MENTAL DEFICIENCY AND LUNACY (SCOTLAND) BILL. (Hansard, 3 June 1913)

The SECRETARY for SCOTLAND (Mr. McKinnon Wood)
I think I should be wanting in respect to the House if I entered upon a discussion of the principle of the Bill, which is identical with the principle of the Bill which has obtained a Second Reading by so overwhelming a majority. That principle has been discussed this year and last year, and the House has obviously made up its mind upon that part of the subject. The House will remember that this. Bill last year was part of the English Bill, but there are certain points of administration, points connected with the local authority, and points connected with finance in regard to which it was considered more convenient to deal with them in a separate Bill, therefore this Bill is introduced for Scotland as a separate measure. We propose in this 850 Bill—I do not intend to take up the time of the House in dealing with what are, after all, Committee points—that the education authority should take charge of the mentally defective child up to the age of sixteen. I think that provision will commend itself to the House as a whole. Everyone will agree that the education authority, from many points of view of sentiment and more than sentiment, is the right authority to deal with a defective child. With regard to the safeguards in the Bill, they are similar, but I am sure they will be found, when considered in Committee, to be at least as strong as the safeguards in the English Bill. The appeal to the sheriff is a very satisfactory appeal. These are necessarily Committee points. I can assure my hon. Friends that they will find that the safeguards are not in any degree weaker than they are in the English Bill, and, perhaps, in some respects they are even stronger.
There is another feature in this Bill which, I hope, will commend itself to general approbation; that is, we propose to spend the money dealing with lunacy and mental deficiency so as to relieve to some extent the burden placed upon the 851 poorest parishes in Scotland, in which, as every Member of the House knows, the burden of lunacy is now an almost intolerable weight. There are certain Amendments that are Amendments in detail of the Lunacy Act, which it would be quite impossible to discuss upon Second Reading, but there is one point which I ought to mention. The central authority proposed under the Scottish Bill is the Lunacy Board, with the addition of another Medical Commissioner. Having its powers enlarged, its name will be changed, and it will be called the Board of Control. As to the local authority, some difference of opinion may arise. As hon. Members from Scotland know, for some time parish councils have claimed that as they have to bear the cost of maintaining the individual lunatic they ought to have some share in the representation on the district committee—that is the committee in the lunacy district. On the other hand, the county councils, who have had a large share in the appointment of these committees, claim that they ought to retain a share. That is obviously a Committee point, and one which, I think, we all would be willing to discuss with open minds and to hear representations upon from the different authorities who are interested. I do not think I have anything to add upon the Bill. It is the same Bill in principle, and the differences in detail are not very large or important, and every one of them is a purely Committee point. I therefore venture to appeal to the House, seeing that we have discussed this principle so thoroughly—

§ Mr. WEDGWOOD
No.

Mr. McKINNON WOOD
And having had such an overwhelming proof of the will of the House in the matter, to give us the Second Reading for the Scottish Bill, so that Scotland may not be deprived of the benefits which, I think, this Bill will bring to her.

§ Sir G. YOUNGER
I rise in no spirit of hostility to the right hon. Gentleman, for this is a Bill which is very much wanted in Scotland, and one we desire to have discussed in Committee upstairs. I propose to follow the right hon. Gentleman by not dealing at all with the details of the Bill because, as he truly said, they are practically identical, except in regard to certain particulars which local differences demand, with the Bill which has been dis- 852 cussed by the House and approved of by an overwhelming majority. There are one or two points which we must consider carefully in Committee. The first thing I wish to say to the right hon. Gentleman is that the changes in administration are really very important and far-reaching, and I hope that he will not take the Bill too soon into Committee, but that he will give an opportunity to the various boards to consider it in order that they may communicate with their Members in Scotland and advise them upon the subject. I myself for many years was a member of a board of lunacy controlling the Stirlingshire district. We were appointed by the county councils and the borough councils. We found a very large sum of money from our rates to provide what proved to be an enormously valuable institution. It seems to me that we cannot dispossess these people straight away without consideration, and we have to consider the propriety of transferring the authority from them to the parish council. In a matter of this kind, which is of great importance and a very delicate matter we shall have to commune with ourselves in a friendly way, as I am sure we shall do from the tone of the right hon. Gentleman's speech, as to whether or not these changes are desirable.
I have nothing to say about the alteration in the central authority, an increase in which was demanded by the increase in the work, nor do I wish to say anything about the proposal to put a portion of the maintenance of lunatics and mentally deficients in the shape of a flat rate over the various parishes. The capital expenditure in the past, which was called a providing account in connection with asylum management in Scotland, has always been paid by a rate levied by the county council, and the maintenance has been provided by each parish according to the number of lunatics. This pressed heavily upon some poor parishes, and if you add the cost of mental deficients to that of lunatics, you will be asking some parishes to do more than they can afford one other word I am not satisfied with the manner in which the Treasury deals with Scotland under this Bill. The right hon. Gentleman will agree that that is the point of difference between this and the English Bill. In England, as I understand it, one-half of the cost is paid by the Treasury in the case of lunacy, and is also going to be paid in the case of the mentally deficient. 853 In Scotland a specific sum is paid now for the purposes of lunacy, with the result that while we had 4s a patient some years ago, we have only 2s 6d. a patient now. It may be considered very Scotch to bring up this question, for it nearly always crops up on every Bill of this kind. The Treasury is always painfully niggardly in dealing with it. I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman upon the fact that he has been more successful in beating the Treasury than some of his predecessors. I wish him God-speed in that work. I hope that in this case he will induce the Treasury—he can do it if he likes, for he has seventy-two votes behind him—to put Scotland in this particular matter in the same position as England, and to give us a little more than the Bill proposes to give. Subject to these remarks, I hope very much that the Bill will be allowed to pass to-night.

§ Mr. JAMES HOGGE
I have listened with interest to the speech of the hon. Baronet (Sir G. Younger) because it appeared to me that the arguments he was using were arguments not for referring the measure to a Committee upstairs, but for delaying the passing of the Second Reading, in order that those authorities in Scotland who have to be consulted with regard to it should have every and ample opportunity of considering this vast and far-reaching change in local administration before anything is done in this House. I was also interested in noticing that the bulk of the cheers in regard to the appeal made by the right hon. Gentleman, that we might have the Second Reading of this Bill to-night, came from Members who do not know anything at all about Scotland. I think that en occasion the Scottish Secretary can make very adequate speeches about great topics but this measure, dealing with the large subject of mental deficiency in Scotland, which involves such far reaching changes and which also involves the setting up of what the Opposition in this House is so much opposed to, new authorities, new appointments given through Liberal administration to Conservatives throughout the country—

§ Sir G. YOUNGER
It is not a new body.

§ Mr. HOGGE
I am obliged to my lion. Friend for reminding me of that, but it is an authority to which battalions of officials are to be added. I am informed that this authority will be increased by 854 over 50 per cent. of what it is at present. We shall then have a request for a return from the Opposition for the appointments made and then they will run away, as usual, from the debate. I was saying that the Scottish Secretary can make an adequate speech on a great measure on occasion, but this afternoon in the space of three minutes the Scottish Secretary attempted to deal with what the Government call a great far reaching social reform, upon which they appeal to the' country for support, and all the information we can get with regard to it, unless we have taken the trouble to read it ourselves, is a three-minute speech from the Scottish Secretary. As a Scottish Member I object entirely to that method of dealing with Scottish business in this House It is nothing short of a scandal that on the day on which we are to adjourn at seven o'clock in order to celebrate the King's birthday, we are asked, in the remaining thirteen minutes, to discuss this measure and to give a Second Reading to the Government in order that they may send this Bill upstairs. The Government have got far too many Bills on their programme already, and there are a great many of us who sit behind the Government, and who are pleased and glad to support them on every available occasion, who object to the prospect of this being prolonged into another Autumn Session. If Ministers go on producing Bills from their pocket and putting them upon the Order Paper to the number that appeared yesterday—thirty-five is the number that we have got on the Paper, and we have not yet started the programme for the Session—if that is the hors d'œuvre what is going to be the menu? People in Scotland after all have a certain amount of intelligence, even those who, are not going to be dealt with by this measure, and the intelligence resides in the local authorities in Scotland. Some of these local authorities have not had an opportunity of discussing the details of this measure. It is going to involve financial changes, and I do not know what the Secretary for Scotland meant by saying that it would relieve the burden on the poorest parishes. That is the tale that both Front Benches tell when they are in office, but it usually works out in an entirely different way, and we who represent Scottish public opinion would like, before we agree to the Second Reading, to have the opinion of those authorities as to, whether or not, from the administrative 855 side, they agree to the Bill. For these reasons and a great many others which I need not enlarge upon, I feel bound, in order that the House may proceed to celebrate the King's birthday, to move the Adjournment of the Debate.

§ Mr. ROBERT HARCOURT
I beg to second the Motion.