§ Motion made, and Question proposed, "That a sum, not exceeding £44,754, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1916, for the Salaries of the Law Officers' Department; the Salaries and Expenses of the Department of the Solicitor for the Affairs of His Majesty's Treasury and King's Proctor, and the Department of the Director of Public Prosecutions; for the Costs of Prosecutions, of other Legal 1085 Proceedings, and of Parliamentary Agency." [NOTE.—£45,000 has been voted on account.]
§ Mr. WATTI wish to call attention to the fact that these law charges this year show a large increase of £7,575, and that is rather surprising in face of the fact that the legal world is exceptionally depressed in these war times. Everybody else is saving money on law, but the Government is not. It is, I confess, very difficult to understand that. This Vote includes the salaries of two important Law Officers—the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General—£7,000 being allocated to the former, and £6,000 to the latter. This Committee ought to consider its position in granting these salaries. It must be aware, from various sources, that these two Law Officers are not receiving these sums, but that by a private arrangement which my hon. and learned Friend the Member for North-West Lanark has aptly described as "pooling," the salaries are not paid directly to them. These salaries have been fixed at the amounts I have mentioned, because Parliament desires to secure the services of a certain type of men for the posts. It pays these high salaries in order that the officials may be above suspicion and, at the same time, be satisfactorily rewarded for the work which they do. I suggest that these gentlemen should not have the power of coming to some private arrangement whereby the Committee is baulked of its intention, and I beg to enter my protest against this practice.
I desire further to have an explanation from the Financial Secretary to the Treasury of the extraordinary figures demanded for the King's Proctor. I find on Vote F there is an item of £7,000—£500 more than last year—which is described as the cost of intervention by the King's Proctor in divorce cases. That seems an exorbitant sum. I do not know what the King's Proctor does. I never could discover why he should poke his nose into these cases, or why it should be done at such an expense to the community. Then, if the Committee will turn to another page, they will find a sum of £2,000 asked for for the solicitor to the King's Proctor, and £l,500 for his assistant. Altogether that Department costs the country £40,000, and I should like the right hon. Gentleman to tell us what value the community gets in return.
§ Mr. MONTAGUThe King's Proctor, who is also the Treasury Solicitor, receives 1086 no salary or any other emolument for acting as King's Proctor, and his fees go to the Treasury as the Appropriations-in-Aid. With regard to the observation of the hon. Member, that this item shows an increase of over £7,000, I may say that that amount is practically accounted for by one item in the Appropriations-in-Aid, an item largely due to successful litigation. Last year there were legal proceedings in which costs were recovered to the extent of £11,000. This year the costs recovered only amount to £5,500, and that item therefore practically accounts for the whole increase in the Vote. I need not pursue the remarks of the hon. Member with regard to the method employed by individual Ministers for dealing with the salaries voted by Parliament. We had a debate on that subject early in the Session, and the House of Commons then, as I think, very rightly, declined to take any interest in the matter.
§ Mr. PRINGLEI had expected when I saw the hon. Member for East Nottingham (Sir J. D. Rees) here that he had given notice to the Law Officers that he wished to raise a question which he had upon the Question Paper to-day. He has shown a great anxiety to raise the question of the policy of the Law Officers in dealing with prosecutions for treason. Surely this is a suitable opportunity, much more appropriate than Question Time, to ascertain the policy of the Government in dealing with persons who are guilty of publishing or printing treasonable publications. I notice, for example, that on the Question Paper to-day the hon. Member for East Nottingham was anxious to ascertain why the Law Officers of the Crown—
§ The CHAIRMANThat is certainly not a matter which can be raised in Committee of Supply. It is a matter of the policy of the Government, not of the Law Officers, who simply carry out what is decided upon by the Government.
§ Mr. PRINGLEOn a point of Order. I have always understood that it was the function of the Law Officers to advise the Government as to what the law is. As this is a question as to what publications come within the law of treason, surely I am entitled to raise the matter on the salary of the Attorney-General?
§ The CHAIRMANThat is not so. The hon. Member, I think, will be able to see this: that if that were permitted, we 1087 might have the Law Officers here in Committee of Supply answering legal questions in relation to proceedings in which they had to take action. That would obviously be out of order.
§ Mr. PRINGLEMay I remind you that only a fortnight ago the hon. Member for East Nottingham gave notice that he was going to raise in this House the question of a publication of the senior Member for Leicester—
§ The CHAIRMANThat does not affect the point at all.
§ Mr. PRINGLEThe Law Officers ought to be here.
§ Mr. HOGGEOn the Estimate as it stands, I desire to make a few observations in view of what the Financial Secretary to the Treasury said. Do I understand him to say that the King's Proctor has no official salary? I listened very carefully to the points made by my hon. friend (Mr. Watt), and from the right hon. Gentleman's reply I understood him to say that the King's Proctor has no salary. Is that so? If the Financial Secretary will look at page 4 of Class III., which we are considering, he will see there is put down a sum of £2,000 for an individual called "Solicitor and King's Proctor." That obviously is the person in question, and he is entitled to £2,000 a year for the work he is doing. Therefore the right hon. Gentleman will see that he cannot ride off on that horse in attempting to reply to my hon. Friend who raised this point. The point is a very serious one and involves a question of morals. The right hon. Gentleman will observe that there has been, that there is this year in fact, an increase of nearly £1,000 in the salaries and allowances for this Department. We ought to be more moral than ever we were, because there are fewer people here. There are fewer of these cases arising. It is a perfectly pertinent question to ask why this Vote is increased.
I do not think my right hon. Friend really answered the point put to him by the hon. Member who introduced this discussion. On page 4, under the Law Officers' Department, it is set out that the Attorney-General gets £7,000 for non-contentious business and the Solicitor-General £6,000 for non-contentious business. My hon. Friend did not make the point quite clear, and perhaps the Committee will let me try to make it once more. Under the 1088 system which is known to exist one or other of these high legal officials is outside the rule and the other inside the rule; thus the lower-placed official, the Solicitor-General, will be in receipt of a higher salary for non-contentious business than the Attorney-General. That is a very undignified position for the Law Officers of the Crown to find themselves in. There is some little interest taken in this matter, but the Financial Secretary to the Treasury has not addressed his usually clear mind to the degradation of this high office. Surely Parliament cannot mean that the lower-placed legal officer, namely, the Solicitor-General, by remaining outside a pool, whether compulsorily or otherwise the Committee has no knowledge, should be drawing a larger salary than the Attorney-General, who is the senior legal official. I do not know what other payment they get for contentious business. I suppose that is better paid than non-contentious business. At any rate, there is a point to which my right hon. Friend has not replied. In order that he may understand it I will repeat my questions. First, is it or is it not the case that the King's Proctor is paid a salary? Is this the King's Proctor who is paid £2,000, and if it is not the King's Proctor, whose Proctor is it? The second question is, does he consider it in consonance with the dignity of high legal positions in this House, by an arrangement over which this House has no control, that the junior legal official draws a larger salary than the senior and more dignified legal official?
§ Mr. MONTAGUThe hon. Member quite misunderstood what I said about the King's Proctor. The Treasury solicitor is a gentleman who has to act, particularly in war time, in a very large number of proceedings. It is quite true that the King's Proctor is also the Treasury solicitor, and it is quite true that as Treasury solicitor he gets a salary of £2,000. What I said was that he got no special emoluments as King's Proctor, and that all fees and emoluments paid to him as King's Proctor were paid into the Treasury as Appropriations in Aid. With regard to the salaries of the Law Officers of the Crown, the Attorney-General is paid £7,000 a year, and the Solicitor-General £6,000 a year for non-contentious business. Contentious business is specially defined in a Treasury Minute of many decades ago to be business for which they are specially paid fees.
§ Mr. J. SAMUELThat was in 1895.
§ Mr. MONTAGUI must decline most respectfully to go into the question of what either of these Gentlemen does with his salary, because I venture to submit that this Committee has absolutely nothing to do with that.
§ Sir J. D. REESI was not quite clear about, your ruling, Sir, in reply to the hon. Member opposite, and I should like to ask, is it out of order on this Vote for the salaries of the Law Officers of the Crown to debate here or to raise the question to what extent Members of this House are entitled to ask for their opinion? If you will allow me, I will put a concrete case. I wanted to find out, for instance, how far the present Militia Ballot Act was in force in view of the enactments subsequently passed which more or less deal with the same subject. If you go to the Table with a question like that, the Clerks—I have no doubt quite correctly, and I do not dispute it—say, "You cannot put this in JI question for answer." I accept that. But is it also the case that when the salaries of the Law Officers are before a Committee of the House it is not competent to raise that question? I would like to ask to what extent Members are entitled to appeal to them for information as to the present state of the law, which Members may require perhaps for their guidance. I submit that -the matter is not answered by their saying "Go to Mr. So-and-so, and pay your two guineas or five guineas." I am raising the question of what are the duties of these officials and whether it is not competent to discuss them upon this Vote.
§ The CHAIRMANThe hon. Member's assumption is quite correct; it would not be in order.
§ Mr. J. SAMUELThe right hon. Gentleman the Financial Secretary to the Treasury is mistaken in his history in regard to the fees paid to the Attorney-General and Solicitor-General for non-contentious business. Those fees only go back to the year 1895. Before 1895, during the reign of the Liberal Government from 1892 to 1895, the salary was fixed at £9,000, to include both contentious and non-contentious business. In 1895, when Lord Alverstone came into office, he declined to accept that arrangement, and then, by a Treasury Minute, the old system was reverted to, by which £7,000 a year was paid to the Attorney-General, plus fees, and the Solicitor-General got £6,000, plus 1090 fees for contentious business. Therefore this arrangement does not go back many decades. It really goes back to 1895.
§ Mr. MONTAGUMy hon. Friend's point is a very small one. The date of the Treasury Minute to which I referred is 5th July, 1895, so that instead of saying "many decades," I ought to have said exactly two.
§ Mr. J. SAMUELThen my recollection is quite correct. I said 1895, because only two years ago I looked up the whole matter. I was a Member of the 1895 Parliament, and I remember that an ex-Chairman of Committees (Mr. Caldwell) who was very exacting in these matters, discussed this question several times in that Parliament. I agree with some of my hon. Friends that if we are going to pay these salaries they ought to be received by the persons named. If they are entitled to receive £7,000 and £6,000 a year, then they certainly should not, without the consent of the House, divide those sums with other Members of the Cabinet.
§ Sir H. CRAIKIs it in Order in this Committee to discuss a matter over which the Committee has no control whatever?
§ Mr. J. SAMUELI am not going to pursue the subject.
§ The CHAIRMANOne or two other Members have been walking round that subject, and I had intended to intervene if it had developed at all.
§ Mr. J. SAMUELI am not going to pursue it. I do think that out of respect to the Committee the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General ought to be present upon this Vote.
§ Mr. PRINGLEThey are in the precincts of the House.
§ Mr. J. SAMUELI do not know where they are, but it is in accordance with precedents in previous years for them to be present when the Vote is under discussion. The amount we paid two or three years ago to the Attorney-General was no less than £20,000, and to the Solicitor-General about £18,000. At any rate, it averaged about that amount. We think that is a very excessive sum, and I think also we ought to have each year a Return showing how much is paid for contentious as well as non-contentious business.
§ Mr. PRINGLEI wish to call attention to the question of the fees which arc received by the Law Officers. I think 1091 when the question of the Law Officer's salary is being discussed, the right hon. Gentleman who is responsible for the Estimate should be in a position to tell us what the Law Officers respectively receive in fees for contentious business. The Committee is entitled to that information because, after all, at present we are entitled to consider the salaries which are being paid, and if on a system of payment, partly by salary and partly by fees, any servant or officer of the Crown is receiving a disproportionate salary, it would be for this House of Commons to take action with a view to reducing that salary. I am all the more surprised that when this Vote is under discussion neither of the Law Officers has thought fit to be present. I am informed that before this Vote came on the Attorney-General was within the precincts, was informed that it was imminently coming on, and in spite of that he has departed. In these circumstances of disrespect to this Committee, I beg leave to move to Report Progress.
§ The CHAIRMAN (Mr. Whitley)If the hon. Member will be good enough to read the Standing Orders, he will find that no Motion to Report Progress can be moved.
§ Question put, and agreed to.