HC Deb 17 August 1916 vol 85 cc2193-4

(1)The next statutory elections of county and borough councillors, district councillors, guardians, and parish councillors, and of members of school boards in Scotland, shall be postponed, or, in the case of elections already postponed under the Elections and Registration Act, 1915, further postponed, for a year; and the term of office of the existing councillors, guardians, and members shall accordingly be extended, or further extended, by one year.

This provision shall apply only where the next statutory election (whether a postponed election or not) would take place before the first day of June, nineteen hundred and seventeen, or in Ireland before the twentieth day of May, nineteen hundred and seventeen.

(2) Sub-sections (3), (4), (5) and (6) of Section one of the Elections and Registration Act, 1915, shall apply to the foregoing Sub-section as they apply to the provisions of that Section with the substitution of the year nineteen hundred and seventeen for the year nineteen hundred and sixteen.

(3) Section seventeen of the Local Government (Emergency Provisions) Act, 1916 which amends the Elections and Registration Act, 1915, with respect to casual vacancies), shall have effect as if this Act were mentioned as well as the Elections and Registration Act, 1915, in Sub-section (1) thereof, as if two years were substituted for one year in Sub-section (2) thereof.

(4) Section thirty-six of the Municipal Corporations Act, 1882, and any other enactment making the payment of a fine a condition of resigning any office, shall not have effect so as to require the payment of a fine in the case of a councillor, guardian, or member of a local or other body who resigns any office after the date on which his term of office would, but for the provisions of the Elections and Registration Act, 1915, pr this Act, have expired.

(5) Nothing in this Section shall operate to continue in Scotland any councillor in the office of bailie beyond the date at which he would in ordinary course have retired as a councillor.

Sir G. CAVE

I beg to move, in Subsection (4), after the word "member"["or member of a local"], to insert the words "or elective auditor."

This is to make it clear that the Clause applies not only to members of those bodies, but to the elective auditor as well.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.