§ As amended (in the Standing Committee), considered.
§ Lord ALEXANDER THYNNEI beg to move, "That the Bill be recommitted in respect of Clause 1."
I wish to call the attention of the House to the want of consideration with which its own Committee upstairs was treated in regard to this Bill. Everyone who took part in the discussions upstairs will agree that those discussions would have taken a very different course indeed if at the time we embarked upon them we had been furnished with a copy of the Regulations which were subsequently issued. Certain important Regulations were issued under the Mental Deficiency Act, 1913—Regulations which had a most important bearing upon the deliberations of the Committee. Those Regulations were not issued until 30th March. I submit that it would have been perfectly possible, without any difficulty at all, for the Government to have issued them five or six weeks earlier, so that the Committee might have been apprised of their purpose. Those Regulations were issued on 30th March. They came into force two days later, and, after thirty days—that is, at the end of the current month—they have the force of an Act of Parliament under Section 18 of the Mental Deficiency Act, and can only—
§ The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of EDUCATION (Mr. U. A. Pease)They are only provisional Regulations.
§ Lord A. THYNNEThey are only provisional Regulations for the present month. At the end of the current month, as I am saying, under Section 18, they get the full force of law.
It being a Quarter-past Eight of the clock, further Proceeding was postponed without Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 4.