendment dealing with the lesser question of including the second subsection of Clause 2 which he submitted he should be entitled to move on a separate issue before the noble Lord the Member for East Marylebone came on.

MR. DEPUTY-SPEAKER

That might have been moved as an Amendment to the Amendment just disposed of, but the House has now decided that Clause 2 is not to be re-committed.

LORD R. CECIL

moved to recommit Clause 3 as a whole. To begin with, the Government were not satisfied with it as it stood, and they proposed to re-commit it in a very limited way in respect to two of the subsections and paragraph (a), which were not discussed. Almost all the discussion on Clause 3 was raised by hon. Members on the other side of the House, but even so, in spite of the known dislike of hon. Members to prolong proceedings they only managed to discuss four and a half lines of the clause, which, when introduced, was some thirty-five lines long. Not a minute was wasted. It was perfectly honest, straightforward discussion on questions of enormous importance, and so effective were the discussions that as far as they went they had succeeded in inserting very considerable Amendments. The Government had come to the conclusion that the whole of one subsection—he thought the most important of all—was absolutely indefensible, and had struck it out and substituted for it an entirely new subsection which, if the House had had an opportunity of discussing it, they would have found equally indefensible. The net result of the alterations was, that as far as he could see, not more than four lines out of the twenty of the original Bill remained, and instead they had sub-sections which occupied thirty-three lines of the Bill, almost all of which, both in drafting and in substance, was entirely new. No Amendments increasing the charge on the taxpayer could be introduced on Report, and the result was that the Government were asking the House to adopt absolutely without discussion or consideration, two of the most vital provisions in the Bill. He would not deal with paragraph (a) because the Government said it ought to be recommitted, because it was unworkable, or at any rate, highly unjust. He profoundly wished the right hon. Gentleman had devoted his exceedingly acute intellect to the consideration of paragraph (b), and he would have been able to convince the House and the Government that it was not less unjust and less unworkable than paragraph (a). It began— If before he becomes entitled to a pension he has failed to work according to his ability, opportunity, and need for the maintenance of himself and those legally dependent upon him. That by itself opened up an inquiry which not even the Exciseman of genius who would have to work the Bill could possibly carry out. He doubted whether any woman would not come under that disqualification. It was extremely doubtful whether every married woman would not be disqualified. A woman had to show that she had worked habitually for the maintenance of herself and those dependent on her. It would not be easy for most married women over seventy to show that they had maintained themselves, their husbands, and their children by their work. The proviso that a person should not be disqualified who had continuously for ten years up to attaining the age of sixty kept up his subscriptions to a friendly society was an astonishing one. Did it mean the ten years immediately previous to sixty? If it meant the period between fifty and sixty, it was just in those years that many working men found it most difficult to keep up their subscriptions. If it meant any period of ten years, a man who subscribed between the ages of twenty and thirty would be absolutely entitled to a pension though he might have been a wastrel in all the subsequent years. That matter had never been discussed. They had had no kind of explanation and there was no Member who had the least idea which construction was the true one. The clause went on— By means of payments to friendly, provident, and other societies or trade unions or other approved steps. He could not believe that the Government had considered that difficulty, because it appeared to him that he must continuously for ten years have taken other approved steps. Why on earth should that be so? Supposing that a working man, as many of them did, made an investment by buying a little house property, why should it be necessary for him to spread the operation over ten consecutive years? He could not believe the Government meant that, but that was what their sub-clause said. The Chancellor of the Exchequer in one of his exuberant speeches had said he was going to make membership of a friendly society a charter for a pension. But nothing was clearer than that the clause provided no such thing. It was only to be a removal of the disqualification if he made such provision against old age, sickness, infirmity, or want or loss of employment, as might be recognised as proper provision for the purpose by regulation under the Act. The whole thing was left absolutely in the hands of regulations, and even then it was only for such provision as should be thought to be sufficient. Then came the most astonishing clause of all. It said— And any such provision, when made by the husband, in the case of a married couple living together shall, as respects any right of the wife to a pension, be treated as provision made by the wife as well as by the husband. That meant that she might be an absolutely abandoned woman, yet if she had been fortunate enough to marry a man who had subscribed to a friendly society she would be entitled to a pension. It was absolutely unreasonable. He did not believe the Government meant it at all, but that was what they said. It was nothing short of a scandal that this clause should go to the country as the deliberate opinion of the House of Commons, when the House had no opportunity of considering it. Because the recommitment of the clause had been asked for from that side they would have no consideration at all. Probably the Chancellor of the Exchequer would not answer at all, or, if he did, it would be in a perfunctory way, and hon. Gentlemen behind him would support him with their votes, and that was the way in which legislation was carried out by a Liberal Government. If the Government considered some of their general election speeches and their promises to restore the House to the consideration of the country and to give the power of free, unfettered speech in debate, they must experience several inconvenient quarters of an hour. He did not appeal to the Government, but asked the House to allow the clause to be recommitted as a whole

SIR F. BANBURY (City of London)

seconded the Amendment. He said he had had a much longer experience of the Liberal Party than the noble Lord, and he was consequently not so much surprised that their statements in the country had not been borne out by their policy. There were a good many reasons why this clause should be re-committed. One was that it covered nearly one-and-a-half pages of the Bill, and if they left out the first three lines, which were merely descriptive, the House would find that only about two lines had been discussed. He agreed that if the clause was adequately discussed they would probably be sitting until next Thursday before they got to any other part of the Bill. That would be an impossible course unless the Government had learned the lesson that it was a mistake to overload the session and try to drive a willing horse too far. Subsection (b) was a most extraordinary proposal. He did not think there was anybody in the House who could state what it meant. He had put down an Amendment to the clause, and if he had been afforded an opportunity of explaining his proposal he might have convinced not only the right hon. Gentleman, but also the party opposite, as to the necessity for it. "Means" might mean anything. Then there occurred the sentence: "Maintenance of himself and those dependent upon him." Really subsection (b) ought to have been a clause itself, and it needed considerable discussion. What was really happening was that all the details were to be left to somebody at the Local Government Board where the regulations would be framed. Parliament could not express its intentions on such questions until it had discussed them either in Committee or upstairs, and to give any department power to frame regulations in regard to a clause which had never been discussed either in Committee of the House or in Standing Committee was contrary to all precedent. He hoped the few words he had said might melt the stony heart of the right hon. Gentleman, and that he would grant the concession which had been asked for. If the right hon. Gentleman took that course and accepted his noble friend's proposal, he suggested that his noble friend should give an undertaking that the discussion should terminate in a reasonable time. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would be ready to consider any just criticism from whichever side of the House it might come. He begged to second the Amendment.

Amendment proposed— In line 2, after the first word 'of,' to insert the words 'Clause 3 and.'"—(Lord R. Cecil.)

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

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

replied that on the Motion to recommit Clause 2 the noble Lord made as earnest, as eloquent, and as long a speech as that which he had just delivered in support of his present Motion. If, as the noble Lord said, a portion of Clause 3 was never discussed, whose fault was that? A day and a half of Parliamentary time, some ten or eleven hours, were allocated to the consideration of the clause, and he had no hesitation in asserting that within that time all the main propositions in the clause could have been debated. He was not going back on old precedents, but he could quote many in which far less time had been allowed for the discussion of clauses of much greater importance. [AN HON. MEMBER: When?] In the Licensing Bill and in the Education Bill there were many clauses which were never debated at all. He was not complaining of that at that particular moment. That was what happened under the operation of the guillotine, and the time to debate that was when the House was asked to adopt or reject the proposal of the Government on that particular point. He would not accept the noble Lord's invitation to point out what time had been wasted, and he would rather not apportion the blame, for that might lead to unnecessary heat. He had only the same answer to give to this Motion as had been given by the Prime Minister and himself to the previous proposition. The Government responded to an appeal made to them to recommit the Bill in respect of the schedule and of two other points, and they had been willing to give three or four hours for discussion and to suspend the eleven o'clock rule in order that the debate might not be interrupted.

MR. WALTER LONG

, speaking as one who had been responsible for the administration of the Poor Law, profoundly regretted the decision of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The right hon. Gentleman could not produce one precedent which would justify the action the Government had taken in regard to this particular clause, the first part of which not only involved a reform of the existing Poor Law, but invaded the whole Poor Law system. He marvelled at the attitude of the Law Officers of the Crown with regard to the earlier part of the clause, The Government, in their own interests, would have been wise to have assented to the recommittal of the clause, even if it had involved another day's discussion. What did the Labour Party say? They said: "We do not approve of this Bill in many of its details; but we will do nothing by vote or speech which will retard its progress." They had not taken for the first time this very wise and broad view of the situation; they knew that the Bill contained something of what they wanted, and they knew that these limitations could never be maintained. He ventured to say that the proviso which followed the limitations was one which could not be considered. The first thing which the pension committee and pension officer had to decide and act upon was whether a man had habitually refused to work, or had habitually failed to work according to his opportunities and needs. Everybody could imagine hundreds of cases in every county in England and Wales where the condi- tions were so peculiar that it would be impossible to apply those words. He did not want a Second Reading discussion that night, although that was what they ought to have had on this clause. The clause as it now stood was not only about three times its original length, but it was going to pass through the Report stage, and from this House to the other House, and could not be discussed or amended. If he had had his way, he would rather have discussed this proviso to subsection (b) than any other part of the clause, for he believed they were going to do a great injustice by the proviso which the Chancellor of the Exchequer had put in although he admitted that the Government had done so with the greatest desire to meet the case of the friendly societies. After listening to their speeches, and as a careful observer of their action in Committee, he was convinced that they did not realise what effect the Bill would have on the friendly societies. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had promised rather quickly in the course of a speech to put an Amendment in the Bill which would meet the friendly societies' case. It was all very well for hon. Gentlemen opposite to say that they were passing a Bill which would give old-age pensions, and to claim immunity for the blunders they were committing; but, unfortunately, there were people who would suffer under their mistakes. He understood that the effect of the proviso was that a man must have contributed to a friendly society for a period of ten years before reaching sixty years of age. That meant that a man who had during the best years of his life subscribed to a friendly society and had found it to be irksome, then falling into drink, would be justified in claiming a pension, unless it could be shown that he had led a dissolute life, as against the man who had never been a subscriber, but who had led a sober and industrious life. The proof that the clause was unsatisfactory was an Amendment to it on the Paper by an hon. Gentleman opposite. There were thousands of men who had not joined friendly societies because of the break-down of several of these societies in the West and South of England forty or fifty years ago, and these men, although they had led industrious respectable lives, would not be touched by the clause as it stood. Then they ought to have some explanation of the words "legally dependent upon." Take the case of a young married man with a family. He was bound to contribute to the maintenance of his destitute father and mother. Was the House going to enact that if such a man, with wages of 14s. or 15s. a week, failed in this respect that he was to be prevented from enjoying the privileges conferred by the Bill? It was a scandal that words which debarred men from claiming pensions should go through the House without debate, knowing as they did that it was only in Committee that they could make any alterations. He had been in the House for many years, and he had never yet witnessed obstructive tactics adopted by hon. Members without a feeling of regret. Hon. Members opposite who brought so lightly

the charge of obstruction would find before a year had passed over their heads that every word uttered by the Opposition in criticism of the Bill would be justified in its working, and they would have to explain, and not the Opposition, why it was the Bill was pushed through Parliament at such great speed, and why criticisms and objections had found no response among the supporters of the Government and no answer from the Government itself. It was only because he honestly believed that if there was not some change in the wording the clause would operate unjustly, that he supported the Amendment, and the charge of obstruction made against them by hon. Members opposite was absolutely without justification.

Question put.

The House divided—Ayes, 72; Noes, 337. (Division List No. 169.)

AYES.
Acland-Hood, Rt Hn. Sir Alex. F	Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles	Mildmay, Francis Bingham
Anstruther-Gray, Major	Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers	Moore, William
Aubrey-Fletcher, Rt. Hn. Sir H.	Faber, George Denison (York)	Nield, Herbert
Balcarres, Lord	Faber, Capt. W. V. (Hants, W.)	Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel
Banbury, Sir Frederick George	Fell, Arthur	Remnant, James Farquharson
Baring, Capt. Hn. G (Winchester	Gardner, Ernest	Renton, Leslie
Barrie, H. T. (Londonderry,N.)	Gibbs, G. A. (Bristol, West)	Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall)
Beach, Hn. Michael Hugh Hicks	Gordon, J.	Ronaldshay, Earl of
Beckett, Hon. Gervase	Goulding, Edward Alfred	Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool)
Bowles, G. Stewart	Gretton, John	Salter, Arthur Clavell
Bridgeman, W. Clive	Haddock, George B.	Sassoon, Sir Edward Albert
Bull, Sir William James	Hardy, Laurence (Kent, Ashf'rd	Smith, Abel H. (Hertford, East)
Carlile, E. Hildred	Harrison-Broadley, H. B.	Smith, Hon. W. F. D. (Strand)
Cave, George	Hay, Hon. Claude George	Stanier, Beville
Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)	Hill, Sir Clement	Stanley, Hn. Arthur (Ormskirk
Cecil, Lord John P. Joicey	Hills, J. W.	Thomson, W. Mitchell-(Lanark)
Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.)	Houston, Robert Paterson	Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid)
Chamberlain, Rt Hn. J. A (Wore.	Hunt, Rowland	Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E. R.)
Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry	Kerry, Earl of	Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart-
Clive, Percy Archer	Keswick, William	Younger, George
Coates, Major E. F. (Lewisham)	King, Sir Henry Seymour (Hull)
Courthope, G. Loyd	Lockwood, Rt. Hn. Lt.-Col. A. R.	TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Lord
Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim, S	Long, Col. Charles W. (Evesham)	Edmund Talbot and Mr.
Craig, Captain James (Down, E.)	Long, Rt. Hn. Walter (Dublin, S.	Forster.
Craik, Sir Henry	Lowe, Sir Francis William
Dalrymple, Viscount	MacCaw, William J. MacGeagh
NOES.
Abraham, William (Cork, N. E.)	Ainsworth, John Stirling	Asquith, Rt. Hn. Herbert Henry
Abraham, William (Rhondda)	Allen, A. Acland (Christchurch)	Astbury, John Meir
Acland, Francis Dyke	Allen, Charles P. (Stroud)	Balfour, Robert (Lanark)
Agnew, George William	Ashton, Thomas Gair	Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight)
Barker, John	Essex, R. W.	Kearley, Sir Hudson E.
Barlow, Percy (Bedford)	Esslemont, George Birnie	Kekewich, Sir George
Barnard, E. B.	Evans, Sir Samuel T.	Kilbride, Denis
Barnes, G. N.	Everett, B. Lacey	Kincaid-Smith, Captain
Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N.)	Fenwick, Charles	Laidlaw, Robert
Beale, W. P.	Ferens, T. R.	Lamb, Edmund G. (Leominster
Beauchamp, E.	Ferguson, R. C. Munro	Lamb, Ernest H. (Rochester)
Bellairs, Carlyon	Ffrench, Peter	Lambert, George
Belloc, Hilaire Joseph Peter R.	Fiennes, Hon. Eustace	Layland-Barratt, Sir Francis
Benn, Sir J. Williams (Devonp'rt	Findlay, Alexander	Lea, Hugh Cecil (St. Pancras, E.
Benn, W. (T'w'r Hamlets, S. Geo.	Flavin, Michael Joseph	Leese, Sir Joseph F. (Accrington
Bennett, E. N.	Flynn, James Christopher	Lehmann. R. C.
Berridge, T. H. D.	Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter	Lever, A. Levy (Essex, Harwich
Bethell, Sir J. H. (Essex, Romfr' d	Freeman-Thomas, Freeman	Levy, Sir Maurice
Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Maldon)	Fuller, John Michael F.	Lewis, John Herbert
Black, Arthur W.	Fullerton, Hugh	Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David
Boulton, A. C. F.	Gibb, James (Harrow)	Lupton, Arnold
Bowerman, C. W.	Gill, A. H.	Luttrell, Hugh Fownes
Brace, William	Gladstone, Rt. Hn. Herbert John	Lynch, H. B.
Bramsdon, T. A.	Glen-Coats, Sir T. (Renfrew, W.	Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)
Brigg, John	Glendinning, R. G.	Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk B'ghs
Bright, J. A.	Glover, Thomas	Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.
Brocklehurst, W. B.	Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford	Macpherson, J. T.
Brooke, Stopford	Gooch, George Peabody (Bath)	MacVeagh, Jeremiah (Down, S.)
Brunner, J. F. L. (Lanes, Leigh)	Greenwood, G. (Peterborough)	M'Callum, John M.
Brunner, Rt Hn Sir J. T (Cheshire	Greenwood, Hamar (York)	M'Crae, Sir George
Buchanan, Thomas Ryburn	Grey, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward	M'Kenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald
Burnyeat, W. J. D.	Griffith, Ellis J.	M' Killop, W.
Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas	Gurdon, Rt Hn. Sir W. Brampton	M'Laren, Sir C. B. (Leicester)
Buxton, Rt. Hn. Sydney Charles	Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard B.	M'Laren, H. D. (Stafford, W.)
Byles, William Pollard	Hall, Frederick	M'Micking, Major G.
Carr-Gomm, H. W.	Halpin, J.	Maddison, Frederick
Causton, Rt. Hn. Richard Knight	Harcourt, Rt. Hn. L (Rossendale	Mallet, Charles E.
Cawley, Sir Frederick	Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose	Manfield, Harry (Northants)
Channing, Sir Francis Allston	Hardie, J. Keir (MerthyrTydvil)	Markham, Arthur Basil
Cheetham, John Frederick	Hardy, George A. (Suffolk)	Marks, G. Croydon (Launceston)
Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.	Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Wore'r)	Marnham, F. J.
Cleland, J. W.	Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)	Mason, A. E. W. (Coventry)
Clough, William	Harwood, George	Masterman, C. F. G.
Clynes, J. R.	Haslam, James (Derbyshire)	Meehan, Francis E. (Leitrim, N.
Cobbold, Felix Thornley	Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)	Menzies, Walter
Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)	Haworth, Arthur A.	Micklem, Nathaniel
Collins, Sir Wm. J. (S. Pancras, W	Hedges, A. Paget	Molteno, Percy Alport
Cooper, G. J.	Hemmerde, Edward George	Montagu, Hon E. S.
Corbett. C H (Sussex, E. Grinst'd	Henderson, Arthur (Durham)	Mooney, J. J.
Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.	Henry, Charles S.	Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)
Cory, Sir Clifford John	Herbert, Col. Sir Ivor (Mon., S.)	Morrell, Philip
Cotton, Sir H. J. S.	Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe)	Morton, Alpheus Cleophas
Cowan, W. H.	Higham, John Sharp	Murphy, John (Kerry, East)
Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth)	Hobart, Sir Robert	Nannetti, Joseph P.
Crean, Eugene	Hobhouse, Charles E. H.	Napier, T. B.
Cremer, Sir William Randal	Hodge, John	Nicholls, George
Crooks, William	Hogan, Michael	Nicholson, Charles N. (Doncast'r
Crosfield, A. H.	Holland, Sir William Henry	Nolan, Joseph
Crossley, William J.	Holt, Richard Durning	Norman, Sir Henry
Curran, Peter Francis	Hope, John Deans (Fife, West)	Norton, Capt. Cecil William
Dalmeny, Lord	Hope, W. Bateman (Somerset, N	Nugent, Sir Walter Richard
Dalziel, James Henry	Horniman, Emslie John	Nussey, Thomas Willans
Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)	Howard, Hon. Geoffrey	Nuttall, Harry
Davies, M. Vaughan (Cardigan	Hudson, Walter	O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)
Davies, Timothy (Fulham)	Hutton, Alfred Eddison	O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)
Devlin, Joseph	Hyde, Clarendon	O'Doherty, Philip
Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.)	Idris, T. H. W.	O'Donnell, C. J. (Walworth)
Dickinson, W. H. (St. Pancras, N	Illingworth, Percy H.	O'Donnell, John (Mayo, S.)
Dickson-Poynder, Sir John P.	Isaacs, Rufus Daniel	O'Dowd, John
Dobson, Thomas W.	Jackson, R. S.	O'Grady, J.
Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness	Jacoby, Sir James Alfred	O'Malley, William
Dunn, A. Edward (Camborne)	Jenkins, J.	Parker, James (Halifax)
Dunne, Major E. Martin (Walsall	Johnson, John (Gateshead)	Partington, Oswald
Edwards, Clement (Denbigh)	Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)	Paulton, James Mellor
Edwards, Enoch (Hanley)	Jones, Leif (Appleby)	Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek)
Edwards, Sir Francis (Radnor)	Jowett, F. W.	Pearce, William (Limehouse)
Erskine, David C.	Joyce, Michael	Pearson, W. H. M. (Suffolk, Eye)

Philipps, Col. Ivor (S'thampton)	Scott, A H. (Ashton-under-Lyne	Toulmin, George
Philipps, Owen C. (Pembroke)	Sears, J. E.	Trevelyan, Charles Philips
Pickersgill, Edward Hare	Seaverns, J. H.	Vivian, Henry
Pirie, Duncan V.	Seddon, J.	Wadsworth, J.
Pollard, Dr.	Shackleton, David James	Walsh, Stephen
Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H .	Shaw, Charles Edw. (Stafford)	Walton, Joseph
Price, C. E. (Edinb'gh, Central)	Sherwell, Arthur James	Ward, John (Stoke-upon-Trent)
Priestley, Arthur (Grantham)	Shipman, Dr. John G.	Waring, Walter
Priestley, W. E. B. (Bradford, E.	Silcock, Thomas Ball	Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)
Radford, G. H.	Simon, John Allsebrook	Waterlow, D. S.
Raphael, Herbert H.	Sinclair, Rt. Hon. John	Watt, Henry A.
Rea, Russell (Gloucester)	Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie	Whitbread, Howard
Rea, Walter Russell (Scarboro'	Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim, S.)	White, Sir George (Norfolk)
Redmond, William (Clare)	Snowden, P.	White, J. D. (Dumhartonshire)
Rendall, Athelstan	Soares, Ernest J.	White, Luke (York, E.R.)
Richards, Thomas (W. Monm'th	Spicer, Sir Albert	Whitley, John Henry (Halifax)
Richards, T. F. (Wolverh'mpt'n	Stanley, Albert (Staffs, N. W.)	Whittaker, Rt Hn, Sir Thomas P.
Richardson, A.	Stanley, Hn. A. Lyulph (Chesh.)	Wiles, Thomas
Ridsdale, E. A.	Steadman, W. C.	Wilkie, Alexander
Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)	Stewart, Halley (Greenock)	Williams, J. (Glamorgan)
Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)	Stewart-Smith. D. (Kendal)	William, Llewelyn (Carm'rth'n
Roberts, Sir John H. (Denbighs.	Strachey, Sir Edward	Williamson, A.
Robertson, Sir G Scott (Bradf'rd	Straus, B. S. (Mile End)	Wills, Arthur Walters
Robertson, J. M. (Tyneside)	Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon)	Wilson, Hon. G. G. (Hull, W.)
Robinson, S.	Summerbell, T.	Wilson, Henry J. (York, W. R.)
Robson, Sir William Snowden	Sutherland, J. E.	Wilson, John (Durham, Mid)
Roche, Augustine (Cork)	Taylor, Austin (East Toxteth)	Wilson. J. H. (Middlesbrough)
Roe, Sir Thomas	Taylor, John W. (Durham)	Wilson, J. W. (Worcestersh. N.)
Rogers, F. E. Newman	Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe	Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.)
Rowlands, J.	Tennant, Sir Edward (Salisbury	Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton
Runciman, Rt. Hon. Walter	Thomas, Sir A. (Glamorgan, E.)	Winfrey, R.
Russel, T. W.	Thomas, David Alfred (Merthyr	Wodehouse, Lord
Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford)	Thomasson, Franklin
Samuel, Herbert L. (Cleveland)	Thompson, J W H. (Somerset, E.	TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr.
Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel)	Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton)	Joseph Pease and Master of
Scarisbrick, T. T. L.	Thorne, William (West Ham)	Elibank.

Main Question again proposed.

Mr. ASQUITH rose in his place, and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put."

Question put, "That the Question be now put."

The House divided—Ayes, 334; Noes, 77. (Division List No. 170.)

AYES.
Abraham, William (Rhondda)	Bennett, E. N.	Causton, Rt Hn. Richard Knight
Acland, Francis Dyke	Berridge, T. H. D.	Cawley, Sir Frederick
Agnew, George William	Bethell, Sir J H. (Essex, Romf'rd	Channing, Sir Francis Allston
Ainsworth, John Stirling	Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Maldon)	Cheetham, John Frederick
Allen, A. Acland (Christchurch)	Black, Arthur W.	Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.
Allen, Charles P. (Stroud)	Boulton, A. C. F.	Cleland, J. W.
Ashton, Thomas Gair	Bowerman, C. W.	Clough, William
Asquith, Rt. Hn. Herbert Henry	Brace, William	Clynes, J. R.
Astbury, John Meir	Bramsdon, T. A.	Cobbold, Felix Thornley
Balfour, Robert (Lanark;	Brigg, John	Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)
Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight)	Bright, J. A.	Collins, Sir Wm. J. (S. Pancras, W
Barker, John	Brocklehurst, W. B.	Cooper, G. J.
Barlow, Perey (Bedford)	Brooke, Stopford	Corbett, C H (Sussex, E. Grinst'd
Barnard, E. B.	Brunner, J. F. L. (Lanes, Leigh)	Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.
Barnes, G. H.	Bryce, J. Annan	Cory, Sir Clifford John
Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N.)	Buchanan, Thomas Ryburn	Cotton, Sir H. J. S.
Beale, W. P.	Burnyeat, W. J. D.	Cowan, H. W.
Beauchamp, E.	Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas	Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth)
Bellairs, Carlyon	Buxton, Rt. Hn. Sydney Charles	Crean, Eugene
Benn, Sir J. Williams (Devonp'rt	Byles, William Pollard	Cremer, Sir William Randal
Benn, W. (T'w'r Hamlets, SGeo.	Carr-Gomm, H. W.	Crooks, William
Crosfield, A. H.	Holland, Sir William Henry	Nolan, Joseph
Crossley, William J.	Holt, Richard Durning	Norman, Sir Henry
Curran, Peter Francis	Hope, John Deans (Fife, West)	Norton, Capt. Cecil William
Dalmeny, Lord	Hope, W Bateman (Somerset, N.	Nugent, Sir Walter Richard
Dalziel, James Henry	Horniman, Emslie John	Nussey, Thomas Willans
Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)	Howard, Hon. Geoffrey	Nuttall, Harry
Davies, M. Vaughan (Cardigan	Hudson, Walter	O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)
Davies, Timothy (Fulham)	Hutton, Alfred Eddison	O'Connor, John (Kildare, N)
Devlin, Joseph	Hyde, Clarendon	O'Donnell, C. J. (Walworth)
Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.)	Idris, T. H. W.	O'Donnell, John (Mayo, S.)
Dickinson, W H. (St. Pancras, N.	Illingworth, Percy H.	O'Dowd, John
Dickson-Poynder, Sir John P.	Isaacs, Rufus Daniel	O'Grady, J.
Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles	Jackson, R. S.	O'Malley, William
Dobson, Thomas W.	Jacoby, Sir James Alfred	Parker, James (Halifax)
Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness	Jenkins, J.	Partington, Oswald
Dunn, A. Edward (Camborne)	Johnson, John (Gateshead)	Paulton, James Mellor
Dunne, Major E. Martin (Walsall	Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)	Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek)
Edwards, Clement (Denbigh)	Jones, Leif (Appleby)	Pearce, William (Limehouse)
Edwards, Enoch (Hanley)	Jowett, F. W.	Pearson, W. H. M. (Suffolk, Eye)
Edwards, Sir Francis (Radnor)	Joyce, Michael	Philipps, Col. Ivor (S'thampton
Erskine, David C.	Kearley, Sir Hudson E.	Philipps, Owen C. (Pembroke)
Essex, R. W.	Kekewich, Sir George	Pickersgill, Edward Hare
Esslemont, George Birnie	Kilbride, Denis	Pirie, Duncan V.
Evans, Sir Samuel T.	Kincaid-Smith, Captain	Pollard, Dr.
Everett, R. Lacey	Laidlaw, Robert	Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.
Fenwick, Charles	Lamb, Edmund G. (Leominster	Price, C. E. (Edinb'gh, Central)
Ferens, T. R.	Lamb, Ernest H. (Rochester)	Priestley, Arthur (Grantham)
Ferguson, R. C. Munro	Lambert, George	Priestley, W. E. B. (Bradford, E.)
Ffrench, Peter	Layland-Barratt, Sir Francis	Radford, G. H.
Fiennes, Hon. Eustace	Lea, Hugh Cecil (St. Pancras, E)	Raphael, Herbert H.
Findlay, Alexander	Leese, Sir Joseph F. (Accrington	Rea, Russell (Gloucester)
Flavin, Michael Joseph	Lehmann, R. C.	Rea, Walter Russell (Scarboro')
Flynn, James Christopher	Lever, A. Levy (Essex, Harwich	Redmond, William (Clare)
Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter	Levy, Sir Maurice	Rendall, Athelstan
Freeman-Thomas, Freeman	Lewis, John Herbert	Richards, Thomas (W. Monm'th
Fuller, John Michael F.	Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David	Richards, T. F.(Wolverh'mpt'n
Fullerton, Hugh	Lupton, Arnold	Richardson, A.
Gibb, James (Harrow)	Luttrell, Hugh Fownes	Ridsdale, E. A.
Gill, A. H.	Lynch, H. B.	Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln
Gladstone, Rt Hn. Herbert John	Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)	Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)
Glen-Coats, Sir T. (Fenfrew, W.)	Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk B'ghs	Roberts, Sir John H. (Denbighs)
Glendinning, R. G.	Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.	Robertson, Sir G Scott (Bradf'rd
Glover, Thomas	Macpherson, J. T.	Robertson, J. M. (Tyneside)
Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford	MacVeagh, Jeremiah (Down, S)	Robinson, S.
Gooch, George Peabody (Bath)	M'Callum, John M.	Robson, Sir William Snowdon
Greenwood, G. (Peterborough)	M'Crae, Sir George	Roe, Sir Thomas
Greenwood, Hamar (York)	M'Kenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald	Rogers, F. E. Newman
Grey, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward	M'Killop, W.	Rowlands, J.
Griffith, Ellis J.	M'Laren, Sir C. B. (Leicester)	Runciman, Rt. Hon. Walter
Gurdon, Rt Hn. Sir W Brampton	M'Laren, H. D. (Stafford, W.)	Russell, T. W.
Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard B.	M'Micking, Major G.	Rutherford. V. H. (Brentford)
Hall, Frederick	Maddison, Frederick	Samuel, Herbert L. (Cleveland)
Halpin, J.	Mallet, Charles E.	Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel)
Harcourt, Rt Hn, L. (Rossendale	Manfield, Harry (Northants)	Scarisbrick, T. T. L.
Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)	Markham, Arthur Basil	Schwann, C. Duncan (Hyde)
Hardie, J. Keir (MerthyrTydvil)	Marks, G. Croydon (Launceston)	Scott, A. H. (Ashton under Lyne
Hardy, George A. (Suffolk)	Marnham, F. J.	Sears, J. E.
Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worc'r)	Mason, A. E. W. (Coventry)	Seaverns, J. H
Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)	Masterman, C. F. G.	Seddon, J.
Haslam, James (Derbyshire)	Meehan, Francis E. (Leitrim, N)	Seely, Colonel
Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)	Menzies, Walter	Shackleton, David James
Haworth, Arthur A.	Micklem, Nathaniel	Shaw, Charles Edw. (Stafford)
Hedges, A. Paget	Molteno, Percy Alport	Sherwell, Arthur James
Hemmerde, Edward George	Montagu, Hon. E. S.	Shipman, Dr. John G.
Henderson, Arthur (Durham)	Mooney, J. J.	Silcock, Thomas Ball
Henry, Charles S.	Morgan, G. Hay. (Cornwall)	Simon, John Allsebrook
Herbert, Col. Sir Ivor (Mon., S.)	Morrell, Philip	Sinclair, Rt. Hon. John
Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe	Morton, Alpheus Cleophas	Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie
Higham, John Sharp	Murphy, John (Kerry, East)	Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim, S.)
Hobart, Sir Robert	Nannetti, Joseph P.	Snowden, P.
Hobhouse, Charles E. H.	Napier, T. B.	Soares, Ernest J.
Hodge, John	Nicholls, George	Stanley, Albert (Staffs, N. W.)
Hogan, Michael	Nicholson, Charles N. (Doncast'r	Stanley, Hn. A. Lyulph (Chesh.)

Steadman, W. C.	Tomkinson, James	Wiles, Thomas
Stewart, Halley (Greenock)	Toulmin, George	Wilkie, Alexander
Stewart-Smith, D. (Kendal)	Trevelyan, Charles Philips	Williams, J. (Glamorgan)
Strachey, Sir Edward	Vivian, Henry	Williams, Llewelyn (Carmarthen
Straus, B. S. (Mile End)	Wadsworth, J.	Williamson, A.
Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon)	Walsh, Stephen	Wills, Arthur Walters
Summerbell, T.	Walters, John Tudor	Wilson, Hon. G. G. (Hull, W.)
Sutherland, J. E.	Walton, Joseph	Wilson, Henry J. (York, W. R.)
Taylor, Austin (East Toxteth)	Ward, John (Stoke-upon-Trent	Wilson, John (Durham, Mid)
Taylor, John W. (Durham)	Waring, Walter	Wilson, J. H. (Middlesbrough)
Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)	Wason, John Catheart (Orkney)	Wilson, J. W. (Worcestersh. N)
Tennant, Sir Edward (Salisbury	Waterlow, D. S.	Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)
Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire)	Watt, Henry A.	Winfrey, R.
Thomas, Sir A. (Glamorgan, E.)	Whitbread, Howard	Wodehouse, Lord
Thomas, David Alfred (Merthyr	White, Sir George (Norfolk)
Thomasson, Franklin	White, J. D. (Dumbartonshire)	TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Mr.
Thompson, J W. H. (Somerset, E	White, Luke (York, E. R.)	Joseph Pease and Master of
Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton	Whitley, John Henry (Halifax)	Elibank.
Thorne, William (West Ham)	Whittaker, Rt. Hn. Sir Thomas P
NOES.
Anstruther-Gray, Major	Faber, Capt. W. V. (Hants, W.)	Mildmay, Francis Bingham
Aubrey-Fletcher, Rt. Hn. Sir H.	Fell, Arthur	Moore, William
Balcarres, Lord	Forster, Henry William	Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield)
Banbury, Sir Frederick George	Gardner, Ernest	Nield, Herbert
Baring, Capt. Hn. G (Winchester	Gibbs, G. A. (Bristol, West)	Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel
Barrie, H. T. (Londonderry, N.	Gordon, J.	Remnant, James Farquharson
Beach, Hn. Michael Hugh Hicks	Goulding, Edward Alfred	Renton, Leslie
Beckett, Hon. Gervase	Gretton, John	Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall)
Bowles, G. Stewart	Guinness, Walter Edward	Ronaldshay, Earl of
Bridgeman, W. Clive	Haddock, George B.	Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool)
Bull, Sir William James	Hardy, Laurence (Kent, Ashf'rd	Salter, Arthur Clavell
Carlile, E. Hildred	Harrison-Broadley, H. B.	Sassoon, Sir Edward Albert
Castlereagh, Viscount	Hay, Hon. Claude George	Smith, Abel H. (Hertford, East)
Cave, George	Helmsley, Viscount	Smith, Hon. W. F. D. (Strand)
Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)	Hill, Sir Clement	Stanier, Beville
Cecil, Lord John P. Joicey-	Hills, J. W.	Stanley, Hn. Arthur (Ormskirk)
Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.)	Houston, Robert Paterson	Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)
Chamberlain, Rt Hn J. A. (Worc.	Hunt, Rowland	Thomson, W. Mitchell-(Lanark)
Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry	Joynson-Hicks, William	Thornton, Percy M.
Clive, Percy Archer	Kerry, Earl of	Walrond, Hon. Lionel
Coates, Major E. F. (Lewisham)	Keswick, William	Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E. R.)
Courthope, G. Loyd	King, Sir Henry Seymour (Hull)	Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart-
Craig, Captain James (Down, E.)	Lockwood, Rt. Hn. Lt.-Col. A. R.	Younger, George
Craik, Sir Henry	Long, Col. Charles W. (Evesham
Dalrymple, Viscount	Long, Rt. Hn. Walter (Dublin, S)	TELLERS FOE THE NOES—Sir
Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-	Lowe, Sir Francis William	Alexander Acland-Hood and
Faber, George Denison (York)	MacCaw, William J. MacGeagh	Viscount Valentia.

Question put accordingly, and agreed to.

Bill, as amended, re-committed in respect of the Schedule and in respect of the Amendments to paragraphs (i.) and (ii.) of the proviso to paragraph (a) of Clause 3, standing on the Notice Paper in the name of Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer as Amendments to be moved on re-committal.

Bill considered in Committee.

(In the Committee.)

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

moved to insert the words, "including food or com- forts". There was some doubt whether the words in the Bill would really include that particular provision, and in order to make it quite clear he moved.

Amendment proposed— In page 2, line 10, after the word 'assistance,' to insert the words 'including food or comforts.'"—(Mr. Lloyd-George.)

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

LORD R. CECIL

asked if it was quite clear that these words covered medical or surgical assistance to any member of the applicant's family.

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

said he had looked at the words very carefully, as the promise had been made to him, and he thought they would cover the case as arranged.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

Certainly.

SIR P. BANBURY

asked what was intended to be covered by the word "comforts" It was rather a wide term and it might include all sorts of things, coals, bedding or tobacco.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

asid that the word "comforts" was the most comprehensive term they could suggest, and it was very well known what it meant.

Amendment agreed to.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

moved to insert after "hospital" in Clause 3 "or the payment of any expenses of the burial of a dependent."

Amendment proposed— In page 2, line 14, after the word 'hospital,' to insert the words 'or of the funeral expenses of any such dependent.'"—(Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer.)

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

SIR F. BANBURY

said the word "dependent" was a curious sort of word. He saw the Attorney-General was in his place, and he would like him to give the Committee a definition of the word, stating what it covered and what it did not cover.

THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL (Sir W. ROBSON,) South Shields

said that "dependents" was a word very well known in statutes. It meant a person whom the pensioner would be under a legal obligation to maintain. The word was frequently used in the Workmen's Compensation Act and in the Poor Law, and there was no difficulty in giving it the ordinary construction.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause, as amended, agreed to.

Schedule:

MR. HOLT (Northumberland, Hexham)

moved the following Amendment, "In line 25 of the schedule to leave out all the words after 'exceeding' to the end and to substitute the following schedule: 'Where the means of the person does not exceed per annum £22 10s. pension 5s. per week; £25, pension, 4s. 6d.; £27 10s., pension 4s.;, £30 pension 3s. 6d.; £32 10s., pension 3s. £35, pension 2s. 6d.; £37 10s., pension 2s.; above £37 10s., no pension.'" The object of this Amendment was to secure that a man who had saved 10s. or 12s. a week should be in a better position than the man who had saved only 8s. The man who had saved 9s., for instance, would receive 4s. 6d., or 13s. 6d. in all, against the 13s. received by the man who had saved 8s. The objection to the Amendment was, of course, that it would cost more money. Would it be more expensive than the schedule of the Government? He had been inquiring into the pensions paid by a certain public authority to its workmen, and he found that there were 206 pensions, the lowest being 7s. 6d. and the highest 15s. a week. Under the Government schedule it would have to pay 372 shillings a week, and under his schedule it would pay 610. His scale was graduated by falls of 6d. from 5s. to 2s. No pension was payable below that amount, the income limit which excluded a person from getting a pension being an amount exceeding £37 10s., At first sight his scale appeared to be more costly than that of the Government, but his impression was that the private pensions would be reduced almost at once to 8s,, as people did not like to pay out of their pockets for the benefit of the taxpayer, and a similar line of argument would influence friendly and benefit societies, who would recast their rules so as to get as much out of the Exchequer as possible, and to have more to distribute among other people. If there was any doubt as to which scale would cost most to the Exchequer there could not be any doubt as to which one was going to be of the greatest benefit to the pensioners.

Amendment proposed— In page 7, line 25, to leave out from the word 'exceed' to the end of the schedule, and to insert—

	s.	d.
"£2210s.	5	0
Exceed £22 10s., but do not exceed £25	4	6
Exceed £25, but do not exceed £ 27 10s.	4	0
Exceed £27 10s., but do not exceed £30	3	6
Exceed £30, but do not exceed £32 10s.	3	0
Exceed £32 10s., but do not exceed £35	2	6
Exceed £35, but do not exceed £37 10s.	2	0
Exceed £37 10s.	No pension."
—(Mr. Holt.)

Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out to '4s, 0d.,' in line 26, stand part of the schedule."

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

said the Government could not accept the scale suggested, which would cost over £800,000 a year more than the Government scale. The scheme was ingenious, but it was rather complicated and complex, and subtle schemes generally came to grief when an attempt was made to put them in operation. The plan of the Government was a plan which had already worked well in New Zealand, New South Wales, and one or two other colonies. His hon. friend seemed to assume that under the Government scheme there would be a real danger of the reduction of pensions paid by authorities like dock authorities to 8s. a week. But the scale of such pensions could surely be adapted not merely to the Government scheme, but to any scale introduced into the Bill, So long as it was graded according to income. That was why he would avoid the complicated and difficult scale suggested by his hon. friend. It was far better to stick to the scale which in the experience of the colonies had worked very well.

MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

said they were discussing the schedule under circumstances of great difficulty, approaching it for the first time after the hour at which ordinary sittings of the House had closed. He thought the proposal made by the hon. Member worthy of more consideration than the Chancellor of the Exchequer had vouchsafed. They knew that in these matters the first aspect of the case was often misleading, and the resolution at which the Government first arrived in the matter was not that which they reached when they had heard the subject discussed. If the Committee had had to debate the question of adopting a fixed limit or a sliding scale under conditions similar to those under which they were compelled now to discuss the nature of the sliding scale, the fixed limit would have been still embodied in the Bill, for it was not until half a day had been spent in debate upon the point and one or two supporters of the Government had spoken against the sliding scale that Ministers decided to alter their plan.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

said the opportunity of discussing the sliding scale and that of discussing whether a sliding scale or a fixed limit of income should be adopted were exactly the same. The discussion on the latter point began at eight o'clock, and the Government offered to begin the discussion that evening at eight o'clock.

MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

said he declined to be drawn into a controversy at that hour as to the reasonableness of the time allowed for debate on other parts of the Bill not discussed at all. They were endeavouring to find out what would be the effect of the Bill on such questions as were raised by his hon. friend a few minutes ago. For instance, whether a man who had been convicted wrongfully and had received a free pardon, would not be excluded from any right to a pension for ten years afterwards. If they did so they would not get home till morning, or till they ought to be meeting again. He was pointing out when the Chancellor of the Exchequer interposed, that the Prime Minister spoke against the sliding scale, and that the Chancellor of the Exchequer also spoke against it.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

I did not.

MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

said the Chancellor of the Exchequer wobbled. It was not the unaided intelligence of the Government which brought them to the conclusion embodied in the sliding scale which they submitted. It was prolonged discussion which had induced them to modify the Bill profoundly, and if opportunity for debate were afforded they might be induced to modify the schedule. He was one of those who from the first desired the sliding scale rather than the fixed limit, and now that they had got the sliding scale accepted he joined with the hon. Gentleman opposite in appealing to the Government to reconsider the terms of the sliding scale they had put into the Bill. Of course, private Members had no real means of making calculations worth the paper they were made on as to what would be the cost of any particular change. They could only argue the general principle, and leave the Government to apply the general principle to the money which was available, and to the circumstances in which they were placed. The right hon. Gentleman had told them he could not accept the Amendment because it would add £900,000 to the expense already laid on the country by this Bill. That was a very substantial reason, but would the right hon. Gentleman tell them how he had arrived at that estimate? Had he assumed that everyone who now paid a pension, under whatever name, to an old person would continue to pay it, even though that old person would be no better off than if that pension was less than it was? He was not going to pay two or five shillings a week for the purpose not of benefiting the person to whom he paid it, but of saving the Exchequer which was to pay the money. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said that the directors were trying to get the wages paid out of the Exchequer. But that was impossible under a sliding scale. It seemed rather an offensive suggestion to make that his hon. friend or his clients wished to push off an obligation of their own on to the Exchequer.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

said that the right hon. Gentleman had no right to say that. He had simply been replying to the argument which the hon. Gentleman himself had advanced that it would be possible to shuffle off the responsibility on to the Exchequer.

MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

said that that was not the argument of the hon. Gentleman, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer had no right to impute it to him or to anyone on that side of the House. The suggestion was, not that directors might wish to pay their wages out of the Exchequer, but that, if a man did not benefit by saving, the incentive to continue to save was destroyed. If he did not benefit by any pension or gratuity which he received from his late or present employers, the Government destroyed their incentive to continue the payments. It was accordingly urged that, in any sliding scale inserted in the Bill, they should give a clear advantage to the man at each stage of the sliding scale that would prevent those who were now assisting him in his old age from withdrawing their assistance when the Bill passed. It was a reasonable proposition that there might be some old person in whom a man might be interested, who was known to him and whom he would assist to obtain an old-age pension. The first question asked would be what his resources were, and who contributed towards them, and those who contributed would withdraw their contribution if they found he did not benefit. He had no means of checking the calculations of the right hon. Gentleman, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer assumed that people would continue to pay what they now gave voluntarily after the greater comfort of the recipient had ceased to act as a reason. He believed this to be an unfounded assumption, and wholly illusory.

MR. KEIR HARDIE

said he supported the Amendment, because if it were carried he hoped they would be able to persuade the House to leave out all after the word "exceed" in the schedule, and his hon. friend the Member for Barnard Castle might be able to move out the words "£22 10s.," and insert the words "£26," so as to insure with the minimum pension 15s. a week. It would be a great pity, he thought, to spoil an otherwise excellent measure for the sake of £100,000, or whatever it might cost. People whose income was 10s. a week would naturally feel agrieved if they were to be penalised to the advantage of people whose income was more than 10s. a week. He hoped the Government even now would realise that if the scheme they were supporting created this injustice it would cause a great deal of dissatisfaction and discontent. The right hon. Gentleman must remember when he quoted New Zealand that the pension there was 10s., and if a small young Colony could afford to give that the Mother Country at least could afford to give 5s. a week to those whose incomes did not exceed 10s. a week. He appealed to the Government, therefore, not to oppose the Amendment.

MR. LEIF JONES (Westmoreland, Appleby)

supported the Amendment because he desired to see it incorporated in the Bill, and he was sorry it had been met with so uncompromising a refusal from the right hon. Gentleman. He hoped, however, that even now the last word had not been spoken upon it. The only alteration it was proposed to make in the schedule was in the amount of pension to be granted. Upon what ground could it be said by the pension officer or the Government that it would complicate matters to grant 4s. 6d. any more than to grant 4s., which was the Government proposal? It seemed to him in the matter of complication there was nothing to be said against the proposed amended schedule that did not already prevail against the scale of the Government. The right hon. Gentleman's second objection to the proposed amended scale was that it would be much more costly than the scale of the Government. They had not the means of arriving at exact figures and they could not tell how much it was going to cost more than the Government scheme, but he thought that the right hon. Gentleman had under-estimated the cost of the existing scale if he was taking it on the basis of the present payment of friendly societies, trade unions, and benevolent employers. It was quite obvious that under the Government scale there would be no incentive to an any employer, trade union, or friendly society to grant any sum of money between 8s. and 13s. per week to any employee or subscriber, and sooner or later there would be a reduction in all these grants to the 8s., which entitled the recipients to the full Government pension. He should have imagined that the Government in their calculations would have taken the effect of that tendency into account, and he was surprised to hear that the scale proposed by his hon. friend was really going to cost £900,000 more than the Government scale. Even assuming that the scale proposed by his hon. friend would cost this extra money, they could instead of removing altogether the incentive to save between 8s. and 13s., cut off the pension when they reached the higher stages and say a man who had 8s. per week should have 5s., a man who had 9s. should have 4s. 6d., and a man who had 10s. should have 4s., and that there should be no more pensions until such time as they had more money to grant them. In that case they would not be spending more money than the Government at the present provided, and the scale would not be open to the objection that they were putting a burden on the taxpayer, whilst they would be granting pensions without depriving a man of the incentive to be thrifty. He could not see, therefore, why the Government should not give fair consideration to the proposal, even if they could not go the whole length proposed. At any rate their proposal, within the limits of their money, would then be a good one. They would be granting pensions where they were most needed, and granting those who had been careful and had saved more than 8s., something more than those who had not saved so much. It was of infinite importance that the people should understand that the more they saved the better off they would be. It was really a great blot on the Government scheme, valuable as that scheme was, that it was legitimately open to the charge that it gave no encouragement to saving between 8s. and 13s. It was all the more regrettable because the blot was not inevitable. It could be remedied by the proposal before the House without costing the country any more money, and without in the least adding to the complication of the Bill. He believed hon. Members wanted the schedule to be as good as they could possibly make it; and he was convinced, if it were left to their unfettered decision to say which was the best schedule, some such schedule as that now proposed which would secure that the man who had saved most should have the largest income would commend itself to the House.

MR. BOWLES (Lambeth, Norwood)

thought the speeches to which they had listened would convince the House that there was a very great deal to be said for the Amendment. There was no question that this schedule, whatever its defects, was founded upon the only right principle—that the pension scheme ought to have some regard to the thrift of the recipient and that the pension ought to bear some proportion to the provision which a man had made for himself. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had refused the Amendments on two grounds. He was bound to say he really once again showed that he had not seriously considered the Amendment which he disposed of in a few airy phrases to which they had become accustomed. He had said that the scale could not be adopted, because it was too subtle and complicated, and would not be effective in practice. That contention had been blown to pieces by the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down. It was a novel objection to say that proposals on this Bill were subtle, because, if ever there was a Bill which was subtle and complicated, through and through, from beginning to end, it was this Bill. If any fortunate old person ever managed to get through all the enormous entanglements which the Bill set up between him and his pension there would probably be a public subscription got up for him. The only real objection the right hon. Gentleman made was that it would cost too much and that he had not got the money. He had told them it would cost £900,000 more than the Government schedule. He thought they were entitled upon a matter of this vital importance to something more than that mere statement of the right hon. Gentleman. He did not doubt it was so, but the details of the calculation could have nothing confidential about them, and if they knew them they would be able to see what the real character of the calculation was. The right hon. Gentleman had given them no details, but only said it would cost £900,000 more. There was no objection in principle to the schedule, which could perfectly well be adapted to any sum which the Government had at their disposal. The hon. Gentleman had suggested that it could be made less expensive by cutting off the last two lines, the 12s. 6d. and 13s. 6d. a week. He thought that would be a wrong way because it would knock out a relatively small number of persons who were in relatively small need of and got relatively small pensions. It would be better in addition to knocking off the last two lines to begin the whole schedule lower down—to begin with a man earning 6s. 6d. instead of 7s. 6d. But that, after all, was a matter for the Government to consider. His point was that the principle of the schedule, it was not denied by the Government, was the right principle and the objection which they made to it, that they could not afford it, fell to the ground and could easily be removed by adjusting the schedule itself in order to meet any sum which the Government had at their disposal. Having at the invitation of the Government embarked upon the discussion of the schedule, upon the justice of which the whole future of the scheme really depended, it seemed to him that the answer which had been given was a very jejune and small one not altogether worthy of the right hon. Gentleman. He would be unable to vote for the schedule as it stood in view of the additional cost, but he would be able to support the hon. Member in moving the Government schedule out in order to insert another. He objected to the Bill altogether, but if they were to have an old-age pension scheme they should take every means to see that it was just and sound.

MR. SIMON (Essex, Walthamstow)

said he was entirely unconvinced by the answer of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. There were really two questions here quite separate in importance and in the extent to which the ordinary private Member could judge of them. One was the actual question, how much one schedule would cost the Treasury more than another. It was profoundly important, but not a matter on which the ordinary private Member could form an independent opinion. But, apart from that altogether, there was involved in this Amendment a difference in principle, and he desired, with great respect, to ask the Government whether he was not right in thinking that their scheme was one which put no inducement whatever upon a man who had once got as much as 8s. a week to get any more, unless he got at least 13s. a week. In the second place, he desired to ask them whether this proposed system did not provide some stimulus for thrift which the Government system failed to do. If he was right in thinking these two things, was he really to be told that it passed the wit of man and the Treasury to devise a scheme which embraced the better principle? He entirely declined to believe it, and if the eminent gentlemen who advised the Chancellor, of the Exchequer were able to tell him that this scheme was going to cost £900,000 more than the other he had no doubt they could tell him what modifications of the scheme were necessary in order that they might not commit themselves to too great extra expenditure. It was said there was many and many a man who came to the end of his life, and had saved only 8s. a week, who was a much better man and worthier citizen than a man who had saved 12s. But they must proceed on some general rule, and unless it was going to be said that the encouragement of thrift between these limits of weekly saving was utterly unimportant and that, speaking generally, a man was a better citizen, because he had saved less rather than more, he really did not see the force and the relevance of the observation. Then it was said that the proposal was complicated, but it was not complicated a bit. It was quite as easy to follow as the Government scheme. In both cases it was necessary to know that there were fifty-two weeks in the year and to be able to do a long division sum. If they could not do it in their heads they had to do it on a piece of paper. He did not think he would be doing his duty if he silently supported a scheme which contained, as he thought, seed of real vice, in that it did not offer an actual inducement to saving. At the same time he agreed with the hon. Member opposite in seeing the impossi- bility of voting in the dark for some further expenditure, and he therefore appealed to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to tell him, since he had assistance at his command which private Members had not, what were the modifications necessary to be made in the scheme in order that they might be able to spend that sum of money which the Government said they could find.

MR. WALTER LONG

said the main objection of the Government was that the scheme of the hon. Gentleman opposite involved an extra expenditure of £900,000. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had an opportunity of considering the schedule which in the Committee stage stood in the name of the hon. Member for Maidstone and which carried out every one of the suggestions just advanced by the hon. and learned Gentleman opposite. It gave a distinct advantage as between the different grades of those who had saved, and therefore encouraged thrift. It started by giving more to the poorer man and less to the man who was better off, while it involved exactly the same expenditure. It started with an income of £13 a year, and ended with an income of £26 5s. It gave the man with an income of £13 a year 6s. a week, and the man with £26 5s. a year 2s. a week, and the pensions were graded between so that the annual income was slightly increased with the increase of personal savings. That being the case he thought it answered every suggestion which the hon. and learned Gentleman opposite had just made. The Opposition were in exactly the same position as the hon. and learned Gentleman. They would like to have the existing schedule left out in the first instance in order that the Government might put in a fresh one—either one of those which appeared on the Paper, or else alter their own. He begged the Chancellor of the Exchequer to consider whether he was justified in closing the door altogether to the suggestion that had been made, namely, that, whatever the schedule was, it should do something distinctly to encourage thrift. That was not the description of the Government schedule. The difference was only one of sixpence, he believed. It sounded ridiculous to ask a man to indulge in self-denial for years for the sake of 6d., but if the pension were based on the schedule of his noble friend there was a distinct advantage to be gained by the pensioner, and although he would be glad to see it greater, it was an improvement on the Government's schedule. If the Government would be willing to leave out their schedule, and then consider the Amendment of the hon. Gentleman opposite, amending it to meet their case or else bring forward a fresh one, it would be a satisfactory proceeding. The schedule to which he had referred involved not one penny more expenditure than the Government were prepared to meet. It took the original limit of the Government, namely 10s. 5d. a week as the maximum, it started with a lower sum than was taken by the Government, it gave more to the poor man and less to the better-off man, and the increase of income grew with the amount saved by the recipient. Therefore, it had every advantage to recommend it and he could not help regretting that the Government were not willing to accept the proposal.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

said the right hon. Gentleman had asked him to express an opinion upon the schedule suggested by the hon. Member for Maidstone. It was a cheaper schedule than the Government schedule by £450,000. It was not for him as Chancellor of the Exchequer to object to that, but he doubted whether he could persuade the Committee to accept it.

MR. WALTER LONG

said the schedule had been very carefully prepared. He had not the figures with him, but he had seen them. He could not believe a saving of £400,000 was involved. According to the figures he had seen the expenditure worked out almost identically the same as the expenditure under the Government proposals, besides which greater advantages were provided.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

But it runs up from 5s. to 10s.

MR. WALTER LONG

Yes.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

said he was informed that the scheme worked out at something like £400,000 less than the Government scheme, and though he did not think the House of Commons would accept it at that stage, if there was a general feeling to save the Exchequer £400,000 it would not be very difficult to persuade him at any rate to give it very careful consideration. He could not help thinking, however, that his hon. friends had been exercising their well-known ingenuity to very little purpose. What did it mean? The Amendment was represented as a scale which was a great inducement to thrift. What was the great inducement to thrift? It was that the individual might be able to make 6d. out of it. The suggestion was that a man would not merely go on saving, but would so ingeniously adapt his savings that he would not save 8s. but 9s. in order to be able to make 6d. out of it when seventy years of age. It was too fantastic. Of course any man by the exercise of his ingenuity could invent all sorts of conditions and possible contingencies of that kind, but they were not practical. A man when thirty or forty years of age did not sit down to plan how to save every penny he could so as to save exactly the sum that would enable him at the age of seventy years to get an extra 6d. out of the revenue. That was not the way a man acted. A man began to save without any particular consideration of the actual amount he would have when seventy years of age. The inducement to thrift would largely remain, and he could not believe that any man would so adapt, as it were, the whole savings of his life in order to make the difference between 8s. or 9s. according to the very ingenious scale suggested by his hon. friend. The hon. Member for Appleby had said that if the Government could not accept the scale of the hon. Member for Hexham, would they not accept the improvised scale which he had proposed in the course of the debate? Was his hon. friend quite sure where it stopped?

MR. LEIF JONES

said the Amendment, was not improvised. It was put down in the Committee stage and was now on the Paper. The suggestion he made in the course of the debate was that if there were not enough money to meet the whole scale it should stop at the point where it affected the higher incomes.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

asked if his hon. friend knew that the scale he proposed would cost an extra £815,000 a year to the Exchequer?

MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us how these estimates were arrived at?

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

said he would state quite frankly to the Committee that he had to depend on the actuaries of the Department. That was the only answer he could give. The only instructions he gave were that the actuaries were to ascertain on a proper actuarial basis what the proposals in the Amendment would cost. He was anxious to find out exactly what they came to, and the figures he had quoted were given to him by actuaries who arrived at them in the usual way. He thought that was the only possible business way of arriving at a proper estimate. If his hon. friend was referring to his Amendment on the Paper, he was sorry he suggested it was improvised. That, as he had said, would cost £815,000 more to the Exchequer, and really what he had to say about all these schemes was what he had said before, that he would rather the money should be spent in extending the benefits to the very poor, but if they took away £800,000 or £900,000 in order to give it to the comparatively well-off they could not spend it on the very poor. He believed it was the right hon. Gentleman opposite who asked if the Government had tried any alternative of their own upon the principle contained in these suggestions. Well, the Government had, and the very nearest approach they could get to the cost of their present scheme was £330,000 more. They did not think that this mere sixpence thrift was worth £330,000 a year, when they wanted money saved for the purpose of dealing with the paupers, as he hoped they would be able to next year. Under these circumstances he trusted the Committee would not think he was giving a perfunctory answer. These things had been gone into most carefully. He confessed he was rather attracted by the suggestion of the hon. Member for Hexham. He thought that there was an idea to be worked upon, because he was just as anxious as hon. Members that the scheme should be a real encouragement to thrift. He thought it was a very ingenious idea, and started with that view to ascertain what it would really cost. They tried all kinds of alternatives but could not find one which would cost less than £330,000, and under those circumstances they had to abandon the idea. After all, it was not a plan for which any other country had set a precedent. The plan of the Government was the only one which had been pursued up to the present in any other country.

MR. J. W. WILSON (Worcestershire, N.)

said he did not wish to labour the point at that time of night, and he wished to state he was not one of those who asked for 1d. more on the sliding scale than that which was involved by the Chancellor of the Exchequer's proposals. He had not got actuarial figures, but he could not help feeling that, if instead of 5s. with those who had 10s. they stopped at 5s. with 8s., and then raised the scale to 4s. 6d. with 9s., and 4s. with 10s., it gave a margin for over 10s. because anyone could see that there was a saving of 6d. on the second class and 1s. on the third class. He was not concerned to go up to 13s. or even 12s. 6d., but he was concerned about keeping away from the dead level between 8s. and 13s., which was no advantage, and he was sure would create a tendency to unload. He was managing director of a works which gave 1,200 to 1,300 pensions of 12s. to 13s. a week, and the very first thing his colleagues said was that they should reduce the pension below 8s., because they would be able to give pensions to more men. If the Government only went up to 10s. or 10s 6d., and graded the pensions in the way suggested it would appeal to the country, as a man would not have his pension docked off to the extent of the equivalent he had saved. By the permission of the Government they had been allowed to discuss the sliding scale that night not, he took it, with a view to pressing the Chancellor of the Exchequer to give more money, because he agreed they ought to spend it on the poorer people, but in order to deal with arithmetical calculations. He was not asking for anything extra or he would not be standing there, but he only wanted to repeat with emphasis the wish of himself and his hon. friends that this scale should not be open to objections.

MR. CHAPLIN (Surrey, Wimbledon)

said he had hoped the Chancellor of the Exchequer would have been moved by the series of appeals which had been made to him from his own side of the House, but he was afraid the right hon. Gentleman had altogether failed to grasp first of all the objections to his present proposal which came from his own side, and, secondly, the effect of the Amendment which had been pressed on the right hon. Gentleman's attention by his right hon. friend the Member for South Dublin. What was the root of all the objections which came from the Chancellor of the Exchequer's own side of the House? It was that the Bill of the Government and their present proposal gave no encouragement whatever to thrift. The right hon. Gentleman had told the Committee half a dozen times in the course of his speeches that he was most anxious to do something in the Bill to promote and encourage thrift, but from the commencement of the Bill in its original form, when a hard and fast line had been drawn at an income of 10s. a week, it had been nothing but the greatest possible discouragement to thrift.

MR. H. C. LEA (St. Pancras, E.)

On a point of order, is it in order for the right hon. Gentleman to lecture the Government on its alleged lack of encouragement of thrift amongst the working classes when it is notorious that he has himself so little displayed this quality in the course of his life that he has had to make a declaration of insufficiency of means in order to qualify for an allowance from the taxpayers of this country to the extent of £1,200 a year—? [Cries of "Oh," and "Order."]

THE CHAIRMAN

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely in order.

MR. CHAPLIN

said the interruption only showed how extremely little attention was paid by some hon. Gentlemen on the other side of the House to the discussion which was going on. He had been humbly endeavouring to support and enforce the views which had been submitted to the Chancellor of the Exchequer from his own side without any effect at all up to the present. Some improvement, he admitted, had been made by the Amendment that had been moved by the Government themselves with regard to a sliding scale, but unfortunately the sliding scale that they had moved was extremely deficient. His right hon. friend had called attention to an Amendment of the noble Lord the Member for Maidstone. There was another Amendment almost precisely of the same character moved by his hon. friend the Member for Worcester. Either of these Amendments would have had the effect of encouraging thrift, though he agreed with his right hon. friend that the Amendment standing in the name of the noble Lord the Member for Maidstone would have encouraged thrift rather more than the other. That was why he desired in a very few words to press it upon the attention of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who did not appear to have considered the Amendment in the Committee stage or to have paid much attention to what fell from his right hon. friend; but the Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer differed entirely from that of the noble Lord the Member for Maidstone, in the very respect which had been enforced upon him, or tried to be enforced upon him, by Members on his own side. It began at a lower scale than the Amendment which was put on the Paper by the Government. Might he endeavour to impress upon the right hon. Gentleman what was the effect of this Amendment? Instead of beginning as the right hon. Gentleman did at £21 a year, it began at £13, which was equal to 5s. per week. Where that was the case it gave as a pension 6s. per week, bringing the pensioner's income up to 11s. altogether. The next stage was where the income was 6s. 1¾d. a week, in which case 5s. a week pension was given, making the income just over 11s. a week. The third scale was that where the income was 7s. 4½d. the pensioner got 4s. a week pension, or slightly over 11s. altogether. The fourth stage was where the income was 8s. 8¾d., when the pension was 3s., which brought the total again just over 11s. The last stage was where the income was 10s. a week, when the pension was 2s. a week. The great advantage of this in his opinion—and he believed it was the opinion of the large majority of the Committee—was that, even at the last stage there was a distinct inducement still to practice thrift, because the individual would get a pension of 2s. a week. That differed entirely from the scheme of the Government, because according to that scheme, the last stage was reached when the income exceeded 12s. a week when there was no pension at all. Was it not perfectly plain that a man had absolutely no encouragement to thrift whatever after his income had reached that stage? On the contrary, it was a positive disadvantage to him to save after that amount because there was no pension at all. Any Government which did anything to discourage thrift was committing something worse than a blunder; it was a positive crime. The appeals which he had endeavoured to submit had been enforced over and over again by resolutions of all the great friendly societies in this country, and it had been a matter of deep regret to him to see the way in which the representation of their views had been received by a Government which, while it did exactly the contrary, professed time after time that there were no people in the world more anxious to encourage thrift than they were themselves.

MR. W. R. REA (Scarborough)

said the Chancellor of the Exchequer seemed to be under the impression that those who had put forward the scheme suggested were engaged upon a raid on the Treasury. Nothing was further from their minds than that they should increase to any appreciable extent the burden already thrown upon the Exchequer by the Bill. They felt, however, that they were not legislating for a single year, but that they were sitting upon a general principle. It was only wise that they should look forward beyond the demand of the coming year, and, if possible, lay down some scheme which would be consistent with the encouragement of thrift. He wished to demur to what fell from the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he said the question was a mere paltry one of 6d. per week of saving on the part of the pensioner. It was nothing of the sort; it was a question of how an employer who had a certain amount of money to spend in charity could best spend that money. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said there would be nobody so thriftless as to dispose of his income. He had his doubts on that point; but he would urge that it was the duty of the custodians of public money and even of money belonging to public companies not to spend it in indiscriminate charity which would not be to the benefit of the recipients, but could only benefit the Treasury, but they were bound to distribute that money over a larger number of pensions. Had the Chancellor of the Exchequer in distributing his £900,000 thoroughly taken that fact into account, and would he not find that the cost of his present scheme would be considerably heavier than the actuarial calculations would justify him in supposing, owing to the ethical considerations as regarded deductions which would be made by the employers? The Committee recognised, of course, that it was impossible to add to the cost of the scheme during the present year, but he would ask the Government whether they had not had some scheme worked out on the basis of the suggestion of the hon. Member for Appleby; and whether the right hon. Gentleman could not undertake not to put a new schedule in at the tail end of the Bill at the present moment, but to consider if he could not put the Bill in such a form that when he had money to spend—perhaps not next year, but the year afterwards—and when the Bill was enlarged, as enlarged it must be, that enlargement would not be such as to put a premium on thriftlessness.

MR. LEVERTON HARRIS

said he wanted to put one question to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The right hon. Gentleman had given the Committee some very interesting figures; he had told them that one of the alternative proposals would cost £830,000 more, and the other £900,000 more, and that these figures had been based upon very careful actuarial calculations by the Treasury. What he wanted to ask was whether, in making those calculations, any estimate was made of those who were at present enjoying pensions from outside sources and who would, under the Government scheme, have those pensions reduced; and, secondly, would the cost be greater than it would be if those pensions were continued? He would give one case which bore on this question. He had a man working in his garden at the present time, whom he paid 12s. a week, and he would get 1s. from the Government. If he reduced the man's pension to 8s. a week he would get 5s. from the Government and still get 13s. a week. There was nothing to prevent him reducing that man's pension to 8s. a week. He did not say he would do it, but he imagined a great many others would, and what he asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer was whether in the figures of £800,000 or £900,000 due allowance had been made for a probable number who would have their present pensions reduced.

MR. BRODIE (Surrey, Reigate)

said that however excellent the proposal of the hon. Member for Hexham might be in itself, there was one insuperable objection to it, and that was the cost it must involve. They were told on the authority of the Chancellor of the Exchequer that it was going to cost the country £900,000 a year more. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Worcestershire had informed the House that only a Member of the Government advised by the Government officials could really obtain a correct actuarial calculation in matters of this sort, and he would like to impress upon the House that if they were to spend more money on old-age pensions, the first claim surely was that of the old people who were in receipt of outdoor relief at the present time. During the whole course of the debates in connection with this Bill, he had been attempting to say something of the unfortunate position of those people of seventy-five and eighty years of age, who had received outdoor relief for the first time this year, and he thought if they were to spend any more money, it should be spent on those persons. For that reason he trusted the Committee would reject this Amendment and any other Amendment which necessitated extra expenditure, and would keep in view the fact that every extra penny which was spent for the present be spent on these old people. There would never be a perfect scheme until they found enough money to give everybody an old-age pension, without any qualification whatever.

MR. J. M. ROBERTSON (Northumberland, Tyneside)

said he wanted to put before the Committee a view which had not been touched so far in the discussion. It had been assumed throughout that the main object of the Bill should be to promote what was commonly called thrift. The term, he considered, was a misnomer. Thrift was merely wise expenditure, but in this discussion it had been taken only to mean non-expenditure. A man might wisely expend on certain things, and by saving on those things have something to spend on something else. If he did that always, he was practising thrift in the strictest sense of the term. It had been constantly assumed that the object of the Bill was to encourage saving for investment, but that could go too far, for it was plain there were limits to the possibility of investments. The field for investment was necessarily limited. If the democracy next year were to save £100,000,000 more than they saved this year, it would be, according to the argument that had been used, an excellent thing to do. But the effect of saving that amount—that was of withholding the sum from expenditure—would be a lessening of consumption. The working-classes, indeed, would save themselves into unemployment. That was strictly a paradox. The proper meaning of the word "paradox" was not "fallacy," but a proposition which seemed to be false but was in fact true. The fallacy of most critics of this measure was the assumption that saving for investment was in the nature of things unlimited. To think that saving could go on to an indefinite extent, and that the savings could be successfully invested was a very gross empirical fallacy. The limit of successful saving for investment was the point at which the investment yielded that for which there was a demand.

THE CHAIRMAN

said the economic argument of the hon. Member seemed to be a little remote from the question.

MR. J. M. ROBERTSON

said that his proposition was that the object of this Bill should not be first and foremost to encourage further saving for investment, because blind and unlimited encouragement of saving for investment was merely an inducement to what must prove to be loss. That was an economic fact. There was annually a vast amount of saving which was doomed to loss because there did not exist sufficient means for investment beyond a certain sum, and the House was empirically urging upon everyone unlimited saving for investment, when in the nature of the case such unlimited saving for investment must involve loss of a large amount of the saved money. He was trying to repel an argument which had been reiterated a hundred times in the discussion and which was apparently taken for granted without the slightest analysis.

MR. JOYNSON-HICKS (Manchester, N.W.)

said that thrift as he understood it was putting by for a rainy day, and the reason he was supporting the Amendment was that for the first time it embodied in the Bill a word in favour of thrift. The only argument really used against the Amendment was that of the Chancellor of the Exchequer that it would cost an extra £900,000. That had nothing to do with the Opposition. The Chancellor of the Exchequer could look after his own hen roosts. He should have realised before he brought in the Bill that there would be a demand from all sides of the House to make it a more reasonable measure. Amendment after Amendment had been suggested from the Opposition side of the House, and also from Labour Members. The hon. Member for Merthyr Tydvil had said he was going to raise a further Amendment increasing the limit of income which permitted a pension from 8s. to 10s., for which he would certainly vote, because sooner or later, probably within the next twelve months, all these painful wire entanglements would be bound to be swept away, The whole scheme would have to be simplified and would cost more money, and it was just as well that the Government which had initiated this scheme should have the responsibility of bringing in a proper one and the burden of finding the money.

MR. MADDISON (Burnley)

did not think the Chancellor of the Exchequer had addressed himself to the one proposition before the Committee, which was not a question of increasing the amount from the Treasury but of utilising to the best advantage the money he had at his disposal. He did not think the right hon. Gentleman gave that consideration to the question which it deserved, when he merely talked about the scheme of the hon. Member for Hexham being fantastic. The moment the right hon. Gentleman left the fixed income with the small amount of money at his disposal he was sure to get into some fantastic proposals. Did the right hon. Gentleman say that it was not fantastic in a scheme that a man who had 12s. a week got no more than the man who had 8s.? The hon. Member for Tyneside had offered a very learned disquisition about thrift, which he could not attempt to follow, but he would like to say that for the purpose of this Bill they had to assume thrift when it existed in a concrete form, because they could not very well tell when the expenditure had been wise. He quite agreed there was thrift in wise expenditure, but for the purpose of the Bill how could they say over a long course of years if the expenditure had been wise? Therefore, he would ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he could not take the principle of the scheme of the hon. Member for Hexham and confine it within the limits of the money he possessed. If the right hon. Gentleman did that he would at any rate get away from the anomaly that a man with 8s. a week got just as much as a man with 9s., or, rather, that the man with 9s. got no more than the man with 8s. So far from helping the poor—and he was entirely with the right hon. Gentleman there—he ventured to say that under his sliding scale it did not do that at all, because in order to give the pension to a man who had 11s. or 12s. he had reduced the pension of the man who had got 9s. or 10s. a week. He thought there was something more in the proposal than the right hon. Gentleman had yet indicated.

LORD R. CECIL

hoped the Government would reconsider the point. He really could not understand their attitude. Surely the request put forward by the hon. Member for Burnley and others was reasonable, namely, that the Government should take the money they had got and apply it to a reasonable, rational, and logical scheme. The only answer the Chancellor of the Exchequer made was that they had tried all the schemes, and they could not find one that would cost less than £300,000 more than their present scheme. It was really incredible. It was impossible to believe that by an arrangement of the scale they could not bring out the sum substantially the same as that of the scheme of the right hon. Gentleman. He urged this on the Government, not only on the ground of thrift, but on the ground of justice. There would be a grave sense of injustice unless some such proposal were adopted. He could assure the right hon. Gentleman that he was wrong in putting aside the claim of justice as he had so often done on this subject. The pensioner who having 9s. or 10s. a week got no more than the pensioner with 8s. would feel unjustly treated because he would be receiving a less pension from the State, and he would say "Why should I not have some advantage over the person who has only 8s. a week?" It would leave a rankling sense of injustice in the minds of some people. No one in the course of the debate had said that the scheme of the Government was as just as that of the hon. Member for Hexham, and he hoped the Government would see their way to accept the principle of the scheme.

MR. ASQUITH

said he should like, before a division was taken, to say two or three words on this subject, particularly in reply to some of his hon. friends. The question was whether the schedule which now appeared in the Bill, should be left out in order that there might be substituted for it one or another of the proposals submitted by various Members of the Committee. The schedule which appeared in the Bill was the schedule adopted by the Government at the suggestion of the hon. Member for Worcester. It followed precisely the principle which had been adopted in all other countries, including our Colony of New Zealand, which had dealt with this matter of old-age pensions, and he believed it was the experience of those countries and Colonies that the effect was not prejudicial. That was a prima facie justification for the Government when they departed from the fixed scale, and adopted the sliding scale, although he had never concealed his own opinion that in the long run there was a good deal to be said against the adoption of any sliding scale; but the overwhelming opinion of the House was in its favour, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer very wisely adopted it. What were the alternatives to the Government's proposal? When they came to examine them, as they had been in the most unprejudiced way, by gentlemen more competent than any of them could be at a moment's notice, it was found that there was not one which in practice could be found to involve other than a substantially larger sum than the Government scheme. He made an exception of the scheme of the noble Lord the Member for Maidstone, which would give a substantially smaller sum. All the others would necessarily involve a substantially greater expenditure, and under those circumstances he must really appeal to the House to stand by the Government's proposal. He did so with

the assurance that the Government would watch most carefully the practical operation of the scheme, when it became part of the law of the land, and if they found that it was productive of the grave practical inconveniences which some of his hon. friends forecasted, no one would be more ready than they to profit by the lessons of experience, and ask Parliament to remedy the inconveniences.

Question put.

The Committee divided:—Ayes, 209; Noes, 117. (Division List No. 171.)

AYES.
Abraham, William (Rhondda)	Cory, Sir Clifford John	Hedges, A. Paget
Acland, Francis Dyke	Cotton, Sir H. J. S.	Hemmerde, Edward George
Agnew, George William	Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth)	Henry, Charles S.
Ainsworth, John Stirling	Crean, Eugene	Herbert, Col. Sir Ivor (Mon., S.)
Alden, Percy	Crossley, William J.	Higham, John Sharp
Allen, A. Acland (Christchurch)	Dalziel, James Henry	Hobart, Sir Robert
Allen, Charles P. (Stroud)	Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)	Hobhouse, Charles E. H.
Asquith, Rt Hn. Herbert Henry	Davies, Timothy (Fulham)	Hogan, Michael
Astbury, John Meir	Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.)	Horniman, Emslie John
Balfour, Robert (Lanark)	Dickinson, W. H. (St. Pancras, N.	Hutton, Alfred Eddison
Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight)	Dobson, Thomas W.	Hyde, Clarendon
Barnard, E. B.	Dunn, A. Edward (Camborne)	Idris, T. H. W.
Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N.	Dunne, Major E. Martin (Walsall	Illingworth, Percy H.
Beale, W. P.	Edwards, Sir Francis (Radnor)	Isaacs, Rufus Daniel
Beaumont, Hon. Hubert	Erskine, David C.	Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)
Beck, A. Cecil	Essex, R. W.	Jones, Sir D. Brynmor (Swansea)
Benn, Sir J. Williams (Devonp'rt	Esslemont, George Birnie	Kearley, Sir Hudson E.
Benn, W. (T'w'r Hamlets, S. Geo.	Evans, Sir Samuel T.	Kilbride, Denis
Bennett, E. N.	Everett, R. Lacey	Kincaid-Smith, Captain
Berridge, T. H. D.	Ferens, T. R.	King, Alfred John (Knutsford)
Black, Arthur W.	Fiennes, Hon. Eustace	Lambert, George
Brace, William	Findlay, Alexander	Lehmann, R. C.
Bramsdon, T. A.	Flavin, Michael Joseph	Lever, A. Levy (Essex, Harwich)
Brocklehurst, W. B.	Fuller, John Michael F.	Levy, Sir Maurice
Brodie, H. C.	Fullerton, Hugh	Lewis, John Herbert
Brooke, Stopford	Gibb, James (Harrow)	Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David
Brunner, J. F. L. (Lancs., Leigh)	Gladstone, Rt Hn. Herbert John	Lupton, Arnold
Bryce, J. Annan	Glen-Coats, Sir T. (Renfrew, W.	Luttrell, Hugh Fownes
Burnyeat, W. J. D.	Glendinning, R. G.	Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.
Buxton, Rt Hn. Sydney Charles	Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford	Mac Veagh, Jeremiah (Down, S.)
Byles, William Pollard	Gooch, George Peabody (Bath)	M'Callum, John M.
Carr-Gomm, H. W.	Goulding, Edward Alfred	M'Crae, Sir George
Causton, Rt Hn. Richard Knight	Greenwood, Hamar (York)	M'Kenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald
Cawley, Sir Frederick	Griffith, Ellis J.	Manfield, Harry (Northants)
Channing, Sir Francis Allston	Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard B.	Markham, Arthur Basil
Cheetham, John Frederick	Hall, Frederick	Marks, G. Croydon (Launceston
Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.	Harcourt, Rt Hn. L. (Rossendale)	Masterman, C. F. G.
Clough, William	Hardy, George A. (Suffolk)	Meehan, Francis E. (Leitrim, N.)
Cobbold, Felix Thornley	Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worc'r)	Menzies, Walter
Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)	Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)	Molteno, Percy Alport
Corbett, C. H (Sussex, E. Grinst'd	Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)	Montagu, Hon. E. S.
Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.	Haworth, Arthur A.	Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)
Morrell, Philip	Robertson, J. M. (Tyneside)	Thomas, Sir A. (Glamorgan, E.
Murphy, John (Kerry, East)	Robinson, S.	Thompson, J W H (S'merset, E.)
Nicholls, George	Robson, Sir William Snowdon	Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton)
Norman, Sir Henry	Roe, Sir Thomas	Tomkinson, James
Norton, Capt. Cecil William	Rowlands, J.	Toulmin, George
Nussey, Thomas Willans	Russell, T. W.	Villiers, Ernest Amherst
Nuttall, Harry	Samuel, Herbert L. (Cleveland)	Wadsworth, J.
O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)	Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel)	Walters, John Tudor
O'Donnell, C. J. (Walworth)	Scarisbrick, T. T. L.	Waring, Walter
Paulton, James Mellor	Schwann, C. Duncan (Hyde)	Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)
Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek)	Scott, A H. (Ashton-under-Lyne	Waterlow, D. S.
Philipps, Col. Ivor (S'thampton	Seaverns, J. H.	Whitbread, Howard
Pickersgill, Edward Hare	Seely, Colonel	White, Sir George (Norfolk)
Pirie, Duncan V.	Shaw, Charles Edw. (Stafford)	White, J. D. (Dumbartonshire)
Pollard, Dr.	Shaw, Rt. Hon. T. (Hawick, B.)	White, Luke (York, E. R.)
Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.	Sherwell, Arthur James	Whitley, John Henry (Halifax)
Price, C. E. (Edinburgh, Central)	Silcock, Thomas Ball	Whittaker, Rt Hn. Sir Thomas P.
Priestley, Arthur (Grantham)	Sinclair, Rt. Hon. John	Williams, J. (Glamorgan)
Priestley, W. E. B. (Bradford, E.)	Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie	Williams, Llewelyn (Carm'rth'n
Radford, G. H.	Sores, Ernest J.	Williamson, A.
Raphael, Herbert H.	Stanley, Hn. A. Lyulph (Chesh.)	Wills, Arthur Walters
Remnant, James Farquharson	Stewart-Smith, D. (Kendal)	Wilson, Hon. G. G. (Hull, W.)
Rendall, Athelstan	Strachey, Sir Edward	Wilson, J. W. (Worcestersh, N.
Richards, Thomas (W. Monm'th	Straus, B. S. (Mile End)	Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.)
Richardson, A.	Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon)	Winfrey, R.
Ridsdale, E. A.	Taylor, Austin (East Toxteth)
Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoin)	Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)	TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr.
Roberts, Sir John H. (Denbighs.)	Tennant, Sir Edward (Salisbury	Joseph Pease and Master of
Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradf'rd	Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire)	Elibank.
NOES.
Acland-Hood, Rt Hn. Sir Alex F.	Faber, George Denison (York)	Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)
Anstruther-Gray, Major	Faber, Capt. W. V. (Hants, W.)	Macpherson, J. T.
Ashley, W. W.	Forster, Henry William	Maddison, Frederick
Balcarres, Lord	Gibbs, G. A. (Bristol, West)	Mason, A. E. W. (Coventry)
Banbury, Sir Frederick George	Gill, A. H.	Moore, William
Banner, John S. Harmood	Glover, Thomas	Morpeth, Viscount
Baring, Capt. Hn. G. (Winchester	Gordon, J.	Nannetti, Joseph P.
Barnes, G. N.	Gretton, John	Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield)
Barrie, H. T. (Londonderry, N.)	Guinness, Walter Edward	O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)
Bignold, Sir Arthur	Gwynn, Stephen Lucius	O'Donnell, John (Mayo, S.)
Bowerman, C. W.	Haddock, George B.	O'Grady, J.
Bowles, G. Stewart	Hardie, J Keir (Merthyr Tydvil)	O'Kelly, Conor (Mayo, N.)
Bridgeman, W. Clive	Hardy, Laurence (Kent, Ashf'rd	Parker, James (Halifax)
Bull, Sir William James	Harris, Frederick Leverton	Pearson, W. H. M. (Suffolk, Eye)
Butcher, Samuel Henry	Harrison-Broadley, H. B.	Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel
Carlile, E. Hildred	Henderson, Arthur (Durham)	Rea, Walter Russell (Scarboro)
Castlereagh, Viscount	Hill, Sir Clement	Renton, Leslie
Cave, George	Hills, J. W.	Richards, T. F. (Wolverh'mpt'n
Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)	Hodge, John	Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)
Cecil, Lord John P. Joicey	Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)	Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall)
Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.)	Hope, John Deans (Fife, West)	Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool)
Chamberlain, Rt Hn. J A. (Wore.	Houston, Robert Paterson	Salter, Arthur Clavell
Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry	Hudson, Walter	Seddon, J.
Cleland, J. W.	Hunt, Rowland	Shackleton, David James
Coates, Major E. F. (Lewisham)	Jenkins, J.	Sheffield, Sir Berkeley George D.
Cochrane, Hon. Thos. H. A. E.	Joynson-Hicks, William	Simon, John Allsebrook
Cooper, G. J.	Kerry, Earl of	Smith, F. E. (Liverpool, Walton
Courthope, G. Loyd	Lamb, Edmund G. (Leominster)	Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim, S.
Craig, Capt. James (Down, E.)	Lamb, Ernest H. (Rochester)	Snowden, P.
Craik, Sir Henry	Lane-Fox, G. R.	Stanier, Beville
Crooks, William	Lea, Hugh Cecil (St. Pancras, E.	Starkey, John R.
Crosfield, A. H.	Lockwood, Rt. Hn. Lt.-Col. A. R.	Summerbell, T.
Dalrymple, Viscount	Long, Rt. Hn. Walter (Dublin, S.	Sutherland, J. E.
Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers	Lyttleton, Rt. Hon. Alfred	Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)
Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness)	MacCaw, William J. MacGeagh	Taylor, John W. (Durham)

Thomas, David Alfred (Merthyr	Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, d) Mi	Wortley, Rt. Hn. C. B. Stuart
Thomson, W. Mitchell-(Lanark)	Wilkie, Alexander	Younger, George
Valentia, Viscount	Willoughby de Eresby, Lord
Walker, Col. W. H. (Lancashire)	Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E. R.)	TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr.
Walrond, Hon. Lionel	Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)	Holt and Mr. Leif Jones.

Question proposed, "That this be the Schedule of the Bill."

MR. ARTHUR HENDERSON (Durham, Barnard Castle)

said before the Question was put to the Vote he desired to say a word or two against the schedule. That was the only method he had left by which to raise the question that he had placed upon the notice paper. In objecting to the schedule being added to the Bill he thought they were acting in a perfectly consistent way, for every Member on those benches he believed voted against the deletion of the 5s. which the Government proposed in order to insert a schedule. But having decided that a schedule was to go into the Bill they thought a great injustice would be done to a large number of people who had had hopes raised by the Government that their pension would be 5s. a week, whereas now it was to be something less, according to the schedule. They felt that even though it might involve the Government in the task of finding more money, there was not sufficient justification for accepting any schedule that placed a number of the pensioners in a worse position than they would have been placed in had the Bill in its original form been carried into law. Therefore, they on those benches not only protested against the acceptance of a schedule that had that effect, but they were also prepared to carry their protest into the division lobby. The question would be put to him as it had been put to others who had attempted to amend the schedule in the direction of increased cost, namely, what was the actual cost it would involve. He did not know that any of them who took the responsibility of putting Amendments down had been in a position really to ascertain the exact amount involved in the proposals, but he had estimated that it would mean an increased cost of something like £2,000,000. That might seem a very large amount to add to the Government's estimate of a little over £7,000,000 for their scheme; but having regard to the immense possibilities for providing money that the country enjoyed, the increase would not impose an impossible task upon the Government. And seeing, as the hon. Member for North West Manchester had told the Committee, this would have to be done, and probably in a very short time, they felt that the Government in dealing with the question should deal with it on lines that would give greater satisfaction to a greater number of pensioners. They were very disappointed that the Government had accepted a schedule that would place such a large number of those in whom the Government had created hopes in a position much more disadvantageous to themselves than they would have been under the original Bill.

Question put.

The Committee divided:—Ayes, 210; Noes, 54. (Division List No. 172.)

AYES.
Acland, Francis Dyke	Dewar, Arthur (Eninburgh, S.)	Kincaid-Smith, Captain
Agnew, George William	Dickinson, W. H. (St. Pancras, N	King, Alfred John (Knutsford)
Ainsworth, John Stirling	Dobson, Thomas W.	Lambert, George
Allen, A. Acland (Christchurch)	Dunn, A. Edward (Camborne)	Lane-Fox, G. R.
Allen, Charles P. (Stroud)	Dunne, Major E. Martin (Walsall	Lehmann, R. C.
Ashley, W. W.	Edwards, Sir Francis (Radnor)	Lever, A. Levy (Essex, Harwich
Asquith, Rt. Hn. Herbert Henry	Essex, R. W.	Levy, Sir Maurice
Balfour, Robert (Lanark)	Esslemont, George Birnie	Lewis John Herbert
Banbury, Sir Frederick George	Evans, Sir Samuel T.	Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David
Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight)	Everett, R. Lacey	Lockwood, Rt. Hn. Lt.-Col. A. R.
Barnard, E. B.	Ferens, T. R.	Long, Rt. Hn. Walter (Dublin, S.
Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N.)	Fiennes, Hon. Eustace	Lupton, Arnold
Beale, W. P.	Findlay, Alexander	Luttrell, Hugh Fownes
Beaumont, Hon. Hubert	Fuller, John Michael F.	MacCaw, William J. MacGeagh
Benn, Sir J. Williams (Devonp'rt	Fullerton, Hugh	Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.
Benn, W. (T'w'r Hamlets, S. Geo.	Gibb, James (Harrow)	McCallum, John M.
Bennett, E. N.	Gibbs, G. A. (Bristol, West)	McCrae, Sir George
Berridge, T. H. D.	Gladstone, Rt Hn. Herbert John	McKenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald
Black, Arthur W.	Glendinning, R. G.	Maddison, Frederick
Bramsdon, T. A.	Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford	Manfield, Harry (Northants)
Brocklehurst, W. B.	Gooch, George Peabody (Bath)	Markham, Arthur Basil
Brooke, Stopford	Gordon, J.	Marks, G. Croydon (Launceston
Brunner, J. F. L. (Lancs., Leigh)	Goulding, Edward Alfred	Mason, A. E. W. (Coventry)
Bryce, J. Annan	Griffith, Ellis J.	Masterman, C. F. G.
Burnyeat, W. J. D.	Guinness, Walter Edward	Mechan, Francis E. (Leitrim, N)
Byles, William Pollard	Harcourt, Rt Hn L. (Rossendale	Menzies, Walter
Carlile, E. Hildred	Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)	Molteno, Percy Alport
Carr-Gomm, H. W.	Hardy, George A. (Suffolk)	Montagu, Hon. E. S.
Castlereagh, Viscount	Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Wore'r)	Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)
Canston, Rt. Hn. Richard Knight	Harrison-Broadley, H. B.	Morpeth, Viscount
Cawley, Sir Frederick	Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)	Morrell, Philip
Channing, Sir Francis Allston	Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)	Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield)
Cheetham, John Frederick	Haworth, Arthur A.	Norman, Sir Henry
Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.	Hedges, A. Paget	Norton, Capt. Cecil William
Clough, William	Hemmerde, Edward George	Nuttall, Harry
Coates, Major E. F. (Lewisham)	Henry, Charles S.	O'Donnell, John (Mayo, S.)
Cobbold, Felix Thornley	Herbert, Col. Sir Ivor (Mon., S.)	Paulton, James Mellor
Cochrane, Hon. Thos. H. A. E.	Higham, John Sharp	Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek)
Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)	Hill, Sir Clement	Pearson, W. H. M. (Suffolk, Eye)
Corbett, C H (Sussex, E. Grinst'd	Hobart, Sir Robert	Philipps, Col. Ivor (S'thampton
Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.	Hobhouse, Charles E. H.	Pickersgill, Edward Hare
Cory, Sir Clifford John	Holt, Richard Durning	Pirie, Duncan V.
Cotton, Sir H. J. S.	Horniman, Emslie John	Pollard, Dr.
Courthope, G. Loyd	Idris, T. H. W.	Price, C. E. (Edinb'gh, Central)
Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth)	Illingworth, Percy H.	Priestley, Arthur (Grantham)
Craig, Captain James (Down, E.)	Isaacs, Rufus Daniel	Priestley, W. E. B. (Bradford, E.)
Crossley, William J.	Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)	Radford, G. H.
Dalrymple, Viscount	Jones, Sir D. Brynmor (Swansea	Rea, Walter Russell (Scarboro)
Dalziel, James Henry	Jones, Leif (Appleby)	Remnant, James Farquharson
Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)	Kearley, Sir Hudson E.	Rendall, Athelstan

Renton, Leslie	Sherwell, Arthur James	Walters, John Tudor
Ridsdale, E. A.	Silcock, Thomas Ball	Waring, Walter
Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)	Simon, John Allsebrook	Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)
Roberts, Sir John H. (Denbighs.)	Sinclair, Rt. Hon. John	Waterlow, D. S.
Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall	Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie	White, Sir George (Norfolk)
Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradf'rd	Stanier, Beville	White, J. D. (Dumbartonshire
Robertson, J. M. (Tyneside)	Stanley, Hn. A. Lyulph (Chesh.)	White, Luke (York, E. R.)
Robinson, S.	Strachey, Sir Edward	Whitley, John Henry (Halifax)
Robson, Sir William Snowdon	Straus, B. S. (Mile End)	Whittaker, Rt. Hn. Sir Thos. P.
Rowlands, J.	Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon)	Williams, Llewelyn (Carmarth'n
Russell, T. W.	Sutherland, J. E.	Williamson, A.
Samuel, Herbert L. (Cleveland)	Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)	Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E. R.)
Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel)	Taylor, Austin (East Toxteth)	Wilson, J. W. (Worcestersh, N.)
Scarisbrick, T. T. L.	Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)	Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.)
Schwann, C. Duncan (Hyde)	Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire)	Winfrey, R.
Scott, A. H. (Ashton under Lyne	Thomas, Sir A. (Glamorgan, E.)	Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart.
Seaverns, J. H.	Thompson, J. W. H. (Somerset, E	Younger, George
Seely, Colonel	Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton
Shaw, Charles Edw. (Stafford)	Tomkinson, James	TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Mr.
Shaw, Rt. Hon. T. (Hawick B.)	Toulmin, George	Joseph Pease and Master
Sheffield, Sir Berkeley George D.	Walrond, Hon. Lionel	of Elibank.

NOES.
Abraham, William (Rhondda)	Hogan, Michael	Richards, T. F. (Wolverh'mpt'n
Banner, John S. Harmood.	Hope, John Deans (Fife, West)	Richardson, A.
Barnes, G. N.	Hudson, Walter	Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool)
Bignold, Sir Arthur	Jenkins, J.	Seddon, J.
Bowerman, C. W.	Joynson-Hicks, William	Shackleton, David James
Brace, William	Lamb, Edmund G. (Leominster	Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim, S.)
Cleland, J. W.	Lamb, Ernest H. (Rochester)	Snowden, P.
Cooper, G. J.	Lea, Hugh Cecil (St. Pancras, E.	Summerbell, T.
Crean, Eugene	Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)	Taylor, John W. (Durham)
Crooks, William	Macpherson, J. T.	Wadsworth, J.
Flavin, Michael Joseph	Moore, William	Walker, Col. W. H. (Lancashire)
Gill, A. H.	Murphy, John (Kerry, East)	Wilkie, Alexander
Glover, Thomas	Nannetti, Joseph P.	Williams, J. (Glamorgan)
Gwynn, Stephen Lucius	O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)	Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)
Haddock, George B.	O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)
Hall, Frederick	O'Dowd, John	TELLERS FOR THE NOES—Mr.
Hardie, J. Keir (Merthyr Tydvil)	O'Grady, J.	George Roberts and Mr.
Henderson, Arthur (Durham)	O'Kelly, Conor (Mayo, N.)	Charles Duncan.
Hills, J. W.	Parker, James (Halifax)
Hodge, John	Richards, Thomas (W. Monm'th

Bill reported, with Amendments; as amended, to be considered this day (Tuesday), and to be printed. [Bill 295.]