§ 63 and 64. Mr. GEORGE ROBERTSasked the President of the Local Government Board (1) the number of local authorities administering areas where labour for hop-picking is employed which have adopted the optional model by-laws, designed to secure a rational measure of decency and sanitation, prepared by his Department, together with the number who have failed to apply such by-laws; and (2) if he is aware that numbers of persons migrate into the several parishes of the county of Hereford in the autumn for the purposes of hop-picking, and that many are accommodated without due regard to sanitation or to the appropriate separation of the sexes; and whether, as the local authorities have failed in several cases to adopt the model by-laws prepared by his Department, he will consider the advisability of strengthening those by-laws and making them compulsory in application throughout all the areas of hop-picking employment?
§ Mr. BURNSIn only five out of some thirty-four districts in which imported hop-pickers are employed have the local authority failed to make 326 by-laws. Legislation would be necessary to make the adoption of by-laws compulsory, but I have urged on all these authorities the necessity for making by-laws, and have recently addressed a further letter on the subject. I am also asking for a report from the medical officers of health, to be sent before the hop-picking season begins, showing how far the accommodation for the imported pickers expected is sufficient. The matter is one to which I have given a good deal of personal attention, and I have visited several of the hop-picking areas. For the last four or five years one or more of my officers have inspected the districts, and they report that the accommodation for hop-pickers is improving. I have directed further visits to be made this year.