HC Deb 27 June 1913 vol 54 cc1400-39

Order read for resuming adjourned Debate on Question [3rd June]," That the Bill be now read a second time."

Question again proposed. Debate resumed.

2.0 P.M.

Mr. WEDGWOOD

I feel that I owe the House some sort of apology for speaking on the Scottish Mental Deficiency Bill, but I do so with a certain amount of confidence, because during the Debate upon the English Mental Deficiency Bill one of the most able pronouncements in favour of that measure was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stirlingshire (Dr. Chapple), a Scottish Member, and not only did he speak on the Second Reading of that Bill, but his name was added to Standing Committee D, which is to discuss the Bill upstairs, while my own name was kept off. If Scottish Members are preferred to English Members to deal with the English Bill, it gives a certain right to English Members to debate this Scottish Bill. The speech of the hon. Member for Stirlingshire was very largely directed against myself and against the hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. Booth). It dealt almost entirely with attempted refutations of my statements and those of the hon. Member for Pontefract. I think I may, therefore, fairly appeal to the House to give me, an English Member, an opportunity upon this Bill to reply to the statements made by a Scottish Member upon the English Bill. The hon. Member took up a very clear and definite position. He said that feeble-mindedness was entirely distinct from insanity, that there could be a hard and fast line drawn between the two, and that whereas insanity resulted—I think I am putting his point correctly—more or less from accident, feeblemindedness was congenital and born in the child.

Dr. CHAPPLE

I think the hon. Member is unconsciously misrepresenting me. I did not say that insanity was due to accident; I said it was due to disease of the brain.

Mr. WEDGWOOD

Quite so. The hon. Member said that there could be a perfectly clear distinction drawn. He said that no definition could be drawn up of insanity, any more than that you could define feeble-mindedness, but that a doctor knew them perfectly well. Against that position I want to take up a most determined stand. If it is impossible to define either insanity or feeble-mindedness in an Act of Parliament, and if we are to take the mere ipsi dixit of a doctor upon the question and leave it entirely to the experts to decide whether a man is insane or feeble-minded, without giving the subject an opportunity of having a hard and fast definition and a clear law to which to refer, we are surrendering too much to the doctors in this matter. The hon. Member for Stirlingshire is, I know, a person who would not hurt a fly if he could help it, but there are, and he knows there are, among doctors in this country very various ideas as to the treatment of insanity and of feeble-mindedness, and as to the comparative rights of society and the individual. That is bound to be the case. Only the other day I observed in the "Times" a long appeal to the Home Secretary, signed by a great number of very distinguished surgeons, urging that these feeble-minded institutions, which are to be set up under this Bill and the English Bill, should be used for the purposes of research. When you see a suggestion of that sort made in cold blood, a suggestion that advantage should be taken by the Government and by the surgeons—of course, in the interests of the community, just as vivisection is carried on in the interests of the community—to employ these institutions for research, and to employ the inmates of these institutions as victims of research, it ought to make us doubly careful how far we leave it to the medical profession alone to determine whether or not a man or woman is feeble-minded. Therefore, I am not at one with the hon. Member for Stirlingshire in suggesting that it is possible to put in a perfectly loose definition of feeble-mindedness, and then to leave it to the common or garden medical practitioner, for these cases do not come before specialists, and the medical certificates will net be signed by men like the late Member of this House, Sir William Collins, or the hon. Member himself. In these circumstances. I submit that it is not fair to say, whatever the definition may be, that the state is well known to medical science, and, therefore, needs no more precise definition. Then the hon. Member referred, I thought rather boldly, to Turner as being a feeble-minded man.

Dr. CHAPPLE

I did not say Turner was feeble-minded. What I said was that if the hon. Member (Mr. Booth) had sail Turner was feeble-minded, and not his mother, I should have been more inclined to agree with him. I was contrasting the sanity of his mother and the alleged feeble-mindedness of Turner. I did not say he was feeble-minded.

Mr. WEDGWOOD

I am sorry I misrepresented the hon. Member. I quite see it was a hypothesis which could not be imagined, and therefore which it was not necessary to agree to. At the same time, when the hon. Member says it is possible for a man to be feeble-minded in certain departments of his life and not in others, we are verging upon the very difficult question whether we are justified in saying that a man shows himself feeble-minded in business, however excellent a father he may be, and therefore ought to be locked up. Directly you deal with these states of mentality, you are dealing with a subject which is one of extreme difficulty and one where extreme carefulness of definition should be adhered to. That is why I strongly urged that certain Amendments asked for by that distinguished surgeon, Dr. Bernard Hollander, should be embodied in the Bill, though I regret to say when the Bill was discussed they were not accepted and apparently were not debated. The question of definition is, of course, an enormously difficult one, and the doctors themselves have failed to give a very satisfactory definition.

Now I want to pass on to another part of the hon. Member's speech. He tried to make out that I was calling these institutions prisons, whereas, as a matter of fact, they were homes. It is on that point that he and I differ, and that I shall ask the House to support a scheme which would ensure their being homes and avoid the possibility of their becoming prisons. I have offered all along to withdraw all opposition to these Bills, and my Friends who act with me will do the same, provided we could be assured that there will be no, asylum treatment, that there will be no warders and no bolts and bars, that the new institutions should be exactly on all fours with the existing institutions, so far as liberty is concerned. But they might be, of course, better than the existing institutions in that you might have more division of the different classes of treatment, not only keeping the sexes apart, but keeping persons of different ages apart, or of different ability and adaptability. On those lines there might be improvements on the existing institutions, but I would urge that on no account should that alteration be made in the existing institutions which would tend to deprive their inmates of such liberty as they possess at present. At present they are free to go and come if they like, and we all know that they do not go. There is no running away from these institutions, or whatever there is is of a very small character indeed. They are contented, they are comfortable, and they are well looked after. What I fear, and what I believe the hon. Member (Dr. Chapple) himself fears too, is that if you once give the managers of these institutions such powers as the director of a lunatic asylum has, where every ward is looked after separately from the next ward and where people are looked after by a big staff of nurses and warders who naturally become to a certain extent callous in their treatment of these people, you will be opening the door to all those abuses which he and I are most anxious to avoid. He says:— There is no consciousness of restriction or of chains, or of bolts and bars to which the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme refers. Of course there is not, because, at present, they have not got these bars and bolts and these restrictions; but under this Act they will have.

Dr. CHAPPLE

Why should they have them?

Mr. WEDGWOOD

Because under this Bill the homes are not places which the inmates are allowed to leave, because they will now be exactly on all fours with the asylums which we have at present. There will be the same necessity for control and the same powers, and I am afraid we are all inclined to be bureaucrats at heart, and if those powers are given they will be exercised. But I have a more serious bone to pick with the hon. Member than this misstatement of the character of these new institutions. He says the posi- tion of the poor parent at present is as follows:— They cannot keep the feeble-minded child at home since it is almost impossible to do so. They make use of these institutions which are now open to the rich. Who wants to object to their making use of these institutions? But when the hon. Member brings forward a special plea such as that, he knows perfectly well that we are all anxious that they should make use of these institutions. We are all anxious that there should be more of these institutions so that they could make use of them. At present they cannot, because there are not enough of them. But what we object to is their being forced to make use of those institutions.

Attention called to the fact that forty Members were not present. House counted, and forty Members being found present—

Mr. WEDGWOOD

It is a misstatement to say that this Bill merely provides the poor with an opportunity which the rich already enjoy. It goes far beyond that. It not only provides them with an opportunity, but, in addition to that, it compels them, whether they like or not, to make use of that opportunity. That is a form of compulsion which I think is illiberal. I do not believe it is a part of true Liberal policy to compel parents even to be good parents. The only thing we can do is to provide opportunities for parents to be good parents, but not to say to them, "if you are not good parents, according to the ideas of this board of doctors and experts you will be compelled to be good parents against your will." We have got too much of that kind of compulsion. We have recently had compulsory thrift, we have had compulsory education, and we are now threatened with compulsory segregation of the unfit, and compulsory service in the Army. I maintain that I am on sound Liberal ground when I object to this kind of compulsion. It is not the business of Liberalism at any time to compel the people to be either moral, or thrifty, or well educated, or even to be excellent marksmen. All these things may be desirable, but it is not the business of any Government to enforce them on the people of this country.

That leads me to the question of inspection. This Bill applies to Scotland. My belief is that the people of Scotland are more liberal than the people of this country, that they do resent far more even than the English people do interference with individual liberty, and that they do resent having people coming into their houses at all hours of the day, and even of the night, and seeing that they are not overcrowded, seeing that the children's heads are clean, and seeing that the children are going to school. I have recently been in my own Constituency, and I can assure the House that there is in this country, even in a nice peaceful district Like the Midlands, a growing feeling of revolt against this perpetual inspection and interference with everything the poor citizen does. It does not affect us, because we are above the line that is inspected. Anybody who has over £160 a year, and who lives in a house which is rated for more than £16, escapes the attention of the inspectors; but it is those people who live in small houses who are getting badgered to death with our legislation and inspection from morning to night, from the cradle to the grave. That is what goes on in the houses of these poor people, and it is getting intolerable. Here we are, under this Bill, taking another decided step forward in this direction. I ask the House to consider what this Bill means in Scotland. The Irish got exempted from it, because in that country liberty is inborn, and they would not tolerate it for a moment. In every county in Scotland it will be the duty of the new committee of the county council, or whatever body it is, to inspect and to make a list of the people who come within the somewhat vague definition of feeble-minded. They have to draw up a black list when getting the information. The policeman, or the officer of the new authority, will search people's houses, examine the children, and make all sorts of backstairs inquiries from neighbours; they will get information from school teachers; and all this is to go on in Scotland as the result of an Act passed by a Liberal Government nominally in favour of Liberalism. I would ask any Scottish Members here whether they think that, when this Bill is passed and inspection is being carried out, they will be as popular as they are at present time or whether their popularity will not decline?

I know perfectly well it is difficult for an ordinary layman to differ from expert authority. It is difficult for an ordinary layman to attack this Bill when it has the backing of a Royal Commission, but I would ask the House to remember that while it is impossible to controvert their statement or to deal with their doctrine of heredity—although some doctors say it is not altogether true—it is quite possible to say that by passing this Bill we would be setting up a Vehmgericht. You are giving to these expert committees powers of smelling out, such as the witch doctors possess on the West Coast of Africa. It. will not affect yourselves or your relations, but it must vitally affect the deep-seated feelings of the working classes of this country. They will not like it, and what is more they will answer in this way, "Why do good Liberal Governments always seek to deal with the results of a bad social. system? Why not go to the roots of the evil and try to stop the causes themselves?" Hon. Members know that, if we have feeble-minded children, we can look after them, and that there is nothing we should hate more to see than the taking of them away to institutions. Why can we look after our children? It is because we have a certain amount of leisure and wealth and can afford to do it. Do you think that if the working classes got full reward for their labour, they would not be in a position to look after their children themselves? When you see how much larger feeble-mindedness is among slum people than among wealthy people, is it not obvious that feeblemindedness must be the result, not of heredity entirely, but of the conditions under which these mentally stunted children are being brought up in the slums? When your constituents ask questions about this Bill and begin to heckle you at by elections as to some of the scandals which will arise under it, I think, whatever your answers may be, and however plausible the plea of the hon. Member for Stirlingshire may be in regard to looking after unfortunate girls who have illegitimate children, they will answer, "Why not go, to the roots of the evil and deal with the poverty in the country, instead of always tinkering with the results and trying to look after the poor whose condition is largely due to economic causes?"

I want to raise another point. It was referred to by a Scottish Member who stated that there was a large demand in Scotland for this Bill. I ask where it is. It comes in resolutions from boards of guardians, town councils, and all manner of organisations of the middle class and other classes of people, who will not be affected by the Bill, but who are all permeated with the idea that it is their duty and their mission in life to improve the poor. These people pass resolutions, send letters to Members of Parliament, and interview the Scottish Office to press forward this Bill. Has any Minister of the Crown attempted to defend this proposal in Scotland? I think very few Members of the Cabinet have read the Bill, and, if they have, it is certain that not one word has been spoken in the country upon it by any responsible Minister.

Mr. CAWLEY

It was supported by the Under-Secretary for the Home Department (Mr. Ellis Griffith) when speaking at Stockport.

Mr. WEDGWOOD

He is only an Under-Secretary. I wish the name of some responsible Member of the Cabinet. As a matter of fact, this subject has not been mentioned in the country to any extent since the Bill was introduced, and before the Bill was introduced it was not mentioned at all. There is no shadow of mandate for the Bill. There is no shadow of any sort of authority from the electors of the country for the measure. It is quite true that a certain number of people, of whom I am one myself, are shocked and horrified at the condition under which these people are looked after and tended to-day, but we are shocked end horrified because there is not sufficient accommodation and because the State has never attempted to help in any way to deal with this problem, and while we are only too anxious to see something done to help these feeble-minded people, let us be quite certain that it shall be a help, and not A punishment. There is, of course, some possibility of getting this Bill and the English Bill through. It is only possible if hon. Members, like the hon. Member for Stirlingshire and the hon. Member for Heywood (Mr. Cawley) are prepared to modify their demands. Here you have these enormously long Bills going up to the Committee. These Bills will get through Committee, but if hon. Members in favour of them think that they are going to get from the Prime Minister a Guillotine Resolution in order to shove them through on Report, I can assure them that they are mistaken, and yet without a Guillotine Resolution we know perfectly well that these Bills can never become law. There are a good many determined friends of liberty in this House who are opponents of all such interfering and meddling legislation as this. Therefore, if hon. Members want to get the Bill through to help the feebleminded in this country, of course they will consider the possibilities of compromise and coming to terms with those who have been opposing them up to now, but who do honestly and earnestly wish to see something done for these feeble-minded persons.

As far as I can gather from the meagre reports in the Parliamentary Papers, there was a sort of tentative concession made upstairs on the English Bill which does not go far enough, and is entirely illusory as it stands at present, but which I hope indicates a weakening of the extremists' position on this question. They have put in that these feeble-minded persons shall not be put in institutions except after the parents' consent has been obtained. Then comes the proviso which takes away the whole point of the concession, that such consent is not to be reasonably withheld. We all know that the definition of "reasonably" is an extremely difficult thing to get in black and white. We have all seen the way in which the Vaccination Acts are treated in this country. I do not like to give to an unsympathetic magistracy, who are imbued with the idea that their business is to lock up everybody and to protect society against all these people, the interpretation of what is meant, by "unreasonably withheld." Where the parents are bad parents, people whom no reasonable being could trust with the responsibility of their child's welfare, there is always a case for refusing to consider that point of view, but in such cases as that it is always possible to proceed against them under the Children Act and under the Prevention of Cruelty Act, and I think that we shall want something a great deal more clear than those words "unreasonably withheld." There is another and more important point on which we differ. I ask the hon. Member for Stirlingshire to use his influence with the Home Office to see if terms cannot be reached. He and I both think that the existing institutions are good, though possibly they might be improved. Why, then, go out of the way to put in all these penal clauses, punishing people who help inmates to escape and giving this power of inspecting every year and taking them in for a further year if the state of their health is not good? All you want is to have a home, to see that those homes are run on similar lines to the present, with similar powers, with no addition to the penal restrictions of inmates or of the people outside who are interested. On all these points there will be required a great deal of remodelling of these Bills. The Bills are built up by experts of the Home Office, with the criminal code, the asylum laws and the Lunacy Acts at the back of their minds.

Those are the two points which I wish to emphasise: make it perfectly easy for the parents, decent parents against whom the police can really urge nothing except mere obstinacy, to retain control, and, in the second place, see that all restraints are removed from these home institutions. So far as the penal ones are concerned, I do not say that anything can be done with inmates transferred from prisons to these institutions which the Secretary of State is willing to pay for, but in an ordinary institution where the inmate has committed no crime whatever, where his presence is merely the result of sifting out from the ordinary elementary education, I maintain that if you keep these homes free until the child is sixteen, you ought to keep them open and free for the rest of the time. It might be that in 5 or, perhaps, 10 per cent. of the cases they will quarrel with the managers of the institution and go out and have these unfortunate, illegitimate children, but it is worth while submitting to a few cases such as that if you can only prevent the definite imprisonment of so large a portion of the population. You cannot make things perfect in this world by locking everybody up who ought to be locked up; but what you can do is to provide an opportunity by which feebleminded people can get looked after, and at the same time continue to enjoy the privileges of British citizenship. It can be done, and I hope it will be done before very long, both in the case of the English and the Scotch Bills. I have been emboldened to take up so much time because the hon. Member for Stirlingshire spoke of the English Bill and is on the Committee of the English Bill, and I have nothing more to say except to beg the House to believe that in all my actions as regards this Bill I have the interests of these mentally defective persons at heart Just as much as the Home Secretary and others. I want to get the best possible treatment for these people while securing their liberty, and to see that justice is done to them, as I believe it can be.

Major HOPE

The hon. Member who has just spoken has explained how he obstructed the English Bill, but I trust he will not on that account raise any strenuous opposition to the Scottish Bill, but that he will allow Scottish Members to voice the opinions of Scotland, for I think that perhaps they are better capable of correctly interpreting Scottish opinion on the subject. The hon. Gentleman has voted in favour, certainly of Home Rule for Ireland, and probably Home Rule for Scotland, and I think we might ask him to let us settle a question of this kind in our own way.

Mr. WEDGWOOD

Will you do the same for England, and keep away Scottish Members?

Major HOPE

I did not interfere in any way with the English Bill.

Mr. WEDGWOOD

Other Members did.

Major HOPE

Personally I welcome the introduction of this Bill, and I trust that in some form it will be passed during the present Session. There is urgent need for legislation, both in the general interest of the community, and also on behalf of those for whom it is primarily designed, and who I believe will benefit by the measure if it is passed into law. The feebleminded are not of course able to exert political pressure or voice their own feelings on the subject, and all the more reason, therefore, that they should receive special consideration from this House, and that their interests should be sympathetically considered, as I believe they will and can be under this proposed Bill. I was glad to see that the Prime Minister the other day repudiated the suggestion of the Member for East Edinburgh that Scottish Liberal Members are opposed to this Bill. I trust that if the Member for East Edinburgh continues his opposition to this measure he will not receive any more support than he did on two occasions yesterday on Scottish matters—on one of which he could not even get tellers for his Motion. Personally, I am convinced that the overwhelming majority of opinion in Scotland demands that the principles of this Bill should be carried into law, and I believe that Scotland will be justly indignant if the English Bill is passed into law and the Government do not give time to complete the Scottish measure this Session. The Scottish Bill, as it is, already lags behind the English Bill, which was read a second time three weeks ago, and half the Clauses of which have already been dealt with in Committee upstairs.

Mr. MARTIN

Only one-third.

Major HOPE

Twenty-six out of sixty-six Clauses have been dealt with, but those twenty-six Clauses include the most important in the Bill, and those which raise the most controversy. I submit therefore that practically half the English Bill has already been satisfactorily dealt with in Committee. I hope that the deliberations of the Committee on the English Bill will materially assist our deliberations on the Scottish Bill in Grand Committee, and that we may be able to make up leeway with the Scottish Bill. 1 believe the English Bill is a distinct improvement on the Bill introduced last Session, and that the Scottish Bill, which deals with our particular local circumstances and different local government, is an enormous improvement on the hurriedly drafted Clauses with which it was proposed that the Bill of last year should be made applicable to Scotland. I shall, of course, support the Second Reading, but I should like to call attention to one or two points in regard to which I think this Bill requires Amendment in Committee. I submit that its financial provisions are not generous or even fair to Scotland, as compared with England. The Home Secretary on the Second Reading of the English Bill made the special point that local authorities would not be required to deal with the mentally defective unless half the cost was provided from central funds. Scotland is to have £20,000, and the local authorities are to be compelled to provide for all the feeble-minded and pay for the remainder of the cost over and above the £20,000. In the Report of the Royal Commission, in 1906, it was stated that 26 of the population of Glasgow were mentally defective. If this proportion of the population holds good throughout Scotland there would be some 11,600 mentally defective to be provided for in that country. Taking the cost of maintenance at £25 per head—I do not think that is an excessive estimate—the £20,000 would only provide half the cost for 1,600 of these mentally defective, the whole cost of the remainder falling on the rates under the Scottish Bill. The Home Secretary said that he hoped more money would eventually be found for England, and I hope for Scotland, too. I would remind the House that in England the pressure of public opinion in regard to the mentally defective not being provided for will tend to loosen the Treasury purse strings, but in Scotland there will only be the cries of the over-burdened ratepayers to effect this object, and we know that the fulfilment of promises to the ratepayers is very often long delayed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

There is another point: The central Government Grant for pauper lunatics which is to be continued and available for new Boards of Control, is 4s. per head in England, and only 2s. 10d. per head in Scotland. I know that is the stereotyped Grant, but Scotland is a distinct loser by the Grant being only 2s. 10d. at the present moment as compared with, in England, 4s. per head per pauper lunatic, who, of course, would have to be dealt with by the new Board of Control. Nor is this all: Clauses 3 and 5 of the Scottish Education Act are to be made compulsory on school boards, that is to say, education will have to be provided for all mentally defective children between five and sixteen years of age. In England under the Defective and Epileptic Children Bill, to be read a second time to-day, the education authorities will only have to deal with children between seven and fourteen years of age. There again there is a heavier burden on the Scottish ratepayers than is to be imposed on the English ratepayer. In any case, I think Scotland would have especially felt the burden owing to her poor and thinly scattered population in the Highlands, and in many of the outlying districts. In Scotland we have also the small school board areas, which will feel the burden much more seriously than will the large county areas in England, over which the education rate is to be spread. The President of the Board of Education a week or two ago—I think it was in London—made the public statement that in order to assist the education authorities in England the Grant for mentally defective children would be increased from four guineas to £6, and that for residential schools for mentally defectives a most substantial Grant would be forthcoming. I asked the Secretary for Scotland last week if he had noticed this speech of the President of the Board of Education and he said he had, and it was receiving his attention. I asked him if he would give a guarantee that Scotland would receive an equivalent Grant, but I am afraid he declined to pledge himself. I trust that the Secretary for Scotland will be firm in demanding that Scotland should receive fair treatment as compared with England in all the financial parts of the Bill, and I trust that in this firm attitude he will have as full support from hon. Members opposite as was promised yesterday when he put forward claims for more money for Scotland on behalf of small holdings. I fear, however, small holdings have more claims on hon. Members opposite than the care of the mentally defective. There are certain election platform promises to be fulfilled in the ease of small hodings, and I am quite aware none of these have been made in the case of the mentally defective. I hope, however, that the Scottish Members upon both sides of the House will support the Secretary for Scotland in securing fair treatment as regards the financial aspects of this case.

The hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Wedgwood) referred to the question of children under sixteen being placed in institutions without the consent of their parents. On that aspect I am somewhat in sympathy with him. I certainly believe that unless children under sixteen are neglected, abandoned, or ill-treated they should not be placed in institutions contrary to the will of their parents or guardians. I believe the English Bill has been amended in this direction, and under the English Bill as it now stands these children can only be placed in institutions with the consent of their parents, provided that consent is not unreasonably withheld. I should be quite ready to see that this Amendment was made in tins Bill, that no children under sixteen should be placed in these institutions without the consent of their parents, either by a judicial order or any other means, unless they were abandoned, neglected, or ill-treated, and that would place them on the same footing as adults, who can be placed in institutions if they are ill-treated, etc.

There is just one other point to which I wish to draw attention, and that is the representation of the county councils upon the governing board of control. Under the provisions of this Bill, for the first three years the county councils are to have representation to the extent of one-third. After that they are to have no representation at all upon the new board of control. That seems absolutely indefensible. The whole cost of the erection of these institutions—the whole capital cost—has to be provided by the county areas and distributed over county areas. Half the cost of maintenance is to be distributed over county areas. I am not now going into whether it is best to have the Poor Law system or county assessments, but the fact remains that the county as a whole will bear considerably more than half the expenses of the Bill, and that after the first three years the county councils are not to have any representation upon the board which is to replace the old Lunacy Board, which was practically the county council. I do not wish to go further into this case, because I have this morning received a letter which informed me that there had been a conference in Glasgow last Wednesday and that representatives both of the county council and the parish council were present, and as far as I can gather from the letter the parish council representatives equally agreed with the county council representatives that the county council should be represented upon this new board of control. They appointed a sub-committee to go into this question more thoroughly, and I believe there is to be a larger meeting in Edinburgh on 14th July to consider the report of the sub-committee, and I trust that that larger meeting, representative, as I hope it will be, of the county councils, the parish councils, and the school boards, will come to some agreement as to the precise constitution of these new district boards of control, and that when they have arrived at an agreement the Secretary for Scotland and hon. Members here will be ready to fall in with the enlightened suggestions of the county council, the parish council, and the school board.

Mr. BARNES

Like the last speaker, I have a good deal of sympathy with the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme in regard to the treatment of youngsters under this Bill. I should draw a line between them and adults, because adults of defective minds may be of vicious habits and a danger to the community, which cannot be said of the young. Therefore, I am in sympathy with the hon. Member opposite who has spoken and with my hon. Friend here in regard to protecting so far as it is consistent with the public welfare the right of the parents to have control of their children, and if this Bill can be strengthened in that direction I will support the effort to strengthen it. I also have a good deal of sympathy with the hon. Member in regard to the character of the institutions under the Bill. We do not know exactly what the character of these institutions will be, but I hope that not only will provision be made for taking the youngsters out and some distinction made between them and persons of defective mind, but that power will be taken in regard to taking out children, if necessary, at the desire of their parents. I hope, also, that the institutions may be such that there will be some chance of restoring people to a normal condition of mind, if at all possible. I hope that the prison element and the asylum element may be as far as possible altogether re-removed. I am also heartily in sympathy with the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme in his observations as to the need, and, in fact, the duty of this House to devote some time, and a good deal more than it has done, in getting down to the underlying causes as to why we have so many people of defective minds amongst us. I believe with him that the causes are very largely the social and industrial condition in which our people live, and therefore I should be more heartily in favour of a Bill which would remove the causes that produce the feeble-minded than a Bill merely to deal with the feebleminded that we have got in our midst. But having said that, I part company with my on. Friend, because I am one of those practical minded persons who like to face face facts and unfortunately whatever may be the cause of the feeble-minded being amongst us, there they are, a source of demoralisation, and a source of danger to their immediate relatives and friends as well as to the community, and, therefore, that being so, we should make better provision for them than we yet have. I have come across cases in my own experience. I remember a brother and sister. The sister had been in prison over 200 times for drunkenness. She would be sent to prison for seven or fourteen days, and then on being liberated would get into liquor, and in the course of a few days be in prison once more. The brother I have seen in the streets, scrambling after insects on the posters. It is perfectly obvious that that type of person is a nuisance to everybody with whom they come in contact, and there is always the possibility that they may perpetuate their kind and land the community in further trouble with their offspring. The last speaker quoted a percentage which, in regard to Glasgow, works out at 2,500 people of that type. However strongly we may feel, as I feel, that landlordism and capitalism are largely, I do not say entirely, the causes of this sort of thing, whatever we may regard as the underlying causes, we ought, at all events, to face the fact that in Glasgow, with a population of 1,000,000, there are 2,500 of these people roaming about demoralising everybody with whom they come in contact. The fact that they depress the standard of living is one which we, of the Labour party, ought to have in view. Some of us have had experience of this type of individual in the workshops. A man comes along and gets a job, very often simply because he is willing to take it at less than a man of normal habits and full power. Therefore, the fact that these people are allowed to roam about is not only a cause of moral demoralisation, but a cause of economic trouble in that they depress the standard of living amongst large numbers of people throughout the country.

Major HOPE

May I correct the hon. Member's figure with regard to the population of Glasgow? 26 on the population only amounts to 1,614 in all.

Mr. BARNES

That is a mere matter of arithmetic. If the hon. Member will apply that percentage to a million population he will get a different result from what he has just announced.

Major HOPE

Is there a population of 1,000,000 in Glasgow now?

3.0 P.M.

Mr. BARNES

I am speaking in round numbers. There may be a few thousands less or more, but roughly speaking, there are 1,000,000, and the percentage given by the hon. Member on that basis would give 2,600. Even if there are only 1,600, every one of them is a centre radiating demoralisation of all sorts, and that is sufficiently serious as a justification for this Bill. It is said that there is no public opinion in favour of the Bill, and even that there is no need for it. The need is recognised by the fact that we already deal with these people in a chaotic manner. Large numbers of them are dealt with through the agency of the Poor Law. The Commission on the feeble-minded stated in their Report, issued about five years ago, that large numbers of the very class of people to be dealt with under this Bill are at present in the workhouses, associating with people of normal mind, and very often under circumstances that must depress them and prevent their getting out of the workhouse and taking their proper place in life.

Sir F. BANBURY

It is not infectious.

Mr. BARNES

I say that very often it is. I remember a case in a workhouse where a woman had pneumonia, and alongside of her was a person of weak mind who shrieked all night, so that the woman with pneumonia could not get any sleep. The weak-minded person may not in the ordinary acceptation of the term give the other person weak-mindedness, but she may conduct herself in such a way as to make it practically impossible for the person with pneumonia to recover. I say that that is altogether a wrong way of dealing with these people. We have recognised the need for dealing with them by taking them into the workhouse. Let us go a step further and deal with them in a proper manner by the authority set up under this Bill, and therefore outside the operation of the Poor Law altogether. It has been said that there is no public opinion in favour of the Bill. I have received numerous letters from Scotland in its favour. A public body in the district represented by the hon. Member for Midlothian have passed a resolution in favour of the Bill. A similar resolution has been passed by the Scottish Women's Temperance Association, which is very large body. There has been a good deal of discussion in the public Press in Glasgow, and the Labour and Socialist papers have given the Bill an unqualified support. That being so, and for the reasons I have given, I shall vote for the Second Reading, while, at the same time, I would much rather vote for a Bill going to the fundamental causes of the production of a great many of these feeble-minded people. I fully sympathise with the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme in that respect. I only wish with him that we had some measure to deal with those bottom causes engaging our attention instead of the Bill we are now discussing. But that is another matter. We have not got a Bill and we have got the feeble-minded. Therefore this Bill to deal with the feeble-minded will have my support.

Sir H. CRAIK

I have no doubt that what the hon. Member opposite has said with regard to the demand for this Bill is perfectly true. I cannot see how, in view of the great difficulties which have to be solved, there should be anything else than a general desire for some legislation to deal with some of those difficulties. But in a question of this sort there is the great danger that we are apt to think that the immediate demand places upon us the obligation as fast as possible, and perhaps with insufficient consideration, to place upon the Statute Book any measure that professes to deal with the particular difficulty. It must be remembered that great as is the evil that has to be dealt with, the question of amelioration is one of quite as profound difficulty—difficulty that is felt by the man of science, and difficulty that is felt by those who have done the work of practical administration. I happen to know something on the educational aspect of this question.

Mr. MARTIN

May I call attention to the fact that forty Members are not present?

Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER (Mr. Maclean)

A little while ago I satisfied myself that there was more than a quorum of Members present in the Chamber, and therefore I shall disregard the intimation now.

Sir H. CRAIK

I am not quite sure that the House in its endeavour to deal with this question has taken counsel as to all the logical inferences that are involved in some of the proposals that are now before the House. They are very drastic. If hon. Members knew these schemes and proposals put forward on behalf of some scientific men here and abroad they would realise what a very dark and difficult task it was upon which we are embarking. I feel I must dissociate myself from some of the words of my hon. and gallant Friend who spoke a little while ago, the Member for Midlothian, in deprecating the interference of the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme, or any English Member, in questions of this sort. I claim the right to interfere in regard to Imperial questions. Three-quarters of my own Constituency live outside Scotland, and it is all nonsense to suppose that we are to be confined in our interference in debate to merely those who happen to be connected with some particular part of the Kingdom. I welcome the interference of the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme. I do not always agree with him, but I think it is not only the right, but it is most useful on the part of an English Member to say what he feels impelled to say.

After all, let us look at this thing as men of common sense. Is there a special form of idiocy or imbecility in Scotland that can only be dealt with by people who happen to be sent here from constituencies North of the Tweed? The question is a great general question which must be dealt with on the lines of statesmanship for both parts of the United Kingdom. I do welcome therefore the interference of hon. Members. It is of enormous importance in questions of this sort that all those who have given time, attention and attention, and study, should be heard. Good may be done by this new effort, but there may be serious evils in legislative proposals against which it is well to safeguard ourselves, such as interference with the homes of those concerned, harsh and drastic rough-riding officialism, and against tyranny. Without going further into these questions which are very difficult, I want to point out to the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for Scotland certain general complaints in regard to the Bill and to the foundations upon which it is built, which are not the same as those of the English Bill. Perhaps in some respects it would have been better to have had a common Bill laying down general principles, and then by separate Clauses adapting the provisions of the Bill to each part of the United Kingdom. I think then you would have been going upon safer grounds. First of all, what is your local authority. In England you establish a local authority, which I think is likely to be a very happy and useful one. It is to be a special committee appointed by the county council in each place. In Section 26 of the English Act we have laid down:— Every local authority shall constitute a committee for the purposes of this Act to be called the Committee for the care of the Mentally Defective, consisting of such members as the council may determine, being Poor Law guardians or other persons having special knowledge and experience in respect of the care, control, and the treatment of the mentally defective, and of the persons so appointed one at least shall be a, woman. What have you in the English Act? You have a provision that the persons must be those selected for their knowledge and experience in dealing with the mentally defective, and they must have one woman on the board. What have you in place of that in the Scottish Bill? The school board of each district upon which there may be no woman whatever! It is one of the most essential points that a woman should be present. I do not know anywhere where it is more necessary for the presence of a woman on a committee. At present you have no guarantee that there shall be. It is merely an education authority popularly elected which has to constitute the committee. A school board is not elected in order to attend to the mentally defective. It is elected in order to promote the general education of the whole community. I have noticed of late years, especially since this Government came into office, a dangerous tendency in educational legislation and administration, and that is to wrap up with educational administration far too many things that are altogether extraneous to it.

The school board is purely an educational authority. It ought to be looking to the promotion of the greatest efficiency in education for the community at large. It ought not to deal with questions that properly come under the Poor Law Board or a committee for the mentally defective. There has been far too much of late of converting real educational administration into setting up amateur Poor Law guardians or giving persons a sort of roving commission to deal with the whole domestic life of children under the age of sixteen. This is not a matter with which they are fitted to deal or with which they can deal without serious detriment to their public duties. I would beg the right hon. Gentleman to consider very carefully whether he cannot follow the better precedent of the English Act, and have a special committee dealing with these mentally defectives apart from ordinary education or administration. I am perfectly certain that it will interfere with that educational administration, and I am quite sure also that those persons who are elected to look after secondary and elementary schools, and to promote the proficiency of education for the general classes of the community, have not the time, even if they have the interest, qualifications, or experience, which would constitute them the most fitting members for a committee for the care of the feeble-mended. Either the proper duties will suffer or else persons not specially fitted to perform educational duties will be elected on the school boards in order to attend to those other duties. I thought it was a pity when the feeding of children was taken away from the Poor Law guardians and put upon the school boards. I think it was an economical error, an administrative mistake, and an injury to education. I think the matter was managed quite as well before by the Poor Law guardians, eked out by the very generous voluntary subscriptions.

I think you are making precisely the same mistake here in putting this altogether extraneous duty on to the school boards. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will consider that question. By this Bill the school boards will now be responsible not only for the conduct of education, but to another Board, and it is a most dangerous thing to put any local authority under more than one central authority. Can you conceive anything worse as a piece of administration than putting the school boards under the Board of Education and under this new Board of Control? The school board is responsible to the Education Department for its own proper work, and you add a totally alien sort of work. I do ask the right hon. Gentleman to consider whether the general foundations of this Bill ought not to be recast upon some sort of sounder administrative foundation. I have to insist and mention these things because this Bill will go up to a Committee, and this is the last time it is possible to give any opinion on the question, a question to which I have given by far the largest number of the years of my life. The Bill after to-day goes upstairs, and then we know how impatiently any further discussion will be heard. We are dealing with a question of enormous difficulty and complexity. I have pointed out some administrative objections to this Bill which I think are of a most serious character. I am not going to stop simply because some hon. Members think it would be easy and convenient and popular with the constituencies in Scotland that we should slur over and botch up a piece of legislation of this kind, which requires every guidance which we can have from science and experience and from the study of administrative experiments elsewhere of a similar kind. I trust before this Bill passes its Second Reading we shall have some assurance that some of these administrative difficulties will be dealt with in Committee upstairs.

Mr. DUNCAN MILLAR

The hon. Member who has just addressed the House speaks with great authority on the educational aspects of the measure we are considering. I am bound to say I sympathise somewhat with some of the criticisms he has made against the measure in its present form. I am glad to associate myself with other hon. Members from Scotland who have stated that there is a desire in Scotland for such a measure, but 1 do hope that there may be further consideration given as to the form of the Bill before it reaches the Statute Book, so as to deal with some of the criticisms just made by the hon. Member and by other hon. Members. I think the question of the position and interests of our school boards is one of very great importance indeed in regard to the duties which are imposed upon them under the Bill. I should like to know whether the school boards of Scotland have been fully consulted in regard to all the matters which it is now proposed that they should have to deal with in the future. I gather from reports which I have seen in the Press and from communications which I have received from Scotland that there is some doubt in the minds of a good many of our school board authorities how far those additional duties should be properly imposed upon them. I notice that the Glasgow School Board Committee on Special Schools, at a meeting the other day, did make a suggestion that the duty of dealing with idiots and imbeciles should not be thrown on school boards, but that the responsibility for all such mentally defectives of whatever age should rest on the parish councils. I think it will be very desirable in this matter that we should be in a position to consider fully the representations which the school boards of Scotland are inclined to make when the Bill is being considered in Committee stage.

I think Section 2 of the Bill as it stands imposes upon the school board duties which they will find it very difficult indeed to carry out, because that Section provides that the power conferred upon school boards under the 1908 Act to contribute towards the maintenance and education in institutions of defective children should be made a duty in the future, and that the boards should have to undertake that duty, where before they could exercise discretion. I think it is very desirable that it should be made clear to the Scottish people that there is no attempt to be made to compel defective children to leave their parents, or to be placed in institutions, particularly those living in rural districts where it would be difficult for educational authorities to make provision on the spot, and I hope that this matter will be reconsidered in Committee, so that there shall be in no case obligation placed on the parents to part with their children, and especially in the ease of poor parents, except under very special circumstances which make it necessary that they should be treated in institutions. With reference to the constitution of the new District Boards of Control which it is intended to set up, the hon. Member for Midlothian (Major Hope) has already drawn the attention of the House to the fact that a conference was held in Scotland a week ago of representatives from the existing District Lunacy Board, and that there is a strong feeling that further consideration should be given to their views, and that in future the existing Districts Boards should continue to have a substantial representation upon the new Boards of Control. It seems to me, looking to the services which the District Lunacy Boards have already rendered in Scotland, they should be recognised in future, and that their complete abolition should not be permitted. I think there is a general feeling that an arrangement could be arrived at which would meet the case and deal with the position of the town councils, parish councils, and county councils, and that the new Board might be so constituted as to give effect in a fair way to the interests of all those parties. I welcome the right hon. Gentleman's statement, made on the last occasion when this Bill was discussed that he was prepared to consider with an open mind, representations made to him on that point. The feeling of the representatives of the existing Lunacy Boards in Scotland, is that they are quite prepared to acquiesce in a change in the provisions of last year's Bill, so as to confer upon the parish councils the administrative control of the mentally should be continued on the new Boards. They think the new administrative duties thrown on parish councils are already so great that they ought to be prepared to accept the assistance of those, who, in the past, have done such good work in connection with the administration of the Lunacy laws in Scotland. They desire that the present Lunacy Boards should continue to exist, and that their representation should be continued on the new Boards. There is no objection on their part to a large representation of the parish councils.

With regard to the school boards, I understand that they are in a somewhat different category, but there would be no difficulty in arriving at an agreement if the right hon. Gentleman could arrange for the matter being further considered at a general conference. I wish to deal with the position of asylum officers under this Bill. Clause 34 which proposes to deal with the superannuation of officers of certified institutions for the defective by the District Boards prescribes certain adaptations and modifications of the existing Superannuation Act of 1909, which may be prescribed by the Secretary for Scotland. Those adaptations and modifications are to include the alteration of the classes of officers, the periods of service and scale of allowances and contributions. I think it is very desirable that in a Bill of this character, where you are proposing to include a new set of asylum officers—because that is practically what the new officers will amount to—and where you are going to modify the asylum officers Superannuation Act of 1909, you should at the same time consider the case of those who have a real grievance under the present superannuation system provided by that Act, and that their case should be dealt with in this Bill. A very strong appeal has been made to introduce into this Bill a section which would deal with the case of the asylum officers who have served in asylums, which were formerly parochial institutions, and which have only recently become district asylums, in order to secure that the period they have served in the parochial asylums should count for superannuation purposes. These officers have had a real grievance for many years, and so have the officers who have served in the pauper lunatic wards in our poorhouses. It is desired that their case might be dealt with in this Bill by making their period of service in the parochial asylums arid pauper lunatic wards count for the purpose of superannuation. I might remind the right hon. Gentleman that there is a small private Member's Bill before the House, backed by the hon. Member for Roxburghshire (Sir John Jardine) and other Scottish Members, which deals with this and other points affecting Scottish asylum officers. I hope the right hon. Gentleman may be in a position either to give a guarantee that that Bill will receive facilities this Session or else that he i3 prepared to deal with the most important of its provisions in this Bill.

I desire to refer, but without going into any detail, to the further grievances of those asylum officers who, under the Superannuation Act, have been classified for superannuation purposes in class 2 instead of class 1. There are a large number of these officers in Scottish asylums employed as tradesmen attendants who are anxious to have their case considered. These officers perform very responsible duties and have the care and charge of patients and they should not be put into the position of having to go into class 2 which consists of officers who have had no control of patients. I think these officers should be given the advantage of being dealt with in this Bill and be classified in class 1 as officers who are in charge of patients. I trust also that the right hon. Gentleman will keep in view the desirability when appointing the new central Board of having at least one woman Commissioner. That point has been dealt with in the English Bill, and it has been agreed that in England there shall be one woman on the Commission. Under the Section of the Bill which deals with the Commissioners and the Sub-Commissioners it is left discretionary to the Secretary for Scotland to appoint even one woman as a Sub-Commissioner or as a Deputy-Commissioner out of the four additional appointments which may be made. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will be able to give us the assurance that instead of this being discretionary on his part, he will agree to one woman acting as a paid Commissioner in view of the large number of women who will fall to be dealt with under the Bill. I trust this measure will be very much improved in Committee, and that some consideration will be given to the suggestions which have been made in different quarters of the House. I feel sure it will give satisfaction in Scotland if it passes in a somewhat altered form to meet the views which have been expressed.

Sir JOHN SPEAR

Although I am an English Member, I wish to congratulate the Scottish Members upon the prospect of better provision being made for the care of the feeble-minded in Scotland. I cannot share the doubts expressed by the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Wedgwdod) about there being a popular demand for legislation of this kind. As president of the Poor Law Association for England and Wales, I know that one of the most prominent subjects they have considered is that of the provision of better care for the feeble-minded, and from all I can learn opinion in Scotland is of the same kind. Not only the dictates of humanity, but expediency demands steps such as are contemplated in this Bill. There is nothing more distressing, to my mind, than to see parents who have feebleminded children who are not in a position to see them well cared for. I cannot help thinking that it is one of the first duties of a nation to come to the aid of people so situated, and try to make the burden which has fallen upon them less heavy than it is at the present time. It seems to me that in the interests of the country we should embrace the first opportunity of helping to care for these children who are feeble-minded.

First of all, we should take such steps as are contemplated by this Bill to meet the condition of mind of the children. I have in my own experience seen cases in Devonshire where feeble-minded children have been trained to physical work, and, they are able not only to make articles of furniture, but devise patterns which they could put into execution. To see those children enjoy their physical work makes one feel how important it is that provision should be made for the children of poorer people who have not the opportunity of availing themselves of an institution of that kind. The hon. Member for Glasgow spoke of feeble-minded persons in workhouses, and he mentioned that there were persons of that character who, were a source of injury and annoyance to their fellow inmates. That is quite correct, and, as a Poor Law guardian, have been face to face with that difficulty and have felt that it is undesirable and unjust that persons of that description who have become somewhat dangerous should remain as inmates, but hitherto we have had no alternative but to send them to the lunatic asylum, and they have sufficient sensibility to make their association with lunatics extremely painful to them. Poor Law guardians have felt for years that it is very desirable there should be a home for feeble-minded where persons of that character would be taken care of in a way consistent with the requirements of their individual case. I quite agree as to the necessity of safeguarding the liberty of the subject, and I hope that in Committee the opinions which the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Wedgwood) and the hon. Member for Glasgow have expressed will be taken fully into consideration to see whether there are any provisions of the Bill which unduly interfere with the liberty of the subject. That, however, is a question that may be dealt with in Committee, though, as far as I can see, there is some precaution taken not to interfere with the feelings between parents and the afflicted child unfairly or unduly.

It seems to me that at present it is the poor who are so situated who have first claim to our consideration. Wealthy people who can afford to send their children to a home are already provided for. There are many who are not able to send their children to such a home, and it is to them that the Bill will prove a real boon indeed. I quite agree that at present the Bill does not provide sufficient funds to efficiently carry out the proposals. Surely the care of the feeble-minded is a national concern, and funds should be provided out of the Imperial Exchequer to carry out this work, rather than place an increased burden on the ratepayers. The increased charges which fall on the rates make it very difficult for public administrators of the law to carry out their work because of the resentment felt by the ratepayers at having to provide more money. I hope that the Government, both in this Bill and in the English Bill, will take steps to meet the natural liability which rests upon them and will find more funds from the Imperial Exchequer with which to carry out this work. I can speak from my knowledge of Poor Law administration and my acquaintance with the desires and opinions of the largest Poor Law authority I believe in the world, and I say that we are as anxious as hon. Members to safeguard the liberties of the subject, but we hope, through the English Bill and through this Bill, to do something not only to secure the liberty of the subject, but also to secure to poor people who have invalid children of this kind the liberty and the right to send them to a home where everything that can be done will be done to develop their intellect, and where due and considerate care will be taken of them while they are in the institution.

Mr. WHYTE

Some regret was expressed earlier in the afternoon that this Bill had not made the same progress as the English Bill. I am not sure that I share that regret, because in the interval Scottish public opinion has had time to crystallise, and when we get in Committee upstairs on this Bill, as I have no doubt we shall very soon, we shall also have the advantage of the Committee on the English Bill. I agree with a good deal that has been said in criticism even of the principle of the Bill. I agree that the question of definition is extremely difficult, but I do not admit that it is as impossible a matter as has been suggested by some of the more severe critics of the measure. The definition is a good deal better in this Bill than it was in last year's Bill, and the year's delay has done no harm either to the English Bill or to this Bill. At the same time I wish to say that as far as I can gather, and I have taken some trouble to find out how educated and enlightened opinion in Scotland regards this question, there would be serious dismay not among those whom the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Wedgwood) would call superior persons but throughout the community from top to bottom, among persons who have really taken a serious interest in this subject, if this Bill were not to proceed to a successful conclusion.

Criticism now is mainly directed to the details of the Bill, and with that criticism I have a good deal of sympathy. The Bill and its methods are in the nature of things a good deal of an experiment, and it is better when we are proceeding by way of experiment to proceed with too many safeguards rather than with too few. On that account I wish to do everything that lays in my power to allay the fears of the small folk in Scotland who think, erroneously as I believe, that their children, if they happen to be feeble-minded, will be snatched from their arms and locked up in the dark prisons of the hon. Member's imagination. He calls it an inquisition. I think he will find that the inquisitorial cases will be a very small minority indeed, and I think that I am entitled to say that people in Scotland have not the fear and suspicion of their own public officials that perhaps people have in England. As far as I am able to judge, the relationship there is a good deal better than it is South of the Tweed, but, be that as it may, we must proceed to criticise this measure on the assumption that it is going to be administered with caution and by men of good sense. I am perfectly certain that would be the case, and in case there may be a certain number of mistakes made by the primary authority concerned with the feeble-minded in Scotland I am quite prepared, as I say, to support those who wish to insert the strongest possible safeguards in the Bill. On the question of definition, I have had it strongly pressed on my notice that there is a certain class of prisoners who frequent Scottish prisons who might possibly be brought under the operation of the Bill. A society which does very good work indeed among the discharged prisoners coming out of the prison in my Constituency has urged very strongly upon me whether a certain class of prisoners might not be regarded as moral imbeciles, but I will not dwell upon that because it is a point which we shall be able to thresh out in Committee upstairs. I was asked to lay this particular question before the House, and I do so the more readily because it is quite evident, that for that class of person who spends the larger part of his days in prison, constantly in gaol and constantly returning to it, something better than our present system is urgently needed. The Discharged Prisoners Aid Society has taken the opportunity of the publication of this measure to express the opinion, for whatever it is worth, that Sub-section (d), Clause 1, might be made applicable to that class of person. I want to deal with the point raised by the hon. Member for Glasgow and Aberdeen Universities who wishes to take school boards out of the Bill altogether—to remove the care and control of feebleminded children from the school board and to hand them over to the jurisdiction of the parish council.

Sir H. CRAIK

No, not of the parish council, but of some special committee for the care of the feeble-minded chosen for their experience, knowledge, and special qualifications.

Mr. WHYTE

On the point who is to be the authority regarding the treatment of the feeble-minded, once feeble-mindedness has been established I have an open mind. But I am quite convinced that the school board alone is entitled to judge—of course in consultation with the parents—whether or not feeble-mindedness exists, and on that ground we object to one of the provisions in the Bill in which the Scottish Education Department is brought in to decide in cases of doubt. I cannot conceive anything more likely to prove to an inspector who comes down from the Scottish Education Department that a child is feeble-minded than the presence of that inspector himself. I am not speaking without book in this case, because I have in my mind the cases of two small children who were left orphans, both father and mother being dead, and, at a very early age, a medical man of high standing decided that they ought to be under some special supervision. He was not actually prepared to say they should be certified as insane, but I am confident that if this measure had been in operation, he would have certified that they were feeble-minded. That was simply and solely due to the fact that these two small children who had been deprived of the care of their parents, were undoubtedly backward in their mental development without being feeble-minded, and the natural nervousness, not to say the terror which came over them when brought face to face with a doctor, was quite enough to make them shrink into themselves altogether, and to show their least favourable side. I have, therefore, great objection to bringing an outside inspector in to decide a question of that sort. I say the only people entitled to decide are the parents and the teacher. Joint authority should rest with those two. Consequently the question of the decision should not be taken out of the hands of the education authority which, in my opinion, is the only body at all fit to judge the question. Once the decision has been made, I have a perfectly open mind as to who shall have care and control over the further treatment of such children.

Sir H. CRAIK

The teacher is not a mental expert. He is neither trained nor qualified in that way.

Mr. WHYTE

What does the hon. Member mean by that?

Sir H. CRAIK

I say the teacher could not say if a child showed signs of mental deficiency. That is a question for a trained doctor.

Mr. WHYTE

In my opinion the people best able to judge are those who exercise care and control over the child, and the teacher who is in constant contact with the child. I have already stated one instance in which the introduction of a strange element, such as a technical medical expert, or an inspector of a public education department is quite enough to turn the balance.

Sir H. CRAIK

I never proposed the visit of an inspector of the Scottish Education Department.

Mr. WHYTE

But it is proposed in the Bill. I should like to turn to two other points. The question of finance has been already raised, and I think it was the hon. Baronet the Member for Ayr Burghs (Sir G. Younger) who, in the first half of the Debate ten days ago, was only speaking the truth when he congratulated the right hon. Gentleman on doing a great deal better for Scotland with the Treasury than previous Secretaries for Scotland. But in this case I think the operation of this Bill may be seriously handicapped unless its finances are put on a better footing. If we start out with a stereotyped Grant front the Treasury it is difficult to make the Treasury move again. In the case of a stereotyped Grant, as the administration of a measure proceeds in a locality it is bound to happen that the expenditure increases. While the State Grant remains unaltered, the local burden grows greater and greater, and the result is that we have an ever-increasing reluctance on the part of the local authorities to enthusiastically cooperate in putting into operation such measures as we are discussing to-day. Therefore we should do well to promise the Secretary for Scotland our enthusiastic support of any proposal he may make to the Treasury to secure a more elastic Grant, and not a stereotyped one, for the working of this measure. Then there was a point raised by the hon. Member for North-East Lanarkshire, namely, the inclusion of women on a much wider scale than is proposed in the Bill in the administration of the measure. That seems one of the vital points in the success of the Bill. A large part of the administration of the measure will, in future years, be concerned with children, and, in dealing with them, I am perfectly certain that a strong element of women representation on all bodies concerned with the administration of this measure is absolutely necessary, if it is to succeed. All these points, however, will be dealt with in Committee upstairs, and I will only add, on the general question as to the desirability of the Bill passing, that I find no strong body of opinion in Scotland which at all echoes the criticisms made by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Wedgwood). On the contrary, bodies which are in no sense composed of superior persons, but working-class bodies and educational bodies, are keenly alive to the need for this measure, and have made their desire for it very clear in many forms to many Members of this House.

Sir F. BANBURY

My hon. Friend the Member for the Tavistock Division (Sir John Spear) told us that he was in favour of this Bill because he considered that mentally defective children belonging to the poor should be properly looked after. That is an excellent proposition with which I agree. But it has very little to do with this Bill. What I object to, and what the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme objects to, is the compulsory part of the Bill—in fact, this Bill Would have very little effect if it were not for the provisions as to compulsion. The Bill goes much further than my hon. Friend suggested. It actually, in Clause 10, gives power to the Secretary for Scotland, if he finds a mentally defective person in prison undergoing a sentence of imprisonment, to keep that person imprisoned without any rhyme or reason being given, for all that he has to do is to get a certificate from two duly qualified medical practitioners. You can get a certificate from a doctor, as you can get an opinion from counsel, with very little trouble. I attach no importance whatever to the certificate of two duly qualified medical practitioners, especially when it is asked for by a person in the position of the Secretary for Scotland. The Bill really puts the Secretary for Scotland in the position of the old French kings, who sent out lettres de cachet, and kept people in prison as long as they liked. It is true that here there is a revision. At the end of the year somebody must come forward and say that the right hon. Gentleman is keeping the person in prison rightly and properly, but once the right hon. Gentleman has him in his power he will not be anxious to let him go. Another point is that doctors differ, and while two doctors might be found to say that I, perhaps, am mentally deficient, I should be equally able to produce two doctors who would say that upon one subject—the single tax—the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme was mentally deficient, and ought to be locked up. I am not sure that I should not hold that view if I were the Home Secretary.

4.0 P.M.

I desire to point out to my hon Friend for the Tavistock Division that this proposal goes much further than he thinks. It is really a very serious attempt upon the liberties of the subject. I am opposed to this Bill, as I was opposed to the English Bill, on the ground that it interferes with the liberties of the subject. I am an individualist, and believe strongly that the great majority of the people in this country are individualists, if they only knew where individualism came in. They are deceived and deluded by such speeches—I do not say it in an offensive way—as that of my hon. Friend the Member for the Tavistock Division. They think it will do something to relieve them to an obligation, and will put the expense upon somebody else. My hon. Friend says that the boards of guardians all over the Kingdom have been desirous of extending the operation of this Bill. Naturally all officials desire to extend their power. My hon. Friend says that these boards of guardians are desirous of doing all this at the expense of the taxpayers and not at that of the ratepayers. That is one of the very serious blots upon this Bill. The hon. Gentleman who has just sat down made an appeal to the Treasury to increase the Grant. We know that as soon as the Bill is in operation it will be found that it cannot be carried out for the money voted by the Treasury, and further efforts will be made to obtain more money from them. The hon. Member for the Blackfriars Division (Mr. Barnes) made some very interesting remarks. I understood him to be not very favourable to this Bill, and that he would prefer another Bill which would go to the root of the evil and stop mental deficiency. He said that mental deficiency was caused by landlordism and capitalism. He is in a powerful position in this House. Why does he not bring in a Bill to abolish landlordism and capitalism, vote against the Second Reading of this Bill and then wait and see the effects of the abolition of landlordism and capitalism? That is a much simpler method of procedure and one which will probably have a much better result. I do not think that mental deficiency is caused by poverty. It is very difficult to know how it is caused. I fail to see how this Bill is going to stop the production of mental deficients. The hon. Member for the Blackfriars Division said he would like to stop the production of feeble-minded persons. So should I. But how can you do it? You will certainly not stop it by this Bill. Whether or not you will arrest its growth by this Bill is extremely doubtful. I felt obliged to say a few words upon this subject because I was unable to speak upon the other Bill, and although I am a member of the Committee on the English Bill, I have not been able so far to attend its meetings. As to the suggestion put forward that the objection I have raised to compulsion has been to a certain extent met by the insertion of an Amendment in the English Bill, which says that a child cannot be taken away from the custody of its father or mother without their consent, but that such consent should not be unreasonably withheld, that seems to be a most ridiculous suggestion, and the Amendment was too absurd to have been put into the Bill. Who is to

decide what is unreasonable? Probably it will be two medical practitioners who have already made up their minds that the child is mentally deficient, and who will say that the objection is unreasonable. You might just as well have a Bill dealing with the liberty of the subject in regard to leases and say that if the consent to repair is unreasonably withheld the person shall be imprisoned. That infringes upon the old doctrine that an Englishman's home is his castle. I do not know where we are going. What with sentimental Gentlemen on this side of the House and sentimental Gentlemen on the other side of the House, and the medical students who think they are going to revolutionise the whole world, and by science prevent what has been going on for I do not know how many thousand years, and what with all this sort of Bill to carry out the fads of these hon. Gentlemen, I do not know what is going to happen to the country. Where have we been during the last three or four hundred years when we had none of these measures taking one man and locking him up, and taking a child away from his parents. We were progressing until the year 1906, when, I admit, our progress stopped. Prior to that time we had been progressing in the most satisfactory manner. I felt bound to express shortly the views I hold strongly, not because I desire to prevent a feebleminded child or person being looked after, that is the last thing I should desire to prevent, but because I desire that everybody, whether a rich man or a poor man, shall be able to do what he likes with his own affairs without constant interference on the part of right hon. Gentlemen opposite or boards of guardians or other officials paid for out of the pocket and by the work of that person.

The SECRETARY for SCOTLAND (Mr. McKinnon Wood) 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, 180; Noes, 75.

Division No. 125.] AYES. [4.5 p.m.
Abraham, William (Dublin, Harbour) Balfour, Sir Robert (Lanark) Brady, Patrick Joseph
Acland, Francis Dyke Baring, Sir Godfrey (Barnstaple) Brocklehurst, William B.
Ainsworth, John Stirling Beale, Sir William Phlpson Bryce, John Annan
Alden, Percy Beck, Arthur Cecil Burke, E. Haviland-
Allen, Arthur A. (Dumbarton) Benn, W. W. (T. H'mts, St. George) Buxton, Noel (Norfolk, North)
Allen, Rt. Hon. Charles P. (Stroud) Black, Arthur W. Carr-Gomm, H. W.
Arnold, Sydney Boland, John Pius Cawley, H. T. (Lancs., Heywood)
Baker, Joseph Allen (Finsbury, E.) Bowerman, Charles W. Chancellor, H. G.
Chapple, Dr. William Allen Jones, J. Towyn (Carmarthen, East) Parker, James (Halifax)
Clough, William Jones, Leif Stratten (Notts, Rushcliffe) Parry, Thomas M.
Compton-Rickett, Rt. Hon. Sir J. Jones, William (Carnarvonshire) Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek)
Condon, Thomas Joseph Jones, W. S. Glyn- (Stepney) Pearce, William (Limehouse)
Cornwall, Sir Edwin A. Jowett, Frederick William Pease, Rt. Hon. Joseph A. (Rotherham)
Cotton, William Francis Joyce, Michael Phillips, John (Longford, S.)
Cowan, W. H. Keating, Matthew Pointer, Joseph
Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth) Kellaway, Frederick George Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.
Crooks, William Kelly, Edward Price, C. E. (Edinburgh, Central)
Crumley, Patrick Kennedy, Vincent Paul Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.)
Cullinan, J. Kilbride, Denis Radford, George Heynes
Davies, Timothy (Lincs., Louth) King, Joseph Raphael, Sir Herbert H.
Dawes, James Arthur Lambert, Richard (Wilts, Cricklade) Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough)
Delany, William Lardner, James C. R. Reddy, M.
Denman, Hon. R. D. Lawson, Sir W. (Cumb'rld, Cockerm'th) Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)
Dickinson, W. H. Leach, Charles Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbighs)
Donelan, Captain A. Lewis, Rt. Hon. John Herbert Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradford)
Doris, William Lough, Rt. Hon. Thomas Robertson, John M. (Tyneside)
Duffy, William J. Low, Sir Frederick (Norwich) Robinson, Sidney
Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness) Lundon, Thomas Roth, Walter F.
Edwards, Sir Francis (Radnor) Lyell, Charles Henry Roche, Augustine (Louth)
Elverston, Sir Harold Lynch, A. A. Rowlands, James
Esmonde, Sir Thomas (Wexford, N.) Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk Burghs) Samuel, Rt. Hon. H. L. (Cleveland)
Falconer, James McGhee, Richard Schwann, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles E.
Ffrench, Peter Macnamara, Rt. Hon. Dr. T. J. Sheehy, David
Fiennes, Hon. Eustace Edward MacVeagh, Jeremiah Sherwell, Arthur James
Fitzgibbon, John M'Kean, John Shortt, Edward
Flavin, Michael Joseph McKenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald Smith, H. B. L. (Northampton)
Gladstone, W. G. C. M'Micking, Major Gilbert Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim, S.)
Glanville, H. J. Marshall, Arthur Harold Spicer, Rt. Hon. Sir Albert
Goldstone, Frank Meagher, Michael Sutherland, John E.
Greig, Colonel James William Molloy, Michael Sutton, John E.
Guest, Major Hon. C. H. C. (Pembroke) Montagu, Hon. E. S. Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton)
Guest, Hon. Frederick E. (Dorset, E.) Mooney, John J. Toulmin, Sir George
Gwynn, Stephen Lucius (Galway) Morgan, George Hay Trevelyan, Charles Philips
Hackett, J. Morrell, Philip Verney, Sir H.
Harmsworth, Cecil (Luton, Beds) Muldoon, John Ward, John (Stoke-upon-Trent)
Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale) Munro, Robert Wardle, G. J.
Harvey, T. E. (Leeds, W.) Murphy, Martin J. Wason, Rt. Hon. E. (Clackmannan)
Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth) Murray, Captain Hon. Arthur C. Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)
Havelock-Allan, Sir Henry Nicholson, Sir Charles (Doncaster) Webb, H.
Hayden, John Patrick Nolan, Francis White, Sir Luke (York, E.R.)
Hayward, Evan Norton, Captain Cecil William White, Patrick (Meath, North)
Hazleton, Richard Nugent, Sir Walter Richard Whitehouse, John Howard
Higham, John Sharp O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny) Whyte, Alexander F.
Hinds, John O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool) Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)
Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H. O'Doherty, Philip Wood, Rt. Hon. T. McKinnon (Glas.)
Holmes, Daniel Turner O'Dowd, John Young, William (Perth, East)
Howard, Hon. Geoffrey O'Malley, William Younger, Sir George
Hudson, Walter O'Shaughnessy, P. J. Yoxall, Sir James Henry
Hughes, Spencer Leigh O'Shee, James John
Isaacs, Rt. Hon. Sir Rufus O'Sullivan, Timothy TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr. Illingworth and Mr. Gulland.
Jones, Rt.Hon.Sir D.Brynmor (Swansea) Palmer, Godfrey Mark
NOES.
Adamson, William Gilmour, Captain J. Peto, Basil Edward
Archer-Shee, Major Martin Goldsmith, Frank Pringle, William M. R.
Ashley, W. W. Grant, James Augustus Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel
Atherley-Jones, Llewellyn A. Hamersley, Alfred St. George Richardson, Thomas (Whitehaven)
Baird, John Lawrence Hardie, J. Keir Samuel, Sir Harry (Norwood)
Banbury, Sir Frederick George Henderson, Arthur (Durham) Sanders, Robert Arthur
Baring, Maj. Hon. Guy V. (Winchester) Henderson, Major H. (Berks, Abingdon) Scott, A. MacCallum (Glas., Bridgeton)
Barnes, George N. Herbert, Hon. A. (Somerset, S.) Spear, Sir John Ward
Barrie, H. T. Hill-Wood, Samuel Stanley, Hon. G. F. (Preston)
Beach, Hon. Michael Hugh Hicks Hope, Major J. A. (Midlothian) Steel-Maitland, A. D.
Benn, Arthur Shirley (Plymouth) Jardine, Sir J. (Roxburgh) Sykes, Sir Mark (Hull, Central)
Booth, Frederick Handel Jessel, Captain Herbert M. Talbot, Lord Edmund
Boscawen, Sir Arthur S. T. Griffith- Kerr-Smiley, Peter Kerr Thomas, J. H.
Bridgeman, William Clive Kerry, Earl of Thompson, Robert (Belfast, North)
Bull, Sir William James Kinloch-Cooke, Sir Clement Thynne, Lord Alexander
Burn, Colonel C. R. Lyttelton, Hon. J. C. (Droitwich) Wedgwood, Josiah C.
Campbell, Capt. Duncan F. (Ayr, N.) Macdonald, J. Ramsay (Leicester) Weston, Colonel J. W.
Cooper, Richard Ashmole Macpherson, James Ian White, Major G. D. (Lancs., Southport)
Courthope, George Loyd Martin, Joseph Williams, Col. R. (Dorset, W.)
Craik, Sir Henry Millar, James Duncan Winterton, Earl
Croft, Henry Page Morrison-Bell, Major A. C. (Honiton) Wood, John (Stalybridge)
Dalziel, Rt. Hon. Sir J. H. (Kirkcaldy) Newman, John R. P. Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart-
Esslemont, George Birnie Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield) Yate, Colonel C. E.
Eyres-Monsell, B. M. Orde-Powlett, Hon. W. G. A.
Falle, Bertram Godfrey Outhwaite, R. L. TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr. Robert Harcourt and Mr. Neilson.
Fell, Arthur Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington)

Bill read a second time.

Mr. WEDGWOOD

I beg to move,

"That the Bill be committed to a Committee of the Whole House."

The House divided: Ayes, 19; Noes, 241.

Division No. 126.] AYES. [4.13 p.m.
Ashley, Wilfrid W. Eyres-Monsell, B. M. Radford, G. H.
Atherley-Jones, Llewellyn A. Grant, J. A. Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel
Banbury, Sir Frederick George Kerry, Earl of Williams, Col, R. (Dorset, W.)
Booth, Frederick Handel Morrison-Bell, Major A. C. (Honiton) Yate, Colonel C. E.
Bridgeman, William Clive Neilson, Francis
Burn, Colonel C. R. Nicholson, William G. (Petersfield) TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr. Wedgwood and Mr. Martin.
Courthope, George Loyd Outhwaite, R. L.
Craik, Sir Henry
NOES.
Abraham, William (Dublin, Harbour) Ffrench, Peter Lynch, Arthur Alfred
Acland, Francis Dyke Fiennes, Hon. Eustace Edward Lyttelton, Hon. J. C. (Droitwich)
Adamson, William Fitzgibbon, John Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)
Ainsworth, John Stirling Flavin, Michael Joseph Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk Burghs)
Alden, Percy Gilmour, Captain John MacGhee, Richard
Allen, Arthur A. (Dumbarton) Ginnell, Laurence Maclean, Donald
Allen, Rt. Hon. Charles P. (Stroud) Gladstone, W. G. C. Macnamara, Rt. Hon. Dr. T. J.
Archer-Shee, Major M. Glanville, Harold James Macpherson, James Ian
Arnold, Sydney Goldsmith, Frank MacVeagh, Jeremiah
Baird, John Lawrence Goldstone, Frank McKenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald
Baker, Joseph Allen (Finsbury, E.) Greig, Colonel James William M'Micking, Major Gilbert
Balfour, Sir Robert (Lanark) Guest, Major Hon. C. H. C. (Pembroke) Marshall, Arthur Harold
Baring, Maj. Hon. Guy V. (Winchester) Guest, Hon. Frederick E. (Dorset, E.) Meagher, Michael
Baring, Sir Godfrey (Barnstaple) Gwynn, Stephen Lucius (Galway) Meehan, Patrick J. (Queen's Co., Leix)
Barnes, G. N. Hackett, J. Millar, James Duncan
Barrie, H. T. Hamersley, Alfred St. George Molloy, Michael
Beach, Hon. Michael Hugh Hicks Hardie, J. Keir Montagu, Hon. E. S.
Beale, Sir William Phlpson Harmsworth, Cecil (Luton, Beds) Mooney, J. J.
Beauchamp, Sir Edward Harvey, T. E. (Leeds, West) Morgan, George Hay
Beck, Arthur Cecil Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth) Morrell, Philip
Benn, Arthur Shirley (Plymouth) Havelock-Allan, Sir Henry Muldoon, John
Benn, W. (T. H'mts., St. George) Hayden, John Patrick Munro, Robert
Black, Arthur A. Hayward, Evan Murphy, Martin J.
Boland, John Plus Hazleton, Richard Murray, Captain Hon. Arthur C.
Boscawen, Sir Arthur S. T. Griffith- Henderson, Arthur (Durham) Newman, John R. P.
Bowerman, Charles W. Henderson, Major H. (Berkshire) Nicholson, Sir Charles N. (Doncaster)
Brady, Patrick Joseph Henderson, J. M. (Aberdeen, W.) Nolan, Joseph
Brocklehurst, William B. Herbert, Hon. A. (Somerset, S.) Norton, Captain William Cecil
Bryce, John Annan Higham, John Sharp Nugent, Sir Walter Richard
Bull, Sir William James Hill-Wood, Samuel O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)
Burke, E. Haviland- Hinds, John O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)
Buxton, Noel (Norfolk, North) Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H. O'Doherty, Philip
Campbell, Capt. Duncan F. (Ayr, N.) Hogge, James Myles O'Dowd, John
Carr-Gomm, H. W. Holmes, Daniel Turner O'Grady, James
Cawley, H. T. (Lancs., Heywood) Hope, Major J. A. (Midlothian) O'Malley, William
Chancellor, Henry George Howard, Hon. Geoffrey Orde-Powlett, Hon. W. G. A.
Chapple, Dr. William Allen Hudson, Walter O'Shaughnessy, P. J.
Clough, William Hughes, Spencer Leigh O'Shee, James John
Compton-Rickett, Rt. Hon. Sir J. Isaacs, Rt. Hon. Sir Rufus O'Sullivan, Timothy
Condon, Thomas Joseph Jardine, Sir John (Roxburghshire) Palmer, Godfrey Mark
Cooper, Richard Ashmole Jessel, Captain H. M. Parker, James (Halifax)
Cornwall, Sir Edwin A. Jones, Rt.Hon.Sir D.Brynmor (Swansea) Parry, Thomas H.
Cotton, William Francis Jones, J. Towyn (Carmarthen, East) Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek)
Cowan, William Henry Jones, Leif Stratten (Notts, Rushcliffe) Pearce, William (Limehouse)
Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth) Jones, William (Carnarvonshire) Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington)
Crooks, William Jones, W. S. Glyn- (T. H'mts, Stepney) Pease, Rt. Hon. Joseph A. (Rotherham)
Crumley, Patrick Jowett, Frederick William Peto, Basil Edward
Cullinan, John Joyce, Michael Phillips, John (Longford, S.)
Dalziel, Rt. Hon. Sir J. H. (Kirkcaldy) Keating, Matthew Pointer, Joseph
Davies, Timothy (Lincs., Louth) Kellaway, Frederick George Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.
Dawes, James Arthur Kelly, Edward Price, C. E. (Edinburgh, Central)
Delany, William Kennedy, Vincent Paul Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.)
Denman, Hon. Richard Douglas Kerr-Smiley, Peter Kerr Raphael, Sir Herbert Henry
Dickinson, W. H. Kilbride, Denis Rea, Rt. Hon. Russell (South Shields)
Donelan, Captain A. King, Joseph Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough)
Doris, William Kinloch-Cooke, Sir Clement Reddy, Michael
Duffy, William J. Lambert, Richard (Wilts, Cricklade) Richardson, Thomas (Whitehaven)
Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness) Lardner, James C. R. Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)
Edwards, Sir Francis (Radnor) Lawson, Sir W. (Cumb'rld, Cockerm'th) Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbighs)
Elverston, Sir Harold Leach, Charles Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradford)
Esmonde, Sir Thomas (Wexford, N.) Lewis, Rt. Hon. John Herbert Robertson, John M. (Tyneside)
Esslemont, George Birnie Lough, Rt. Hon. Thomas Robinson, Sidney
Falconer, James Low, Sir Frederick (Norwich) Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke)
Falle, Bertram Godfray London, T. Roche, Augustine (Louth)
Fell, Arthur Lyell, Charles Henry Rowlands, James
Samuel, Rt. Hon. H. L. (Cleveland) Sykes, Sir Mark (Hull, Central) White, J. Dundas (Glasgow, Tradeston)
Samuel, J. (Stockton-on-Tees) Talbot, Lord E. White, Sir Luke (Yorks, E.R.)
Sanders, Robert A. Thomas, James Henry White, Patrick (Meath, North)
Schwann, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles E. Thompson, Robert (Belfast, North) Whitehouse, John Howard
Scott, A. MacCallum (Glas., Bridgeton) Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton) Whyte, Alexander F.
Sheehy, David Thynne, Lord Alexander Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)
Sherwell, Arthur James Toulmin, Sir George Winterton, Earl
Shortt, Edward Trevelyan, Charles Philips Wood, John (Stalybridge)
Smith, H. B. Lees (Northampton) Verney, Sir Harry Wood, Rt. Hon. T. McKinnon (Glas.)
Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim, S.) Ward, John (Stoke-upon-Trent) Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart-
Spear, Sir John Ward Wardle, George J. Young, William (Perth, East)
Spicer, Rt. Hon. Sir Albert Wason, Rt. Hon. E. (Clackmannan) Younger, Sir George
Stanley, Hon. G. F. (Preston) Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney) Yoxall, Sir James Henry
Steel-Maitland, A. D. Webb, H.
Strauss, Edward A. (Southwark, W.) Weston, Colonel J. W. TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr. Illingworth and Mr. Gulland.
Sutherland, John E. White, Major G. D. (Lancs., Southport)
Sutton, John

Bill committed to a Standing Committee.